Blood Debt (Vicki Nelson #5)

Blood Debt (Vicki Nelson #5) Page 4

SENSES extended, Vicki sifted the darkness for some indication of a ghostly presence. According to Henry, she should be feeling a chill and a distinct sense of unease. It was supposed to be impossible to miss.

"So why am I missing it," she muttered, propping herself up on an elbow and reaching for the light.

The room was empty of everything but Henry's scent.

Out in the apartment, the phone rang.

"Who was that?"

Celluci very carefully set the flat, almost featureless, high-tech receiver back into its cradle. "Fitzroy," he said without turning.

"Well if he wants to know what I asked the ghost, he's s.o.l." Vicki dropped a shoulder against the living room wall and crossed her arms over her breasts. "Our spectral friend didn't show."

"It showed." Celluci drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Things had just gotten a lot more compli?cated. "It followed Fitzroy. Appeared to him this eve?ning just like always."

"Shit. Now what?"

"He's coming back."

"Here?"

"Here."

Vicki straightened and her voice rose. "And what does he expect me to do?"

"He didn't say." Hands spread, Celluci finally turned to face her. She'd thrown on an oversized shirt but hadn't bothered doing up the buttons. Momen?tarily sidetracked, he forced himself past his immedi?ate reaction and added gruffly, "The way I see it, we've got two choices. We go home, or we stay and you get another chance to prove your point."

Her eyes narrowed. "If you'll remember, it was Henry's point we proved. We can't be together with?out fighting."

Celluci sighed and propped his right thigh on the dining room table. "Vicki, we can't be together with?out fighting, but that doesn't seem to stop us. If you can't leave Fitzroy to take care of his own problem- a course of action which gets my vote, by the way- then the two of you are going to have to work some?thing out."

"How do we work out a biological imperative?"

"You're the one who said you wouldn't be ruled by your nature."

After a moment, she stared down at the floor and growled, "I was wrong."

It had never been difficult for Michael Celluci to figure out what Vicki was thinking, and her recent metamorphosis hadn't changed that. For her to actu?ally admit she was wrong without a three-hour argu?ment and half-a-dozen pieces of irrefutable evidence could only mean that losing the fight to Fitzroy had upset her world view more than he'd realized. Time to put it right. "Fitzroy provoked that fight, Vicki. He had no intention of giving the two of you a chance to work it out."

Vicki's gaze snapped up off the pattern of pieced hardwood and locked onto his face, her eyes silvering. "You know this for a fact?"

"He admitted it before he left."

"And you're just telling me now.'"

"Hey!" Celluci lifted both hands to chest height, a symbolic defense at best. "I'm not the bad guy here."

"No... " Teeth clenched, Vicki fought to free the memory of the actual fight from the cloud of mixed emotions obscuring it.

"You insisted we could work together," he reminded her mockingly.

"We could if you'd stop this Prince of Darkness bull?shit and back off!"

"Why that lousy son of a... " Profanity somehow seemed inadequate. Fingers curled into fists, she spun around on one bare heel and headed back toward the bedroom.

"Where are you going?"

"To get dressed!"

An innocuous statement on its own, but the way Vicki spat it out, it sounded very much like a threat. With the strong feeling he was going to need the caf?feine, Celluci headed into the kitchen for another cup of coffee.

"Sorry I'm late. I almost got clipped by a Caddie on the way over, and... " Tony's voice trailed off as Celluci came into the entryway and he got a look at his face. "What's wrong?"

"Fitzroy's coming back. It seems the ghost is ap?pearing only to him."

Tony stared down at his helmet. A hundred tiny reflections in beads of rain stared back at him. "Com?ing back here?" When the detective didn't answer right away, Tony looked up to meet a speculative gaze. "What?"

"You don't want him coming back here?"

"That's not what I said." He tossed the helmet down beside his roller blades and shrugged out of his damp jacket. "I mean, jeez, it's his condo, isn't it? What's Victory gonna do?"

"Victory's going hunting."

The two men turned toward the voice, their motion almost involuntary.

