at the moment.”
“That gives me exactly one drop of relief, into a bucket of worry.”
“Plus, in the summer, a lot of the vamps have started migrating.”
“Sure. Somewhere where the days aren’t so long.” Barry sounded very familiar with vampire habits.
“You’re not a hunter, are you?”
He snorted. “Do I look like a fool with a death wish?”
She shook her head. “No, but people don’t always look like what they are. No one would look at you and say, ‘He’s a telepath.’”
“We’re definitely not common,” he said offhandedly.
“There are many more?” She didn’t disguise her surprise.
“At least one more.” He obviously wasn’t going to talk about that. “What do you need?” He’d been relaxed, chatty, but no longer.
“All right,” she said, with equal briskness. “I need you to go with Tommy, Suzie, and Mamie tomorrow on a little road trip to a fancy house in a suburb of Dallas. Manfred and I will go with you most of the way, but we’re not going to the house in question. We’ll fill you in on everything at length, so you’re prepared. But what we need you to do, if you agree, is get in the house, get the older people up to the room designated as the library, and look at it as hard as you can while you’re there. There’s something hidden there, and we need to know where to start to look. Now that I know what you can do, I also want you to get as close to the man named Lewis as you can. Get everything you can out of his mind. And tell us what you see.”
“How much?” was all Barry asked.
Naturally, Olivia was curious about Barry’s need for money. He was able-bodied, personable, not stupid. But actually, it didn’t matter.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t.”
Having a telepath around was a two-edged sword. “Interesting,” Olivia said, after an appreciable pause. “I’m so used to assuming my mind is opaque that I simply hadn’t applied your particular skill to me.”
“Yeah, it wins me friends everywhere.”
“But you haven’t really tried to conceal it.”
“Not here. It’s effing weird. Everywhere else I’ve been, my whole life, my primary purpose has been concealing what I am. But here . . . not so much.”
“Let me ask you . . .”
“What?”
“You’ve been in the diner.”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the deal with the Reeds?”
“What do you mean?” He was hedging. She didn’t have to be a telepath to see that.
“I’ve always wondered about them. Why are they here? They’re so . . . I started to say, normal. But there has to be a reason for them to be here. It’s not simply chance.” Olivia really did want to know.
“Would you like me to tell them things about you?”
Olivia leaned forward, ready to break his neck if she had to. “What do you think?” she whispered.
“Then I’m not going to tell you things about them.”
Olivia forced herself to relax. She hadn’t realized until this moment how much she didn’t trust the Reeds, and his reaction somehow reinforced that feeling. “Fair enough,” she said.
“So. You never answered. How much?”
“Five hundred,” she said. She had that much in her room, and she could go by the ATM in Davy to get more. Manfred would repay her.
“Seven fifty.”
“Six hundred.”
“Six fifty,” he countered.
“Done,” she said.
He stood to extend his hand to her, and she also stood to shake his. When she touched him, she had the same feeling she’d had when she’d first touched Lemuel. “Not completely human,” she said.
“What?”
“You heard me.” She smiled, glad that she’d been able to shake him up in return for the unpleasant surprise he’d given her.
Barry smiled back. “Sorry about your psycho mom,” he said, and walked away.
“Tomorrow morning, bright and early,” she called after him. She would not let him have the last word.
She was tougher than that. She was always tougher than that.
22
The day of the Bonnet Park field trip didn’t start well on any level. Manfred, Olivia, and Barry were up and ready by the designated time, and Olivia and Manfred both took their cars over to the hotel. Mamie, Suzie, and Tommy were up, which was good, and they’d had breakfast, which was good, but Mamie had had a bad night and she was hurting.
“I can’t go,” she said. “I just can’t face a long drive. My hip hurts too bad today, dammit. I want to get out of this hole and see some life.”
Manfred agreed with her assessment. Mamie looked frail and pale, and she moved with obvious difficulty. But Tommy and