Reluctant Partnerships (16 page)

“Are you ready to head out?” he asked when she answered.

“Yes,” Pascale said. “It’s not like I had anything with me when I arrived.”

“I know you’ll be glad to be home,” David said. “I’ll take you as far as l’Institut, and they’ll make arrangements from there.”

“Yes, that’s what Angelique said,” Pascale replied. “Thank you for helping me.”

“You’re welcome,” David said. “Shall we go?”

Pascale nodded, and David cast the displacement spell, taking both of them to the courtyard of l’Institut. “Let’s go inside,” David said. “We’ll find Jean and Raymond, and they can figure out how to get you home from here.”

David led her inside to the director’s office. The door was closed, but he could hear voices inside. He knocked and entered at Raymond’s terse summons.

“I’ve brought Pascale back,” David said. “Angelique told me you’d take care of getting her home from here.”

“Yes, I talked to her about it earlier today,” Raymond said. “Welcome to l’Institut Marcel Chavinier, Pascale. David, will you stay for dinner?”

“I ate already, but thank you,” David demurred. “I should get back. Angelique is waiting for me.”

“Don’t keep her waiting,” Jean said. “We’ll take care of Pascale from here.”

David cast a second displacement spell, leaving Pascale alone in the office with Jean, Raymond, and Adèle.

“Have a seat,” Raymond said. “Jean was just going over some names with Adèle in the hope of narrowing the list of suspects in your case.”

“Really?” Pascale asked. “I didn’t really expect you to catch him. I gave you little enough to go on.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Adèle said, hiding her discomfort at being in the same room as the new vampire, “but I kept thinking about what you’d said about his voice being similar to Jean’s. Any linguist will tell you that you can place a person’s home by the way they speak. It occurred to me you might be able to place a vampire’s time of birth the same way. If your attacker sounded similar to Jean, it could be because he is a contemporary of Jean’s. And that means we can at least narrow down the list of vampires somewhat.”

“You met Sebastien when you first came here,” Jean said. “Do you remember him?”

“Yes,” Pascale said. “He helped get me to Paris.”

“Did his voice remind you at all of the vampire who attacked you?” Jean asked.

“No,” Pascale said, “not like yours does.”

“So that gives us an outer limit on when the vampire was turned,” Jean told Adèle. “Somewhere before 1500, since Sebastien was turned early in the sixteenth century. The farther back you go, the fewer vampires there are to choose from. I can only think of a few dozen in France who predate my turning. Once you get to the time of Sebastien’s turning, the numbers increase. Not dramatically, but enough that it would be harder to narrow down. Since we can leave out everyone who postdates his turning, though, it’s a large but hopefully manageable list.”

“Particularly when we eliminate those who weren’t likely to be in the area on Sunday,” Adèle said. “Monsieur Lombard, for example. When did he last leave his house, never mind Paris?”

“Not recently,” Jean agreed, “although he goes out more often than he used to. You might check with Denis Langlois about that list as well. Those are the vampires I know, but I don’t know his Cour nearly as well as he does. He might be able to add some names.”

“I’ll do that,” Adèle said. “I should go.”

“Wait,” Jean said, “take Pascale with you. You’ve been to her house, so you can cast a displacement spell and send her home instead of Raymond having to drive her.”

Adèle gritted her teeth in frustration. She had hoped to avoid this situation until she had more time to wrap her head around possibly having a new,
female
partner, but Jean had given her no choice. “I can’t,” she said. “My magic didn’t work on her when I tried to stop her from jumping off the bridge.”

“What?” Raymond said. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

“Because it’s none of anyone’s damn business,” Adèle snapped. “How many times do I have to tell you I don’t want another partner?”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts,” Adèle interrupted. “I don’t want another partner. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have vampires to investigate.”

She cast a displacement spell and disappeared before Jean or Raymond could say anything else.

“Sorry about that,” Raymond said to Pascale. “She’s prickly at the best of times.”

