Blood Debt - By Tanya Huff Page 0,71

and gathered up his sleeping bag, wrapping herself in his scent.

Would I be as concerned, she wondered, without the guilt? Never mind. Stupid question.

Returning to the living room, she sank back into the chair by the window and picked up her notebook. It had always helped to write things down-that hadn't changed, although she missed the balance of a coffee cup in her left hand. Scanning her scribbled description of the second ghost, she turned to a fresh page and glanced around for her pencil. Both pieces were over by the window.

"Oh, damn."

She could see the end of a pencil sticking out of the Yellow Pages on the phone table. About to pull it free, she paused and opened the book instead. It wasn't her bookmark, so it had to be Mike's.

Her finger traced up and down the columns of pri?vate clinics. Vancouver either had one of the healthi?est populations in the country or a thriving colony of hypochondriacs. Apparently Celluci'd done as she'd suggested and gone looking for the facility where the kidney had been removed. The East Hastings Clinic at East Hastings and Main had been circled and "start here" had been scribbled beside it in the margin.

Figuring he hauled ass out of bed by ten or eleven at the absolute latest, if he went there first thing, there's no way he's still there. She glanced down at her watch.

It was past nine P.M. Michael Celluci has been a cop for fourteen years, he can take care of himself. He probably met someone at one of these places and joined them for dinner.

"Oh, shit." Tossing the pieces of the pencil aside, she called herself several kinds of an idiot. He has to eat, Vicki. Just because you and Henry... well, it doesn't mean he has.

But he hadn't been there when she woke and he hadn't called in and he knew she'd want to know what, if anything, he'd found.

The East Hastings Clinic at East Hastings and Main.

She'd told Henry she'd wait until Mike called. Or something.

It looked like something had come up.

If nothing else, she had a place to start.

"Where to now?" Henry slowed the BMW to give a cyclist room to maneuver around a line of parked cars. They'd started their search for the ghost's com?panion at the video store and had searched a widening circle without any luck. None of the locals had seen anyone matching his description.

"The Eastside Youth Center. If he's not there, someone'll probably know him."

"That's east of Gastown, isn't it?"

Tony's gaze remained aimed out the window of the car. "Yeah. So?"

"It's just that it's a bit of a distance away. If you saw him here, in this neighborhood ..."

"The Center's a safe place, Henry. A guy'll go far?ther than that to find one."

"Tony."

Although he wasn't using his Prince of Darkness voice, something in the way Henry said his name, drew Tony's head around.

"You're still safe with me."

"I know." For a change, looking away would've been the easier course-the hazel eyes held no touch of darkness, nothing that compelled him to continue. Tony swallowed and found the strength to say, "Maybe too safe." For a heartbeat, he thought he was being mocked, then he realized Henry's answering smile held as much sadness as humor.

"I assume you're speaking of life in general and not our immediate circumstances?"

"What circumstances? You mean you driving with?out watching the road!" His voice rose on the last word as he grabbed the dashboard and watched the world narrow to a corridor of moving metal. "Christ, Henry, that was a truck! That was two trucks!"

Henry deftly inserted the car back into the curb lane. "I know."

"Look, man, if you didn't want to talk about it, you shouldn't have brought it up."

Had he done it on purpose? Henry didn't think so; he'd seen a break in traffic and used it. Hadn't he? Whether he'd intended the result or not, the moment for shared confidences had passed.

Like any other city of its size, Vancouver had its share of rundown neighborhoods. The area east of Gastown, an area widely quoted in reports on crime and poverty, was one of the darkest. Theoretically, social assistance paid most of the bills, but the reality was considerably less benign.

The dividing line between the haves and have-nots was astonishingly abrupt. Leaving the lights and tour?ist attractions of Gastown on one side of the intersec?tion, Henry began to drive past boarded-up and abandoned stone buildings-once the main Vancouver branches of the seven chartered banks-standing shoulder to shoulder