A vampire named Sturn drove Maura straight through from Toronto to Boston by 5am. Instead of dropping her at a hotel as she requested, he took her to a brownstone in the Back Bay. "Janette's orders, sorry. Guy's name is Anton, he runs a club in Kenmore where you can get work. He's one of us. He's expecting you." Sturn carried her bags up the short stoop to the door and leaned on the bell. A tall, forbidding looking man answered the door. Dark eyes, long black hair and a full beard, he stood well over six feet tall.
"Here's your package, man. Don't forget to call Janette. Good luck, Cherie."
"Maura, my name is Maura."
"Not anymore," Sturn shot back as he got in the car and drove off.
"Welcome," Anton told her as he ushered her in. "Come in, get settled. But first call Janette, she's waiting to hear you made it."
Feeling like she was trapped in witness protection, Maura dialed Raven on the cell phone that was handed to her.
"Ah, cherie, you've arrived already. Anton will be your host for as long as you require, and he has agreed to employ you as well, if you wish. I didn't feel it was wise for you to be wandering the streets the night before the new moon."
"Thanks, I guess, but this changing my name stuff is a little over the top. I mean it's fine on the card, to avoid the obvious paper trail, but it's not like I'm on the lam or anything."
"Perhaps I'm mistaken, then, and your signature need not match the name on your financial records?" Her tone said she knew very well she wasn't mistaken.
"Oh yeah, right. Well call me Snow White if you want, I'm here and everyone's done their jobs. D'accord?"
"D'accord, cherie. Bonsoir."
Maura switched off the phone and took a look around. Her host had disappeared for the moment. The ground floor was elegant in a subdued way, with a baby grand piano in the foyer and comfortable looking furniture in the living room. The dining room was rather old-fashioned but welcoming. Anton returned with a pot of tea, which looked rather odd in the hands of such a large dark person.
"Join me in the front room." She hadn't heard it referred to as "the front room" in ages. Once there she looked out the tall bay window at the near-absence of moon, then cast a somewhat nervous eye at her host.
"Anton? Janette did tell you about my, uh, 'condition', didn't she?"
The dark face broke into a surprisingly winning smile. "Don't worry, I'm one of the ancients." That addressed her concerns immediately. The vampires who had surpassed 1000 years or so didn't seem much taken with her "condition". Her blood had the same effect on them as any other vampire, but the pheromone had little attractive power. "I came across in Imperial Rome. With age comes discretion, and self control. And there are no guests this weekend to bother you."
"Guests?" She looked around. "This isn't a B&B is it?"
His laugh reassured her further. "No, just a sort of safe house for fellow travelers."
"Safe for me too?"
"Oh yes. With age also comes power." He was pouring the tea, but Maura stopped him.
"If you don't mind, do you have anything harder? It's been a rugged day."
"Jack rocks, right? Janette told me." He got her a glass and poured a sensible measure over a couple of ice cubes.
"Thanks." She couldn't believe she was relaxing, chatting with this stranger, this vampire stranger, as if he were simply a mutual friend. "Janette told you a lot I guess."
"Only the essentials. You left Toronto for personal reasons and would rather decide for yourself who knows where you are. You're a 'prized' mortal, but more at home with us than with other mortals. No trouble, no threat, and no reason not to trust you. That's about it. Except for the fact that Janette said you'd be needing work sooner or later, and she told me what you do for her."
"So you own this place and a club?"
"Somebody else owns the house. I just live here and keep an eye on things." He didn't say who owned it, so she didn't ask.
She sipped the bourbon, careful to pace it. He seemed okay, and Janette trusted him, but she didn't feel quite comfortable enough to risk getting drunk. "Tell me about your club."
"It's called Pulse, in the Kenmore Square club complex. Straight-up rock'n'roll." Maura smiled broadly. "You like that idea?"
"Well not that I haven't grown attached to Raven, and really I can work anywhere and love all sorts of music, but straight-up rock is really my style. I'd rather rock than angst. Heart, AC/DC, ZZ Top, Tom Petty, like that. Oh, and Tina."
Now he smiled again, and his teeth were of course snow-white and perfect. "Janette favors Goth, and Raven is fine for her niche. I prefer to play to a wider market. What?"
