Dead Of Night

“Cara.”

“I wasn’t.” She shook her head at her husband’s quiet protest. “I was only twenty when she was born, and I wasn’t a good mother. I wasn’t a good anything.” The words were bitter with regret. “It was all parties and fun and where can we go next. When Tiara’s father had an affair, I had one to pay him back. And on and on, until we loathed each other and used her as a weapon.”

She turned her shimmering eyes to her husband as he lifted their joined hands, pressed his lips to her fingers. “Long ago,” he said softly. “That was long ago.”

“She never forgave me. Why should she? When we divorced, Tee’s father and I, I married again like that.” Iris snapped her fingers. “Just to show him he didn’t matter. I paid for that mistake six months later, but I didn’t learn. When I finally grew up, it was too late. She preferred her father, who’d let her do whatever she liked, with whomever she liked.”

“You made mistakes,” Georgio told her. “You tried to fix them.”

“Not hard enough, not soon enough. We have an eight-year-old daughter,” she told Eve. “I’m a good mother to her. But I lost Tiara long ago. Now I can never get her back. The last time we spoke, more than a month ago, we argued. I can never get that back either.”

“What did you argue about?”

“Her lifestyle, primarily. I hated that she was wasting herself the way I did. She was pushing, pushing the boundaries more all the time. Her father’s engaged again, and this one’s younger than Tee. It enraged her, had her obsessing about getting older, losing her looks. Can you imagine, worried about such things at twenty-three?”

“No.” Eve thought of the mirrors again, the clothes, the body work Tiara had done. Obviously, this was a young woman who obsessed about anything that had to do with herself. “Did she have any particular interest in the occult?”

“The occult? I can’t say. She went through a period several years ago where she paid psychics great gobs of money. She dabbled in Wicca when she was a teenager-so many girls do-but she said there were too many rules. She was always looking for the easy way, for some magic potion to make everything perfect. Will you find who killed her?”

“I’ll find him.”

Even as Eve made arrangements to have the Francines transported to the morgue, she saw Mira come in. After an acknowledging nod, Mira wandered to a vending machine.

She’d cut her hair again, Eve noted, so it was short and springy at the nape of her neck, and she’d done something to that soft sable color so that little wisps of it around her face were a paler tone. She sat, trim and pretty in her bluebo

“Iris Francine,” Mira stated when Eve came over. “I recognized her. Her face was everywhere a generation ago. I always thought her daughter was hell-bent on outdoing her mother’s youthful exploits. It seems she succeeded in the hardest possible way.”

“Yeah, dying will get you considerable face time, for a while.”

“Quite a while, I’ll wager in this case. Vampirism. I had a meeting one level up,” Mira explained, “and thought to catch you in your office. Peabody gave me the basics. Murder by vampire proponents is very rare. For the most part, it’s the danger, the thrill, the eroticism that draws people-primarily young people. There is a condition-”

“Renfield Syndrome. I’ve been reading up. What I’m getting from the people who knew the vic was a predilection to walk the edge, a desperation for fame, attention, a serious need to be and stay young and beautiful. She’d already had bodywork. And you have to add in sheer stupidity. I get her. She’s not unusual, she just had more money than most so she could indulge her every idiocy.”

Eve paused as she broke the seal on the Pepsi tube. “It’s him. The method of killing was very specific, pla

“The compulsion may be his,” Mira considered. “A craving for the taste of blood, one that escalated to the need to drain his victim. Have you gotten the autopsy results as yet?”

“No.”

“I wonder if they’ll find she drank blood as well. If so, you may be dealing with a killer who believes he’s a vampire, and who sought to turn her into one by taking her blood and sharing his own with her.”

“And if at first you don’t succeed?”

“Yes.” Mira’s eyes, a softer blue than her suit, met Eve’s. “He may very well try again. The rush, the power-particularly when coupled with sex and drugs-would be a strong pull. And she made it so easy for him, even profitable.”

“How could he resist?”

“And why should he?” Mira concurred. “He was able to enter her highly secured building undetected. More power, and again cementing the illusion of a supernatural being. She gave herself to him, through sex, through blood, through death. Held in thrall-whether by his will or chemicals-another element. He removed her blood from the scene. A souvenir perhaps, a trophy, or yet another element of his power. His need for blood, and his ability to take it. You believe she was drugged?”

“I haven’t had that confirmed, but yeah. Her closest pal states she’d been using, and heavily, the last week or so.”

“If he drank any of her blood, he’d have shared the drug.” Seeing Eve had already considered that, Mira nodded. “More power, or the illusion of it. From what you know, they’d only met a week or two earlier. It wasn’t eternal love, which is one way of romanticizing vampirism.”

“I don’t get that.” Interrupting, Eve gestured with her drink. “The romantic part.”

Mira’s lips curved. “Because you’re a pragmatic soul. But for some, for many, the idea of eternity, that seeking a mate throughout it, coupled with the living by night, the lack of human boundaries is extremely romantic.”

“Takes all kinds.”

“It does. However, the way he left the body wasn’t romantic, or even respectful. It was careless, cold. Whether or not he believes he could sire a vampire through her, she was no more than a vessel to him, a means to an end.

“He’ll be young,” Mira continued. “No more than forty. Most likely attractive in appearance and in good health. Who would want eternal life if they were homely and physically disadvantaged?”

“This vic wouldn’t have gone for anyone who wasn’t pretty anyway. Too vain. Her place was loaded with mirrors.”

“Hmm. I wonder how she resigned herself to the lore that she’d have no reflection as a vampire.”

“Could be she only bought what she wanted to buy.”

“Perhaps. He’ll be precise, erudite, clever. Sensual. He may be bisexual, or believe himself to be as in lore, vampires will bed and bite either sex. He will, at least for the moment, feel invulnerable. And that will make him very dangerous.”

Eve drank some of her soft drink, smiled. “Knowing I’m mortal makes me very dangerous.”