Tony, who'd been expecting a variation on Henry's Prince of Darkness attire, was surprised to see her in jeans, sneakers, and bright, not-even-remotely vampiric cotton jacket. Except that she no longer wore glasses and she'd left her shoulderbag back in the bed?room, she looked no different than she had on a hun?dred summer nights in Toronto when he'd still been living on the street.

And then she looked very different.

And then she didn't again.

He blinked. Looking at her was like looking at one of those pictures that could be either a vase or two people. "Uh, Victory, your vampire's showing."

She looked startled, and then she laughed. With a subtle shift in emphasis, she fitted the civilized mask more firmly in place. "Better?"

"Yeah. But, uh, if Henry's coming, shouldn't you ..." He glanced over at Celluci who was obvi?ously going to be no help at all. "... shouldn't you be here?"

"Are you warning me against hunting in Henry's territory?"

He knew this mood. He'd seen Henry wear it a hundred nights. "Do I look stupid?"

"No." When she smiled at him, he barely resisted the urge to lift his chin and he released a thankful breath when she turned her attention to Celluci. "If Henry gets here before I get back, make my excuses, would you?

"Vicki." He placed his hand on her arm and Tony thought he saw the edges soften as she looked up at him. "Be careful."

"I'm always careful."

"Bullshit." But he let her go.

She paused at the door. "Trendy people still gather on Denman, Tony?"

He'd barely begun to nod when she was gone.

Henry liked to hunt on Denman. Tony chewed on a corner of his lip and turned toward the detective. "I thought you were going to ask her not to go."

Celluci snorted. "Not likely. It's safer not to have her around when she's in that mood."

"Yeah, but... " He spread his hands, unsure of the words.

"I know what she is, Tony." Celluci's voice was sur?prisingly gentle. "I don't always like it, but I like the alternative even less." He cleared his throat, suddenly embarrassed by the spontaneous shared confidence. "Have you eaten?"

After Tony pointed out that Henry didn't like the apartment smelling of food, Celluci ordered a pizza.

"Give him something else to think about."

"Besides Vicki?"

"Besides Vicki."

Expecting to be uncomfortable, Tony was aston?ished to find himself relaxing. They were just two guys thrown together by mutual friends, age the biggest difference between them. They even argued over which toppings to order.

Halfway through a large double cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, and pepperoni, Celluci sat back, wiped sauce off his chin, and said, "You want to tell me what's wrong?"

"Nothing's... " Tony let the protest hang half said. He could tell from the expression on the other man's face there was no point in finishing it. "You wouldn't understand."

"Tony, if it has to do with Henry, the odds are I'm the only person in the world who would understand."

"Yeah, I guess." He chewed and swallowed, unsure if he was trying to think of what to say or if he was avoiding the question entirely. He could feel Celluci waiting, not impatiently but like he really wanted to know. After a moment, he put down the half-eaten slice and scrubbed at the grease on his fingers. "This is just between you and me?"

"If that's what you want."

After a few minutes of expectant silence, he sighed. "When I first met Henry, I wasn't anything, you know? And I wouldn't be what I am now without him. I mean, he sort of made me go back and finish high school just because, well, he believed I could, and... " He poked at a congealing piece of cheese. "I guess that sounds pretty dumb."

"No." Celluci shook his head, remembering how he'd fallen into position by Henry Fitzroy's side on more than one occasion. "The little shit has a way of making you live up to his expectations."

"Yeah, that's it exactly. He just expects." Tony ripped his napkin into greasy squares before he con?tinued. "Trouble is, sometimes he doesn't really see me in those expectations. I mean, he didn't choose for me to know about him, Vicki just kinda dumped me on him and he never really felt about me like he did about her." Realizing who he was speaking to, he col?ored. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I know how he felt." But it's my life she's a part of, not his, his tone added smugly. "It seems to me, it's time for you to get out and find a life of your own."

"I guess." He lifted his head and met Celluci's eyes. "But how do you just leave someone like Henry?"

