Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,79

get her mother off the phone, curiosity unsatisfied.

"What does he do?"

"He's a writer." As long as she stuck to answering her mother's questions, the truth would serve. Her mother was not likely to ask, "Is he a member of the bloodsucking undead?"

"How does Michael feel about this?"

"How should he feel? You know very well that Mike and I don't have that kind of relationship."

"If you say so, dear. Is this Henry Fitzroy good looking?"

She thought about that for a moment. "Yes, he is. And he has a certain presence... " Her voice trailed off into speculation and her mother laughed.

"It sounds serious."

That brought her back to the matter at hand. "It is, Mom, very serious, and that's why I have to go now."

"Very well. I was just hoping that, as you couldn't make it home for Easter, you might have a little time to spend with me now. I had such a quiet holiday, watched a bit of television, had supper alone, went to bed early."

It didn't help that Vicki was fully aware she was being manipulated. It never had. "Okay, Mom. I can spare a few moments."

"I don't want to put you out, dear."

"Mother... "

Almost an hour later, Vicki replaced the receiver, looked at her watch, and groaned. She'd never met anyone as capable as her mother at filling time with nothing at all. "At least the world didn't end during the interim," she muttered, squinting at Henry's number up on the corkboard and dialing.

"Henry Fitzroy is not able to come to the phone at the moment... "

"Of all the nerve!" She hung up in the middle of the message. "First he asks me to come over and then he buggers off." It wasn't too likely he'd met an untimely end while her mother had held her captive on the phone. She doubted that even vampires had the presence of mind to switch on their answering machines while being dismembered.

She shrugged into her jacket, grabbed up her bag, and headed out of the apartment, switching her own machine on before she left. Moving cautiously, she made it down the dark path to the sidewalk, then pointed herself at the brighter lights that marked College Street half a block away. She'd been going to call for a taxi, but if Henry wasn't even at home, she'd walk.

Her mother attempting to call attention to her disability had nothing to do with the decision. Nothing.

Henry grabbed for the phone, then ground his teeth when the caller hung up before the message had even finished. There were few things he hated more and that was the third time it had happened this evening. He'd turned the machine on when he sat down to write, more out of habit then anything, with every intention of picking up the receiver if Vicki chanced to call. Of course, he couldn't tell who was calling if they didn't speak. He looked at his watch. Ten past eleven. Had something gone wrong? He dialed her number and listened to her complete message before hanging up. It told him nothing at all.

Where was she?

He considered going to her apartment and trying to pick up some kind of a trail but discarded the idea almost immediately. The feeling that he should stay in the condo was stronger than ever, keeping him in a perpetual sort of twitchy unease.

As long as he had to hang around anyway, he'd been attempting to use that feeling in his writing.

Smith stepped backward, sapphire eyes wide, and snatched the captain's straight razor off his small shaving stand. "Come one step closer, " she warned, an intriguing little catch in her voice, "and I'll cut you!"

It wasn't going well. He sighed, saved, and turned off the computer. What was taking Vicki so long?

Unable to remain still, he walked into the living room and peered down at the city. For the first time since he'd bought the condo, the lights failed to enthrall him. He could only think of them going dark and the darkness spreading until the world became lost in it.

He moved to the stereo, turned it on, pulled out a CD, put it back, and turned the stereo off. Then he began to pace the length of the living room. Back and forth, back and forth, back...

Even through the glass doors of the bookcase he could feel the presence of the grimoire but, unlike Vicki, he named it evil without hesitation. A little over a hundred years ago it had been one of the