“It’s fine,” Pascale said, mind reeling as she tried to take in the implications of what had just happened. “Angelique told me Adèle hadn’t had a good experience with her first partner, and she doesn’t know me. She had no reason to believe I’d be any different.”

“Oh, she has plenty of reasons to believe you’d be different,” Jean said. “For one thing, you’re a contemporary of hers rather than hundreds of years old and refusing to accept that times have changed, but she’s too stubborn to see it. She’ll come around.”

“Do I get a say in the matter?” Pascale asked. “I mean, you just said she’s prickly at the best of times. Maybe I don’t want the hassle of dealing with someone like that.”

“She
is
prickly,” Raymond said. “There’s no denying that, but that doesn’t make her a bad person or a bad partner. She’s one of the most determined, hardworking, fair-minded wizards I know. She hides beneath that gruff exterior because she believes that’s the only way she’ll get the respect of her generally older, generally male colleagues on the police force. If you can win her trust, she’ll show you her softer side.”

“I’ve talked to Angelique, so I have some idea of what it means to have a partner and why that trust would be so important,” Pascale said, “but what if Adèle continues to refuse to have anything to do with me? Does that mean I can’t find a partner until after she dies?”

“I don’t know,” Raymond said. “We’ve had vampires and wizards match and then choose not to form a partnership, but everything is still so new that we don’t know if they’ll be able to match with someone else, because only a small percentage of vampires and wizards who have completed the seminars have found partners at all. Maybe fifteen percent. The rest have either chosen not to try for a match, haven’t found a match, or haven’t taken the final step of becoming partners. There’s still so much we don’t know about what allows a partnership to form. We know how, but not why.”

“So I guess I’ll go through a seminar to decide if I want to have a partnership, with Adèle or with someone else, and then take my chances,” Pascale said.

“After you’ve done that, if you decide you do want a partnership, we can always try to persuade Adèle to reconsider,” Raymond said. “I can’t order her to do it, and I wouldn’t even if I could, because that’s what landed her in a partnership she didn’t want the last time around. We didn’t know what we were getting into, or we wouldn’t have rushed into them then. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try reasoning with her.”

Pascale nodded. “I need to go home,” she said slowly. “I need to sleep in my own bed and wear my own clothes and feel like myself again. Angelique said I could use the branch of Sang Froid in Dommartin until I get used to hunting on my own.”

“Some vampires never hunt,” Jean added. “Some always use Angelique’s services. You won’t have grocery bills anymore, so you can use your grocery budget at Sang Froid if you choose to go that route instead of hunting.”

It made sense, and Pascale suspected she would go that route more often than not. She was not aggressive as a rule, and while she had hunted successfully with Angelique at her side guiding her and shoring up her confidence, Pascale doubted she would fare nearly as well on her own. If she had a regular lover she could feed from, that would be different, but she did not, and now that she was a vampire, she would have even more trouble finding one than she had before. Unless Adèle changed her mind.

“Would it be too much of an imposition to ask someone to drive me home?” Pascale said, not comfortable sharing her thoughts with the two men in the room. They wanted to help, but she did not know them well enough to confide in them the way she suspected everyone else did. They had that air about them, but everything was still too new and uncertain for her to trust anything or anyone.

“I’ll drive you,” Raymond said. “That way I’ll know where you live so I can use magic to take you there later.”

“Thank you,” Pascale said. “It will be good to be home again.”

H
ALF
an hour later, alone in her house, Pascale walked around the familiar rooms, trying to feel at home once again. Everything felt strange, though, as if she were seeing it all through new eyes. Perhaps she was, she mused as she fingered the jewelry box her mother had given her. She supposed she should be glad her mother was not around to see what she had become. Deeply devout, her mother would have had trouble accepting this change in Pascale’s nature. More than once, she had listened to her mother rant about magic being the devil’s own handiwork. It was not an opinion Pascale shared, but it was one she had given up trying to change in her mother.

