8

Irina said, "You realize you are risking more lives than yours and mine."

Garreth nodded.

The two of them sat at the kitchen counter with pewter tankards of blood, his horse blood from his thermos, hers from a unit of human blood she had brought from the Foundation. He buried his nose in his tankard in an effort to block out the tantalizing scent leaking toward him from hers. Thirst scorched his throat.

He distracted himself by thinking about Fowler. Where was the writer now? Watching the house, they had to assume. To keep Fowler from suspecting he was now the hunted, Garreth had come home from the Foundation on foot, with a stop at the police stables to fill the thermos. Irina had followed later, parking her car several blocks away and approaching the house through the back yards.

An anxious voice said, "Garreth, you shouldn't be out—who is this?"

He looked around at Lien in the kitchen doorway. "Meet Irina Rudenko." Then he noticed Grandma Doyle behind Lien. Introducing her, too, it occurred to him that Irina was also his grandmother of sorts.

A rap sounded upstairs. "Garreth!" Harry's voice called.

Lien glanced up. "I'll say I let you out."

Garreth shook his head. "I have to tell him everything anyway. We need him."

She studied his face for a moment, then sighed and nodded. Moving around the work island, she reached up into a cupboard for a bottle of brandy.

Grandma Doyle stayed near the door fingering the Maltese cross around her neck as she eyed the girl.

Irina smiled. "Mrs. Doyle, you have nothing to fear from me." She held up the tankard. "As you see, I have my breakfast."

Grandma Doyle's expression became accusing. "You're the one responsible for the creature who did this to me grandson."

The smile faded. "To my regret, yes. Even one as experienced as I can be a fool."

Harry came thumping down the stairs and through the doorway from the hall. "Lien, see if you can—Garreth?" He plowed to a stop, staring in open-mouthed, almost comic disbelief. Garreth felt no desire to laugh, however. "Your door is bolted on the inside."

Here it came. Garreth's gut knotted. He took a deep breath. "Yes. I don't have to open doors to go through them."

Irina caught Garreth's wrist. "Gently, tovarich. I am Irina Rudenko, Mr. Takananda."

"Rudenko?" Harry's eyes narrowed. "You were going to meet him at noon today."

She smiled. "No. Twelve o'clock our time, I told him. That's midnight."

Harry blinked. "What?" Then he started, staring back at Garreth. "What do you mean you don't have to open doors to go through them?"

That had taken long enough to sink in. "Harry, maybe you'd better sit down. I need to talk."

Tautly, Harry groped for a stool. Garreth smelled an acid tang beneath his old partner's blood scent. Fear Garreth was about to confess to the killings?

Garreth hurried to reassure him. "I didn't kill those men, Harry, I swear."

Harry let his breath out. "I didn't think you could, Mik-san."

"What I have to say is about me . . . why I act strange sometimes, how I left the bedroom without unbolting the door."

The almond eyes narrowed. "You went out the window."

Garreth shook his head. "Harry—" Shit. How do I say this? Maybe he should take off his glasses and— He discarded the idea in mid-thought. No, this was something Harry had to understand and accept of his own volition.

Good luck, lover, Lane's voice laughed in his head.

He groped desperately for words. "Harry . . . if you were watching a movie and the detectives had some murders to solve where the bodies had two punctures in their necks and were all drained of blood, and then one of the detectives was found dead with his throat torn out by the killer only he sat up in the morgue with his throat almost healed, and after that he stopped eating food and preferred night to daylight and he couldn't stand garlic . . . what would you say they were dealing with?"

Harry frowned. "I thought we were going to talk seriously."

"Harry, I'm deadly serious."

A pulse jumped in Harry's throat. He stared at Garreth in silence for a long time, then with face smoothed into a bland mask said in a careful, flat voice, "This isn't a movie."

"No," Garreth agreed. "I wish it were. Then we could shut off the TV and go on with normal lives. But everything that happened to me is real. I wake up from sleeping and I'm still a—still changed."