Vicki had the taxi drop her off in front of the Sylvia Hotel on English Bay. Her memory of the three nights with Henry in the vine-covered, Victorian building, learning to manipulate the world she was no longer a part of, was one of the few memories she had of her "childhood" in Vancouver not drenched in blood. She stood for a few moments in front of the building, remembering how Henry had taught her to survive, then she drew in a deep breath of night-scented air and walked the two blocks to Denman Street.

Bisecting the West End, running vaguely southwest to northeast, Denman was a lovely walking street- and that made it prime hunting territory.

The rain had stopped and well-lit sidewalk cafes, still glistening from the last shower, had filled. Vancouverites never let a little rain bother them-since it rained so frequently, there wasn't much point-and they were serious about their cafes. Scanning the crowds, Vicki noted certain similarities in the mix as the young and trendy rubbed elbows with the old and somehow still trendy, all dressed in what could only be called a sporty and health-conscious style-very un?like the Gothic punk so prevalent in trendy Toronto. In spite of the hour, everyone seemed to have a "I'm going roller blading/mountain biking/sea kayaking after I finish my cappuccino" look. In any other mood, Vicki might have found it amusing. Tonight, it pissed her off.

Denman, she mused, glaring a pair of young men in chinos out of her way, might have been a mistake. She wanted something with an edge, something to de?finitively establish her presence in Henry's territory. There's never a motorcycle gang around when you need one.

Then she saw him.

He was sitting inside one of the cafes, alone, all his attention focused on the notebook in front of him. A slender shadow amid the surrounding proto-jocks, he looked disturbingly familiar.

He looked remarkably like Henry.

A closer examination proved the resemblance purely superficial. The clothes were black, the skin pale, but the blond hair was too long, and the face more angular than Tudor-curved. Were he standing, he'd probably be significantly taller.

Still...

When he glanced up, Vicki met his gaze through the glass, held it for a moment, then vanished into the night. Safely hidden in the darkness between two buildings, she watched the front of the cafe and smiled. She knew the kind of man he was. The kind who, against all urgings of common sense, wanted to believe there was something more. The kind who wanted to believe in mystery.

Wanted to believe, but didn't quite.

The door opened, and he stood on the sidewalk. Vicki could hear his heart pounding, and when he closed his eyes she knew he was searching for the moment they'd shared, searching for the mystery. An older man, with a strong Slavic accent and his arm across the back of a well-dressed woman, asked him to move away from the door. Visibly returning to real?ity, the young man apologized and started along Denman, a slightly rueful smile twisting his mouth, one hand trailing in the planters that separated the side-walk cafe from the sidewalk proper.

Vicki allowed the Hunger to rise.

She followed the song of his blood at a safe distance until he started up the broad steps of a four-story, Victorian brownstone on Barclay Street. When he put his key in the lock, she moved out of the night, laid a hand on his shoulder, and turned him around. Some?where, down in the depths of eyes almost as silver-gray as her own, he was expecting her.

He wanted to believe in mystery.

So she gave him a mystery to believe.

"Who do you think'll be back first?"

"Fitzroy." Celluci surfed a few more channels, won?dering why someone with Fitzroy's money didn't buy a better TV-from the looks of it, he'd spent a fortune on the stereo system. "It's Monday night, won't be much traffic in from the mountains, so he'll make good time."

"He'll probably want to feed before he gets here, though. So that he's not overreacting to things."

"Things meaning Vicki? Well, my guess is she's taken that into account. He's going to expect her to be here when he arrives, so she's not going to be- not even if she has to hide across the street and wait for him to drive up." He flicked past three syndicated sitcoms, two of them from the seventies, an episode of classic Trek he'd seen a hundred times and the same football game on four channels. "Five hundred channels and four hundred and ninety-nine of them still show crap. What's this?"

Tony stuck his head out of the kitchen where he was cleaning up the debris from their meal. "Local talk show," he said after watching for a moment. "The woman is Patricia Chou. She's really intense. One of my night school teachers says she does kamikaze re?porting and thinks she's trying for a big enough story to get her a network job. At least half of City Council is terrified of her, and I heard she was willing to go to jail once to protect a source. I don't know who the old guy is."

"The old guy," Celluci snarled, "probably has no more than ten years on me."

