“About you and what you claimed to be,” Victor corrected, thinking it a verbal slip. “I haven’t even read the e-mails.”
“No, but I was answering them in your name, so used your e-mail account and gave her answers about you.”
“What?” Victor turned on him sharply. “I don’t have an e-mail account.”
“You do now,” DJ informed him. “[email protected].”
Before Vincent could blast him, DJ hurried on saying, “Well, you did say to answer the ad and try to get her interest so we could find out more about her.” He shrugged. “I figured we had a better chance to get her interest if you were the one answering. You’re more interesting than me.”
“How do you figure that?” he asked with amazement.
“You’re rich,” DJ answered promptly. “And the brother of the most powerful immortal on this continent, not to mention a member of one of the oldest families. Chicks go in for that sort of thing. Money, power…It doesn’t hurt that you’re good-looking either.”
“She could hardly have any idea what I look like,” Victor pointed out with a scowl.
“I e-mailed her a picture,” DJ announced. When Victor turned on him, he said defensively, “Well, she asked for one. So, I sent her the only one I had. The one of you and Lucian at Lissianna’s wedding. Of course,” he added, casting Victor’s shoulder-length dark hair and black jeans and T-shirt a glance. “Your hair was much shorter then and you were in a suit. You don’t look much like that now.”
Victor glowered, and then forced himself to relax back in the passenger seat. “And what did you receive in return for this picture and information about my bloodlines?”
DJ made a face. “Not as much as I’d hoped. A brief synopsis of her life and a photo.”
Removing one hand from the steering wheel, he reached blindly into the backseat and picked up a file he’d set there when they got in the car. He handed it to Victor. “It’s in there on one of the e-mails.”
Victor opened the file. A photocopy of the newspaper ad was on top.
Wanted: Male vampire for attractive and self-supporting female vampire. Seeking companionship and a possible love connection. Must be willing to relocate. Only real vampires need apply.
Shaking his head, he continued to leaf through the papers as DJ recounted what he’d learned.
“She’s a widow, and part owner with a friend in a Mexican restaurant as well as a bed-and-breakfast. I can’t remember the friend’s name. Both businesses are in Port Henry. She’s lived there her whole life.”
Victor grunted at this rundown as he found the picture. It showed a beautiful woman with long dark hair, large dark eyes and full red lips. The name on the back said Elvi.
Victor slid the photo back in the file after the briefest look. She was a beautiful woman, but beauty rarely affected him. He’d seen much of it over his lifetime, enough that it no longer impressed him. It was his experience that beauty was the best way to distract one from, and/or hide, an unbearable ugliness. The devil surely wouldn’t show up to tempt covered in warts and slime.
“So?” DJ queried when Victor set the file back on the backseat. “What do you think?”
“I think I can’t tell anything from a picture and that little bit of information you managed to get,” Victor said, then spotted the sign for the exit they wanted, and added, “but we’ll find out soon enough.”
DJ made a tsk of disgust. “This is probably all a huge waste of time. She didn’t seem impressed by the name Argeneau. If she was one of us, she’d have been impressed.”
Victor shrugged. “We aren’t the only old, powerful family. Maybe she comes from one herself so isn’t impressed. Or maybe she’s just moved over from Europe. The Argeneau name doesn’t carry as much weight over there as it did before we moved. There are a lot of old, powerful families there. Whatever the case, she still has to be checked out.”
“Right,” DJ said on an exhalation, and then cheered up and added,” On the bright side, if she turns out to be a whacko wannabe, we can get in the car and head straight back to Toronto. We’d be back home by midnight, easy.”
Victor smiled faintly, but didn’t comment as he watched the rural road they’d exited onto slowly morph into an urban area with first farmhouses and barns appearing out of the darkness, then houses. These quickly gave way to businesses; a gas station, the requisite doughnut shop, secondhand stores, and banks.
“We’re meeting her at her restaurant?” Victor asked glancing over the signs on the storefronts they were passing.
“Yes. Bella Black’s,” DJ said. “It’s supposed to be on Main Street. She said it was on the left, halfway between the second and third set of lights.”
“This is the second set of lights,” Victor pointed out as they stopped at the red light. They both glanced along the road, reading the signs.
“Bella Black’s,” DJ said aloud even as Victor spotted the building in question. Port Henry was obviously one of the older towns in Ontario. Most of the storefronts on the street were Victorian in design. Bella Black’s was no exception, but the sign was large and colorful and the large front window had a painted mural of a sleek green iguana amidst a bower of flowers.
Victor contemplated the odd choice of design, and then turned his gaze back to the road as a car reversed into the very last available parking spot. A couple got out and crossed to the restaurant.
The light changed then and DJ eased their own car forward, passing Bella Black’s as the couple reached the entrance and pulled the door open. They were treated to a brief view of light and color and milling people, then the door closed behind the couple, leaving the street silent once more.