We’re all friends here. Allies. Give me the girl and join us.”
“Is one dependent on the other?” Blair asked with apparent interest. There was silence in the garden, apart from a quiet car engine in the distance.
A funny little smile flickered across Smith’s face. “Do you know, I think it might be.”
“Sorry,” Blair said. “I could never do coercion.”
Abruptly, the quiet car engine got louder, much louder, and a car actually crashed through the wall at the back of the garden. It careered across the grass, scattering vampires. Staring stupidly, Sera glimpsed Phil at the wheel. He looked drunk. The car skidded to a halt beside her and Blair, and the passenger door sprang open.
Sera and Blair all but fell through it. The car was moving again almost immediately, bouncing and crashing its way around the garden and back the way it had come. Sera, half on Blair’s knee, clung to him for safety. There was a loud bump as a vampire landed on the roof, but Phil kept driving, and at the next bounce, the vampire fell off. Phil put his foot down.
Under Sera’s hand, Blair’s shoulder was shaking. Silently but joyously, he was laughing.
****
As she entered her flat, Sera called up Ferdy Bell’s number on her phone and pressed Call. He answered almost immediately.
“Are you all right?” Sera demanded.
“I’m fine,” Ferdy said. “Tom’s got a bit of a sprained ankle, but we’re okay.”
“Who’s Tom?” she asked, turning to close the front door. Blair swung past into the house, causing a little frisson to run up her spine. It was probably fear—there was a vampire in her house—but it felt a lot like excitement. She shut the door behind him.
“Tom’s our gardener,” Ferdy said sheepishly.
“Oh dear… What in the world were you doing there?”
Ferdy sighed down the phone. “We followed Jason to the house. Then we went back to get a ladder and decided to break in and—er—kill any vampires who were there.”
“Mr. Bell,” Sera said. “Do you not trust me?”
Unflatteringly, he hesitated. Then: “I trust you to try and do the right thing. I do. But to be honest, this thing seems beyond you. It’s too big, too horrible, too brutal.”
“Yes? Well, I still killed one more vampire than you did tonight,” she retorted. “I’ll call you in the morning. Bastard,” she added, tossing the phone on to the living room table. “Didn’t even ask how I was.”
“And how are you?” Blair asked, settling onto the sofa with his feet up. “Apart from pissed off?”
Sera blinked. The large vampire looked quite at home in her sanctuary, and she didn’t even mind. She sighed and sank down on the sofa next to his feet. “Confused. Nicholas Smith is controlling, ordering the banking vampires. Why?”
“To get rich, of course. The ‘how’ is a bit more difficult. I never met many vampires who could organize or control other vampires. I’ve never encountered any humans who could. Or even wanted to.”
Sera frowned. “Hypnosis, like you said? Can vampires be hypnotized?”
He shrugged. “I doubt it.”
“But Smith’s a magician, a sorcerer,” she said slowly. She turned her head to look at him. “What do you know about magic, Blair? Real magic?”
“Nothing.”
“But that’s not true. You open doors with your mind. You can jump so high it’s like flying. Isn’t that magic?”
He shrugged. “It’s just something vampires can do. I’ve never thought about it as magical, just natural. It comes with the change of state, which we inherit with the Founder’s blood.”
She kept hearing about the Founder. Something to investigate later. For now, there was a more important point to pursue. “But people do learn about magic, don’t they? According to a friend of mine who’s a witch, it’s a gift that can be nurtured, just like talking to the dead and sensing by touch.”
“Maybe. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s how Smith keeps control of the vampires.”
Blair’s eyebrow twitched. “Maybe it’s even how they can talk and can’t hear telepathically. He managed to shut down that side of their existence by magic? Is it possible?”
“Don’t ask me. Until three nights ago, I didn’t think vampires were possible.”
He gave her a lazy smile, one that seemed to shoot straight through her tingling stomach to her core. She stood up quickly before he could notice. “Do vampires drink coffee or just blood and whisky?”
“They can drink anything they like. Coffee is good.”
In the mess that was her kitchen, at least the coffeemaker and a couple of cups were clean. She cleared a space, vowing to