Tony prudently withdrew.

On screen, Patricia Chou frowned slightly and said, "So what you're saying, Mr. Swanson, is that the fears people have about organ donations are completely unfounded?"

"Fear," her guest declared, "is often based on lack on information."

It was a good response; Celluci tossed the remote onto the glass-topped coffee table-Fitzroy had a dis?tinct fondness for breakable furniture-and settled back to watch.

Mr. Swanson settled back much the same way and looked into the camera with the ease of a man often interviewed. "Let's take those fears one at a time.

People with influence or money do not have a better chance of getting a transplant. Computers suggest the best possible match for each available organ based on bipod type, size, illness of patient, and time on the waiting list."

Patricia Chou leaned forward, a slender finger ex?tended to emphasize her point. "But what about the recent media coverage of famous people getting transplants?"

"I think you'll find that media coverage is the point to that question, Ms. Chou. They're getting the cover?age because they're famous, not because they've had a transplant. Hundreds of people have transplants and never make the news. I assure you, my wife would still be alive today if I could have bought her a transplant."

"Your wife, Rebecca, died of chronic kidney failure?"

"That's right." He had to swallow before he could go on, and Celluci, who over the years had seen grief in every possible form, was willing to bet it was no act. "Three years on dialysis, three years waiting for a match, three years dying. And my wife wasn't alone; approximately one third of all patients awaiting trans?plants die. Which is why I'm an active supporter of the British Columbia Transplant Society."

"But in this time of cutbacks, surely the cost of transplants ..."

"Cost?" His gaze swung around and locked on her face. "Ms. Chou, did you know that if all the patients waiting at the end of last year had been able to receive kidneys, health care savings would exceed one bil?lion dollars?"

Ms. Chou did not know, nor, from a certain tight?ening around her eyes, was she pleased at being inter?rupted. "To return to the public's fears, Mr. Swanson, what about the possibility of organ-legging?" Her emphasis made the last word hang in the air for a mo-ment or two after she finished speaking.

"That sort of thing is an impossibility, at least in any first world nation. You'd have to have doctors willing to work outside the law, expensive facilities, you'd have to contravene a computer system with massive safeguards-I'm not saying it couldn't be done, merely that costs would be so prohibitive there'd be no point."

Good answer, Celluci allowed. Although slightly less than spontaneous. Swanson had obviously been ex?pecting a variation on the question.

"So from a purely marketing standpoint, there'd be no profit in it?"

"Exactly. You'd have to hire thugs to procure un?willing donors and I imagine that a reliable thug, pro?vided you could find such a creature, doesn't come cheap."

She ignored his attempt to lighten the interview, "So the body found floating in the harbor, a body that had a kidney surgically removed, had nothing to do with organ-legging?"

That, Celluci realized, was where she'd been head?ing all along.

Mr. Swanson spread his hands, manicured nails gleaming in the studio lights. "There are a number of reasons you can have a kidney surgically removed, Ms. Chou. The human body only needs one."

"And you don't believe that someone needed one of his?"

"I believe that this kind of yellow journalism is why there's a critical shortage of donated organs and peo?ple like my wife are dying."

"But wouldn't someone be willing to pay... "

The screen returned to black, and Henry put the remote back on the coffee table.

Celluci, who hadn't even been aware he was in the room until he'd crossed directly into his line of sight, attempted to relax a number of muscles jerked into knots by Fitzroy's sudden appearance. "Did you have to do that?" he snarled.

"No, I didn't." The implication of Henry's tone sug?gested that he'd achieved exactly the effect he'd in?tended. "Where's Vicki?"

Glancing over Henry's shoulder and then disre?garding Tony's silent warning from the kitchen, Celluci drawled, "She's gone hunting."

"Hunting." It was an emotionless repetition that nevertheless held a wealth of meaning. "You knew it was going to happen when you asked her to come out here."

"Yes." With his fingers laced tightly together lest he lose control of his reaction and put his fist through the glass, Henry walked over to the window and stared down at the lights of Granville Island. "I knew it was going to happen."

