“I always forget how warm it is here,” he said. “There’s still snow in New York. Snow.” He curled his lip. “I’ve got to convince Chloe to move. Houston. Los Angeles. Capri. I have a new bar in Spain she’d like.”
“She loves New York.” Ben fought to get his emotions under control.
“I know.” He finished his drink. “How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Yes, clearly.” Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Funny, you have that enraged look you usually only get when you’ve been around your partner.”
“Tenzin isn’t my partner anymore.”
“And yet you knew exactly who I was talking about,” Gavin said. “She’s still your partner, and you’re fooling yourself if you think you can just avoid her.”
“Did she fly to LA with you?”
“With me?” Gavin frowned. “Of course not. Do you know how fast she flies? It’s ridiculous and irritating.” He muttered, “You’ll probably be as fast as her eventually, you irritating knob.”
“Missed you too.” Ben stalked past the Scottish vampire.
“Giovanni wants us in the library,” Gavin yelled. “You need some background on Radu.”
“I already got the briefing on the icon.”
“The icon?” Gavin smiled. “You still amuse me, sweet lamb. You think this is only about an icon? Everyone underestimates Radu.” Gavin joined him. “It’s not a mistake I’ve made.”
“So?” Ben shook off the irritation Tenzin had provoked and focused on work. “He’s offering way more than market value to find it. We knew it was sentimental.”
“Sentimental is one way of putting it.”
They walked in the house and past the empty kitchen.
Ben glanced at the clock. “It’s late.”
“Yes, that darling little mite was quite perturbed you weren’t here to wish her good night.” Gavin looked amused. “She’s quite funny for a small human.”
“I know.”
“Does she ask everyone to see their fangs? I find her ease with vampires disconcerting.”
Ben pushed through the swinging kitchen door. “Sadia has no fear.”
“That explains her fascination with Tenzin.”
Ben wiped a hand over his face and paused at the foot of the stairs. “Can I just go even one night without her being thrown in my face? I’m about ready to go back to Kashgar.”
“Is that where you were?” Gavin nodded. “Good choice. What made you come out of hiding?”
“A woman.”
Gavin lifted an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Not like that.” He walked to the second floor. “She was watching me. She knew my name. Left me a note.”
“Ah. Which said?”
“‘Answer your fucking mail.’ That’s it. No name. No address. Just answer your fucking mail.”
Gavin laughed as they walked into the library. “What did she look like? Little pixie of a thing with big eyes and too much hair?”
Ben froze. “How did you know that?”
Gavin took a seat near Chloe, who was sitting at the library table with Beatrice. Chloe had her laptop open, and Beatrice was pointing to something on a tablet.
“I would bet you a case of sixty-year-old Macallan that the woman watching you in Kashgar was Kezia. She’s Radu’s sister.”
“Biological or immortal?” Giovanni spoke from the other end of the library.
“Maybe both,” Gavin said. “The Poshani tend to keep the same bloodlines in the terrin.”
Ben sat down near the fire. “And now you’re speaking a completely different language.”
“Yes he is.” Giovanni walked toward them, holding a book he handed to Ben.
Ben looked at it. It was written in a Cyrillic alphabet. He handed it back to Giovanni. “I don’t read Russian.”
“It’s not Russian; they just borrowed the alphabet. It became more accessible than the original Brahmi script.” Giovanni sat across from him.
“Brahmi?” Ben asked. “As in ancient Indian?” He pointed to the Russian book. “And the connection between Cyrillic and Brahmi would be…?”
“Poshani.”
“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”
“No,” Beatrice chimed in. “Not unless you’d spent a lot of time studying immortal history in Eastern Europe.”
“Fancy that,” Ben said. “I haven’t.”
Giovanni said, “A now-obvious hole in your education that I’ll have to correct with Sadia.”
That poor girl. Ben winced on his baby sister’s behalf.
Giovanni continued, “Gavin confirmed something for me that I suspected about Radu but wasn’t sure.”
“Which is?”
“Radu isn’t your average vampire,” Beatrice said. “He belongs to a particular community of Romani people who came from Northern India with the main branches of—”
“Romani?” Ben asked. “You mean gyp—”
“No.” Beatrice threw a balled-up wad of paper at Ben. “Most Romani consider that word a slur; do not use it.”
“It’s also incorrect,” Giovanni said. “Europeans didn’t understand the origins of the Roma people and thought they were from Egypt, which is a mistake of course. They are Northern Indian both linguistically and ethnically.”
“So Radu is a… Romani vampire?”
“Kind of.” Beatrice flipped her tablet around to show Ben a sort of family tree. “He’s Poshani, a completely separate branch. The Poshani origins are more myth than history as they don’t follow a written tradition.” She scrolled through slides that showed paintings of men playing lutes and pipes. “Some branches broke off over time—those were the human Romani people—but one group, the Poshani, were led by a man who was turned into a wind vampire.”
Giovanni said, “The Poshani initially feared their leader, but he convinced them that this new form was a gift of Shiva and Kali, whom the Poshani revere.”
“Shiva.” Ben tapped his pencil. “The Destroyer. That fits with being a vampire, I guess.”
“Shiva is often conflated with Rudra, a Vedic god associated with storms. More than one vampire believes Rudra was actually the first wind vampire, so that would be significant to the Poshani.”
“Radu’s a wind vampire?” Ben asked.
Gavin nodded. “He’s cagey about it, but yes. He’ll sometimes tell people he’s earth.”
“Okay, the Poshani are wind vampires.” Ben wrote that down. “But why does Radu want the icon if the Poshani worship Shiva?”
“They have a blended religion,” Beatrice said. “The Shiva and Kali connection is very old, but it threads through. The icon is a depiction of Saint Sara-la-Kali.”
Giovanni said, “Whatever the individual sect or community, Poshani of all religions value purity of the elements and balance in all forms of life.”
“Which fits with vampires,” Ben said. “Okay, I’m seeing it.”
“A note.” Gavin held up a hand. “The Poshani as a community are both vampire and human. But all are ruled by wind vampires. Three, to be exact.”