"Here, " he said as he climbed into the driver"s side and reached toward her, holding a cloth-wrapped bundle.
A napkin, she realized, one of the white cloth ones from the cafe. "Lean forward, bend your head down."
She did. He pressed the bundle to the back of her neck. Cold. It was full of ice. He must have scooped it out of her water gla.s.s. She sighed, the breath rushing out of her as the cold hit her nerve endings.
"Any better?"
"I"ll let you know."
"Do you want to go back to the motel?"
She reached behind her to hold the bundle, so he could use his hands again. "No, " she said. "Let"s head to the other meeting."
"But-"
She drew a deep breath. "It"s pa.s.sing. It"s pa.s.sing, it"s okay" She met his eyes. "Look. My eyes are still the right color, aren"t they?"
"They"re the perfect color."
She forced a smile. "And I"m still speaking English. I think the ice worked."
"More likely you"re stronger the farther we get away from that place."
"Maybe." She nodded at the keys he held in his hand. "Let"s get going. Time"s burning, and we need to stop in Salem on the way back."
" Salem? Why?"
"I did some research on the Net yesterday and found a few books that might help me figure out what"s going on with me. There"s a rare bookstore in Salem , and according to their Web site, they have a couple of them in stock."
He nodded. "All right. But if it happens again..." "If it happens again, Jay, restrain me if you have to. Butdon"t let me hurt you. Promise me that?"
He nodded, though she wasn"t sure he meant it. Then he put the keys into the ignition and started the engine.
They were driving back toward Endover late in the afternoon. Max was already thinking about dinner, her stomach growling, and not for pizza or burgers. "I wonder if it"s still storming there, " she muttered, voicing her thoughts aloud. "Probably not. It"s nearly dark. This trip took a lot longer than I expected.
And he doesn"t need to keep us off the island after dark."
"Even a natural storm wouldn"t be likely to last all day, " Lou said.
"Ever the skeptic, " she said. "What do you say we eat in a real restaurant tonight?"
"Fine by me. Stormy and Jason will be expecting us back at the motel, though."
"Slow down, I"ll call them before we enter the dead zone."
He gave a shiver and told her with his eyes that her new pet name for the town wasn"t even a little bit funny to him, but she only shrugged and took out her phone.
Stormy picked up. Her voice was tired, worn.
"Hey, Storm, it"s me. You find out anything?"
"Nothing good. What about you?"
"Freakin" creepy stuff. I"ll tell you when I see you. Where are you?"
"We"ll be back in Endover in another twenty minutes. Why?"
"Why don"t we meet at that restaurant on the sh.o.r.e? We pa.s.sed a billboard for it on the way to the boat rental place the other day, remember? I"m hungry for some real food and in the mood to be waited on.
It"ll be dark by the time we get there, and we need, to decide what to do next."
"Okay. Sure, what the h.e.l.l. I remember that billboard. The restaurant"s outside the Endover town limits, so how bad can it be?"
"You sure you"re up for it? You sound a little tired."
"I"m fine. See you in a half hour or less."
Stormy hung up. Max put her phone down and frowned. "She sounds off."
"You think she"s losing it again?"
"I don"t know. h.e.l.l, maybe the restaurant is a bad idea."
"It"s a good idea. You need a break, and so does she. Jason and I can handle it if anything happens."
Max told herself it was unreasonable to believe everything would be fine, as long as Lou was with her.
Unreasonable and unrealistic. But she felt it anyway, and mostly believed it was true. Even if it was illogical.
She and Lou were closer, so they arrived at the restaurant first. There was no sign of the storm, no rain, no clouds, not even in the distance toward Endover. Then again, it was already dusk.
The restaurant was a large white building, its entire hack side mostly made up of gla.s.s panes, so that nearly every table in the place looked out over the ocean. There were spotlights set up along the sh.o.r.e that came on once darkness fell, to keep the view alive. It was beautiful.
Lou asked for a table for four, and a hostess in black pants and a crisp white blouse with a black ribbon around its collar led them to a gorgeous table right up against the windows. It relieved Max to no end when she looked the woman in the eyes and saw a real person looking back at her, rather than a tranced-out zombie. She ordered wine, deciding to relax a little. Lou settled for coffee and a large gla.s.s of ice water, probably because he wanted to stay sharp. Especially now.
The waitress brought their drinks, left their menus and hurried away.
"This is nice, " Max said. "Someday we ought to come back here, just the two of us."
"I don"t know if I"m gonna make Endover a regular place on my list of favorite vacation spots, Max."
She shrugged. "No matter. There are lots of nice places overlooking the ocean back in Easton ." He nodded.
"Have you thought any more about that, Lou?" "About what?"
He looked across the table at her. She sighed. "About coming to work with Stormy and me in Easton .
Moving up there for good."
He drew a deep breath. "I can"t lie to you, kid. The thought has crossed my mind. I"m just not sure it"s the best idea, is all."
"Why not?"
"Honey, we"ve been over all this."
"No we haven"t. You"ve given me countless reasons-none of them worth a d.a.m.n, by the way-why we can"t be together as a couple. But you"ve never given me any reasons why we can"t work together."