The skin between Harry's brows rippled, as though he started to frown but thought better of it. He said slowly, "You know, Dr. Masethin sees private patients, too."

Garreth's gut twisted. Masethin. The department shrink. Harry thought he had gone bananas. Well, what else did you expect, man? He kept his voice even. "Harry, I'm not crazy."

"Of course not," Harry said hastily. "But maybe—you know, the mind plays funny tricks sometimes. Chemical imbalances from starvation might—"

Garreth slapped his hand down on the counter. "I'm not anorexic either! I eat. This." He poured some of the blood from his tankard onto the counter top.

The pulse leaped visibly in Harry's throat again as he stared at the crimson puddle. After a minute he looked up with a friendly smile that sent Garreth's stomach plummeting. "All right. I'm convinced."

Like hell, Garreth reflected in disappointment. That was Harry's let's-humor-the­subject-until-he's-off-guard-and-we-can jump-him smile.

From the faint shake of Irina's head Garreth saw she read the situation as he did.

Grandma Doyle said, "I'd be thinking of a demonstration, Garreth."

Nothing less was going to convince him, it appeared. Hopping off the stool, Garreth strode over to the hall door and closed it. Then he leaned against it, hands above his head. "Watch, Harry. I don't touch the knob."

Wrench. He stood in the hall. Turning, he pressed against the door again. Wrench. Would Harry be glaring in revulsion?

Not quite. Harry stared but with eyes white-rimmed in disbelief, mouth working soundlessly, face drained of blood.

Grandma Doyle eased him backward onto a stool.

Lien wrapped his fingers around a glass of brandy. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than you or I have dreamed," she said gently.

The brandy went down in a single gulp. Garreth doubted Harry even noticed the action, much less tasted the liquor. After Lien refilled the glass and he tossed that off, too, he stared at the glass in astonishment. Then he looked at Garreth and closed his eyes. "Tell me I didn't see that."

"You saw it," Irina said. "Speaking from experience, it is easier if you forget trying to understand what you saw; just accept it."

Lien put an arm around him. "Accept Garreth, too. Basically he's still the same person he always was."

Harry stiffened.

Garreth sucked in his breath.

But it was Lien Harry turned to frown at. "You knew about this, and you didn't tell me?"

He seemed almost relieved by the omission, Garreth noticed.

Glad to have something comprehensible to think about?

Lien said, "I learned just yesterday. Garreth tried to tell you himself then, but you were too set on believing Vanessa's diagnosis of him." She poured more brandy.

He pushed it away. "I won't be able to drive if I have any more. Or maybe I'll call in sick. I can't handle anything more today." He picked up the glass. Garreth caught his wrist. "Harry, you have to go in! We think we know who the killer is and we need you to prove it."

"The killer." The expression in Harry's eyes wiped the past five minutes out of existence to leap at Garreth's words. "A killer I can handle. Who is it?"

Garreth told him.

Harry listened with a concentration like a drowning man clinging to a life preserver. At the end of the recitation he jumped up. "Van hasn't been happy about that stair window as an entry point. I'll tell her Garreth mentioned not checking the storerooms because they were locked. She'll jump at checking them. After the lab processes them, we'll bring Fowler in to compare prints and fibers."

"How can you do that without warning him he's a suspect?" Irina asked.

Harry grinned. "Easy. I received an anonymous phone call from a woman saying she'd seen Fowler at Maruska's apartment. I'll say of course it's nonsense, probably some nutcase looking for publicity by accusing a celebrity, but of course we have to check it out to clear him. In the course of it, we'll be checking him against associative evidence from Holle's attic, too." Harry kissed Lien and headed for the door. "I'll call you when I have something."

"Meanwhile," Irina said, draining her tankard, "we must keep our watcher occupied. Show yourself at livingroom window and on patio, then I think we should rest away from daylight."