LANA WAITED FOR Vincent’s response.
“Yes, I am,” he said smoothly. No real surprise there, despite his earlier reluctance. She was willing to bet he could be smooth as silk when he wanted to be, right up to the moment he seduced a woman off her feet. He directed her out of his office and across the hall, resting his hand on her lower back under the guise of guiding her to the conference room. It was an innocent touch, polite even. But he was a little too close for innocence. She could feel the heat of his body, smell his clean, masculine scent, and the polite touch suddenly seemed shockingly intimate. She stiffened, but managed to avoid pulling away. She needed Vincent’s cooperation to complete this job for Raphael, and insulting him by jumping at the slightest touch was hardly the way to gain that cooperation. And his ego didn’t need to know that he affected her that strongly.
She entered the conference room to find Michael and two other vampires waiting for them. They were sitting at a heavy wooden conference table, another stunning antique that looked like it had once been a dining room table in some rich Mexican landowner’s hacienda. The leather chairs scattered around the table, on the other hand, were the height of modern comfort.
Lana sank into one of the comfy chairs gratefully. Her body was beginning to get cranky in its demand for sleep, with each old injury starting to make itself known, from the arm she’d broken at the age of ten to the damaged muscles in her back from wrestling with a 250-pound fugitive last year. She swallowed a sigh of relief as she settled into the chair and studied the two vampires sitting on the other side of the table. Vincent had said they were old, but as with all vampires, their true age wasn’t clear. Both appeared to be in their twenties, one slightly older than the other, and they were both short and dark, with stick-straight hair and black distrustful eyes.
Vincent didn’t bother with introductions. He strode into the room behind her, sat in one of the chairs and began speaking in rapid and somewhat archaic Spanish, snapping out what sounded very much like an order.
Lana translated in her head and knew she didn’t get every word, but the thrust of it was, You will tell this woman what you know of Xuan Ignacio. Definitely an order.
The two older vampires nodded, their faces giving away very little. But Lana would have sworn she saw a flash of fear in their eyes before they turned their attention to her. They seemed to be waiting for her to ask a question. She gave Vincent a glance. He was the one who’d told her not to speak to them directly, after all.
“¿Dónde vive?” he began. “Where does he live?”
“Pénjamo,” the slightly older-looking one said in accented English. “On El Cero San Miguel. It has always been so.”
“El Diablo,” the younger one agreed, nodding.
Lana frowned. The devil? What the hell did that mean?
“Fairy tales for stupid children,” Vincent dismissed almost angrily. “Have you met him?” he asked, directing his question at the older vampire.
“Once,” he said. “He appeared as a man, but not like you or I. He is pale like a ghost, with white hair and eyes that are blind but see everything.”
Vincent made an impatient gesture. “Where was this?”
“I spoke truth, my lord. I never had words with him, and I saw him only once. On El Cero San Miguel. That’s where you’ll find him.”
Vincent swung his chair slightly to give Lana a skeptical look. “Any questions?”
“More than one,” she admitted.
“Let me rephrase,” he said. “Any questions our visitors can answer?”
Lana frowned. “I don’t want to insult anyone—” she said, stopping when Vincent shifted his attention to Michael and gave a jerk of his head toward the door. Before Lana had fully registered his intent, Michael and the two older vamps had vacated the room, closing the door behind them.
“I wasn’t finished,” she snapped, irritated that he hadn’t given her a chance to question the older vamps. Why’d he bother to ask her if he was going to be such a jerk about it?
“Yes, you were,” he said, raising her ire all over again with his dismissive attitude. “Look, whenever a question starts with I don’t want to insult anyone, someone is about to be insulted. For all their centuries of living—or maybe because of them—those two remain unsophisticated and very traditional at heart. You’re both a woman and a gringa. If they took something you said amiss—and it wouldn’t take much—they’d clam up and refuse to help you any further. And they’d only be that polite because I was in the room with you. Besides, they believe every word they said.” He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s difficult to understand such persistent superstition.”
Lana was somewhat mollified by his explanation, but couldn’t help retorting, “You seem to understand them just fine.”
Vincent smiled, clearly choosing to ignore the sly insult in her words. “I know what they were talking about. I know where they’re talking about.”
Lana sighed, fingers itching for her computer so she could Google this El Cero San Miguel for herself. Unfortunately, all she had was Vincent. She preferred Google, but Raphael’s clear intent had been for Vincent to be with her when she finally handed the message to Xuan Ignacio. Her original plan had been to find Xuan herself and bring him and Vincent together for the big finish, but she was beginning to think the whole thing would go more smoothly if she had a local guide along on the journey. And the most logical person for that was Vincent. She could kill two birds with one stone. If she didn’t kill Vincent first.
“So you think they’re reliable?” she asked him.
“They’re telling the truth as they know it. Celio, in particular, the more talkative of the two, is very reliable. If he says he saw Xuan Ignacio in the flesh, then he did.”
“What’s this El Cero San Miguel he talked about?”
“It’s in Pénjamo, a city in Guanajuato, at the foot of the mountains. El Cero San Miguel is essentially a big hill that’s reputed to be haunted. It’s something of a tourist destination for those interested in such things.”
“That’s what the other one meant when he called Xuan Ignacio the devil. He thinks Xuan’s the devil who haunts this hill.”
“I told you,” Vincent said with a careless shrug, “they’re superstitious.”