Most vampires can pass for human even without a glamourie, but Lawrence clearly wasn’t one of them. And he couldn’t use a glamourie and his special sparkly master power at the same time, which left me running around with what looked like the spawn of Satan. Which would have been fine—if Satan’s spawn had been able to do the job.
“He was,” Lawrence told me, tipping his head back and then to the side, following some scent too faint for me to detect. “And he did not leave.”
“He went in there and didn’t leave, but he isn’t there now?” I asked, for clarification.
Lawrence nodded.
“You mean, someone brought him here and killed him?”
“No. There is no stench of blood or decomposition.”
“Then how does that work?”
“As I said, I do not know. But I am going to.” And before I could stop him, he had disintegrated into what looked like a swarm of black bees, if the bees were too small to see and had no more substance than ash as they blew by my face. And onto the ship, where they disappeared under a door.
Damn it!
This was why I worked alone. Because stupid assholes with impulse control issues gave me a headache. For a minute there, I contemplated leaving him to look around on his own, since a cloud of mist or ash or whatever was a lot less likely to get holes blown through it than I was. And this was smelling more like a trap every second. But ironically, in his disjointed state Lawrence had less sensory perception than I did, his super nose apparently not able to do its job when dissolved into a million pieces.
So if this was a trap, he’d just gone in blind.
I slipped down the pier to the ship, which was bigger than it had seemed at a distance. There was no deck, just an ultramodern domed and gleaming expans
e of obsidian Plexiglas, and no convenient gangplank left out Hollywood-like for me to use. So I backed up, as far as I could go without falling in the drink, ran and jumped—over the low railing running along the pier and onto the tiny area where the gangplank would have been if my life had a decent screenwriter.
Because it doesn’t, I’ve had to develop some skills through the years, and I somehow stuck the landing. And then realized that it didn’t do me much good since, of course, the damned door was locked. I stood there, balanced on the maybe half-inch lip, grumbling under my breath and sorting through my pockets for something that might get the door open since I couldn’t just avoid it like some—
“Sorry to interrupt,” a head said, poking out of the door. And causing me to jump back in surprise. Which would have been fine if there had been anything behind me.
I flailed out even as I fell, trying to find a handhold or a foothold or any kind of a hold to avoid cracking my head on the damned concrete dock. Or the pylons. Or whatever was under the water that I couldn’t see but was about to experience the hard way, when my fingertips managed to snag the lip I’d been standing on. My body hit the side of the ship hard enough to rattle my teeth, while my fingers were almost wrenched out of their sockets trying to hold my entire weight.
I hung there for a second, watching little waves splash against the side of the ship and trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t attempt to murder the guy whose long hair was almost brushing my face.
“What?” I said, glaring up at Radu. Who was looking fairly pleased for some reason.
“Oh, good. You should be able to see it from there.”
“See what?”
“The name.”
“The name?”
“Of the ship. We need to know—”
I said a bad word and started struggling to get back up. “There’s only one black ship in the whole damned marina! How hard can it be—”
“But that’s just it. There was no ship, of any color, in that slip this morning. And Kit wants—”
“Kit can kiss my ass,” I grunted. Because fingertip chin-ups aren’t fun even when you have more than half an inch to work with. “And if you want the ship’s name, look for it yourself!”
“This is your memory, Dory,” he told me, in a voice that said he was overlooking my rudeness because he was generous like that. “I only see what you see. And by the way, Mircea says to tell you that you’re getting tired. We need to hurry this up.”
“I also…have a few things…you can tell Mircea,” I panted, somehow getting back into position. And then having to practically rupture something to maintain my balance while checking out the hull in both directions. “Tell him there’s no name.”
“None whatsoever?”
“No! And if you want me to hurry this up, you need to—”