Henry felt the weight of Celluci's gaze and tried to remember the last occasion on which he'd spent this much time alone with a mortal he hadn't been feeding from. Or hadn't intended to feed from. The situation was, to say the least, unusual.
In all his long life, Henry had seldom felt so frustrated. "We can't resolve this," he said aloud, "until the body is found and interred, and her grieving is over."
Celluci didn't bother pretending to misunderstand what this referred to, although he was tempted. "So find the body," he suggested, a yawn threatening to dislocate his jaw.
Henry arched a brow. "So easy to say," he murmured.
"Yeah? What about that funny smell Vicki says you ran into last night?"
"I am not a bloodhound, Detective. Besides, I traced it as far as it went, to the parking lot."
"What did it smell like?"
"Death."
"Not surprising. You were in a body parlor." He yawned again.
"Funeral homes go to a great deal of effort not to smell like death. This was something different."
"Oh, lord, not again," Celluci groaned, dragging a hand up through his hair. "What is it this time? The creature from the Rideau Canal? The Loch Ness fucking monster? The Swamp Thing? Godzilla? Megatron? Gondor? Rodan?"
"Who?"
"Didn't you ever watch Saturday afternoon monster movies?" He shook his head at Henry's expression. "No, I guess you didn't, did you? Every weekend thousands of kids were glued to their sets for badly dubbed, black and white, Japanese rubber monsters stomping on Tokyo. Not to mention Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, The Curse of the Werewolf."
A car door, slamming in the parking lot, suddenly sounded unnaturally loud.
"Jesus H. Christ." Celluci's eyes were fully open. Still tired, he no longer had any desire to sleep. He sat up and swung his feet to the floor. "A motive. You don't think... "
"That Tom Chen was playing Igor to someone else's Dr. Frankenstein?" Henry smiled. "I think, as I said before, that you watch too many bad movies, Detective."
"Oh, yeah? Well, you know what I think? I think... "
Bam. Bam. Bam.
They faced the door, then they faced each other.
"The police," Celluci said, and stood.
"No." Henry blocked his way. He could feel the lives, hear the singing blood, smell the excitement. "Not police although I suspect they'd like us to think so."
Bam. Bam. Bam.
"A threat?"
"I don't know." He crossed the room. When he stopped, Celluci moved up to stand behind his left shoulder. It had been a very long time since he'd had a shield man. He opened the door.
The flash went off almost before he could react. A mortal would have recoiled, Henry's hand whipped out and covered the lens of the camera before the shutter had completely fallen. He snarled as the brilliant light drove spikes of pain into sensitive eyes and closed his fingers. Plastic and glass and metal became only plastic and glass and metal.
"Hey!"
The photographer's companion ignored both the sound of a camera disintegrating and the accompanying squawk of protest. Sometimes they got a great candid shot when the door opened, sometimes they didn't. She wasn't going to worry about it. "Good evening. Is Victoria Nelson at home?" Elbows primed, her notebook held like a battering ram, she attempted to push forward. Most people, she found, were just too polite to stop her.
The slight young man never budged; it felt like she'd hit a not very tall brick wall. Time for plan B. And if that didn't work, she'd go right through the alphabet if she had to. "We were so sorry to hear about what happened to her mother's bo... " Her train of thought derailed somewhere in the depths of hazel eyes.
Henry decided not to be subtle. He wasn't in the mood and they wouldn't understand. "Go away. Stay away."
Darkness colored the words and became threat enough.