Maura was shaking her head, still smiling. "I'm sorry, it's just it's rare to speak to one of you guys who isn't all caught up in the 'scene', you know? Janette is really into her role as grande mysterious vampire dame. Maybe it's the French thing, or maybe it's just the way she's most comfortable. But the dungeon-bunny crowd can wear on you if you're an outsider. So grim and angst-y. Gimme a leather-and-denim shot and beer crowd over the blood-wine black eyeliner bunch any day."
"It's where you came from, after all."
She nodded. "Fair enough. Is it a big place?"
"Entire first floor of the complex, with a loft out back for private parties." The last two words betrayed not a hint of the double entendre that dripped from Janette's identical utterance. "I'll bring you in tomorrow night."
"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Maura shifted uneasily. "New moon, and all. Not that I don't trust you, but why ask for trouble?" Now he was laughing out loud, a rich easy sound.
"Janette truly has ruined you for the outside world, hasn't she? I told you, we cater to a wider market."
"You mean, mortals?"
"Why not? There are more of them than us, so why not do business with them? Oh, the staff are vampires, and a core contingent of regulars, but it's not a vampire bar. Or a gay bar, or a straight bar, for that matter. Just a rock'n'roll club with long term investment." They both smiled at that double entendre.
"But what about the staff? Do they uh, sample the clientele?"
His expression grew serious. "House rule, no feeding on customers. Oh, don't label me moral or ethical, it's just bad for business for customers to go missing, or hypnotized."
"Or perforated."
The smile returned. "Exactly. Like Janette and other ancients, I have more wealth than I can possibly use. But I find business to be a challenge to the wits and intellect. After 2000 years I find myself easily bored by the world. Keeping a 21st-century music club running in this economically volatile country is endlessly diverting."
She was beginning to like this Anton. "I'm a little out of practice with 'non niche' club security, but I'm sure it'll come back to me quick enough. Janette said you probably need someone."
"That's true, but not on the door or the floor. What I need right now is a vocalist for the house band."
"You do live music?" She was impressed. She figured it was too big a pain for a big club.
"Half and half, a d.j. to start the night and the band to finish."
"Well I'm sorry, Anton, but I'm a bouncer not a singer."
"Derek Littles told me differently."
She barked a laugh. The snaggle-toothed guitar playing bastard who led Raven's house band had had ratted her out. "So I guess it's true, you do all know each other. Yeah, I did some throwaway stuff with Vamp, but nothing regular. And trust me, not all that impressive. I can carry a tune, but that's about it."
"Practice leads to improvement. And since you're changing most every aspect of your recent life, maybe it's time to change that too."
"You guys all have the gift of smooth talk, you know that?" He shrugged mildly.
"Centuries of practice." That phrase hit her hard, and it showed. "Did I say something wrong?"
"Uh, no. Just reminded me of someone." She finished her drink, and forced a smile. "Absent friend."
Anton nodded knowingly. Surely Janette had told him more than he let on, but he was one of the mannered ones, and didn't mention it. "You must be very tired. Let me show you your accommodations."
He took her bags and she followed him up a winding staircase to the third floor, and into a high-ceilinged whitewashed bedroom with pale oak wainscoting and ornate doorframes. The bed was a huge four-poster, and the other furnishings were comfortably upholstered in mauve and blue linen and velvet. It was a bright, airy room, even at night. She crossed to the open door of the walk-in closet. "This must be the guest room, huh?"
"Some of these 19th century brownstones have been horribly butchered and modernized. In my time I've decided it's more enjoyable to adapt to what you find, rather than vice versa."
She turned in a circle to take it all in. She'd become used to so much dark, blacks and deep crimsons, this was like breathing fresh air. "The blinds?" she asked.
"Blackout, of course," he touched a button on the nightstand and they slid into place behind the elegant curtains. "Your bathroom is through here," he opened another door and the white-and-black tiled bathroom was huge. Pedestal china sink, shining brass fixtures, and an enormous claw-footed bathtub with an old-fashioned circular curtained shower, fluffy white towels hanging everywhere.
"Wow. Thanks, Anton, really, I'm not sure why I deserve all this."
"Janette has instructed me that you are to be treated with every consideration of a member of our Community, and protected from any of its dangers."
"You mean the Enforcers."
