"Has Vayl fulfilled his end of the bargain?" Liliana asked me, her voice as sweet as powdered sugar. She took my silence for the answer she wanted and went on, "An avhar carries a great burden and responsibility," she told me. "Therefore she also receives certain privileges, one of those being the right to know every detail of her Sverhamin's past."
"Liliana," Vayl growled. The panther prepared to pounce.
"So I just wondered if Vayl has told you about his sons—our sons—and how he killed them—"
"Enough!" Vayl's voice rang with power. Somewhere nearby a meteorologist had flipped out because the temperature had just plunged from 59 to oh-crap-cover-the-oranges. I shivered as frost coated my eyelashes and my lungs filled with winter. Liliana's gunmen, not being Sensitives, weren't fairing nearly as well. They blew into their hands and stomped their feet, and I heard the Tattooed Wonder say, "I can't feel my nose."
"You four," Vayl barked, "get into the car!" They snapped to attention, did a quick about-face and marched right into the limo.
"And you," he regarded his former wife like a mongoose facing a cobra, "get out of my sight, for good this time!"
She bared her fangs and hissed at him, a fairly hilarious reaction in any other circumstance. "Do not believe this is over," she warned, "you cannot guard her every moment. You cannot see in every direction at once. I only have to wait until you blink."
"Harm one hair on her head and I will burn that laughable wig of yours with your head still in it."
I felt a sudden urge to applaud as Liliana muttered an insult I couldn't quite translate, my Romanian being limited to "yes," "no," and "Where's the bathroom?" But, to my surprise, she did retreat to the limo. The door slammed shut and it pulled away.
"So," I said, "we're just letting them leave?"
Vayl took hold of my arm. "No, we are letting them think we let them leave. Come."
We hurried to the Mercedes and pulled into traffic a comfortable distance behind the limo. Ordinarily this would be an easy tail considering the make of their ride. But inside our car the atmosphere was far from relaxed. Finally Vayl said, "I do owe you an explanation."
"Just tell me what I need to know to survive this mission. You can save the rest—"
"—for the plane ride back?" We smiled at each other. "At this rate we will have to fly to Ohio by way of Portugal." Our shared laughter eased the tension, and by the time Vayl spoke again he sounded more like himself.
"I think, first of all, we must face the fact that you have been the target of these attacks all along."
"I'll buy the first attempt," I said, "but why would they poison your blood? And why would they call in your ex?"
"Think about it. They taint my blood supply, I turn on you and take yours. All of it."
"That doesn't quite make sense to me. I mean, you didn't, and—"
Vayl stopped me with an irritable shake of his head. "You are looking at this like a human being, Jasmine. Look at it from a vampire's perspective."
Vayl stopped, stared hard out the window, and by the time he met my eyes again I knew we'd made the same leap. Like a couple of kids on their way to yelling, "Jinx, you owe me a coke!" we chorused, "The mastermind is a vampire!"
Chapter Eleven
"It makes perfect sense," Vayl rushed on as I tried to gather my scattered thoughts enough to keep us from crashing into the nearest electric pole. "A vampire would know that, when faced with a deepening hunger, I would turn to the nearest possible source of nourishment."
"You make me sound like a granola bar."
"Jasmine!"
"I'm joking, I know it wasn't that way. Go on, go on."
"Most vampires, at least the ones who scoff at the idea of assimilation, would have drained you without hesitation. This one is, I believe, no exception. That also explains much better the appearance of Liliana. Until you, only vampires knew of her connection with me."
"How many knew?" I asked.
His shrug and grimace told me not to get excited. "All of the Old Ones, who could have told anyone. Everyone Liliana ever consorted with. I would wager the information is shared by hundreds."
"Including a senator. I mean, that's where we're going with this, right? I saw Martha right before we left. She was still human then."
Vayl nodded, "And still is I will wager. But that does not clear her. It only makes her a potential partner, or patsy, of the senator."
"A senator though? Are we sure we're sober?"
"Remember I told you at the beginning that something seemed off about this mission?"
"Yeah."
"The Committee was supposed to meet with us before we left. They called it a six-month review. Despite Pete's reassurances that he and I were happy with your performance, they wanted to ask you a whole slew of questions. Something about making sure we had made the right decision."
The specter of my past lifted its raggedy head and cackled. The thought that it might always haunt me felt wretched. I wanted to crawl into the nearest bed and burrow under the covers until I was just a lump. Nobody expects anything of lumps. It could be a peaceful existence. Unless you'd just eaten chili. And I liked chili. Never mind.
"Then, without warning, the senators canceled their interview. They said this new mission was much too urgent to put off any longer. Although when I discussed it with Pete he made no mention of a need to rush."
"So what are you getting at?" I asked.
"If the interview had taken place, the undead politician would have been forced to attend. You are a Sensitive. As soon as you entered the room you would have pegged the vampire."
"A vampire senator." I shook my head. "Scary. But how did they figure to pull it off? People in Washington get kind of suspicious when you only come out at night."
Vayl shrugged. "Technology has befriended the human race; I imagine there are times when it smiles kindly on vampires as well."
Well, maybe. Or maybe our senator had a double. Public figures had done the same throughout history. Or maybe he or she was so newly turned and this plan so quickly hatched that he or she could go a couple of weeks in the dark without raising suspicion. Bottom line, our senator had found a way.
I said, "Okay, so at this point we have a dirty plastic surgeon with terrorist ties allied with a Most Wanted vampire allied with a senator. You know what this smells like don't you?"
"Raptor?"
"That son of a bitch is the only one I can think of who could pull together three such unlikely collaborators."
We both fell silent, thinking about the vamp who would, according to Pete's prediction, become the nemesis of every government of every developed country in the world by the end of the decade. If we could use our current suspects to prove all the suppositions we'd collected regarding the Raptor and thus justify a hit on him—to say that the safety and stability of the world would increase exponentially would not be an overstatement.
The limo ahead of us slowed, searching for parking. It had led us to South Beach, where the pretty people met to PARTAYYY! Bars, restaurants, two theatres and a comedy club, all dressed up in Art Deco and neon, shared the neighborhood with the establishment in front of which the limo stopped. The place resembled a Jaycees haunted house, from the rocking tombstones that spelled out CLUB UNDEAD on the fake granite facade, to the glowing skeletons that hung from the second floor balcony, to the green lights that outlined the entire building.