us north. “I just saw Hempstead,” he said absently, scanning the crowd as he strode along on his spiderlike legs. “He was probably headed back to—ah. There he is.”
I followed him to a rather modest mausoleum with Hempstead’s name on it, and a short man with a full blond beard that curled down over his barrel-shaped chest, nearly to his belly button. He was chatting with a pretty female vampire who was nearly a foot taller than him. She took one look at me, broke off midsentence, and turned and walked away, leaving the bearded man standing there with his brow furrowed.
“Hello, Jonas,” Milburn said amiably as we walked up. He gestured at me. “Miss Luther, this is Jonas Hempstead. Jonas, meet Miss Luther, the evocator helping Beau with his little issue.”
“Call me Lex,” I said.
“Oh.” A look of comprehension came over the shorter man’s face, followed by a pinch of distaste. “I see.”
“Beau says she has questions for us,” Milburn said mildly. Hempstead’s lip curled, his eyes following the pretty female vampire, and Milburn added more pointedly, “Questions that Beau wants us to answer.”
The bearded man gave a grudging nod. “Right. Understood.”
Milburn looked down at me. “You okay here if I go get Vick?”
“Yes.”
The taller vampire disappeared into the night, and Hempstead turned his attention to me, his expression only slightly sour.
I wanted to get right to the point, and maybe catch him a little off guard, so I said, “Have you been missing any time?”
Hempstead stroked his beard, a hint of a sneer on his face. “Why, yes. I lose time every day between sunrise and sunset.”
So much for that plan. “I’m talking about gaps in your memory. Think about the last few weeks. Do you remember time seeming to jump forward?”
He frowned, his face wrinkling with concentration as he took in my meaning. “No, nothing like that.”
“What about strong feelings that made you behave in a way that you couldn’t really understand later?”
Whatever his faults, Hempstead was not an idiot. “You’re talking about being pressed, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Milburn appeared beside me, so suddenly that I half drew a shredder before I realized what was happening. He grinned at me and gestured to the man next to him, who was fortyish and on the heavy side, with huge, ornate sideburns. “This is Vick,” Milburn said, enjoying my spike of tension. “You’re jumpy.”
“Erasmus, she’s asking us about missing time.” Hempstead’s beard bristled as he turned back to me. “Beau is concerned about this?”
All three men crowded close. “Someone who knows his schedule has been passing information to a boundary witch,” I told them. “He doesn’t doubt your loyalty, but he’s concerned that one of you might have been pressed.”
The three men exchanged a look, and although we’d just met, I understood what it meant: they were silently agreeing to drop whatever grudges or personas they’d adopted and take this seriously.
Then, as though they’d reached a decision telepathically, Milburn turned to me and demanded, “Press one of us now.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“A test,” Vick said, his first words to me. He stroked one sideburn a little nervously. “We need to know how it would have affected us.”
Chewing my lip, I thought about that for a moment. Beau had made me promise not to press any vampires, but this was different. His most loyal followers had asked me to do it. “Which of you has the strongest will?” I asked them.
Without hesitating, Hempstead and Vick pointed at Milburn, whose mouth crooked up on one side.
“Okay. Hempstead, can we borrow your mausoleum for a minute?” I asked.
“Sure. Why?”
I smiled. “Because you’re going to tell Milburn something you don’t want me to know.”
Chapter 16
I went into the mausoleum first, while the three of them figured out a secret to keep from me. At the wrought-iron door I turned on my phone’s flashlight, illuminating a small, empty marble room with a long window opposite the door.
Milburn came in just a few seconds after me, and I got right to business. Less than five minutes after we left the others, he and I returned to the street.
The two other Horsemen looked Milburn over as though I might have left marks on him. “Milly?” Hempstead ventured. “You all right?”
Milburn shrugged. “Of course. Nothing at all happened; it was quite disappointing.”
“What did you tell her?” Vick asked.
The taller vampire’s brow furrowed. “Nothing.”
“What did it feel like?”
“It didn’t feel like anything. We went into the mausoleum, then we turned around and popped right back out. Surely you must have