Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,80

did it anyway.”

Mere colors slightly and looks down at the table.

“But you went one better, didn't you? Montoya's firm runs Hyacinth, doesn't it? Beneath all the corporate confusion, that's the simple truth. Montoya is Hyacinth, and you brought us to their favorite restaurant.”

“So now you know who they are,” she says.

“Mere, they're Arcadians.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Mere swallows, her fingers moving to touch the scar on her throat, but she catches herself, and fumbles with her necklace instead. “They're Arcadians,” she repeats, buying time. I wait her out, watching to see how she deals with this piece of news.

I'm working through it myself. It makes sense, but in doing so, it opens up an entirely different line of inquiry in our suppositions. I had made noises during my conversation with Belfast about getting him an Arcadian, and I hadn't thought through that promise. It had been something to dangle in front of him, but now, sitting in the Montoya family restaurant, I see that my brain was putting words in my mouth that it knew were true.

Amnesiacs know.

“We knew this,” she says finally. “Not in as many words, but we knew it had to be Arcadians.” I nod. “But that means you've got an internal problem. You've got one faction slicing up another.”

Callis's comments seem all too prescient now. How much of this did he know? Did he send me to Easter Island to stir up trouble? To flush out whoever was behind the incident out in the Southern Ocean?

“So who—?”

Our waiter arrives, bearing plates, and Mere shuts up, smiling at the young man. If he saw any body language that suggested anything was amiss, he does a fine job of appearing oblivious. He presents our plates, offers some praise for the food and a promise that we won't be disappointed, and then makes to disappear again.

“Actually,” Mere calls after him. “I could use a cocktail. We both could. Two Jack Roses, please.” She seems almost embarrassed when he nods and departs.

“A what?”

“Jack Rose. Two parts Calvados, one part lime juice, one part grenadine, I think.” She tugs an errant strand of hair behind an ear. “I was going to surprise you. I thought it would be the kind of thing you'd like to drink. Calvados is apple brandy.”

“I know what Calvados is,” I say gently. She seems to be on the verge of tears, and I reach over and rest my hand on hers. “Mere, thank you.”

She catches herself, holding back the emotional flood building inside her and manages a laugh instead. “I fucked up,” she says. “I really did it this time.” She pulls her hand out from under mine and touches the corner of her right eye, daubing at some tear that hadn't started. “I'm sitting on the biggest story of the decade—fuck! of the century—and part of me this afternoon was like, ‘Mere, get out of there. Run for the Consulate. Forget all of this. Just forget it and get out.' But I didn't. I stayed, and I… I… walked us right into the shit, didn't I? But what else was I supposed to do? This is all too incredible for me to write some fluff piece about ‘how vampires were real and they're not as bad as you think they are.' I mean, I'm not some washed up hack who sells creative fiction to the tabloids in order to keep paying my bar tab. I need to break this story, and break it big. And it's worked for me in the past. The brazen US reporter who is too tenacious, too dumb, to stay home. You either have to kill her or hide your shit because she won't stop coming after you. But the corporate bean counters always won; they always ran away. I thought I was doing good. I was making a difference.

“And then Kirkov came along, and he didn't blink. He didn't want to run away. It wasn't in his nature. He had staked out his piece of turf and it was his. No one was going to take it away from him. He would have killed me…”

“I know.”

Her face softens. “But he didn't, right? I got this”—her fingers touch her throat—“and he was dead, so I had won again. My… souvenir was proof that I was invincible. It was a symbol to Big Ag to watch out. I wasn't going to stop coming…”

“It's like that the first few years after… after we become Arcadians,” I say, filling the void that follows her last sentence. “We think