I don’t know him that well, but I know he has a huge clan. From what I can tell, he and Brigid have been quietly investigating Elixir ever since it showed up in Dublin, where they live. They have a lot of contacts and if Father Andrade knows something, he’d be more likely to confide in someone connected to the Church.”
She was silent again, and Baojia could almost hear her brain spinning as she stared out the window. Finally, she said, “I wonder how long Rosa was kept.”
“I was wondering the same thing. Does it take time to work into a human’s system? How much do they give them? Does Elixir make the blood more appealing the longer they’ve been on it?”
Her eyes were lit with wild curiosity. “And why? What’s the point of all this? Pure amusement? Or are they inviting people who might not know what the drug does? Political enemies? People they want to weaken? How would they convince them to come? How much do Ivan’s people even know about it? You said yourself you’d only heard rumors.”
It was a question that had been swirling around ever since they’d made the connection between the missing girls and the Elixir. “It’s entirely possible that they know very little about the lasting effects of the drug. I had heard rumors, but only about the benefits. No one mentioned the downsides.”
“Big surprise there.”
“And Paula doesn’t seem to know anything about it. Rory?” he muttered. “I don’t know what to think about Rory. When did the first bodies show up in the desert around here?”
“According to what I could find, the first ones were found on the south side of the border about three months ago. No one made any connection between them at first. It seemed random. Then a month later, they started showing up on the American side. It was a cop down in El Centro who tipped me off. I did some investigating on my own before I made the connection with Juarez.”
“I don’t know if there is any real connection with Juarez, Natalie. The more we find out, the more I think that Ivan or whoever is orchestrating this is using that situation as a convenient scapegoat to cover his actions. He makes it look like Juarez and no one will see what’s really going on. That’s why they’re dumping the bodies how they are.”
“Why not make them disappear? There’s no need to dump the bodies. Where they’re hunting, they could easily bury them and they’d never be found.”
“But they’d still be missing. If too many girls just disappeared, someone might listen to their families. If they’re murdered…”
She nodded. “They could be the victim of random violence because they worked in the city. Or they could be the victim of whoever is killing in Juarez and moving west.”
“Or victims of smugglers who took advantage of them,” he added. “Isn’t that what the police think now? If I were Ivan and wanted to cover my tracks, I’d copycat a human killer. Everyone would be looking the other direction, including his bosses in Mexico City.”
“But why?” she asked again. “Is this some horrible game? Or is there a plan behind it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t recognize the vampire I killed. I’d never seen him before. He could have been a new vampire of Ivan’s, but I think Tulio is right. These are strangers he’s brought in. The one I killed was stronger because of the Elixir, but normally, I don’t think he would have been a challenge. He didn’t feel old.”
He saw a slight shudder pass over her frame. He wondered if she was bothered by him killing the air vampire or whether her more primitive survival instincts were finally kicking in. They would. The longer she remained in his world, the more they would have to. He didn’t live in the kind of polite society where trials and jails happened. And neither did Natalie. She just didn’t realize it yet. He was trying to break her in to the idea slowly, but he honestly couldn’t see her returning to her old life. She knew too much. She had already been flirting at the edges of vampire attention, being close friends with Beatrice and Dez. She was fully on the radar now.
You need me. He found himself reaching across the car to take her hand. More than you know.
She squeezed it as she continued talking. “If we think the first hunts happened around three months ago, it could be