"Are you sure this is a good idea?" Magda asked an hour later as I hoisted myself onto the windowsill of a large house that sat directly behind the church used by the Brotherhood. "I don't think your husband is going to like you missing your wedding night. Your second husband, that is, not your first."
I grimaced and let myself drop to the ground, oofing as quietly as I could. Magda's feet appeared next to my head. Hurriedly, I moved out of the way so she could climb out. "My husband has nothing to say about it. Either one of them. And as far as the latter one goes, I told him I was too tired to play house tonight, and wanted to sleep."
"He bought that?" she asked in disbelief.
"He had no choice." I gave her a quick smile. "One of the perks of being Zorya is that he pretty much has to do what I say."
"Hrmph."
"I will say that I'm glad the Brotherhood folk were content with their version of a marriage ceremony rather than a civil ceremony, because I really would have hated to explain to them why they couldn't take out a marriage license in my name. You really want to do this? Audrey and Ray must be worried about where you've been all night."
Magda brushed off my concerns and led the way out of the tiny yard to the street, being careful to stick to the shadows. "I called them while you were chatting with your hubby, and told them I'd see them in the morning."
"Can we drop references to Mattias as my husband? It makes me feel... I don't know, uncomfortable somehow. As if I'm doing something underhanded. Which I realize is silly because that's exactly what I am doing."
"Except you're doing it for a good reason," she said, completing my thought. We paused at an intersection, carefully eyeing the streets for signs of police, tour members, Brotherhood people, or incredibly handsome vampires. "So it really doesn't count as a sin, if that's what's worrying you."
We hurried across the street, heading toward the section of town where our hotel was located. Luckily, at that time of night, there wasn't much traffic, either pedestrian or vehicular. "I'm not overly concerned about sinning - I just don't want them to find out the truth and hack off my head or burn me at the stake, or whatever it is they do to people they think have signed on with the enemy. Which is just one more reason why I wanted to get away tonight - if something happens to me, I don't want them coming down on you."
"Pfft," she said dismissively, giving me a friendly little shove. "What's a friend for if not to face almost certain death with, eh?"
"A worthy attitude, but you don't know to what lengths these guys will go," I answered, rubbing my arms. "That little chat I had with Mattias after the ceremony wasn't just to discuss the sleeping arrangements. Did you know that even though Anniki picked me to be her successor, and I have ghostly charges and such, I'm still not officially recognized as Zorya? Evidently they have to conduct some sort of recognition ritual where the Brotherhood people assemble to acknowledge me. Only after that is over will I be able to take the ghosts to their destination."
"A ritual?" she asked. "Like an initiation at fraternities and such?"
"Assumedly without the wild orgies and drunkenness."
She grinned at me. "But that's the best part! Did Mattias say what the initiation is?"
I rubbed my arms again, not sure if the goose bumps were from the cold air or nerves. "He didn't really go into it much, other than to say that just as the Zorya requires the stone to channel power, so does she require the acceptance of the community to be recognized as Zorya. The ceremony is supposed to do the latter bit, and I gather after that I'll be put through my paces in front of everyone. It sounds kind of creepy, to be honest."
"Very Masonic," Magda agreed as we kept to the shadows at the next intersection. I recognized a couple of buildings, guessing we were a few blocks away from the hotel. "So that's going to take place tomorrow night?"
"That's the plan. In the ruins we were supposed to go to the other night."
"Oh, good. I really wanted to see that place. I hope no one minds if I come along tomorrow? Ack. It's almost ten. You'd better get some sleep or you're going to be exhausted."
"Yeah, I'm a bit pooped. Whoops. Come back. I think that's a cop car."
We pulled back as we were rounding a corner, both of us watching suspiciously as a man strolled out of the front of the hotel, pausing to talk to someone sitting in an unmarked car.
"Cop?" I asked Magda.
"Definitely. They must be watching for you. Let's go around the back. Maybe there's a way we can get in there without them seeing."
We slipped around the block, coming up against the kitchen entrance, but there was a policeman there, too, talking with easy amiability with a woman wearing a traditional white chef's hat.
"Damn. OK, how's this? I go in and distract the cop in the lobby, and you sneak through to the side stairs and go up to your room."
"I don't have my key," I whispered, my hopes sinking. Although the Brotherhood people had said they would give me money, I wanted my own clothing and things, which Magda thought were still in my room. "It was in my room when I left, but I'm sure the manager or police picked it up."
Magda pulled out her hotel key - really a plastic card with a magnetic strip - and looked thoughtful. "There's the bathroom. That's a way in for you."
