Bloodfever

Chapter One


You're a difficult woman to find, Ms. Lane," said Inspector O'Duffy as I opened the diamond-paned front door of Barrons Books and Baubles.

The stately old-world bookstore was my home away from home, whether I liked it or not, and despite the sumptuous furnishings, priceless rugs, and endless selection of top-rate reading material, I didn't. The comfiest cage is still a cage.

He glanced at me sharply when I stepped around the door, into full view, noting my splinted arm and fingers, the stitches in my lip, and the fading purple and yellow bruises that began around my right eye and extended to the base of my jaw. Though he raised a brow, he made no comment.

The weather outside was awful, and so long as the door was open, I was too close to it. It had been raining for days, a relentless, depressing torrent that needled me with sharp wind-driven droplets even where I stood, tucked beneath the shelter of the column-flanked archway of the bookstore's grand entry. At eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, it was so overcast and dark that the streetlamps were still on. Despite their sullen yellow glares, I could barely see the outlines of the shops across the street through the thick, soupy fog.

I backed up to let the inspector enter. Gusts of chilly air stepped in on his heels.

I closed the door and returned to the conversation area near the fire where I'd been wrapped in an afghan on the sofa, reading. My borrowed bedroom is on the top floor, but when the bookstore is closed on weekends I make the first floor, with its cozy reading nooks and enameled fireplaces, my personal parlor. My taste in reading material has become a bit eccentric of late. Acutely aware of O'Duffy on my heels, I surreptitiously toed a few of the more bizarre titles I'd been perusing beneath a handsome curio cabinet. The Wee People: Fairy Tale or Fact? was chased by Vampires for Dummies and Divine Power: A History of Holy Relics.

"Dreadful weather," he observed, stepping to the hearth and warming his hands before the softly hissing gas flames.

I agreed with perhaps more enthusiasm than the fact warranted, but the endless deluge outside was getting to me. A few more days of this and I was going to start building an ark. I'd heard it rained a lot in Ireland, but "constantly" was a smidge more than a lot, in my book. Transplanted against my will, a homesick, reluctant tourist, I'd made the mistake of checking the weather back home in Ashford this morning. It was a sultry, blue-skied ninety-six degrees in Georgia--just another perfect, blossom-drenched, sunny day in the Deep South. In a few hours my girlfriends would be heading up to one of our favorite lakes where they would soak up the sun, scope out datable guys, and flip through the latest fashion magazines.

Here in Dublin it was a whopping fifty degrees and so darned wet it felt like half that.

No sun. No datable guys. And my only fashion concern was making sure my clothes were baggy enough to accommodate weapons concealed beneath them. Even in the relative security of the bookstore, I was carrying two flashlights, a pair of scissors, and a lethal, foot-long spearhead, tip neatly cased in a ball of foil. I'd scattered dozens more flashlights and assorted items that might second as arsenal throughout the four-story bookstore. I'd also secreted a few crosses and bottles of holy water in various nooks. Barrons would laugh at me if he knew.

You might wonder if I'm expecting an army from Hell.

I am.

"How did you find me?" I asked the inspector. When I'd last spoken to the Garda a week ago, he'd pressed for a way to reach me. I'd given him my old address at the Clarin House where I boarded for a short time when I first arrived. I don't know why. I guess I just don't trust anyone. Not even the police. Over here the good guys and the bad guys all look the same. Just ask my dead sister Alina, victim of one of the most beautiful men I've ever seen--the Lord Master--who also happens to be one of the most evil.

"I'm a detective, Ms. Lane," O'Duffy told me with a dry smile, and I realized he had no intention of telling me. The smile vanished and his eyes narrowed with a subtle warning: Don't lie to me, I'll know.

I wasn't worried. Barrons said the same thing to me once, and he has seriously preternatural senses. If Barrons didn't see through me, O'Duffy wasn't going to. I waited, wondering what had brought him here. He'd made it clear he considered my sister's case unsolvable and closed. Permanently.
He moved away from the fire and dropped the satchel slung over his shoulder onto the table between us.