"But that doesn't mean you have to like it."

"You needn't sound so superior, Detective."

"Superior? Me?"

In the kitchen, Tony winced. He wondered if surviv?ing a number of years as a cop created a personal belief in invulnerability or if that belief was necessary before starting the job. Whichever it was, Detective Sergeant Michael Celluci seemed to be having one heck of a good time flirting with death.

"I told her that you deliberately provoked her at?tack." Not as relaxed as he appeared, Celluci watched the muscles across Henry's back tense and untense beneath the raw silk jacket. If it came to it, he knew he couldn't survive an all-out attack. Or even a half-strength attack for that matter-proven the last time he and Henry had tangled.

"If you're attempting to divert my attention from Vicki to you, Detective, the sacrifice is unnecessary. If we are to lay this specter, we have no choice but to work together. It seems I must allow the possibility that we can overcome our territorial natures."

"Big of you."

"God damn it, Vicki!" Celluci catapulted off his chair so fast he lost his balance and slammed down on his knees, denim-covered bone cracking against the polished hardwood floor. "Do you have to sneak up on people like that?" He heaved himself onto his feet. "First him, now you?"

Her hands on the back of the chair he'd so recently vacated, Vicki forced herself to smile down at him, forced herself to take her eyes off Henry Fitzroy. "Maybe you ought to cut back on the caffeine."

"Maybe you lot ought to whistle when you come into a room," he snarled.

You lot.

Her and Henry.

Impossible now to ignore the heated connection be?tween them. He was standing by the window, his face expressionless, eyes shadowed. She couldn't tell what he was thinking, nor was she entirely certain she wanted to know. His heart beat slower than the mor?tals they fed from; hers matched it. His blood sang not an invitation but a warning; hers echoed it. His scent lifted the hair on the back of her neck.

"So... " If only to prove that she could, she kept the challenge out of her voice and, if the words weren't exactly neutral, at least the tone was purely human. "I hear you owe me an apology."

"Yes." He inclined his head. "But I've spent over four-and-a-half centuries believing vampires are inca?pable of sharing a territory, Vicki. Don't expect me to change my mind overnight."

Her tone grew distinctly sarcastic. "Apologies usu?ally begin with 'I'm sorry.''

"I'm sorry. You were right. I was wrong. I didn't give us a fair chance. I will this time."

"Because you have to."

He shrugged. "Granted."

"You try that Prince of Darkness bullshit on me again, Henry, and I'm out of here."

"So you've said in the past." All at once he smiled, and she saw not competition but one of two men she'd learned to love in spite of herself. "You haven't changed, you know, not beyond the obvious-you continue to be so definitely you. After I surrendered the day, I became an entirely different person."

Celluci, still standing between them, measuring gaze flicking constantly back and forth, snorted. "Yeah. Right. You were a royal bastard before, you were a royal bastard after-with all the baggage that carries. Since you were barely seventeen when it happened, I'd say if you changed, you grew up, and that change comes to everyone."

Henry opened his mouth and then closed it again, the protest dying behind his teeth. Even Vicki looked slightly stunned.

Pleased with the effect, Celluci moved out into the room until he formed the third point of the triangle and said, "Now that's settled, we have a few other problems to deal with. The first, where's Vicki spend?ing the day? Not in your bed ..."

"I assume you're implying, not in my bed with me. That isn't actually possible."

"You bet your ass it isn't."

Henry ignored him. "There's an empty condo across the hall with an identical layout to this one. It wouldn't take long to secure the small bedroom. The woman who owns it recently died. I called her com?panion on the way in... "

"You have a cell phone?"

"Try to keep up, Detective; these are the 90s. Any?way, Mrs. Munro is leaving to spend the next week with her son in Kamloops and has graciously allowed us the use of her late employer's condo."

"Nice of her."

"Isn't it; but I assure you my persuasions were, for the most part, monetary. While Mrs. Munro is likely to receive the lion's share of the estate, she's just lost her job and will have no income until after the will clears probate. I swung around and picked up the keys and I think it should suit our purposes." He drew a key chain out of his pocket and threw it to Vicki who snatched it one-handed out of the air.