I ran my mind back to the morning, shuddering at the memory. "I left the door unlocked when I went to bed, in case you needed to use the room, but this morning when I found Anniki, it was locked."
She gave a little grimace, then said thoughtfully, tapping the key card on her lips, "That's as may be, but the police unlocked it at one point. I caught them peeking in while I was getting dressed. If they didn't lock it, I bet you could get into your room from mine via the bathroom. Or in a worst-case scenario, use the balcony our rooms share."
"There's still the matter of getting up into your room."
She smiled and fluffed her substantial cleavage. "Oh, I don't think that's going to be too difficult to overcome. The girls and I can keep the lobby cop's attention long enough for you to slip in and go up the side stairs. I would avoid the elevator, though."
"And if we're caught? I don't want you to get into trouble with the police for helping me."
"If you're seen, I'll simply point at you and scream bloody murder," she said confidently, giving me her key card. "There's nothing they can do to me since I haven't done anything wrong. Just a little aiding and abetting, but what's that? Nothing, really."
Whereas I'd honored Anniki's last request, which left me running from the scene of a murder, I thought with a twinge of guilt.
"Come on, let's go in via the verandah, and I'll go dazzle the cop inside with my fabulous breasts."
Her plan - or breasts - worked like a charm. She had no difficulty engaging the cop's attention long enough for me to slip inside and along the far wall to the hallway that led to a set of lesser-used stairs. The reception clerk was too busy watching Magda to notice me, and my luck held all the way to Magda's room. With a quick, fearful glance up and down the hallway, I opened her room door and let myself in.
I was about to turn on the light when a muffled snore emerged from her bed. Evidently Raymond had decided to wait for her here. I knew where the door to the bathroom had to be, and edged my way carefully through the room, but it was dark and impossible to navigate without running painfully into things. The third time I smashed my toe against a piece of furniture and uttered a smothered yelp, Raymond snorted, and groggily asked, "Honeycakes?"
I murmured something that I hoped sounded Magda-ish, and almost sighed with relief when the door to the bathroom opened easily. I closed the door behind me before turning on the light, hesitating for a moment as I considered locking it in case Raymond decided to follow me, but decided against such an action. It wouldn't be fair to keep Magda from using the room for a second night.
The bathroom had been cleaned up, so presumably the police were done with their forensics work. I eyed the spot where Anniki had lain, begging me for justice, and renewed my intention to fulfill her dying wish.
"If it was Kristoff that killed you, he won't go unpunished," I told the empty room.
And if it was Alec? my inner critic asked. I moved toward the door, mentally shaking my head. It couldn't be Alec. I would know.
The bathroom door that led into my room wasn't locked. I sagged with relief for a moment before peeking inside. The room was dark. "Thank heavens for police who don't stay at a crime scene."
I was halfway into the room before the voice spoke.
"Not to mention women who just can't live without their things."
I gasped and whirled as the lights came on. Kristoff stood next to the bed, dressed entirely in black, the golden glow from the lamp casting sinister shadows across his face.
"What are you doing here?" I asked in a high, wavering voice. I started to back away from him but realized I had nowhere to go. There was no safety for a fugitive.
"Waiting for you. Alec had an idea you'd be back. I packed up your things."
I looked where he gestured. My large leather bag was sitting on a chair.
"Why are you following me?" I asked without thinking.
"Why did you run from me?" he countered.
"You killed a man! Right in front of me," I said.
"I killed a reaper," he corrected. "One who was about to kill you."
"He was not. He was just using me as a shield so you wouldn't bite him and turn him into the evil undead."
Kristoff adopted a martyred expression that for some reason, I found endearing. "Dark Ones are very much alive, and we do not turn people without a profound reason."
My eyes widened at his words. Until that moment, I wasn't sure what part of the vampire myth was true. "You mean you can turn people into vampires?"
"We can. It strips the soul from the person, so it is not done frequently. Certainly we are not building some sort of Dark One army to take over the world, if that's what you were about to ask."
I closed my mouth. I was, in fact, about to ask that very thing.
"Now, if there are no more ridiculously misinformed ideas you'd like debunked, I'd like to get going. The night is young, and I have much to do." He started toward me as he spoke.
"Don't you come near me." I said with rising panic, backing up and reaching around blindly for an object to use as protection.
He stopped, a mildly amused look on his face. "Why? What will you do? Call the police?"
My heart sank as I realized the veracity of his words. There was no one I could call to help me. Magda must be in her room by now, but I didn't really want to get her involved. Not with a vampire.
"I thought you wanted to see Alec. Or was your night with him so unmemorable?"
