“Really?” I said, deadpan, glaring at him.
“Just making a statement,” he said. Also, he wore sunglasses to protect against vampires’ hypnotic stare.
“All right, wait here,” I said. He leaned up against the back of the building while I went down a set of concrete stairs to the basement door and knocked.
Rick himself opened the door. Any other Master would have had minions and gatekeepers, but not Rick.
“Hey,” I said, waving a little. “Thanks for doing this.”
He smiled. “And how are you this evening?”
“Good, good. Dying of curiosity.”
“Any idea what he’s up to?”
“Not at all.”
“Then let’s get this over with.” He gestured me up the stairs first.
Where Cormac was rough, Rick was elegant, his dark hair short, swept back, his gaze amused. I hadn’t gotten the whole story, but he was probably around five hundred years old. He claimed he’d been part of Coronado’s expedition into the southwest. Couldn’t guess that about him now. His accent was flat American, and while his looks and manner were refined, they didn’t seem particular to any time or place. He must have seen so much, had so many adventures. I wanted to hear all the stories, but he rarely talked about his own history.
When we reached the alley, Cormac straightened, his hand moving to his quiver of stakes. Rick lifted a brow at Cormac’s armory. I made sure to stand between the two of them. The posturing was stupid; they both knew better than this.
Rick said, “Well, Mr. Bennett?”
Cormac looked down the alley, along the roofline. Everywhere but at the vampire. His mustache shifted when he pursed his lips. I’d have thought this was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
“I’m supposed to deliver a message,” he said finally.
“All right,” Rick answered. “What is it?”
“The message isn’t for you.”
Rick opened his hands. “Then why am I here?”
“Because they told me . . . I was told that you’d know where I’m supposed to go.”
“You’re delivering a message but you don’t know where? What are you talking about?”
I watched the back-and-forth, wide-eyed and intrigued. “Cormac. Maybe you’d better start at the beginning.”
He scowled, paced a couple of steps, then seemed to come to a decision. “Yeah. Okay,” he said, glancing sidelong at an impatient Rick. Then Cormac told a story.
He’d been hired for a job, he said. An easy job, and he should have known better. If you had to call a job easy it meant there was a catch. For the amount of cash he was offered, he figured he could deal with a catch.
The morning after accepting the job, he found a box outside his apartment door. Inside the box was a padded envelope the size of a magazine, labeled with an address but no name. The address was in Ft. Morgan, a small town about an hour northeast of Denver.
He found the spot on a lane off a dirt county road, and Cormac figured even getting this far was enough to earn his pay. He was careful, he kept a watch out. The job might be easy—feeding sharks was easy—but he didn’t trust it’d be safe. All he found at the end of the lane were a couple of sprawling cottonwood trees and an old plank board farmhouse that had fallen in on itself decades before. No one was here to deliver the message to. He couldn’t find a mailbox to put it in.
Maybe he shouldn’t have assumed the job would be easy.
Cormac studied his maps to see if maybe he’d come to the wrong place. He’d have sent a message to his client to ask for more details, but he couldn’t get a phone connection. The address on the envelope was specific. This was the right spot. He hunted around for some clue, maybe a forwarding address. Except clearly no one had lived here for years.
Finally, he found a note on the front door. Had to dig for it around a collapsed wall and splintered shingles. It was as if someone had tacked the note there before the house collapsed, which seemed weird and unlikely. Maybe the note had been put here to protect it from the weather.
On the outside of the folded page, the same address had been written in the same handwriting as on the envelope. He unpinned the note, unfolded it, read.
“Talk to the vampire.
I know this isn’t expected, but it’s necessary.”
What the hell was this about?
We are in the middle of something strange here, Cormac, Amelia observed. He’d met Amelia in prison, where she had been wrongfully hanged for murder more than a hundred years ago. She’d also been something of a wizard and had managed to preserve her consciousness inside the prison walls. They’d made a bargain: he’d carry her back into the world, and he would get her powers. In the meantime, they had become something like friends.
Was it weird that he immediately thought of talking to Rick, the Master of Denver? He was used to hunting and staking vampires, not talking to them. He could call Kitty, she was friends with the guy, and maybe he’d know what this was about.
So much trouble over such an innocuous envelope. He thought about ripping it open, looking inside it for some sort of clue about where it was supposed to go.
That would be rather unethical, Amelia thought at him.
“If they really wanted this delivered, they should have made it easier,” he grumbled.
If it had been easy they would have done it themselves. I’m telling you, this is odd. I want to know more.
He’d gotten the job via email. He didn’t know anything about who had hired him. It had seemed so simple.
“I guess we have to go talk to the vampire, then,” he said, searching the ruined homestead as if someone might pop out of the broken timbers and explain everything.
Really, it won’t be so bad, will it? Master Rick is a gentleman.
He called Kitty.
“I know it sounds crazy, but here I am. I don’t know if you’re the right vampire, but I had to start somewhere,” Cormac said and handed the note from the farmhouse to Rick, shrugging like he was surrendering all responsibility for their current situation. Cormac was a patient guy, but I’d never known him to like puzzles.
Rick read the page. His gaze narrowed. Then he read it again, and glanced at Cormac, his brow furrowed. Finally he handed the note back. “Wait here a minute.”
He vanished. In actuality, he moved so quickly he seemed to fly down the steps in a blur, his vampiric speed and power disguising him. Returning after just a couple of minutes, Rick walked up the steps at normal speed, holding a small item in his hand. A key.
“I think you need this,” he said. The key wasn’t old, but it wasn’t new. The size of his thumb, steel maybe. Small, simple, for luggage or a strong box. He held it out. Seemingly in a daze, Cormac took it from him, studied it. Rick explained, “Fifty years ago, I was asked to keep this safe. I was told that I would know who to give it to when the time was right, and that I would be told, ‘I know this isn’t expected, but it’s necessary.’”
Cormac lifted his sunglasses to study the key more closely, vampire or no. “Fifty years ago?” Rick nodded solemnly.
“Who?” I burst in. “Who does that? Who keeps something safe for a stranger for fifty years?”
“Vampires,” Cormac and Rick said at the same time. Cormac scowled, but Rick quirked a smile.