"That"s because they"re the same reasons."
"Oh" She took a sip of her wine as she thought about it. "So you don"t think we could be together that way without...taking our relationship further."
"I didn"t say that"
She frowned at him. He reached for her winegla.s.s and took a big drink. W hen he set it down again, he nodded. "Okay, I give. You"re right, I think if we were together all the time, yeah-something would be bound to happen."
She smiled. "I"m irresistible to you."
"d.a.m.n near." He looked away as soon as he said it, and she knew he was wishing he could pull the words back.
"It wouldn"t ruin things, Lou. It would only make things better."
"It would ruin you, kid. And I"m not gonna do that."
"Lou, sweetie, don"t you get it yet? You can"t turn off your heart. You think you have, but you haven"t.
Denying it doesn"t make it go away. And pretending you don"t care doesn"t make it true."
He looked past her, toward the entrance, but she knew he heard her, saw it in his eyes. Could he actually be listening for a change? Was she finally getting through to him? G.o.d, she was almost afraid to think it was even possible.
"There are Stormy and Jason, " he said, and standing up, he waved a hand at them.
Max sighed in disappointment. She would have liked more time to pursue the discussion. For the first time, she felt as if she was making progress.
The place had been steadily filling up, but there were still plenty of empty tables around. Stormy spotted them and waved back, but Max thought her smile was forced and her gait heavy. Not her usual bouncing, vibrant steps.
"She"s had a hard day, " Max muttered, but she got up, anyway, and gave Stormy a welcoming hug.
"Hey, honey. You look wiped out."
"It was a long and interesting day, " she said.
Jason pulled out a chair for her, overdoing the chivalrous bit, Max thought, and she sat down. Max returned to her own seat, and Lou waved at the waitress as Jason took his own chair.
The waitress hurried to take Stormy and Jay"s drink orders, then went off to fill them.
"So?" Lou asked. "What did you guys find out?"
Stormy drew a deep breath. "The two women had pretty similar things to say. Both have developed a fear of the dark. Both have...disturbing dreams"
"About a man who... drinks from them?" Max asked, lowering her voice to a whisper on the last three words. Stormy met her eyes, nodded. "Yours, too?"
"Mmm-hmm. One had painted him."
"One of mine sketched him in pencil, " Stormy said.
They both reached for their bags at the same time. Max produced a tiny, oval-framed miniature-aportrait of a man with powerful black eyes and long dark hair. She slid it across the table to Stormy, and took the folder in return. Then she opened it and caught her breath.
"Identical, " she said.
Stormy nodded, showing the oval miniature to Jason without more than glancing at it herself. Max wondered why. Jay thinned his lips and nodded. Max flipped through the drawings, and Lou leaned over the table to look at them as she did.
"It"s uncanny, " Stormy said.
"Not so uncanny if he"s real, " Lou said. "And I think we"re well beyond doubting that he is, especially after I got to see him face-to-face." He thumped his forefinger on one of the drawings. "This is the same guy who tried to grab you the other night, Max. This is our vamp."
Max closed her eyes. "Jesus, here we go again."
"Max, maybe it"s time we called in some reinforcements, " Lou said. "Your sister, Dante, some of their friends..."
She shook her head firmly. "Not until I know for sure what we"re dealing with here. h.e.l.l, Lou, he came after me. There"s every chance he wants to draw them into this-maybe it"s some kind of trap for them.
Maybe he has some sort of vendetta or something."
"But how the h.e.l.l would he know you were connected to others of his kind?" Lou asked. Then he lowered his head and answered his own question. "The break-in. h.e.l.l, it happened the first night you were out of the house."
"And the computer was the only thing taken, " Max said, nodding. "That seals it. We"re not dragging any other vamps into this. He might be a rogue. A killer of his own kind. It wouldn"t be the first time a vampire turned on his own."
Jason was sitting there looking from one of them to the other, his eyes grim.
Stormy put a hand on his arm. "That doesn"t mean he"s done anything to harm Delia. h.e.l.l, he let the other women go. He didn"t hurt them. There"s no reason to believe he would change tactics now."
Max closed the folder and returned it to Stormy, who slid it into the bag at her side. Then Max looked at the bag itself, black with twine handles and a logo on the front. "What"s that?" she asked. "You found time to go shopping during all this?"
Stormy nodded. "Just some research materials."
Max reached for the bag, pulled it into her lap and looked inside. Two fat books, hardcover, musty-smelling, with yellowed, rough-edged pages, sat inside. She glanced at the t.i.tles. Case Histories of Demonic Possession and Rites of Exorcism: A Guide for the Clergy. A business card fell out of one, and Max picked it up and read it. It was for a hypnotist in Salem .
Licking her lips, she tucked the card back into the book, looked up from the bag and saw Stormy"stroubled eyes. "Good choices, " she said. "We"ll read them together."
"Okay."
"But first, let"s eat, huh? I"m starved."
Stormy brightened slightly. "Me too." She opened her menu, but Max got the feeling she wasn"t really reading it.