Having walked into the kitchen, she opened the cupboards mechanically, staring at the items inside. She would have to see if Secours catholique could send someone by to pick up a donation, because otherwise it would all go to waste. She had no idea if she could still consume any of the food, but she already knew it would not provide any nourishment.

The big windows she had so coveted when she first saw the house let in the moonlight, a subtle reminder of the danger they now posed. Even knowing moonlight would not hurt her, she suddenly felt exposed with the volets opened. Grabbing the remote, she pressed the button to close all the blinds in the house, cocooning her safely in darkness.

That brought her thoughts squarely back to the revelation she had been trying to avoid dwelling on: Adèle and the potential partnership between them.

The idea of having some degree of normalcy in her life again appealed. Being able to move in the daylight, while it went against all her new instincts, would allow her to attend meetings at work and keep her job more easily. Not having to hunt would save her from the awkwardness of approaching potential donors only to be rebuffed as she had been too many times in her life when she had approached someone who interested her. Most importantly, having someone to share her life and help her adjust to all the changes in her body and her abilities would be a great comfort. The only problem with that image was her inability to envision Adèle being comforting. Adèle had tried to reassure her the night Pascale was turned, taking her to l’Institut, assuring her she was not a monster, but Pascale had not felt safe until she was in Paris with Angelique. Of course, Adèle’s realization of their potential partnership that night might have influenced her attitude and actions, but her comments tonight did not give Pascale any hope that the intervening days had changed Adèle’s reaction to the situation. Adèle had no desire for another partner, end of discussion, which left Pascale in limbo again. She could try to persuade Adèle to give her a chance, but that seemed a venture doomed to failure with the wizard’s previous partner having spoiled the idea of partnerships for her. She could try to find a different partner, if that was possible, but Raymond and Jean did not seem to have much hope for that.

With a sigh, she fell back on the safety of routine, walking upstairs to her bedroom and getting ready for bed. She was not going to solve this problem tonight, and she had other, more pressing matters to deal with first, like making sure she still had a job and that her employer would work around her new limitations. Once she was sure she could survive on her own, she would think about finding a partner.

A
DÈLE
knocked on the door of the building she had identified as the residence of Denis Langlois. She hoped he was in, but she was prepared to wait if he was not. Anything was better than returning home, where her thoughts would chase her out of bed or follow her into her dreams if she managed to sleep.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, monsieur Langlois,” Adèle said, “but I was hoping you could go over a list of names with me to see if there are any I’ve missed or any I’ve included incorrectly.”

“This relates to the turning the other night?” Denis asked.

“Yes, the victim commented on her attacker’s voice being distinctive, much like Jean’s in accent, though not in pitch,” Adèle explained. “We’re hoping to use that to narrow down the list of possible suspects based on when a vampire was turned. Jean suggested I talk to you, since you’re more familiar with the vampires in this area than he is.”

“I have the records,” Denis said, “although my predecessor was not always meticulous about updating them. Depending on when a vampire was turned or came to Autun, I may not have records. I’ve been trying to fill in the missing information, but I’ve only been in my position for six months.”

“Yes, I remember hearing about your accession to the role,” Adèle said. “Right in the middle of the attacks at l’Institut. I should have come then to introduce myself and to congratulate you, but I was a little tied up with that investigation.”

“What years are you looking for?” Denis asked.

“Before 1500,” Adèle said. “We don’t have a beginning date, although Jean was turned in the year 911, and she said the accent was the same, so the closer to that date someone was turned, the more likely they are to have the same accent.”

“That predates Renaud’s reign as chef de la Cour,” Denis said, “so unless an older vampire came to Autun later, we should have complete records.”

He led Adèle into the library and pulled out a huge leather-bound sheaf of vellum pages. “The records of the Cour d’Autun,” Denis said. “Before 1500, you say? Let’s start there and work backward.”

They spent the next hour checking records against Adèle’s list. Many of the vampires inscribed on the pages were no longer extant, driving home to Adèle the desolation of their solitary existences, but by the time they reached the beginning of the genealogies, she had added ten names to her list, including that of the former chef de la Cour.