And threw it back. "It never occurred to you to ask me what I thought?"

"You can always spend the day locked in your van," he reminded her.

"The hell you can, it's already been ripped off once." It gave Celluci great pleasure to ignore Henry's startled exclamation. "Take the keys, Vicki. He asked you to come here, it only makes sense he finds you accommodation.''

Reluctantly, Vicki held out her hand. "If you put it that way ..."

"That's exactly how I put it." He waited until the keys had changed hands once again, then he contin?ued. "My second point concerns territory and keeping the two of you from each other's throats. This is a big city. Why can't Vicki hunt an area you don't use? You seemed to have implied that was possible back when that other vampire moved into Toronto."

"Unfortunately, Detective, it isn't just the hunting, it's all contact. I have shared cities in the past, but there have been very clear boundaries drawn with neutral areas in between. Our paths never crossed."

Vicki broke in before Celluci could respond. "Wouldn't work, Mike. If I'm going to find out who offed our restless spirit, the restrictions of the night will be more than enough. I don't know, can't know, where leads are going to take me until I'm there, and very clear boundaries will only get in the way."

"Uh, I've got an idea that might help."

Vicki spun around, then glared, not at Tony but at the other two men. "Why didn't you tell me he was there? Both of you were facing the kitchen!"

"Very careless, Vicki." Henry fell easily back into his role of teacher and guide because at least that role had parameters he understood. "You should have known he was there. Caught his scent. Heard his heartbeat."

"His scent permeates this apartment. And his heart?beat got lost in the sound'of the dishwasher."

"The perils of the modern vampire," Celluci muttered.

Tony grinned as he stepped forward. "And that's my point. You guys are modern vampires. I mean this not sharing a territory stuff probably made sense back in the Middle Ages when villages were only like a couple hundred people and more than one vampire would be kind of noticeable, but this city has nearly three million people in it."

"He has a point," Vicki allowed. "There're proba?bly as many people in this condominium complex as in a good-sized village of the 1500s."

"But it is my city... "

"Jeez, Henry, you've never even been to West Van?couver. There could be another vampire, six ghouls, and a family of aliens over there for all you know, and you already said cities can be divided. That has nothing to do with this.

"Look, it's an attitude thing." Tony stopped just outside the perimeter of the triangle. "You've said it yourself, Henry, times don't change you, so you have to change with them or be left behind. And when you get left far enough behind, well, the next thing you know, you're spreading your towel for that last sun tan."

"Last suntan?" Vicki repeated with an incredulous look at Henry.

"I never said that."

"Maybe not those exact words," Tony admitted, "but that was what you meant." He grew suddenly solemn and fixed both Vicki and Henry with an intent, worried stare. "Change or die, guys."

After a long moment, Vicki shrugged. "Look, I'm not trying to take over your territory, and there's plenty of food here for both of us, so we can't logically be a threat to each other. There's no reason we can't put up with each other for the duration."

"Listen to your blood and tell me you believe that."

"I'm listening to my brain, Henry. You should try it some time."

He growled. She echoed it. They each took a step forward.

"HEY!" Celluci's voice didn't so much cut through the tension as smash it aside. "Get a grip! I expect this sort of thing from mongrel dogs but not from two supposedly sentient people." No longer able to blush, they both suddenly became interested in the toes of their shoes. "Times change. Change with them, or admit you can't and stop wasting my time-I've a hell of a lot less of it than you do."

Gaze still on the floor, Vicki murmured, "Tell you what, Henry. I promise to not go on a childish ram?page through your territory if you promise to let go a little."

"It won't be easy."

"Nothing worthwhile ever is."

"Oh, spare me," Celluci muttered.

Henry stepped away from the window and Vicki backed up, carefully maintaining the distance between them. He paused for a moment, as though testing their relative positions. When neither of them seemed in?clined to move closer, he said, a little wearily, "I've got the supplies you'll need to secure that window down in my locker. Why don't you two check out your accommodations while Tony and I go get them?"

