Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,96

squeezed and being fed some bull about calling up demons."

The world stopped for a moment.

"Ms. Nelson? You still there?"

"Trust me, I'm not going anywhere." Vicki fell into her desk chair and rummaged for a pen. "This is very important, Coreen, where does Norman live."

"Uh, west of the campus somewhere."

"Can you give me his exact address."

"No."

"NO?" Vicki took a deep breath and tried to remember that yelling wouldn't help. Tucking the receiver under her chin, she heaved the white pages up off the floor by the desk. Bird... Birddal... Bird of Paradise...

"But if it's so important I could probably take you there. Like, I drove that night so I could probably find it again. Probably."

"Probably's good enough." There was no Birdwell listed in the phone book. It made sense, he'd probably moved into his apartment in the fall, at the beginning of the school year, and new numbers were listed around the end of May. "I'll be right there. Where can you meet me?"

"Well, I can't meet you until five. Like I said, I've got an exam today."

"Coreen, this is important!"

"So is my exam." Her tone showed no willingness to compromise.

"Before the exam... "

"I really have to study."

Okay, 5:00, was still early enough. A little over two hours until sunset and still seven hours until midnight. They had a positive identification and seven hours would be plenty of time. And besides, yelling wouldn't help. "5:00, then. Where?"

"Do you know where Burton Auditorium is?"

"I can find it."

"Meet me outside the north doors."

"All right. 5:00 pm, at the north doors of Burton Auditorium, I'll see you then."

Vicki hung up the phone and sat for a moment just staring at it. Of all the possible situations that could have developed, up to and including one last desperate confrontation with the Demon Lord itself, this had not occurred to her-that someone would just drop the answer in her lap. She pushed her glasses up her nose and shook her head. It shouldn't, she supposed, come as much of a surprise; once the right questions were dredged up out of the abyss the right answers usually followed.

Doodling on the cover of the phone book, she dialed directory assistance-just in case. "Hi, I'm looking for a new listing for a Norman Birdwell. I don't have an address, but he's somewhere up by York University."

"One moment, please. We have a new listing for an N. Birdwell... "

Vicki scribbled the number across the cover artist's conception of a telephone operator. "Could I possibly trouble you for the address as well?"

"I'm sorry, but we're not permitted to give out that information."

"You'll be sorrier if the world comes to an end," Vicki muttered, cutting the connection with her thumb. That it was the anticipated answer made it no less annoying.

At the Birdwell number, an open modem screamed on the line and Vicki hurriedly cut if off.

"Looks like we're back to Coreen."

8:17. She yawned. She could spend the rest of the day trying to get through to N. Birdwell-who might or might not be Norman-but what she really needed was another four or five hours sleep. The blood loss combined with the late night-she'd always been more of an early to bed early to rise type-had really knocked her on her ass. She should probably still go out to York, still speak to the others on the list, but now that the opportunity to catch up on sleep had been dumped in her lap, her body seemed to be making an independent decision to take advantage of it.

Staggering into the bedroom, she tossed her clothes on the floor and managed to stay awake only long enough to reset her alarm for one o'clock. Her eyes closed almost before her head hit the pillow. Coreen's call had banished the uncertainty, defined the threat, and with it Vicki had a weapon to fight the nightmares if they came again.

"Sometimes we win with greater firepower, through sheer numbers or more powerful weapons, but for the most part it's knowledge that defines our victories. Know something and it has lost its power over you."

Vicki woke with the words of one of her cadet instructors ringing in her head. He'd been much given to purple prose and almost Shakespearean speeches, but what had redeemed him in the eyes of the cadets was not only that he'd believed strongly in everything he said but that most of the time, he was right.

The monster had a name. Norman Birdwell. Now, it could be beaten.

After a bowl of soup, a