My spine stiffened at his mocking tone. "I do want to see him, not that the night I spent with him is any of your business. I have several things I'd like to ask him, not the least of which is why he felt it necessary to give you my passport."
"Come along, then," he said, opening the door to the hallway a smidgen. He closed it quickly. "We have to leave. Now."
"Is someone coming?" I asked, torn between a desire to seek help and a knowledge that I was better off without becoming involved with the police.
"Yes. Police. Evidently you aroused suspicion getting in here." He turned off the light, grabbed my suitcase, and flung open the French doors on the balcony.
"But no one saw me... unless the desk clerk caught a glimpse. Oy."
Kristoff didn't say anything, just leaped off the balcony. I followed, closing the French doors behind me, peering hesitantly down to the ground, where he stood waiting impatiently in the indigo shade cast by a nearby hedge. The midnight sun was still up, but at its lowest point, which left everything bathed in a lovely twilight glow.
Everything but the vampire glaring up at me. "Hurry. My car is parked a block away."
"It's a long jump down," I said softly, trying to gauge the distance between the ground and the balcony.
"I thought you said you jumped down this way earlier." Exasperation was beginning to make itself heard in his deep voice.
"Yes, but that was in the heat of the moment. I was scared and panicky. I'm not panicking now."
He muttered something that I suspected wasn't at all a good reflection on me, setting down the bag and holding his arms up. "Jump down and I'll catch you."
"You have got to be kidding."
His teal eyes glittered wickedly in the moonlight.
"I'm too big! I'll squash you flat," I pointed out.
"For god's sake, woman, jump now, or I'll leave you to the police."
I swung my legs over the railing, sitting on it for a moment as I tried to make up my mind.
Light filtered out from the curtains on the French door. Someone was in my room.
"I'll squash - " I started to say again.
"Jump!" he commanded, and I threw all caution to the wind and did just that.
"You see? I told you I was too heavy!" I looked down at Kristoff's face. As I suspected, I had toppled him like a bowling pin. He lay beneath me with a dazed look in his eyes that quickly faded to familiar irritation.
"All women think they're too fat. I am perfectly capable of catching you, regardless."
His fingers were splayed on my hips, his breath brushing my lips. We were fitted together in an intimate way that seemed to make thinking difficult. His gaze dropped to my mouth, and I started to tingle all over at the thought of kissing him.
A voice shouting from the balcony roused us both.
"Get moving," he growled as I rolled off him, quickly getting to my feet.
He grabbed my suitcase in one hand and me with the other, dragging me after him as he raced out of the garden.
The sound of someone hitting the ground hard behind us kept me from protesting the cavalier treatment. I concentrated on keeping my feet beneath me as we raced down the block, around a corner, and back behind a small brick building. Kristoff tossed my bag into the back of the red car, shoving me inside before getting in himself.
A uniformed policeman appeared just as Kristoff slammed his foot onto the accelerator, sending us rocketing out of the small parking lot. He swore and jerked on the wheel, narrowly avoiding the cop.
"Holy crap!" I yelled as he took the corner on what felt like only two wheels. "Are you trying to kill us?"
"The thought had crossed my mind," he ground out, his eyes glittering in the darkness as he sped out of town.
"Where are we going? Are you and Alec staying at a hotel in town?" I asked, looking behind us to see if we were being followed.
"Yes, but that's not where we're going."
"I think we're clear. I don't see any cars racing up the hill after us," I said, looking back down at the town as Kristoff shifted gears and sent us flying out of town on the road that led to the main highway. I sat back down in my seat, relieved to have escaped at least one form of trouble. I eyed the other one. "Why not?"
"Because you stalled so long getting off that damned balcony that the police saw my license plate. It won't take them long to trace it back to Alec, which means they'll know where we're staying."
"I'm sorry, I just wanted to keep from flattening you," I said, wrapping the tattered remains of pride around myself.
He snorted. "Women."
"Yeah, well, you have to admit, I was right. I did knock you down."
"I was off balance," he said, his gaze fixed on the road. "And you'll notice that you didn't flatten me."
"That's just a matter of semantics," I said righteously, looking out the window. "If we can't go to Alec's hotel room, where are we going?"
"Somewhere safe."
"Where's that?"
But he wouldn't answer. He didn't say another word for the next twenty minutes as we drove through the twilight. I ignored him ignoring me and admired instead the lovely soft colors of the sky.
"Why are we stopping here?" I finally broke the silence when Kristoff pulled off a winding rode and stopped in front of a long metal gate.
"Welcome to our accommodations for the night."
