“How soon?”
“I need to call him and set it up, but not here. I’ll call from the road.”
Lana disengaged her hand and immediately started gathering her things, getting ready to leave. She took a final sip of her drink, wiped her mouth, checked the bill, and put some money on the table . . . but the only thing Vincent was thinking about was how much he missed the warmth of her fingers in his.
He blinked and gave himself a mental slap on the head. What the fuck? He was a love-’em-and-leave-’em-happy guy. He wasn’t some lovesick teenage girl.
“You ready?” he asked. When Lana glanced over at him in surprise, he realized his voice might have been a bit hard.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry. It just feels like we’re finally doing what we started out to do in the first place.”
“Too many side trips,” she observed.
“Exactly.”
“So let’s go see a man about a thing.”
Vincent chuckled and dropped an arm around her shoulders as they walked out of the restaurant. “You’ve been reading too many cop stories.”
“Are there any other kind?”
“Good point.”
“YOU’RE SURE THIS is current?” Vincent asked. He was speaking to Celio’s old friend, using the in-dash speaker function as they drove to Pénjamo.
“Unless you’ve scared him away. He know you’re coming?”
Lana thought the other vampire’s voice sounded old, like human old, and she wondered what he looked like. Was it possible that some humans got turned when they were close to the end of their lives? And if so, what happened then? Did the vampire virus or whatever start repairing them so they would eventually look young again? Or were they stuck being old forever? Surely, at least their health improved. They wouldn’t have to endure immortality with arthritis or brittle bones, would they?
“You should have a care whom you’re speaking to, old man,” Vincent growled.
“What’re you gonna do, chase me down and kill me because I don’t kiss your ass?”
Lana’s eyes went wide.
“If you fuck this up, I just might,” Vincent snapped, then slammed his fist against the on-screen disconnect button.
Of course, the screen wasn’t designed for smashing fists, so they could still hear the old vampire on the other end muttering about fucking vampire lords who think their shit don’t stink, just because they got the best of the genetic lottery before Lana touched the screen with her finger and disconnected the call.
“Ignore him,” she said calmly. “He’s an unhappy old man. All we care about is whether his information is good. Do you think it is?”
“Probably,” Vincent admitted grudgingly, obviously still pissed. “I don’t know anything about him except what Celio told me, but there’s no reason for him to lie. There’s nothing for him in this either way.”
“He sounded old.”
“Yeah, so? We knew he was old. Celio told us.”
“But he sounded like an old human, with a quavering voice and stuff. Do vamps eventually age like that?”
Vincent seemed to think about it. “Some do. It’s as if their brains can’t sustain them anymore, even the strong ones. The last Lord of the Northeast was like that. To look at him, you’d have thought he was no more than thirty. But his mind was shot to hell.”
“What happened?”
“His lieutenant took him out.”
“Kind of a mercy killing?”