Moon Child (Vampire for Hire #4) (13 page)

I gave the van more gas and thought about the
medallion. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Whoever Bow Tie
was, he surely wasn’t going to accept anything less than the
medallion.

One problem: As noted by Detective Sherbet, I
needed it to give my son back his mortality.

My phone rang. Another restricted call. At
this point, it could have been anyone, from a vampire kidnapper to
Sherbet. It was neither.

“Hey, Sunshine,” said Chad Helling, my
ex-partner, a man who did not know my super-secret identity...only
that I had a rare skin disease.

“Hey, Romeo.”

“I heard about the shitty business at the
hospital. Is your son okay?”

“My son’s fine, which is more than I can say
for another little boy.”

“You need me to come down?” he asked. “Once a
partner, always a partner.”

“Thanks, Chad, but I’ll manage.”

“I know you will. You always do.” He
paused.

“You have news about Archibald Maximus.”

“Yes, how did you—never mind. You could
always read my mind.”

I grinned to myself. He was right, and there
was nothing psychic about it. I said, “Once a partner, always a
partner.”

He chuckled. “Anyway, no luck with Mr.
Archibald Maximus, although something strange did turn up.”

“How strange?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Never mind.”

“Tell me, dammit.”

“Easy, girl. Okay, fine. There was an
Archibald Maximus who died fifty years ago.”

I did find that interesting, but Chad didn’t
need to know that. “And this helps me how?”

“Well, the strange part is that his family
and friends reported seeing him on two other occasions.”

“After his death?”

“Right.”

“And how do you know this?”

“The wife filed a report. She wanted his body
exhumed.”

“Did they?”

“No.”

I chewed on this. But Chad didn’t need to
know I was chewing on this. Instead, I said, “Well, thanks for
wasting the last three minutes of my life.”

“Anytime. Be safe, Sunshine.”

“Jerk.”

And he clicked off, laughing.

* * *

The 57 North merged into the 91 East. I was
soon shooting past the 80 mph mark—and still there were drivers
riding my ass. You can never go fast enough in southern
California.

I was cruising at 85 mph and had just settled
in for the hour-long drive to Riverside when my cell phone chirped.
A text message. I rummaged through my purse, swerving slightly into
the next lane, until I found the iPhone. A text from Fang.

Something’s wrong, he wrote. I can feel it.
What’s going on? Where are you going?

Jesus, our connection was growing stronger. I
wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but maybe there was something
greater at work here than I thought. Maybe Fang was destined to be
something more. Much more. I didn’t know, but I certainly couldn’t
think about it now.

I rapidly typed out my reply: Just getting
ice cream with Tammy. On our way to Cold Stone now.

Bullshit, Sam. Why do I feel a tremendous
sense of...dread.

Maybe you had some bad Chinese.

A car horn blasted next to me, and I
straightened out my minivan. Apparently I had given the guy next to
me a fright. I waved an apology and he waved back with his middle
finger.

Enough with the bad Chinese, Sam. Please.
What’s going on? I’m worried sick over here.

It’s better if you don’t know, Fang. I’m
sorry.

Let me help you. Please. I’ve never felt this
way before.

Welcome to my world, I thought. Instead, I
wrote: I’m sorry, Fang. I’ll call later. Love you.

Love you? Now what the hell had gotten into
me?

Chapter Forty

The Mission Inn is a national treasure.

And it’s found right here in downtown
Riverside, a city that isn’t much of a national treasure. For me,
Riverside conjures images of heat and gangs and neighborhoods that
aren’t so nice. A false image, surely, as its downtown is actually
quite nice, and boasts some cool bars and nice restaurants. But,
most importantly, it boasts the Mission Inn, getaway to presidents
and celebrities alike, where thousands have been married and many
tens of thousands have passed through.

After negotiating through some heavy downtown
traffic, in which I passed exactly three prostitutes and a guy
dressed like Lady Gaga, and parked in a small parking lot across
the street from the inn. There I sat quietly, closed my eyes, and
tried to get a feel for the place. Eyes closed, I sensed lots of
movement, lots of happy people, lots of great moments. The Mission
Inn is a special place.

I next tried to get a sense of any danger, of
what I might be up against, but the place was just too big for me
to get a feel for it. Either that, or my thoughts were too
scattered to focus correctly. Then again, I still didn’t entirely
know what I was doing.

Next I focused on the roof, rising as surely
as if I was physically floating above the edifice. The suites up
here were nicer, more expensive. The roof area, which sported many
walkways and ramps that led to various floors and balconies, looked
like something out of a medieval fairy tale. A handful of couples
were sitting together on their balconies, enjoying the night,
smoking, drinking, kissing, writhing.

Uh oh.

Above it all was one of the inn’s three
majestic domes, this one a mosaic jewel that crowned this section
of the inn, and as it came into view in my mind, I gasped.

There was a darkness within. It surrounded
the dome as surely as the dark halo had surrounded my son. I tried
to dip into the dome, but I couldn’t. Somehow, I was blocked. More,
I didn’t want to go inside. The dome repelled me, horrified me.

He’s in there, I thought.

And that’s when my cell phone rang.
Restricted call, of course. It was him, I knew it. How an ancient
vampire knew how to restrict his calls, I hadn’t a clue.

I clicked on and he spoke immediately:
“You’re here,” he said. “I can feel another.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can feel another of our kind,
Miss Moon.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

He laughed sharply, so sharply that my ear
hurt. “Oh, we are very much alike, my dear.”

