He’ll grow weaker and weaker, his life drained from him by his wife.”
“Swift? How swift?”
Tim shrugged. “I’m not sure of the time line. A couple of months, maybe.”
“A couple? Like two? Because he’s been married that long already.” She fought the urge to panic. This was a bunch of baloney. There was no such thing as a lamia. And Dao wasn’t about to die. Dao couldn’t die. He just couldn’t.
Unfortunately, Tim didn’t seem to know that. “Sounds like he’s near the end. Sorry.”
She didn’t like what she was hearing. Not one bit. Which was why she preferred to look for another reason for Dao’s illness. And his strange behavior. And the snake skin in his living room. Okay, there were a number of coincidences here. “There must be another explanation. That skin is from a…a python or something. Who knows, maybe he went to a zoo—”
“It’s not the skin of most common varieties of snakes. I snapped a quick photograph and e-mailed it to my buddy who works in the zoo’s reptile house. He’s assured me it’s not from any snake they have there. That rules out several varieties of pythons and boa constrictors. Just to make sure, he’s forwarding the image to a friend of his who identifies shed snake skins for a living.”
“Ick. There are people who do that for a living?”
“Sure. Out west especially. Think about it. If you found a shed skin under your porch, wouldn’t you want to know if you had a venomous snake living under your house?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Tim set the piece of skin on the desk and stared into Sophie’s eyes. “Look, when I hired you, I told you I didn’t require you to actually believe in what I study here. So I accept that you’re doubtful. But this is your friend, and if you truly care about him, I suggest you reconsider your position on a few things. Vampires do exist. And they do kill.”
A lump the size of Tim’s SUV formed in Sophie’s throat as she let his words pass through the baloney filter in her brain and really sink in. Even if she still didn’t believe in vampires, didn’t she owe it to Dao to check out all the possibilities? “So, what’s the next step? Do you need to go scan Lisse with one of your gadgets? Shoot her with an ionizing ray? How do I know she’s in fact one of those lamia things and if she is, how do I get her to leave my friend alone?” Oh God. I know this is going to kill Dao. He adores Lisse. But if what Tim says is true, he’s dying already.
“Nothing I have is going to help you.” He patted her shoulder and nodded. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“Why are you saying that like he’s already dead? What’ya mean you’re sorry for my loss?”
“I’m saying that because I can’t help you. There’s virtually no way to one hundred percent identify your friend’s wife as a lamia or to make her leave him.”
“Virtually no way? What about Buffy? Where’s a vampire slayer when you need one? Or maybe an old-fashioned stake through the heart would do the trick—on second thought, scratch that. I don’t have the stomach to give someone a paper cut let alone shove a wooden stake through their breastbone. Just imagine all the blood. Have I told you that blood gives me the willies—”
“There’s only one way to both identify a lamia and destroy her,” he interjected, cutting off her mindless rant about television characters and paper cuts. “But each step requires the possession of an extremely rare relic, which I’m not sure even exists. They’re the…Shoot, I can’t remember the names. They’re Hebrew. Never been good with Hebrew. Let me go back and get my book.” He took a single step away, then glanced over his shoulder at the piece of snake skin still sitting on Sophie’s desk. “I don’t suppose you’d let me keep that? For research purposes, of course.”
She picked it up and handed it to him. “Sure. If you’ll help me. I think I’m in trouble over my non-vampire-believing head.”
His eyes sparkled as he glanced down at the skin. “Like I said, I can’t help you much. But I’ll do what I can. Come on.” He led her back to his office. “Let’s hope, for your friend’s sake, the book I’ve read on the subject is right and the relics you need haven’t been destroyed eons ago.”
Chapter 2
“Excuse me,” Sophie asked the librarian a couple of hours later. She glanced down at the piece of paper she’d ripped from Tim’s notebook, then continued, “You got rid of the good-old card catalogue and I’ll admit I’m far behind the common kindergartner when it comes to computers—a real crime considering what I do for a living, but that’s beside the point. Where might I find a book on rare biblical relics?”
The middle-aged woman, slim and scholarly looking with her brown hair pulled into a neat bun at the base of her skull, gave Sophie a pleasant, if not a little condescending, smile. “Let me see what I can find.” She tapped a few keys, moved the mouse around a bit, then looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m not finding anything under ‘biblical relics.’ However, you may find what you need under religious relics. Those are in the two-thirties. The nonfiction shelves are in this direction and they are numbered. In particular, this book Religious Relics, Icons, Visions and Cures by James Murrow may be of some help. The call number is two-thirty-one point seven M.”
“Thank you.” Sophie repeated the title and number in her head as she walked in the general direction of the nonfiction shelves. She scanned the numbers on the ends of the shelves until she found the two- to three-hundred section, then focused on the books on the shelves as she walked toward the back of the section. “Two-twenty, two-thirty, two-forty…” When she reached the two-seventies, she stopped and skimmed the numbers on the book spines. “Two-seventy point three, point eight. Two-seventy-one…two-seventy-one point three, point seven, A, B, C…G, P. Hey, no M?” She turned her body, and while still reading the book spines, she started walking toward the very back of the section. But a brick wall stopped her before she reached the end.
As she twisted her neck to inspect the wall, she realized immediately it wasn’t your garden variety brick wall. This one was wide, tall, hard, and yummy, with a head full of blond curls and eyes the shade of a Hershey bar.
Those eyes traveled over her features for an instant, making her feel all goosebumpy inside, then returned to the book that was partly blocking her view of his face.
She wondered if the rest of his face looked as good as the part she saw. Then she shook her head and reminded herself she was on the hunt for a book, not a delish man who knew how to fill out a T-shirt and pair of snug jeans properly. “Sorry,” she muttered to the wall.
“Not a problem.” He stepped aside to let her pass. Naturally, his bulk took up a fair amount of the narrow aisleway between shelves, which meant to pass, she had to get mighty close to him. She turned sideways, her front facing him, of course—wouldn’t want to show him her less than desirable backside—and took a single shuffling step.
As she paused, her body mere inches from his, the girly part of her—the part she’d begun to think had abandoned her ages ago—woke up from its slumber and started getting all vocal, protesting and demanding equal time as the logical part reminded her she was there to find a book, not ogle a good-looking library patron. Being she was short, his chest was at eye level—and it was the broadest one she’d ever seen. Hugged in black cotton, it was pure, unadulterated temptation. The way the thin fabric skimmed over the lines of his sculpted muscles made
