I didn’t want to play games with Helena, anyway. I was getting a headache from staring at the screen. Weren’t headaches things I was supposed to leave behind when I became a vampire?
“We need to figure out what they’re up to,” she said, taking a seat. Helena was dressed in relatively normal clothing: jeans and a black tee. Usually, she wore Victorian-style gothic dresses, so I wondered what was with the casual getup. Maybe she was going to go hunting or slinking around the Grove. Perhaps she wanted to go to Ashbury and wanted to be incognito.
“I agree.”
“I don’t like the fact that they seem to have stopped hunting us,” she said.
“For the last few years, they’ve only randomly popped up in this area. Then, a few months ago, things got pretty hot. Now, it’s silent again. What’s going on?”
“That’s the big question,” she agreed. “Have you talked to Michael?”
“Nope.”
“Lex?”
“No.”
She sighed.
“Have you talked to anyone?”
“Nobody knows anything.” The vampires we colluded with were good people. It sounded real rich, I knew. The idea that a vampire could be good was something most humans didn’t understand. I felt like if I tried to explain something like that to Kimberly, even, that she wouldn’t quite get it.
“I’m going to call Lex,” Helena said. “He was supposed to be meeting with a contact in the Ashbury PD.”
That was news to me.
“Lex has a police contact?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it a female?”
Helena rolled her eyes and nodded.
“Probably. You know Lex.”
Lex was one of the most charming vampires I’d ever met. He was younger than me, and fresher. I didn’t know who had sired him, but when he’d walked into the Grove a few years ago, it had been hard not to notice him. Mostly, he kept to himself, but he surprised me often with his ability to get even humans to trust him and show him affection.
If he had a contact in the police department who was willing to give him information about the people who had been slaughtering vampires, then it was probably someone he’d been sleeping with.
Helena pulled out her cell phone and called. She spoke for a few moments and then ended the call. She placed the cell phone on the desk between us and nodded.
“He’s got a lead,” she said. “Apparently, there’s some sort of meeting downtown tomorrow night.”
“Downtown?”
“Yeah, near the old theater. Do you know it?”
I knew it. It was actually close to where Kimberly had lived before we’d taken her. Well, before I’d taken her. Although it was Helena who delivered her to me, I was still the one who had captured her body and her heart. At least, I liked to think that.
“Yeah,” I said. “On fourth.”
“Yep,” she nodded. “Apparently, there’s some sort of meeting. Lex has been trailing a couple of people who seem pretty sus.”
“Pretty sus?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” she nodded. “You know, suspicious.”