Jack kept staring at him. Sean drew his fingers through his hair. “Look, I know this sounds nuts. I know I can’t go in front of a task force meeting and say any of this. But I don’t know where else to go or what to do. Whatever he is, he is a monster, human or other, who will strike again. We’ve got to stop him. I don’t have many leads. Investigating the old property seems to make sense to me. Well ...”
“I just have one thing to say,” Jack told him.
Sean paused defensively. “What?”
“Daytime. We’re going by daytime. Crack of dawn daytime. We’re not going to hunt, find the guy, and have it turn into night right when we find him, before we can impale him. And we’re going about this intelligently. We can’t have vampires in the cemeteries—we know bodies bake. Live bodies, dead bodies—they’d bake. If the Carters and Dixons were buried in vaults, they must be baked as well—”
“You said that Aaron Carter ordered a chapel or a crypt to be built.”
“What would the temperature be in a chapel?” Jack asked.
Sean shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Jack nodded. “All right. We go to the property at the first sign of daylight. We search the ruins, and the chapel. And we are gone by nightfall. I don’t believe any of this, of course. I can’t believe I’m saying this.
I’m going to go home and make stakes out of all my old baseball bats—”
“Brooms will work just fine.”
Jack hesitated. “Ash. Ash is a good wood. Find anything made out of it. And remember, the chapel must be in ruins by now as well ...” Jack began, then fell silent. He was staring out the door to Sean’s office.
Sean swung around. Maggie had come. He jumped to his feet, looking at her.
She looked pale; she smiled wanly. “The chapel isn’t in ruins.”
“How do you know?” he asked her sharply.
“I tried to trace Aaron Carter myself,” she said softly. She glanced at Jack with an apologetic shrug.
“Then I went to the courthouse and spent some time at the office of public records. A check arrives from an A.D. Carter, Rue Royale, Paris, twice a year for the upkeep of the building of the old chapel on the Carter/Dixon grounds.” She stared at Sean. “I’ll be going with you.”
“No!” Jack and Sean said simultaneously.
“Jack, you don’t understand, I can help you—”
“Maggie, you know what? We can talk about this tomorrow—” Sean began.
“Can we? What happened tonight? Your officers are good at public relations, and they’re careful what they say to the press, but they did use the word ‘disappeared.’ What happened at the morgue? The broadcasts are saying that you and Pierre were attacked by a man dressed as a medical assistant who then disappeared? You and Jack both fired shots—but he disappeared. That’s what they’re saying on the news, Sean.”
“The guy got away, Maggie.”
“The guy was Aaron!” she said angrily. “The murderer.” She stared sharply at Jack. “And you know that he just disappeared into thin air!”
Jack shrugged. “It wasn’t thin air,” he said defensively. But Maggie kept staring at him. He swallowed.
Moistened his lips. “Maggie, come on. People don’t just disappear.”
“He disappeared, Jack,” she repeated.
“How can you know, Maggie? You weren’t there. I think, he, uh, well—” He broke off, looking into her eyes. His voice faltered. “It wasn’t thin air—it was kind of a mist he disappeared into. But, Maggie—”
“He is a vampire, Jack. You can doubt it, you can question your sanity, but it’s true.”
“And you know him?”
“Yes.”
“So the blood drops from the pimp on Bourbon Street that led to your door—”
“Were done by Aaron on purpose. To implicate me.”
“Why?” Jack asked.
“I’m a vampire, too,” Maggie said.
Sean groaned.
Jack smiled. His smile was weak. “Maggie, you’re wearing a big, beautiful, gold cross, and you’re—”
“I go to church.
“I haven’t accepted the fact that I’m supposed to be damned. I go, but Aaron doesn’t. You really can hurt him by many traditional means. He’s going to be hard to kill, but sometimes, every little edge helps.
He won’t evaporate or sizzle or melt like a wicked witch from Holy water, but it may slow him down.
Garlic will honestly help—”
“Garlic. Maybe we should have a big Italian dinner and refrain from brushing our teeth,” Jack murmured.
“Yes, we should have a big Italian dinner. We’ll go to my house. I’ll cook.”
“With garlic?” Jack asked, half teasing her, half afraid that his question was entirely rational.
“I won’t eat it, I’ll just cook it. We’ll all stay at my house tonight. And I’ll be with you in the morning.”