He didn't react to the reference. "I mean any of its dangers. The kitchen is partially stocked with fruits and coffee for the morning. Vlad will take any list you make to the market, or take you there to do your own shopping."
Her eyebrows went up. "Vlad?"
A friendly laugh. He laughed a lot, and not sarcastically. A good sign. "Short for Vladmir. He is Russian, and quite mortal. He and his wife Majeska take care of the housekeeping, maintenance, other household and daytime tasks. They may be trusted as I am, and are as protected as you shall be."
She was setting her things out on the bed, when Anton concluded his "tour" by saying, "Sleep well, and as long as you like. No one will disturb you." Maura was beginning to notice a certain air that contrasted with his youthful appearance. He looked about her age, but had the grace and manners, not to mention the syntax, of an aristocratic elder. "Feel free to use the phone, there is a directory in the nightstand drawer."
"No Gideon Bible, I presume." She couldn't resist.
He shuddered and raised an eyebrow, "Janette warned me about your humor. No, Cherie, there is no bible to disturb either one of us."
She stopped him before he could leave. "Anton, can you do me a favor? When we're here, can you call me Maura?"
"Of course. I knew a fine Irish pirate by that name a long time ago... but that's a tale for another time. Sleep well."
"See you after sunset." Once he'd gone, she reached for the phone and dialed Raven, long since closed she knew. When the machine kicked on she said quietly, "Janette? Merci. Merci beaucoup. Tu es une amie pour les ages."
She changed for bed as the sun was rising. And, as she'd done every night for the past five weeks, she took the handwritten note from her wallet and looked at it as if it held some secret she'd yet to decipher. "'Toujours' isn't such a long time, is it Bats?" she asked the silence that surrounded her. Replacing the note she couldn't bring herself to throw away, she shut off the light and went to bed. And for the first and last time since that first morning she'd faced alone she cried herself to sleep, for what Nick had walked away from, and for what she was about to try to leave behind.
A week to the day after Maura arrived in Boston, Nick returned to Toronto. Six weeks of extended debate and travel, bound by LaCroix' strict rules, had settled their argument once and for all. True to form, LaCroix would remain in Toronto until he bored of his surroundings and playthings, but would cease his interference in Nick's life and leave Maura strictly alone. Nick remained unconvinced by his mentor's urging to rejoin the dark life he'd left behind, but the only way he could do so was to agree not to tell Maura where he was or how long he'd be gone. Knowing instinctively that this time LaCroix would keep his word, he had agreed reluctantly to the conditions. And equally reluctantly, LaCroix had been forced to acknowledge that it was far more than a new "pet" that had bound Nick to his Toronto incarnation. Her absence, he realized, would change nothing except to leave the way open for another to assume the same place in his life, sooner or later. While not conceding defeat, he accepted a change in dynamic.
"You're right, of course, we'll never really be shed of one another," Nick told him, "why can't we just ratchet down the dysfunction? Why does it have to be this hard?" That, finally, was a question LaCroix could not answer.
As Nick left Maura in the Caddy that night, LaCroix had proposed a final test. "If I'm to believe you are completely committed to this new existence, and not simply held in check by an infatuation with this pet of yours, you must prove it to me by risking her loss."
"Why should I have to prove anything at all to you, LaCroix?"
"Because you know I'll never leave you in peace until you do." He was absolutely secure in his knowledge that, free from the enticements of his prized pet mortal, Nicolas would be more easily prised from this newest role-play. This was the first time in 800 years that Nicolas seemed to believe fully in the reality of the part he played.
"How do I know you'll hold up your end of the bargain?"
"Because, dear Nicholas, I don't have to lie, do I?"
And so Nick had flown to Nero the botanist and taken the rose, returned to the loft and left it with the note. He made the necessary calls to his attorney, and to the precinct. Lies came easily to him, they always had when he had an agenda in mind. That they'd be revealed as in mere hours didn't bother him. How Maura would be affected bothered him a great deal. She'd been betrayed so many times, and he had sworn she had seen the last of them, but this one last transgression would free him forever and he would make it up to her, many times over. If she would permit it.
"She is gone, Nicolas." Janette had greeted him with little fanfare, but then this separation was a minor one relative to those in the past. The chill in her voice didn't register at first.
"Gone where?"
