“He isn’t my—that’s not who I meant!”
“As can the guards.”
“Damn it, Claire. You know who I mean!”
“No, I really—” I saw when it hit, when her eyes widened. As if it had literally not occurred to her despite my all but spelling it out last night.
“You’re sane when you transform,” I gritted out. “I’m not. And since I can’t guarantee I won’t attack someone who can’t defend themselves, I’m out of—”
I cut off because something had just zipped by us, moving so fast it was merely a blur of color.
I started to ask what the hell, but before I could get the words out, the blur had knocked a mirror off the wall, caught it a couple inches off the floor, put it back where it belonged, zipped the rest of the way down the hall and finally resolved itself into a small man with a smaller mustache. He was of medium height and slender, with dark eyes, slicked-back black hair, and a sharp dark outfit. It made him look like the maître d’ at one of the kind of restaurants that don’t take reservations, because if you’re not important enough for them to recognize you, you aren’t getting in anyway.
It looked a little incongruous next to the overflowing laundry hamper he had tucked under one arm.
“Who—” I tried again.
“The other reason I have a headache,” Claire muttered, as the maître d’ hoisted the basket of laundry—meticulously folded sheets and towels, by the look of it—and rapid-fired them into a linen closet, like a veteran poker player dealing cards.
If I’d tried that, they’d have ended up in a crumpled mess, and probably piled in the bottom of the closet. In his case, they obediently formed themselves into perfectly square piles with military precision, allowing him to kick the door shut with one mirror-bright patent leather shoe, zip back down the hall, tuck something into Claire’s apron pocket, and disappear down the stairs.
The whole thing had taken maybe ten seconds.
“That…was a vampire,” I said stupidly.
Claire sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“What did he give you?” I asked, because she’d fished it out.
She opened her palm to show me a little packet of pills. “It’s like they know what I need before I need it.”
“Not unless you’re going to dry-swallow. You don’t have any—” I stopped because I’d blinked. And now she was holding a glass of water.
“They even folded the fitted sheets,” she said. And then she let me go in order to knock back the aspirin.
“That’s impossible.”
“That’s what I always thought, but it can be done. And the old copper cookware—you know, the ones that had that lovely patina?”
“I guess,” I said, because I cooked about once a decade.
“Well, they’re bright and shiny now,” she said sourly. “At least they were the last time I was allowed into my own kitchen, which was about an hour ago, so God knows what’s been done in—”
“Who are they?’”
“You said it,” she grimaced. “Vampires.”
“But whose?”
“Whose do you think?”
Damn.
“I’ll talk to Ray,” I told her. “I know his people probably need somewhere to crash until I get this mess so
rted out, but I never told him they could—”
“They aren’t Ray’s,” Claire said, looking at me funny.