My gaze moved from him as he climbed out of the car and opened the metal gate, to beyond where the outline of a rickety pink barn lurched drunkenly against the glowing sky.
Kristoff got back into the car and drove us around to the far side of the broken-down barn, tucking the car neatly away between the barn and a large, corroded metal cylinder, obviously some sort of farming equipment.
"We're staying here?"
"Yes." He got out, grabbing my bag and hauling it around to the front of the building.
I stayed staring at the back of the barn for a moment or two, noting with mild interest that a rat was observing me from the top of the metal cylinder.
"We're staying here," I told the rat.
It didn't look impressed.
"I'm not either," I told it, then gathering my wits, marched my way through thick, smelly mud to the front of the barn. Kristoff and my suitcase were nowhere to be seen, but a faint light glowed from inside the barn. I entered through one of the double doors that had been left slightly ajar.
Kristoff had a cell phone to his ear, then closed it with a quick, jerky motion. "Alec isn't answering."
"Do you think something is wrong?" I asked, watching him closely.
His lips thinned a smidgen. "No. The police probably arrived, and he got out quickly. He might have left his phone behind. I'll try again in the morning."
"Ah. Um. Why are we here?" I asked Kristoff as he jerked a couple of mildewy bales of hay off a platform. He had set a flashlight on an overturned bucket, since the interior of the barn was almost completely dark. "That is to say, why are we not at a hotel or something like that? I know we can't go to yours if they saw your license plate, but that doesn't mean we can't go to somewhere civilized."
He yanked an empty moth-eaten grain bag onto the upper half of his bale platform. "Unfortunately, I did not think to bring a false passport with me, so once the police have my name - which they will get from the hotel where Alec and I were staying - they will simply track that no matter what hotel I register at."
"Oh." I thought about that for a moment, distastefully eyeing the refuge he'd found us. There was a suspicious rustling behind the bales. "You couldn't... you know... make someone give us a room without registering under your real name?"
He stared at me. "And how am I supposed to do that?"
"Well, I don't know!" I slapped my hands on my legs in exasperation. "You're a vampire, aren't you? Doesn't that mean you can mind meld with people? Or brain wave them into doing what you want?"
"With my mesmerizing powers, you mean?"
"Yes! Those!"
He sighed a martyred sigh. "I am a Dark One, Zorya."
"My name is Pia."
"I do not have magical powers that affect mortals. So no, I cannot stare deep into someone's eyes and convince them to give me a room without first providing my passport and credit card." He went back behind a half wall and brought out a really filthy-looking blanket.
"Well, what's the use in being a vampire if you don't get any special powers?"
"I didn't say I don't have any powers - I simply said that I do not have any over mortals. And the only one I can mind meld with, as you put it, is someone close to me, like a Beloved, and I sincerely doubt such a woman exists." He plopped himself down on a couple of the bales of hay, and pulled the blanket over him.
"What are you doing?" I asked, feeling somewhat lost and alone. I rubbed my arms against the cold - it was cold and dank in the barn, the night air teasing its way in through a dozen or more missing slats in the walls.
"Going to sleep." The words emerged with a surly edge to them.
I considered the black lump that he made in the near darkness of the barn.
"Where am I supposed to sleep?" I asked, hating the pitiful tinge to my voice, but feeling particularly vulnerable at the moment. Being helpless in the company of a murderous vampire will do that to a girl.
"I made you a bed over there."
The black lump bulged in the direction of the clumped bales of hay with the dirty feed bag. I looked at the so-called bed, moving hesitantly toward it. The rustling had stopped. Maybe it was the wind, not rodents.
"Turn off the flashlight."
"Not on your life," I said, edging my way over to the bed. One squeak, one sign that there were rats or mice near my bed, and I'd go sleep in the car, small as it was.
"Fine. If you want the police to come investigating who is hiding out in a barn that's supposed to be unoccupied, leave it on."
"Are you deliberately being as obnoxious as possible?" I asked, hefting the flashlight. It had a nice solid feel in my hand. It would make a reasonable weapon in case anything with four legs decided to attack.
Why did I have a feeling it was the two-legged predators I had to worry about more?
"I thought I was being pleasant."
"Pleasant." I snorted. "You wouldn't know the meaning of the word. Don't I get a blanket?"
"No."
I sat gingerly on the edge of my makeshift bed. "You have one. I'm cold. Why can't I have one?"
Kristoff sighed heavily and rolled over to glare at me, his eyes glowing with a teal light in the dimness of the barn. "Because I don't have a bloody bag full of clothing and you do. Now, will you turn off that light and go to sleep?"
He rolled back over, leaving me staring balefully at his back.