"'Gone where'?" she mimicked. "Gone away, Nicolas, she tired of waiting and wondering what had become of you once your solicitor had made it plain it could be sooner, or later, or jamais. Did you really expect her to live in your apartment, spend your money, go on as if nothing were different, so you and LaCroix could pursue yet another chapter in your family drama?" She didn't bother to hide her displeasure. "You wanted to bond with a mortal, Nicolas, and from the start she has had to play by our rules. Perhaps she is tired of the game."
"It's no game to me, Janette. I did all this so we LaCroix would leave us alone once and for all." Nick's voice was tight and low. "You know where she is."
"She does not want you to find her." A small lie, and no sense letting him believe otherwise yet.
His anger rising, Nick warned, "We are old friends, you and I, but don't try me."
She was unimpressed. "And you do not 'try' me, Nicolas. I know too well how it feels to be forced into the shape of someone else's life, to trade some of yourself for what you crave so badly. Perhaps I have enough memory of my life as a mortal woman to think as a woman first. Yes I know where Maura has gone. If you want to find her, you must do it yourself. If you are as bound to her as you claim, it should come naturally."
He could force the information from her, take it in a harsh bite and swallow, but both knew that would rupture their connection forever.
"If you talk to her, Janette," there was an edge of desperate need in his voice, and even Janette in her disapproval could not ignore it. "Tell her I'm back. Tell her I'll find her."
"Tell her you're 'sorry'?" In spite of her shreds of sympathy, Janette had as little patience as Maura did with Nick's chronic regrets. Better to think in advance, and avoid them altogether.
"That would just make it worse," he admitted.
"Then perhaps I should tell her you love her," and the sentiment dripped ice water. He answered with fire, gripping her wrist and replying in the deceptively gentle dangerous tone that caught everyone's attention whenever he used it. "She knows that." He threw her hand away. "Never mind. You're right, I'll deal with this on my own."
He returned to the loft, needing some time alone before dealing with the mess of questions he'd left behind at work. Maura had left things neat and tidy, painfully so. No flung-open closets or sprung hangers, no farewell poison slashed on the mirror in lipstick. The bottles were neatly lined in the fridge, his delivery having been made at the beginning of the week as scheduled. The box of vials of the "thermostat potion" were still stacked in orderly fashion in an adjacent cupboard. She'd even left the rose where he'd laid it on the table by the door, but the note was gone. Maybe she threw it away. Outside the sun was rising; he slid the blinds shut and trudged upstairs to the bedroom and into his dressing room to change for bed. There, on the hook inside the door, hung the kimono he'd had made in Sapporo for Maura, the one he'd given her for Christmas, the night they'd first summoned the courage to make love. The night she'd summoned the courage for both of them, he corrected himself. By her "rules", at last. Janette was right, of course, every concession had been made from Maura's side, every lapse was his to be forgiven by her. There had only been a few, but all deep and painful. He ran his hand along the velvet and fur of the sleeve, fingers straying inside to the ripple cut silk velvet, trying to remember how it felt warmed by her. He raised the sleeve and pressed it to his face, closing his eyes. Her fragrance remained, honeysuckle and amber. Where would she go, he wondered, to escape the knowledge of this final abandonment? After finally making a home and the life she loved, where would she go not simply to forget it, but to replace it? With Janette and the others (he hadn't missed the cold looks from Miklos and Vachon at the club) on her side she no longer needed the protection of anonymous strangers, no longer needed to trade herself for safety. Now when she left it wasn't in search of refuge, but to start a new life for herself, alone. Where things felt easy and familiar. His eyes shut tighter and he concentrated the power he hadn't visited until his travels with LaCroix these past weeks.
In a strange sense he felt grateful to LaCroix, once mentor and later nemesis, for having forced him to confront what had clearly been his own half-commitment to his life and love. What had been assumptions – he assumed his inner doubts were calming down, he assumed Maura's was the only human blood he cared to taste, he assumed his existence with her paled all those previous by comparison – had crystallized to utter certainty in this past month and a half. In no time at all he had become terribly homesick, not just for his job and friends but for Maura and their life together. No cheerfully willing vampire whores or eternal nights at the opera or flights over moonlit landscapes in search of virgins (for LaCroix, who was still sentimental in his tastes) or a butcher (for Nick, who steadfastly refused all but cow's blood) could distract him from what became a physical longing for home in every meaning of the word. And nothing at all could distract him from the strain he felt in his connection with Maura, her pain and confusion came to him with increasing power through his one-way blood connection, as if someone were turning up the volume on a distant radio. He supposed now he'd known when she'd left, there was a drop in feeling, a sudden sense of loss. He tried to ignore it, and was ashamed to say it got easier as the days progressed, but now he was back and needed to put it all together, knowing he'd never put it all behind him.
