4

The party ended about three-thirty, after the second, somewhat apologetic, visit by a black-and-white. "Hey, Harry, we don't want to lean on you, but your neighbors are going to bitch about favoritism if we don't look like we're treating you the same as any other loud party. So turn it down, okay?"

Lien smiled at the officers and went into the family room to whisper something in Evelyn Kolb's ear. A few minutes later Kolb and her husband left with loud good-byes, and soon everyone else began drifting out, too. Garreth sighed inwardly in relief.

When the last guest had gone, Lien bolted and chained the front door and leaned against it, shaking her head. "Honorable husband, I think we're getting too old for this. Leave everything. Letty can deal with it when she comes in tomorrow morning. I hope you enjoyed yourself, Garreth."

"It was great fun seeing everyone again." He kissed her cheek. "Thank you both very much."

Upstairs, though, he scrambled into a sweat suit and running shoes and paced impatiently, waiting for Harry and Lien to settle down for the night. It seemed to take an eternity. Once he heard their bedroom door close, he bolted his on the inside and moved through it to glide silently downstairs to the refrigerator for the meal he had not been able to drink during the party. Then he slipped out through the locked front door.

Tonight he did not even consider driving. A man about to commit burglary needed an alibi. His bedroom door and the front door both locked from the inside and his car parked in the drive all night should make it appear that he could not have left.

He regretted having to leave the car, but not much. As his legs stretched and the street streamed backward beneath him, he gave himself over to the exhilaration of running. Forget where he was going and why. Forget burning bridges, the hustler, and violet eyes watching him from cold shadows. For the moment, nothing mattered but the sea-scented air filling his lungs and the power surging through his legs, giving him the heady feeling that he could run forever. He ran soundlessly through the empty residential streets, a shadow, a phantom.

Leaving the Sunset district, he crossed Golden Gate Park, then angled on north and east through Richmond into Pacific Heights. The houses lay dark and the streets deserted except for an occasional civilian car or patrolling black-and-white, which Garreth avoided by moving off the street into shadows by houses or parked cars while the unit passed.

No activity showed in Holle's house, either. Garreth watched it from the shadow of a doorway across the street for five minutes just to be sure. With a look both ways up the street, he strolled across and listened at the front door. Nothing moved inside.

Wrench.

The hall stretched out before him, twilight bright in his night vision, empty but not silent. The house creaked and groaned with the voices of old stone and aged wood. Beneath the lingering traces of cooking odors, Emeraude perfume, and Holle's cologne, it breathed out the scents of its existence, too: varnish, wood, smoke from the fireplace, lemon oil. Garreth glanced around, from the paneling and paintings to the stairs and soaring ceiling. Where did he start looking? Right here?

Still moving silent as a shadow, he walked through the living, dining, and breakfast rooms, and into the kitchen. None of those rooms had heavy drapes. In the kitchen, though, he eyed the refrigerator. The chances of finding anything significant in it were probably slim at best. With a whole city out there to draw on, vampire guests had no need to store up blood for an extra day or two. Obtaining extra from people was not quite like bleeding a cow, either. People noticed the loss of three or four pints at one time. Still . . .

He opened the refrigerator.

Holle kept it well stocked for humans. He even kept a selection of chilled wine.

Garreth started to close the refrigerator, then stopped. He pulled the door open again to peer at the wine. Something looked odd about those bottles. After studying them for a minute, he realized why. Four of the eight had no seals. They had obviously been opened and recorked. But the recorked ones all stood in the rear.

Garreth reached back for one. Pulling it out, he blinked. A strip of red tape crossed the commercial label, lettered in black: RAW SEA WATER. DO NOT DRINK! Further examination found that the other three without seals had the same warning.

Odd. Garreth hefted the bottle. He could see someone keeping brine for marinating or cooking seafood, but why would anyone have four bottles of real sea water? There was no telling what pollutants it carried. No one could pay him to drink it! He shook the bottle.

The dark liquid inside moved sluggishly.

Garreth's neck and spine tingled. That was no sea water. He worked the cork free and sniffed at the opening.

The scent from it raised goose bumps all over his body. Human blood!

He stared down at the bottle, hunger searing him. Human blood, ready to drink without having to attack anyone. Hurriedly he returned it to the refrigerator and retreated from the kitchen. No. He could not afford to indulge his appetite.

On the second floor none of the rooms but the library had heavy drapes. At the rear of the house the scents of blood and Holle's cologne wafted around the edges of a locked door along with the sound of a sleeper's breathing. The room must be Holle's. The third floor, all bedrooms, had two occupied rooms at the front, neither locked. The sleepers in both smelled of blood. The next room stood empty. The two rear rooms by the service stairs, though, had been turned into an apartment for the housekeeper. The scent of Emeraude filled them, and the housekeeper herself slept soundly in the bedroom.

