"Yeah, that's it exactly. He just expects." Tony ripped his napkin into greasy squares before he con?tinued. "Trouble is, sometimes he doesn't really see me in those expectations. I mean, he didn't choose for me to know about him, Vicki just kinda dumped me on him and he never really felt about me like he did about her." Realizing who he was speaking to, he col?ored. "Sorry."
"It's okay. I know how he felt." But it's my life she's a part of, not his, his tone added smugly. "It seems to me, it's time for you to get out and find a life of your own."
"I guess." He lifted his head and met Celluci's eyes. "But how do you just leave someone like Henry?"
Vicki had the taxi drop her off in front of the Sylvia Hotel on English Bay. Her memory of the three nights with Henry in the vine-covered, Victorian building, learning to manipulate the world she was no longer a part of, was one of the few memories she had of her "childhood" in Vancouver not drenched in blood. She stood for a few moments in front of the building, remembering how Henry had taught her to survive, then she drew in a deep breath of night-scented air and walked the two blocks to Denman Street.
Bisecting the West End, running vaguely southwest to northeast, Denman was a lovely walking street- and that made it prime hunting territory.
The rain had stopped and well-lit sidewalk cafes, still glistening from the last shower, had filled. Vancouverites never let a little rain bother them-since it rained so frequently, there wasn't much point-and they were serious about their cafes. Scanning the crowds, Vicki noted certain similarities in the mix as the young and trendy rubbed elbows with the old and somehow still trendy, all dressed in what could only be called a sporty and health-conscious style-very un?like the Gothic punk so prevalent in trendy Toronto. In spite of the hour, everyone seemed to have a "I'm going roller blading/mountain biking/sea kayaking after I finish my cappuccino" look. In any other mood, Vicki might have found it amusing. Tonight, it pissed her off.
Denman, she mused, glaring a pair of young men in chinos out of her way, might have been a mistake. She wanted something with an edge, something to de?finitively establish her presence in Henry's territory. There's never a motorcycle gang around when you need one.
Then she saw him.
He was sitting inside one of the cafes, alone, all his attention focused on the notebook in front of him. A slender shadow amid the surrounding proto-jocks, he looked disturbingly familiar.
He looked remarkably like Henry.
A closer examination proved the resemblance purely superficial. The clothes were black, the skin pale, but the blond hair was too long, and the face more angular than Tudor-curved. Were he standing, he'd probably be significantly taller.
Still...
When he glanced up, Vicki met his gaze through the glass, held it for a moment, then vanished into the night. Safely hidden in the darkness between two buildings, she watched the front of the cafe and smiled. She knew the kind of man he was. The kind who, against all urgings of common sense, wanted to believe there was something more. The kind who wanted to believe in mystery.
Wanted to believe, but didn't quite.
The door opened, and he stood on the sidewalk. Vicki could hear his heart pounding, and when he closed his eyes she knew he was searching for the moment they'd shared, searching for the mystery. An older man, with a strong Slavic accent and his arm across the back of a well-dressed woman, asked him to move away from the door. Visibly returning to real?ity, the young man apologized and started along Denman, a slightly rueful smile twisting his mouth, one hand trailing in the planters that separated the side-walk cafe from the sidewalk proper.
Vicki allowed the Hunger to rise.
She followed the song of his blood at a safe distance until he started up the broad steps of a four-story, Victorian brownstone on Barclay Street. When he put his key in the lock, she moved out of the night, laid a hand on his shoulder, and turned him around. Some?where, down in the depths of eyes almost as silver-gray as her own, he was expecting her.
He wanted to believe in mystery.
So she gave him a mystery to believe.
"Who do you think'll be back first?"
"Fitzroy." Celluci surfed a few more channels, won?dering why someone with Fitzroy's money didn't buy a better TV-from the looks of it, he'd spent a fortune on the stereo system. "It's Monday night, won't be much traffic in from the mountains, so he'll make good time."
"He'll probably want to feed before he gets here, though. So that he's not overreacting to things."
"Things meaning Vicki? Well, my guess is she's taken that into account. He's going to expect her to be here when he arrives, so she's not going to be- not even if she has to hide across the street and wait for him to drive up." He flicked past three syndicated sitcoms, two of them from the seventies, an episode of classic Trek he'd seen a hundred times and the same football game on four channels. "Five hundred channels and four hundred and ninety-nine of them still show crap. What's this?"
Tony stuck his head out of the kitchen where he was cleaning up the debris from their meal. "Local talk show," he said after watching for a moment. "The woman is Patricia Chou. She's really intense. One of my night school teachers says she does kamikaze re?porting and thinks she's trying for a big enough story to get her a network job. At least half of City Council is terrified of her, and I heard she was willing to go to jail once to protect a source. I don't know who the old guy is."
"The old guy," Celluci snarled, "probably has no more than ten years on me."
Tony prudently withdrew.
On screen, Patricia Chou frowned slightly and said, "So what you're saying, Mr. Swanson, is that the fears people have about organ donations are completely unfounded?"
"Fear," her guest declared, "is often based on lack on information."
It was a good response; Celluci tossed the remote onto the glass-topped coffee table-Fitzroy had a dis?tinct fondness for breakable furniture-and settled back to watch.
Mr. Swanson settled back much the same way and looked into the camera with the ease of a man often interviewed. "Let's take those fears one at a time.