Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,47

I'm up. I'm drinking coffee." She took a noisy swallow. "I'm talking to you. What more do you want?"

"I want you to get a normal job."

As Vicki was well aware how proud her mother had been of her two police citations, she let this pass. She knew that in time, if it hadn't happened already, the phrase "my daughter the private investigator" would begin peppering her mother's conversations much the way "my daughter the homicide investigator" had.

"And what's more, Vicki, your voice sounds funny."

"I walked my face into a post. I got a bit of a bump on my chin. It hurts a little when I talk."

"Did this happen last night?"

"Yes, Mom."

"You know you can't see in the dark... "

It was Vicki's turn to sigh. "Mom, you're beginning to sound like Celluci." On cue, Celluci came out of the bedroom, tucking his shirt into his pants. Vicki waved him at the coffeepot, but he shook his head and stuffed his arms into his overcoat. "Hold on for a minute, Mom." She covered the receiver with one hand and looked him over critically. "If we're going to keep this up, you'd better bring a razor back over. You look like a terrorist."

He scratched at his chin and shrugged. "I have a razor at the office."

"And a change of clothes?"

"They can live with yesterday's shirt for a few hours." He bent down and kissed her gently, careful not to put too much pressure on the spreading green and purple bruise. "I don't suppose you'll listen if I ask you to be careful?"

She returned the kiss as enthusiastically as she was able to and said, "I don't suppose you'll listen if I ask you to stop being a patronizing son of a bitch?"

He scowled. "Because I ask you to be careful?"

"Because you assume I won't be. Because you assume I'm going to do something stupid."

"All right." He spread his arms in surrender. "How about, don't do anything I wouldn't do?"

She considered saying, "I'm paying a call on a vampire tonight, how do you feel about that?" but decided against it and said instead, "I thought you didn't want me to do anything stupid?"

He smiled. "I'll call you," he told her, and left.

"You still there, Mom?"

"They won't let me go home until five, dear. Where else would I be? What was that all about?"

"Mike Celluci was just leaving." She tucked the phone under her arm and with the extra long cord trailing behind her, got up to make toast.

"So you're seeing him again?"

The last piece of bread was a little moldy around the edges. She tossed it in the garbage and settled for a bag of no-name chocolate chip cookies. "I seem to be."

"Well, you know what they say about spring and a young man's fancy."

She sounded doubtful, so Vicki changed the subject. Her mother had liked Celluci well enough the few times they'd met, she just thought that temperamentally they'd both be better off with someone calmer. "It's spring?" Gusts of wind slapped what could've been rain but looked more like sleet against the windows.

"It's April, dear. That makes it spring."

"Yeah, what's your weather like?"

Her mother laughed. "It's snowing."

Vicki brushed cookie crumbs off her sweatshirt and got herself more coffee. "Look, Mom, this is going to be costing the department a fortune." Her mother had worked for eighteen years as the private secretary of the head of Life Sciences at Queen's University, Kingston and she abused the privileges that had accumulated as often as possible. "Although you know I enjoy talking to you, did you have an actual reason for calling?"

"Well, I was wondering if you might be coming down for Easter."

"Easter?"

"It's this weekend. I won't be working tomorrow or Monday, we could have four whole days together."

Darkness, demons, vampires, and six bodies, the life violently ripped from them.

"I don't think so, Mom. The case I'm on could break at any time... "

After listening to a few more platitudes and promising to stay in touch, Vicki hung up and went to her weight bench to work off equal parts of cookies and guilt.

"Henry, it's Caroline. I've got tickets to the Phantom for May fourth. You said you wanted to see it and now's your chance. Give me a call in the next couple of days if you're free."

It was the only message on the machine. Henry shook his head at his vague sense of disappointment. There was no reason for Vicki Nelson to call. No reason he should want her to.

"All right," he