He climbed the service stairs to the top floor in the attic. The old servants' quarters there had apparently been turned into more guest rooms. The front ones were unoccupied. Two locked doors closed off storage rooms. Sliding through the doors, he found light from the street shining in the dormer windows to light stacked cardboard boxes and a jumble of old chairs, lamps, and some racks of clothing hanging in zippered plastic bags.

Two rooms at the back remained unchecked. He opened one door. Heavy drapes covered the dormer window. Quickly Garreth examined the bed. Earth filled the plastic mattress cover. The delicious relaxation he felt running his hand over it told him that even before the gritty shifting inside did.

Pay dirt. The room could be meant only to accommodate a vampire.

Only one room remained.

As he opened its door, Garreth froze with his hand on the knob. A spicy muskiness lingered in the air, a perfume he remembered only too well. It had curled around him with such inviting sweetness that Thanksgiving night on the island in Baumen's Pioneer Park.

He fought to breathe. No! Impossible. Lane could not have been here! Could she?

But what did he know . . . really? Books with vampire lore could hardly be called authoritative. Beyond that, he had only personal experience and what Lane had told him. How could he trust what she said?

After a few minutes, panic ebbed, and as reason replaced it, it occurred to him that along with everything else Lane had learned from her mentor, Irina, she might also have adopted the other woman's perfume. What he smelled could be traces of Irina, not Lane.

His paralysis dissolved. Swiftly he examined the room. It had the same heavy drapes and earth-filled mattress cover the room next to it did. Both closet and dresser drawers had been cleaned out, but the spicy scent lingering in them, too, told him that they had been used recently. Perhaps as recently as today.

He closed the door and glided downstairs to the next floor, through the door of Holle's room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Garreth shook the sleeping man's shoulder. "Wake up, Mr. Holle; we have things to talk about."

Holle woke with a start. "What—" He blinked, squinting up at what his dark­blind eyes must see as only a vague shadow beside him. "Who are you? How the hell did you get in—"

"I'm Garreth Mikaelian. So you know how I got in."

Holle sat up. "Then take yourself out the same way."

"Not until I know where to find Irina Rodek." Garreth switched on the bedside light. "Mr. Holle, look at me and tell me you don't know where she is."

Holle squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "I don't know."

"Look at me!"

"Sorry." Holle smiled faintly. "You're obviously young in the life. You don't have the power yet to command by voice alone."

"Someone around here has the power, though," Garreth said grimly. "Great power. Last night that someone killed a man named Richard Maruska. Maruska happened to be one of my kind."

Holle's eyelids flickered but remained closed. "Killed him?"

"Broke his neck. At night. How many humans could do that?" Garreth watched Holle lick his lips as the statement sank in, then added, "He was supposed to meet me to tell me how to find Irina."

Sweat beaded Holle's forehead. "Irina couldn't have killed him. She—" He broke off.

"She what?" Garreth prompted. "Tell me about her. And tell me about yourself. How long have you known vampires really exist? Do many humans know?"

But Holle only pressed his lips into a line and turned his head away.

"You're obstructing a murder investigation, Holle."

The man snorted. "Conducted in the middle of the night by an officer without authority who breaks into my house and bedroom? I wonder what Sergeant Takananda would think if he knew about it."

Cold chased down Garreth's spine. He came back, "Who's going to tell him? You? The man with bottles of a very unique and bizarre vintage in his refrigerator and earth mattresses on two of his guest beds? You can't risk close scrutiny any more than I can."

Holle licked his lips again. "Then we have reached an impasse."

"Not really. You say Irina can't be guilty. Fine. Let me talk to her and see for myself."

The stubborn set returned to Holle's jaw. "I told you before, I don't know where she is. She left and didn't say where she was going."

The experience from years of talking to reluctant subjects told Garreth that without more leverage, this was all he would pry out of Holle. He stood, sighing. "Okay. If you happen to remember something and care to confide it, in the interests of justice and public safety, you can reach me through Sergeant Takananda. Though it doesn't really matter. With or without your help, I'll find Irina."

The way to start, he decided on his way downstairs, was with a look at the murder scene. Maybe that would give him a lead. Even if he had free access to the case reports—doubtful under the circumstances—they might not help. For all the crime lab's competence, their examination could have overlooked something that had signifi­cance only to a vampire.

Holle's phone directory on the hall table listed a Richard Maruska with a Western Addition address. Not the best of addresses, Garreth noted, but there were worse, and it was close. He would have time to reach it and still be back at Harry's before dawn.

Footsteps whispered overhead.

Garreth froze. They came from the guest room. One of the guests heading for the bathroom to take a leak? No, he realized a moment later. The footsteps, so quiet that human hearing would not have detected them, were coming downstairs. The guest must have heard him!

Making sure he moved soundlessly this time, Garreth raced for the front door and slipped out through it with a sharp wrench. On the street he breathed more easily, but he lost no time breaking into a lope and heading south toward the Western Addition.