2

Garreth told Harry Fowler's theory on the drive home.

Harry bit his lower lip. "It's a possibility. I'd like it to be the case; it'd mean your only involvement is as a fall-guy. Van won't go for it, though. Too complicated. She'll have a point, too; most people in Barber's position would just kill you. Plots like Fowler's suggesting only happen in books and the movies." He paused. "Mik-san, what is it you know you haven't told me about? It might help if you did."

He wished . . . but even if he could feel confident that the resources of the police department would find Irina, not only was there too much risk that they might learn what she was, but Harry could become her next victim. Once before his carelessness had nearly killed Harry. That must not happen again.

In the interest of appearing cooperative, though, maybe he could risk a partial truth.

He shrugged. "It's nothing, just one of Grandma Doyle's Feelings. I'm not even sure how you'd act on it. She warned me to beware of a violet-eyed woman. I . . . asked Holle if the woman asking for Lane had violet eyes."

"And?"

"He claimed he never noticed their color. When I asked him if he were sure, he acted like I'd accused him of lying."

"That was the hassle?" Harry shook his head. "Why didn't you say so before?"

"I'm not about to drag my grandmother out in front of your partner and Fowler to be ridiculed or turned into a character in a book."

Did Harry believe that? Garreth could not tell. Harry smiled, but said nothing more, only drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Until they pulled into the drive. Then as they climbed out, he looked at Garreth across the top of the car. "There's no point in upsetting Lien with the . . . problems in this case, so—"

"I don't want to distress her with the fact that I'm a suspect, either, Harry," Garreth interrupted.

"Thanks."

Lien met them at the door, shaking her head in mock exasperation.

"I don't know why I bother cooking for you two. Everything is mummified by the time you finally come home. It would make more sense to wait until I see you, then send out for pizza or make a quick run to the Colonel for fried chicken."

Harry kissed her soundly. "Think how dull life would be if you always knew where I'd be and when."

"You might start taking him for granted," Garreth teased.

For a moment the laughter died out of her eyes. She reached out to touch Harry's cheek. "Never."

In the one word Garreth heard her morning ritual with I Ching—"Will my husband be safe today?"—and the memory of that terrible wait in the emergency room to learn if Harry would live or die.

A moment later she laughed again. "Come along, honorable husband, honored guest; your tea is waiting."

She served it in the family room as always, but instead of sitting down to enjoy it, they followed her into the dining room and kitchen, joking with each other and her. Garreth pretended to sip from his cup, then set it down and "forgot" it as he helped her set the table. Without actually talking shop, Harry filled dinner with a string of anecdotes about people seen or interviewed during the day, mimicking some like Fowler and the clerk at the Bay Vista Hotel with wicked accuracy.

"It was great being partners with Garreth again, right Mik-san?"

"Right." Garreth wished his tea had no brandy in it so he could drink it. As the kitchen and dining room filled with blood scents, his stomach cramped in a savage hunger that burned all the way up his throat. "Like old times." He gulped down his glass of water. It eased the pangs a little. "How was your day?"

"I had my children's art class this afternoon." She launched into stories about teaching drawing and painting.

As she talked, however, she kept glancing from Harry to him with a searching gaze that dropped his stomach toward his feet. Did she suspect something?

His answer came at the end of dinner. He picked up his plate and started to stand and carry it into the kitchen.

She reached across to catch his arm. "That can wait, Garreth. All right, you two; tell me what's wrong."

Harry regarded her innocently. "Wrong? What do you mean?"

She stared into him. "I mean you've come home running a relentless two-man comedy routine, but you're just picking over your beef stroganoff and Garreth hasn't eaten any at all. Every time you do that, something has happened you don't want me to find out about because you think it will upset me. Once it was a knife wound on your arm. Another time the two of you had fought over whether to release a suspect you felt sure was guilty but didn't have the evidence to hold. What this time?"

"There's nothing—" Harry began.

Garreth interrupted, "Girimonte and I mix like gasoline and matches." He should have remembered. Lien always knew when they dragged home psychological baggage. So give her some to chew over.

Lien eyed them both for a minute, then nodded. "Yes, I can imagine, and my poor Harry is caught in the middle, not sure which to side with, old partner or new partner."

After reaching over to pat Harry's arm, she appeared satisfied and let the subject drop. They washed dishes and adjourned to the TV to watch the news, then to groan and hoot at police procedure as portrayed on the late-night rerun of a cop show.

Garreth slipped out to the refrigerator in the kitchen during the show. He drank straight from the thermos, but even as he gulpied down the blood, his appetite continued to snarl in frustration at every maddeningly unsatisfying swallow. The memory of Holle's refrigerator taunted him.

A sound in the dining room warned him that he was about to have company. Blood scent drifting around him told him who. Moving casually, he crossed to the sink and rinsed out the thermos. Hunting time again tonight. "Hi, Lien."

From behind him she said, "You're still using that liquid protein diet you were on when you left San Francisco? Do you ever eat anything else?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Of course." Water rinsed the last traces of blood down the drain. "I just wasn't hungry tonight."

She leaned against the kitchen door. "Harry's gone up to get ready for bed. I don't suppose you'll tell me what the real problem between the two of you is."

He set the thermos upside down on the drainboard to dry and turned to face her. "I can't."

Her forehead furrowed. "Or what the problem eating you up inside is? Before you left San Francisco, remember, I told you I wished I could help you. I still want to."

"I wish you could, but . . . no one can. It's something I have to work out for myself."

"That's what you said last time, but you obviously haven't worked it out yet. Why can't you tell me? You let me help when Marti died, and you came here when you ran away from the hospital after that Barber girl tried to kill you." She paused. "I dream about you, Garreth. I reach out to touch you and I can't. You're so far away . . . farther and farther each time."

All her dream lacked was the burning bridge. Longing grawed at him to tell her everything.

But he could visualize her reaction . . . disbelief first, then concern as she decided he had gone bonkers. He imagined proving himself by showing her how his fangs extended, and how he could move through shut doors. Then disbelief would turn to horror and revulsion, and worst of all, to fear of him. He could not bear that.

He made himself smile. "Don't let a stupid nightmare upset you. I'll be fine."

She ran a hand through her hair. "While I waited for you two to come home tonight, I threw tomorrow's hexagrams. Yours was number Twenty-nine, The Abysmal. If you are sincere, you have success in your heart and whatever you do succeeds."

He eyed her, stomach knotting. "So why aren't you smiling?"

She bit her lip. "A change line in the third place means that every step, forward or backward, leads into danger. There is no escape. You must wait for the way out."

Cold ran down his spine. "No escape? The change line makes a second hexagram. Does it offer a solution?"

She shook her head. "Number Forty-eight, The Well, is a bit esoteric, but in this context, I think it reinforces the first hexagram."

Cold ate deeper. Every step leads into inescapable danger. But he could not afford to wait it out. He had to find Irina before more people died and what remained of his bridge collapsed into ashes.