He decided not to call Natalie but to go straight to the lab before work. He wasn't sure what to expect other than anger and hurt feelings. Even so, he didn't expect the deep freeze that confronted him.
"Well, well, the prodigal vampire returns. I hope you're not expecting confetti." She hadn't even risen from her stool at the microscope bench. "Have a nice vacation with your buddy? Bet you found home nice and peaceful, huh?"
Nick was taken aback. He knew it was unreasonable to expect her to leap up and kiss him, but her attitude bordered on open hostility.
"It was complicated. LaCroix,"
"Yeah, Nick I heard all about LaCroix. Maura told me. She told me how he as good as announced to her his plan to call you away, just a minute before he did it. She told me she begged you just once to stop trying to be Mr. Nice Guy and let the past be past. No matter how much you claim to love mortality, you'll always turn away in a mortal heartbeat at your master's call."
"He's not my master."
Natalie laughed out loud. "Not much. You traipsed off into the night and left behind everyone you claim to care about, every part of the life you swear you want to keep. You walked out on possibly the best thing you ever accidentally stumbled into. You left us all as if we were an afterthought, and for what? Let me guess, to figure out where you really belong, am I right?"
By now he was scowling. "Not entirely. LaCroix told me he would stop interfering if I could prove to him that my commitment to this incarnation was more than an attachment to a 'prized' mortal. To do that, I had to walk away without explanation, risk losing her, losing all of it."
Now Natalie jumped from her stool, leaped from it, to shout in Nick's face. "How fucking dare you! We're human beings, Nicholas, the people who trust you, who have forgiven your every stubbornly stupid error in judgment regarding us, and still you use us as leverage to prove a point to that asshole LaCroix!"
He'd never heard her swear like that, like a sailor, like... Maura when she was enraged. "Natalie, I don't expect you to understand." It was all he could tell her, there honestly was no way she could understand the prospect of ending 800 years of perpetual harassment and torment.
"You'd better not expect anyone else to, either. Y'know, I used to envy Maura's relationship with you. I thought, if only it were me, all of your doubts would be erased and it would be happy ever after." Another explosive laugh as Nick shifted uncomfortably at her candor. "Well experience is a harsh teacher. I don't have Maura's patience or forgiving heart, and if it had been me you'd have been found smouldering in the sunshine by now with a stake through your chest." She paused for a moment, trying to think of something else evil to say. "God Nick, you are such an ASSHOLE sometimes!"
He blinked at her, stunned. "I don't suppose you know,"
"As a matter of fact, I do. But the only way you'll get it from me is through the jugular."
"Well I guess I'll just go to work then." He felt pretty lame, but what else was there to do? He'd incinerated more bridges than he'd imagined, though he was realizing how stupid he'd been not to have foreseen it.
"Don't let the lab door hit you in the ass. And don't expect to have it easier from Schanke. He's not thrilled to have been left holding the bag at the precinct, and he and Myra put in some serious time with Maura after she got those letters from your lawyer. Oh, that reminds me," she got the envelope from her desk drawer where she'd stashed it since Maura had given it to her. "She doesn't want your self-redemptive charity."
He peered in the envelope, shaking his head. How could he have misread everything so completely? "I was only trying to,"
"'Do the right thing'? Well let me tell you your little gesture of half-hearted responsibility made things a lot harder for her. She said seeing her name on all your stuff like that made it feel like you were married now, but only because you'd gone. We both agreed it is pretty sick."
His face a too-familiar mask of guilt, Nick tucked the envelope in his jacket and turned to leave. Natalie tried to let him go in silence, but couldn't.
"Nick." All the vitriol was drained from her voice as she spoke his name, and he turned as if expecting a blow. "You're my best friend. You will always be my best friend, saint or screwup, and I will always, always love you. But I gotta tell you, it's gonna take a while for me to like you again."
