"The next day I went to see Professor Romney" Beverly continued "I wanted to catch him before Sheriff Oates got him. It was easy. I was already inside, at Dinah's bedside (she did not need that much watching – she was to be discharged the next day) but as soon as there was first light I ran down to his room and introduced myself"
-0-
"You certainly filled in the details that Sheriff Oates did not include – maybe because he did not REALLY believe – he probably thinks that Mrs. Benchley was crazy and that her real name was not Annipe Ranefer. But you believed. I guess that your experiences here made you more willing to believe"
"I have seen things..."
"Like Amos Benchley?"
"He's given me a lot of information for my research"
"In exchange for your blood?"
-0-
"That floored me. I was not sure what to tell him about Amos, and he already knew it."
-0-
"He drank the blood I spilled. I do not begrudge it. It was going to waste. And he did save me… He's not the first vampire I ran across. I think that Amos is one of the smart ones. But then the foolish ones do not last long. The smart ones take care of them, permanently a lot of times; Some of them work for us. And they are not the most unusual of our agents."
"Flynn…"
"Yes, you want to know about him. Well, he is behaving now. He might be allowed to come back here, if I can trust his judgement. But I worry about you. You got involved with Amos Benchley before finding out if he was one of the smart ones. He might have been a foolish one and drained you… but then I would have heard of it. You took a big chance. You should not be so reckless."
"I thought about it, when Dinah was attacked. But it was not him and he took care of the problem."
"And is this why you called me?"
"The sheriff thinks that it is a repeat of what happened with Ann Benchley – (or Annipe Ranefer)."
"Yes, you wrote to me about it."
"It looks like what happened there."
"But you have your own theory."
"I told you.:
"Yes, the problem that was taken care of."
Sheriff Oates came in. "I do not really believe in this spooky stuff… but..."
"But you cannot discount it either."
"And now it is coming back."
"I understand that there was some sort of altar where you rescued the little girl?"
"Yes."
"And when Mrs. Benchley burned herself, you thought it was ended. And I be no one thought about sealing it."
"Were we supposed to seal it?" Oates' expression brightened. He had an explanation. And a way to fix things.
"Well how could you have known? But when I get out of here, I will go seal it. After I get all the ritual elements. In the meantime," he took out a small amulet. "put this on the altar. It will hold for a few days until I can do a proper job."
-0-
Sheriff Oates accepted it, and he would stop wondering why Amos tended to find people in distress at night so often.
-0-
"And then Heather almost got me in trouble again." Amos said, sighing. Between the panic and her experiences with Midler she was reacting, not acting…"
-0-
-Albert Thatcher is blackmailing us… Frank Carruthers has Midler's notebooks and he has information about you."
"And what are his terms?"
"Help in making the law easy on Frank."
"He imagines that I am more powerful than I am."
"You cannot deal with blackmailers. They have to be… removed."
"Heather, think a bit. Irina and Raft are gone. There will be no more incidents, so it will die down. The last thing we need is one more corpse, one more mystery, another reason for the Sheriff to poke in corners and ask questions… and he asked me a few pointed ones already. I can deal with Thatcher."
They were interrupted by Beverly knocking. She came in.
"Professor Romney knows what you are. He does not mind. And he gave some very convincing BS to the Sheriff about sealing the site where Ann Benchley met her doom. So, you are in the clear."
"See?" he turned to Heather. "It is being filed away and forgotten."
"Thatcher is still a problem."
"There are ways of getting that notebook that do not involve mayhem. I will talk to Dinah about it. I think that she has the experience for it."