Barely suppressing the urge to snarl as he went by, Vicki nodded, not trusting her voice. Celluci took one look at her face and pulled her carefully to his side. She jerked her arm free but remained close, using his scent to mask Henry's.

"There," she said when the door closed and they were alone, "that wasn't so bad. We've definitely made progress."

"So unclench your teeth."

A muscle jumped in her jaw. "Not yet."

When it seemed that time enough had passed to give them a clear path out the door and down the hall, they made their way to number 1409.

"Jesus H. Christ."

"On crutches," Vicki added.

The walls had been marbled. The windows wore four different types of swag. The furniture appeared to have been upholstered in raw silk. The overlapping carpets were Persian. Artwork, two dimensional and three, had been arranged for effect. Number 1409 looked like it had been decorated for the benefit of photographers from Vancouver Life Magazine.

"I didn't think people actually lived like this." Turn?ing her back on the splendors of the living room, Vicki started down the hall. "Do you think the rest of the place is the same?"

A pair of concrete Chinese temple dogs guarded a huge basket of dried roses in one corner of the master bedroom. One end of the king-sized bed had been stacked with about fifty pillows in various shapes and shades. The silk moire duvet cover matched the wall?paper. The drapes, although the same fabric, were sev?eral shades darker.

"This room probably cost as much as my whole house," Celluci muttered.

"Certainly classier than the Holiday Inn," Vicki agreed, stepping back into the hall and opening the door to the smallest of the three bedrooms. "Oh, my God." She froze in the doorway. "I can't stay in this."

Celluci peered over her shoulder and started to laugh.

A huge doll, with a pink-and-white crocheted skirt, sat in the middle of the pink satin bedspread. The pink frilly bedskirt matched the pink frilly curtains which complemented the pink frills on the pale pink armchair tucked into a corner. The dresser and the trunk at the foot of the bed were antique white. The bed itself was the most ornate brass monstrosity either of them had ever seen, covered in curlicues and enam?eled flowers, with a giant heart in the center of both the head and footboard.

Laughing too hard to stand, Celluci collapsed against the wall clutching his stomach. "The thought," he began, looked from Vicki to the bed, and couldn't finish.

"The thought ..." A second attempt got no further than the first.

"What's the matter, chuckles? Can't handle the thought of a vampire in such feminine surroundings?"

"Vicki... " Wiping his streaming eyes with one hand, he waved the other into the room. "... I can't handle the thought of you in these surroundings. I hadn't even started thinking about the other."

Her lips twitched. "It does look like it's been decor?ated by Polly Pocket, doesn't it?"

A few moments later, Tony found them sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the hall floor, wearing the ex?pressions of people who've nearly laughed themselves sick. "No one answered when I knocked," he ex?plained. "What's so funny?"

Vicki nodded toward the room and gasped, "A pink plastic crypt that fits in the palm of your hand."

"Yeah. Okay." He glanced inside, shrugged, and looked back down at the two of them. "I have no idea of what you're talking about, but the stuff to block the window's outside. Henry thought it would be best if he didn't come in. You know, keeping his scent out."

Braced against the wall, Vicki got to her feet, ex?tended a hand down to Celluci, and stopped herself just before she lifted him effortlessly upright-displays of strength bothered him more than anything else. When she noticed Tony watching her and realized he understood what she'd done, she clenched her teeth in irritation. "This is not a case of a woman being less than she can to save the machismo of some man," she growled. "This is a person making a compromise for someone she cares about."

Tony backed up, both hands raised. "I didn't say anything."

"I could hear you thinking."

As she stomped by him, Tony glanced over at Cel?luci. "Has she always been that moody?"

Celluci ignored him. "What machismo?" he de?manded following her down the hall. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Tony sighed, "Never mind." Trailing along behind, he waited for a break in the argument and announced, "Henry says that once you get the stuff inside and before you put it up, we should all meet in his apart?ment to discuss the case."

Resting two sheets of three-quarter-inch plywood against the wall, Celluci frowned. "Wouldn't finding neutral territory make more sense?"

"He says his place'll do since Vicki's already scented it."

"He what?"

