and my comrades are gone and I feel like I'm taking advantage of them now but...
But that will pass.
Right?
Right?
He waited over an hour to come out. To sneak out, on tiptoe, bathroom lights already out before he opened the door.
She was asleep. At least she was lying still on the shadowy bed and that was good enough for him. He sneaked past her into the living room and found an extra cover in a closet there and wrapped up in it on the couch and turned off the light - all without making a peep.
Tomorrow this will pass.
Right.
Sometime in the night the sound of someone sobbing woke him up. He rose up on the couch and started to go to her but it stopped. Was that Davette?
Was that me?
Is this ever going to end?
The next morning she was sweet and friendly and gracious as if nothing had happened and he knew damn well he had hurt her feelings but...
But he didn't want to think about that now.
Cat came to a little later and he was shaken and ashen gray once more but he was back.
They talked about nothing while they ordered and waited for breakfast and then it came and they sat down together and ate it and it was somewhere in the middle of that meal that Cat had looked up at Felix and thanked him.
And Felix shrugged.
A few minutes later Cat spoke again: "So. What's the next move?" he asked Felix.
And Davette had looked to him as well, as if it was the most natural thing in the world - for him to decide.
He almost punched Cat again.
He wanted to say, Don't start looking to me, now, goddammit! I ain't carrying anything on.
But he did not say this. He was calm. He played the game and gave them what they wanted. He told them they would stay here, in the suite, until tomorrow afternoon, when they would go to the bishop's office, as planned, and pick up the documents and tickets for the nonstop to Rome that left the next day.
Calm. Reasonable. Leader-sounding, if that's what they really, really, fucking wanted.
But, he added silently, don't think this changes anything. This doesn't change shit.
We are out of the vampire business.
So they stayed in the suite. All that day and all that night. Room service food and movie channels and alcohol. When it got late, Cat went to crash in his bedroom. A few minutes later Davette went to the other.
Felix took his drink and went to the window and looked out over north Dallas.
Odd to be able to do that. When he had been growing up, there was nothing this far north. No shopping malls, no freeways, no high-rise luxury hotels. But now he could almost see his house. He could almost see hers.
That started him remembering, for some reason. He had loved that time. The money, the lovely homes and people. The country club parties. The debutante balls. He had always wanted to be a part of that because he saw it as more than just upper-class frivolity. It was a celebration of men and women, generation after generation of them, who were raised to shape the world. Maybe they were a little smarter? Because their parents had been smart enough to build so much and they had kids as smart as them?
Or maybe not. Felix had known a lot of dumb rich kids.
But still, the expectation had been there. You were expected to accomplish something. Invent something or at least manufacture it and make payroll and support your employees and expand something. Expand everything.
But I didn't. I didn't do shit. And here I am, waving goodbye.
Shit.
Is that why Davette's story had sunk so deep into him? Because it was about people ripping up the best of his past? The best of his memories?
Should I try to go in to see her now?
He had another drink. And another. He was drunk after the third and, well, the couch was right there.
And he didn't want to think about it.
The bishop's office staff at St. Lucius got very quiet when Felix walked in the next afternoon. There was another bishop there, filling in, who escorted Felix into the inner office and gave him the documents and tickets.
Then he asked what to do about the bodies.
Of Carl. Of the bishop. Of two of his aides. Everyone else on the bishop's staff, it turned out, had run to the church during the attack, where they had been safe.