"Understood. I'll be in touch."
Natalie had been right about Schanke.
"You should know you finally score lower than me with the women in this precinct," he informed Nick once they got back to work.
"A moment to cherish." Nick hadn't had much to say, fielding the looks and forced smiles stoically.
The captain's greeting was closer to neutral, but as his commander she was unimpressed with his behavior from a professional standpoint. "Glad you made it back, detective. You were dangerously close to AWOL. Schanke will catch you up."
And oh, how he had. Before hearing about the cases in process, Nick got chapter and verse of the riot act, every conversation and despairing unanswerable question Maura had uttered since he'd left. After five or ten minutes, Schanke ran out of steam.
"If you'd tell me what you're waiting to hear, maybe I could come up with something," Nick told him.
"Hell, I dunno, man!" Schanke gestured in frustration. "We've been partners for years, I may not know what goes on in your head but I know how you act, and this just wasn't the Nick Knight I know. He doesn't slap down the people that care about him without a backward glance. But I guess I can't say that anymore, can I?"
"If I could explain, I would. I can't."
"Not even to her?"
Nick sighed. "Think I could get her to listen?"
"I can't believe I'm saying it, but you probably could. If you can find her. And no I don't know where she's gone, she was afraid I'd tell you so she kept me in the dark." The bereft look on his partner's face got to Schanke. He couldn't even guess why Nick would hurt Maura so badly; it was probably the stupidest thing Schanke had ever known him to do. But for all of that , it was clear Nick was desperate to find her. What he'd say and how he'd put things back together who knew, the only question he didn't have was whether or not Knight was still crazy in love with her. Though how someone crazy in love could cause so much damage... well they'd both seen plenty of things on the job to make them question human behavior. And he seemed even more crazy for her than before, if such a thing was possible.
"Look partner, I'm not saying I understand what you did. I'm not saying I don't want to join the line of people dying to kick your ass. And I'm not saying you don't deserve whatever workover Maura puts you through when you do find her. But in spite of it all I don't think the door is closed. Not locked, anyway."
Cautious optimism. "What does that mean?"
"It means when she came to say goodbye she told me if you want to find her again you're gonna have to 'work for it'. That means she didn't tell anyone where she was gonna be."
"Oh, she told someone. She told Natalie. And Janette knows, she helped her on her way. But they're not telling."
"Women stick together," and now Schanke clapped a sympathetic hand on Nick's shoulder, much to the latter's relief. Schanke noticed the look. "Hey there's nothing I can say to you that somebody else hasn't said, and that you won't hear in spades later. I like Maura, a lot. So does Myra, who by the way wants to geld you right now. But I've seen the change in you since you two got together, even if you haven't spilled your guts about it. It's written all over you. And speaking as someone trapped with you every day, I do not wanna see the black clouds return. So anything I can do to help..."
"Thanks, Schank. It's more than I deserve."
"You got that right. But partners are partners, right?"
He knew where she'd gone, and it didn't take vampire powers or even detective work to figure it out. Getting more time off was a little more difficult, until Schanke reminded him of the detective exchange program.
"Detective Knight, you've used up every sick day, vacation day, and comp day imaginable. What could possibly induce me to give you more time away from the precinct? Not that I'm entirely unsympathetic, but after all you left first. I can't blame your lady friend for not hanging around."
"Captain, there's an exchange program coming up, you posted it last month. Looking for detectives to swap with American police precincts, to share ideas and cross-train for international co-operation. Boston is one of the cities, and I happen to know that you've had no accepted takers." Happened to know, because he sweet-talked Gloria in personnel (the one coworker young and naïve enough not hate his guts right now) into giving him information on all of the applicants. Who happened to have been turned down for lack of experience or unproven performance.
"Boston isn't the only city on the list, detective."
"Captain, please." Nick gave up the pretense of detachment. "Look I know it's not the concern of Metro, but I'm pretty certain Maura's in Boston. I know I can't get more time off, but I know I qualify for the exchange. I just didn't apply before because,"
"Because there was no compelling reason to go to Boston." He didn't dare respond. "All right, detective. It's not as if you are unqualified, or have nothing to contribute. But I'm warning you, work has to come first. As for the rest... I wish you luck. But that's all I can offer. See human resources for the guidelines and forms."