"Hey! Victory!" Eyes wide, Tony backed up until he hit a sideboard and he stopped cold, one hand flung out to steady an antique candelabra rocked by the impact. "Chill. I'm just repeating what Henry said."

"He makes it sound as though I've been spraying the furniture."

Remembering his earlier conversation with Celluci, Tony didn't think it would be wise to add that Henry had also drawn in a deep breath, his expression had softened, and he'd murmured, "God, how I miss her." At the time, Tony had been tempted to remind him none too gently that Vicki was just down the hall and that if he missed her it was his own damned fault. That wasn't, however, a tone one took with Henry Fitzroy.

"While Vicki and I secure that room, I suggest you head over to the city morgue at Vancouver General and ID a corpse."

Henry looked down the length of his dining room table and raised a red-gold brow. "I beg your pardon?"

"If there's a ghost, odds are good that somewhere there's a body." Fully conscious that their precarious truce would need constant maintenance, Celluci bur?ied his initial reaction to being patronized by a man who wrote romance novels and managed to keep his voice calm and his body language noncommittal. "The odds are better that a handless body, if found, is going to make the paper. So this afternoon, while you two were getting your beauty sleep, I went through your recycling." He picked up the folded newspaper and tossed it down to Henry. "A handless body got pulled out of the harbor right about when your ghost showed up."

"It isn't my ghost," Henry told him tersely.

Celluci shrugged. "Whatever. Body's still going to be at the morgue. Police haven't been able to ID it or that would be in a later edition."

"And if it is the right body?" He slid the paper back down the length of the table.

"We find out what the police know," Celluci began, "and then... " Cold fingers closed around his wrist like a vise.

"Mike. My case. Before you solve it, don't you think you ought to maybe talk things over with me?"

He half turned to face her. Fully aware of the dan?ger, he didn't quite meet her eyes. "Vicki. Our case. I assumed we'd talk things over while Henry was at the morgue. Or would you rather I just bunked with Tony and went on vacation until you decide to go home?"

Eyes narrowed, she let go of his arm. Unwilling to look at either him or Henry, she swept her gaze around the room and suddenly laughed. "I think Tony's terrified you might actually make good on that threat."

"Not terrified," Tony protested as the other three turned to stare at him. "It's just I'm staying with friends and they haven't got room and it's not like ..." His voice trailed off, and he directed a with?ering gaze at Vicki. "Thanks a lot."

"You can come home," Henry reminded him. "My initial plan seems to have been...  discarded."

"Nah." The younger man shifted in his chair. "I already moved my stuff, and John and Gerry made room for me, so it'd be rude to just leave."

"Suit yourself." His brow furrowed thoughtfully, but just as he was about to speak, Celluci, who'd been watching Tony's face carefully, cut him off.

"Better see if you can get a copy of the autopsy report while you're at the hospital."

The red-gold brow rose again, but if Henry sus?pected the other man's timing, he let it go. If Tony wanted to keep secrets with Michael Celluci, that was none of his business. "Anything else?" he asked dryly as he stood.

"Yeah, write out a full description of your ghost-especially noting any differences between it and the body in morgue."

"And the other spirits? Those within the scream?"

"Can you describe them?"

Never fond of admitting inability, and less fond of it under these circumstances with these listeners, Henry shook his head. "No."

"Then let's just forget them for the moment and stick with the description you can give."

"You can put it in with the autopsy report," Vicki declared, standing as well. "Now, if you'll excuse us ..." Her tone made it clear he could excuse them or not, it made little difference to her. "We're going to seal off my sanctuary while you put flesh to your ghost."

"Vicki."

She paused, one hand on the back of her chair.

"As I said before, it isn't easy putting aside a tenet I've held for over four hundred and fifty years. Even if I've never tested it, even if it's no longer true, the belief that vampires are incapable of physical contact is, if nothing else, a strong tradition."

Her hand moved up to Celluci's shoulder and gripped it reassuringly as it tensed. "I'm not exactly a traditional vampire, Henry."

He smiled, and it was the smile she remembered from before the change. "Then stop being such a de?liberate pain in the ass."