“The Gordon brothers were delighted with you,” Brook said. “They wished you were a little older, but they were willing to wait. They planned to go down to meet your sisters and your mothers. I don’t know whether or not that had happened, but it would have been necessary. Your mothers would have to meet the whole Gordon family and then give or refuse their consent.”
“Where do the Gordons live?” I asked.
She hesitated, frowned. “Somewhere on the coast of northern California.” “You don’t know exactly where?”
She shook her head. “Their community has a name—Punta Nublada—but it’s not a real town. It’s only the four brothers and their three fathers and a couple of elderfathers who were born in the sixteen hundreds. It’s amazing to meet people like that.”
“You met them?” Wright asked.
“I went with Iosif and one of Shori’s mothers and some other symbionts to visit them. I loved the trip, but I didn’t know where I was most of the time. I know we flew into San Francisco Airport—at night, of course—and a couple of symbionts from Punta Nublada met us in vans and drove us up. It was more than two hours north of San Francisco Airport and on the coast. That’s all I know. They have a lot of land. Inland, away from their community, they own vineyards. They have a wine-making business, which is kind of funny when you think about it.”
Wright laughed. “Yeah. I’ll bet they still don’t drink it.” “What?” I demanded.
“Old joke from a vampire movie,” Wright said. “From the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula. Someone offers the Count a glass, and he says,‘I do not drink . . . wine.’”
I shrugged. Maybe I’d watch the movie someday and see why that was funny. “We’ll go to Punta
Nublada,” I said. “You’ll find it for us, Brook.”
She looked distressed. “I don’t know where it is, I swear.” “Did you sleep while you were being driven?”
“No, but it was dark.”
“You can see in this darkness—here, under the trees. Your night vision is good.” “It is. But most of what I saw was headlights and taillights.”
I nodded. “They can be a problem. But I think you saw more than you realize.” “I didn’t,” she said. “I really didn’t.”
“We need help, Brook,” I said. “Can you think of anyone else—anyone other than the Gordons—who might help us?”
She faced me and shook her head. “But these people may not help us, even if we find them. I don’t know whether there was a confirmed agreement between your family and theirs. And even if there was, they ... I’m sorry, Shori. They might not want you without your sisters. It’s hard for only children to find mates. Iosif said it would have been hard for him, but he was already mated when his brothers were killed. His mates were just smart enough to get out before he did.”
I shrugged. “All right, even if the Gordons don’t still want to mate with me, they should be willing to help find and stop the assassins. That’s what I really need help with, after all. Human gangs wiping out two whole communities of Ina. Any Ina should be willing to do something about that—out of self-preservation if nothing else.”
“They should.”
“Then you find them, and I’ll put it to them in just that way. Self-preservation. Iosif must have seen some good in them.” I looked at her, and she looked away. “I feel as though I know humans better than I know my own kind—not that that’s saying much. Am I missing something here? Is there some reason these people might not help us?”
She shook her head. “I think they will help, even if they don’t want you as a mate. I’m just scared I
won’t be able to find them for you.”
“Yes you will,” I said. “You’ll find them. Then once we get some peace, we can begin to assemble a household. The Gordons should be able to give us phone numbers and addresses of other Ina—my mothers’ brothers, perhaps. Are they alive?”
“Your mothers’ brothers? Yes. I’ve never met them, but you have.” Suddenly she put her hands to her face. She didn’t cry, but she looked as though she wanted to. “How can I do this?” she demanded. “You can’t depend on me. I don’t really know anything.”
“You can.” I said. “You will. Don’t worry about it. Just know that you will.”
Wright said, “We can drive down—all the way to San Francisco Airport if we have to. From there, we can turn north again, and maybe Brook can find the way.”
“We’ll start tonight,” I said.
He nodded. “What about Celia? She might know something.”
“She needed to sleep. We’ll tell her when she wakes up, and I’ll find out what she knows.”
“We need maps,” Wright said. “I don’t know the way, except that we’ll be going south, probably on I-5. We’ll make San Francisco Airport our destination, so when we reach California, we should stick to a coastal route—probably U. S. 101—until we reach the airport or until Brook recognizes something.”
“We should go back to your cabin first,” I said, “or if you don’t want to do that, you can let me out a few blocks from there. I need to talk to Theodora and see whether or not she should come with us.”
He nodded. “I need to talk to my uncle anyway, to let him know that I haven’t just disappeared on him and that I want my job. I want him to be willing to hire me again when this is over. I want to get some of my stuff, too. Hell, I was all packed to leave anyway.”
“Let’s go now,” I said. “We’ve got hours of darkness left. By daybreak, we should be well on our way.”
fourteen
Once we got back to Wright’s cabin, I went to visit Theodora. I slipped into her bedroom by way of her balcony, woke her, and told her what had happened and what we were going to do. Her scent was still mostly her own so I knew I could leave her, lonely but safe.
“I want to go with you!” she protested.
“I know,” I told her. “But it will be better if you wait. I can’t protect you now. I don’t even have the prospect of a home now, and I have no Ina allies. It was only luck that none of us was hurt or killed at the Arlington house.”
“You protected them.”
“Luck,” I said. “They could so easily have been burned or shot. Wright could have left the television on, and I might not have heard the intruders until it was too late. I want you with me, and you will be. But not yet.”
She cried and wanted me to at least stay the rest of the night with her. I bit her a little—only to taste her—then held her and lapped at the wound until she was focused on the pleasure. She was like Wright. She had some hold on me beyond the blood. At last, I knew I had to go so I told her to sleep. She resisted briefly, took something from the very back and bottom of the middle drawer in her night table, and put it in my hand. “You might need this,” she whispered. “Take it. I’ve got more.” Then she kissed me and let herself drift off to sleep.
She had put money into my hand, a thick roll of twenty-dollar bills with a rubber band around it. I took it back to Wright’s cabin. He was in the main house, talking to his uncle. He and the two women had each had a shower. By the time Wright came back, I was having one, and the women were eating the meal they had prepared. We were all wasting time, and I knew it, but I enjoyed my shower and let them enjoy their microwaved mugs of vegetable soup, slabs of canned ham, and dinner rolls heated in the convection oven—simple, quickly prepared food.