would have thought he could have taken the information. But he said we’ve got to do it in the jurisdiction in which they live.”
Meena took a deep, steadying breath. She realized now that just like Cassandra, she really was cursed.
Because Cassandra—poor, clairvoyant Cassandra, who’d denied the love of a god—had taken up with Agamemnon, only to end up murdered by his vengeful wife, Clytemnestra.
“Mrs. Delmonico,” she said, her mouth gone dry as sand, “have you reported them missing yet?”
“Well,” Mrs. Delmonico said, “no. The officer said we’d have to do it in person, and we can’t just leave the baby here by himself—”
“Exactly,” Meena said. “Drop the baby off at David’s sister’s, and then go to the Freewell Police Department as soon as you can. Do you hear me, Mrs. Delmonico? It’s very important that you report David and Brianna missing right away.”
Mrs. Delmonico sounded even more surprised. “Oh,” she said. “Well, the police officer didn’t say that. I don’t know how Naomi is going to feel about us leaving David Junior with her. She’s got the triplets now, you know. But I suppose under these circumstances, it would be all right. I just don’t know what we’re going to do about David’s car. Apparently, the impound people are being difficult. The police are searching it, or something—”
“Look,” Meena said, finally, in desperation. “Why don’t I just meet you? At the police station in Freewell. I might be able to help.”
Now Mrs. Delmonico sounded more than just surprised. She sounded stunned. “Help? How?”
“I might have some information,” Meena said. “About David. Information that the police may find useful. It’ll take me a little while to get there, because I’ll have to shower, then take the train. But I’ll be there no later than nine o’clock. You’ll meet me there, right? You and Mr. Delmonico? And you’ll leave the baby at David’s sister’s house?”
“Well,” Mrs. Delmonico said, clearly flabbergasted, “I … yes. Thank you, Meena. That’s very … kind.”
Meena said it was no problem and hung up, feeling guilty.
Because she wasn’t being kind. She had no other choice. She was the last person to have seen David Delmonico alive.
She was also the person who’d tried to save his wife’s life.
And apparently, she’d failed. She couldn’t understand how … except for the part where she’d made out with the guy who’d provided her with the weapon with which she’d murdered Brianna’s husband.
Now she had the lives of David’s parents, and his baby, to worry about. Who knew where Brianna Delmonico was?
But Meena wasn’t taking any chances that Brianna might be looking for breakfast in her own house. She had to make sure the Delmonicos got out of there, just in case.
She could see she had a lot of work to do if she was going to rectify all the wrongs she’d committed the night before.
But when she got to the station house where she’d promised to meet Mrs. Delmonico, she could see that her karmic punishment was going to be even worse than she’d anticipated.
That’s because the last person in the world she wanted to see was waiting for her on the station-house steps:
Alaric Wulf.
Why are you here?” she demanded.
He thrust a cup of coffee at her. “I thought you might need this.”
The truth, however, was that he needed it. Especially now that he’d seen the scarf.
“I called Abraham, not you,” she said rudely.
“I noticed,” he said. “Do you want the coffee or not?”
She looked down at the cup. “Light?”
She had on sunglasses, so he couldn’t see her eyes. But he guessed from the throatiness in her voice that she’d been crying.
“I think I know by now how you take your coffee,” he said stiffly.
She took it from him. “Thanks,” she grumbled.
They stood outside the station house in silence, drinking coffee and watching the good people of Freewell drive by on their way to work … or wherever they were going so early on a Saturday morning.
The police department was a fairly new building, on a grassy embankment attractively landscaped with new trees. Birds sang prettily in the treetops, oblivious to the impending doom. Alaric reflected that, if they had been in front of a station house in the city, police officers would have been hauling transvestite hookers past them. Instead, a squirrel, foraging for nuts for the winter, hopped nearby.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on,” Alaric asked, “or am I supposed to guess?”
“It’s not what you think,” Meena said.
“I thought you could only tell how people are going to die, not what they’re thinking.”
“You’re not exactly hard to read, Alaric,” she said.
This stung. He said, “Well, as it happens, neither are you. The last time you wore a scarf like that around your neck, it nearly cost me a leg. So I’d appreciate a little heads-up this time, since I happen to enjoy being able to walk.”
Her cheeks went almost the same color pink of the scarf.
“All right,” she said, reaching up to remove the sunglasses. Beneath them her dark eyes, which she’d carefully made up, were nevertheless red-rimmed from crying. “Yes. I did get bitten last night. But it wasn’t by Lucien, Alaric. Not this time, I swear.”
He felt the sidewalk sway beneath him. He didn’t understand this, because despite his protests that they should get to Freewell as quickly as possible, Abraham had pulled into a fast-food drive-through in the Prius (Alaric would never get over the indignity of having been forced to ride in such a vehicle) along the way, insisting that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and they’d need the protein.
Now Alaric was glad, even if the alleged “McMuffin” he had eaten was sitting like a rock in his stomach.
“Impossible,” he said to her. “We haven’t had a vampire sighting in the city—in North America—in six months. We killed all the Dracul. You know that. You were there.”
“This wasn’t a Dracul,” she said.
Alaric shook his head, confused. “But there’s never been another clan reported in—”
“Well,” Meena said, “then someone needs to alert Homeland Security. Because last night I had a close encounter