“No, Maggie,” Sean grated.
Maggie shook her head sternly. “Yes! And we’ll stay together as of now. Aaron wants to kill you, Sean.
And he’ll kill you, Jack, too, with every pleasure in the world.”
“I shot him,” Jack said. “Sean shot him. He’s got to be in pretty bad shape.”
“He’s definitely hurt,” Sean said, daring her to deny that much.
Her eyes fell. “If he ran, then he was hurt. But if he disappeared on you, he wasn’t that hurt. He’ll be back.”
“But we should have some time,” Sean insisted.
“Maybe,” Maggie said.
Sean came to her, set his hands on her shoulders, kissed her forehead. “Okay, Maggie, we’ll both come to dinner. We’ll load down with garlic. But I need to tie up a few things, and Jack needs to go shopping.
Give me an hour or so.”
She hesitated. “You’re really coming?” she asked.
“I swear it.”
She stared into his eyes, then nodded after a moment, turned and left them.
Jack looked at Sean. “Maggie’s a vampire?”
Sean shrugged.
“Maggie?” Jack repeated.
“So she says.”
“All right. So—what are we really doing?”
“You’re going out for ammunition. Brooms, holy water, blessed crosses. Matches, lots of matches. Or lighters. Or both.”
“We would be put away for this, you know.”
“There’s not going to be any task force meeting about it, Jack.”
“No, I guess not. And while I’m out buying brooms to pare into stakes, what will you be doing?”
“I’m going to the drugstore.”
Jack arched a brow.
“Sleeping pills. Maggie can’t come with us.”
“Sean, she can’t really—”
“I don’t know what’s real. But she can’t be with us.”
Jack turned, shoulders squared, and left the office.
Sean sat back when they were gone. He unlocked his bottom drawer, drew out ammunition. Bullets at least slowed the sucker down. He swung around on his chair and happened to notice the wall. One of his Civil War ancestor’s swords hung there. He hesitated, then stood on the chair to lift it down. “Revenge?” he murmured quietly, carefully handling the sword. It was a traceable antique—priceless.
It felt far too familiar in his hands.
He gave himself a shake, dug into a cabinet for a duffel bag, packed his sword and extra rounds of ammunition, and left the office.
He walked down Royale Street. Jewelry dealers, tourist shops, antique stores were just beginning to close for the evening. It was nearly ten o’clock, he realized. A mule-drawn carriage clip-clopped by.
Across the street was the pharmacy, an old building, the second floor graced with a beautiful wrought-iron railing. His city. He loved it.
There wasn’t room in it for both him and Aaron Carter.
He shifted the duffel on his shoulder and entered the drugstore. Old Trent Bickery, more ash-colored than black, was behind the counter. Trent owed him. Sean had kept his grandson out of prison on what could have been a case of grand theft auto. The boy, given the break, had cleaned up his act and gone on to Duke. Not that what Sean was asking was such a terrible thing, but dispensing narcotics without a prescription was still illegal. And Trent was a man of the law. A Christian to the core, as moral as they came.
“Lieutenant Canady!” Trent greeted him. “I was just about to close up. You caught me just in time.”
“I need some help, Trent.”
The gnarled old man arched a brow. “You asking me for some kind of uppers or downers, Lieutenant?
Ain’t like you. Don’t be asking me to do anything illegal, now—”
“Trent, you know me. I’m clean. And you know that the docs down at the medical examiner’s office could give me a prescription for anything I wanted. I don’t have time, that’s all. I need a sleeping pill.
Now. Not some over the counter may-or-may-not-work sleeping pill. Someone could get killed. I have to keep her out of danger.”
Trent stared at him a long moment. Shrugged. Turned around and came back to him. “No taste, no smell. Break one capsule into a drink and she should be out in twenty minutes. Break two .. . and she’ll sleep the clock around.”
“Thanks, Trent. Give my regards to your wife, the kids, and their kids, huh?”
“Yessir, Lieutenant. You make sure to let me know if everything works out all right, you hear?”
“Sure, Trent. Sure.”
He drove out to the Montgomery Plantation, thinking that the night seemed blacker than usual. There were no stars. The full moon had begun to wane. Storm clouds covered what light it might have offered.
The weatherman on the radio advised that there would be wind, rain, and squalls tomorrow from a formation in the Gulf.