“You’re in the dome,” I said.

“Yes,” he said, and sounded impressed. “With
the other bats.”

“Is the boy with you?”

“You mean that sickly little thing? Sure,
he’s here somewhere, but he’s not long for this world. I should
probably just help him along.”

“You touch him, and you’ll never get the
medallion.”

“Oh, relax, my dear. I’m won’t touch
him...yet. I’ll see if you’ll play by my rules first. If so, he may
be spared. If not, there’s going to be blood tonight.”

“Enough with the threats, asshole. I have the
medallion.”

He veritably hissed with pleasure. “Good,
good! Then I expect to see you soon,” and he clicked off.

Chapter Forty-one

The massive hotel stretched from city block
to city block, surrounded by a low, medieval-style brick wall.

An array of lights lit the hotel, and the
building’s sheer complexity of style was enough to nearly overwhelm
the senses, everything from Spanish Gothic, Mission Revival,
Moorish Revival, Renaissance Revival and Mediterranean Revival. I
know something about architecture. If I hadn’t been an
investigator, I would have been an architect. And the inn was a
wonder to behold.

I was in a parking lot on Orange Street,
along the south east side of the building. There was a side opening
here that I was familiar with, one that led to a small bar that
Danny and I had frequented many times, where we drank wine and beer
and ate lightly breaded chicken strips and listened to a talented
cellist and talked about our days.

Those days were long gone.

Years ago, before I met Danny, my first visit
to the hotel had been a laughable one. I was running late to my
then-boyfriend’s cousin’s wedding. I was in college and working two
jobs and I had barely gotten off in time to rush out from Orange
County on a Saturday evening. Running in high heels and clutching
my dress, I dashed into the first chapel I saw. The wedding was
about to start. Feeling self-conscious, I sat in the back row and
looked wildly for my boyfriend, assuming he was sitting somewhere
in the front. I felt like shit that I had come so late that I
couldn’t find him, but at least I made it, right? I had never met
his cousins, and I didn’t know anyone in his family, and so I sat
in the back alone, going through the motions of a very Catholic
wedding, kneeling and crossing and saying prayers with everyone
else.

After the longish wedding, when everyone
poured out into the courtyard, I was caught up by a group of women
who forced me up a spiraled staircase for pictures. As I continued
to scan the milling crowd below for my boyfriend, I paused every so
often for the photographer. We took a God-awful amount of pictures,
and when I was finally released, I happened to see another chapel
on the far side of the courtyard. Another wedding had taken place,
and was just now finishing.

And there, exiting through the doors, was my
boyfriend.

Exactly. I had gone to the wrong wedding.
That’s me, Samantha Moon, the original wedding crasher. To this
day, I’m certain the bride is wondering who that cute, dark-haired
girl was in all her photos.

Back when I could take photos, of course.

Needless to say, that night only went from
bad to worse, and my boyfriend and I broke up in an epic fight. I
met Danny shortly thereafter and the rest, as they say, is
history.

Good times, I thought, as I stepped across
the street and headed under the veranda and into the gloomy bar
where the cello player had long since disappeared. Now, no one
played, and that was a damn shame.

I moved through the lobby and front desks,
and through what appeared to be yet another lobby lined with
presidential portraits. I assumed these were all the presidents who
had stayed here. The hotel felt damn old and I sensed many, many
lingering spirits. Hell, if I was a spirit, I would linger here,
too. A ghost could do worse than haunt the Mission Inn.

Now with the hair on my neck standing on end,
I turned and saw where one spirit was semi-manifesting. Staticy
energy formed into the shape of what appeared to be a teenage boy.
He was watching me casually from one of the spiraling staircases
that led up to the more expensive suites. As I watched him, he took
on more shape and made a partial appearance, the crackling energy
briefly replaced by a wispy cloud of ectoplasm. Had someone chosen
now to take a picture of the staircase, they would have captured an
honest-to-God ghost. Anyway, his eyes widened with some surprise
when he no doubt realized that I was watching him in return. He
came to life, so to speak, and drifted immediately over to me,
where he stood in front of me, smiling. Was that a wink?

I could be wrong, but I think he was flirting
with me.

Next, the strong impression of a name
appeared in my thoughts. “Your name is...Leland?” I asked.

He nodded vigorously, and now other spirits
seemed to take note. They were manifesting around us rapidly, like
human-shaped sparklers. Some fully formed, although most crackled
and spat crackling energy, only vaguely humanoid. Most were dressed
in older-style clothing. Some of the men even wore hats.

“Now look what you started, Leland,” I
whispered to the teen boy.

He frowned, and then shooed the other spirits
away, moving quickly to each. The others departed, some clearly
irritated, others fading into nothing or zipping away like blazing
comets through the hotel. As they did so, I caught a very real
little girl watching us from across the room. She was standing next
to her mother, her index finger hooked into her mouth. Her wide
eyes followed some of the fleeing spirits. Kids can see far more
than we realize.

The teen ghost faded in and out of clarity,
sometimes reverting to nothing more than a crackling human torch,
and other times to a dapper young man who could have hailed from
the 1920s. Once, he even made a gesture to dance, holding out his
hand as one would lead a woman to the dance floor, and only then
did I notice the ambient music playing over the hotel’s speakers. A
sort of jazzy/classical rag-time, of the type my grandmother would
listen to. Had the classical music drawn him downstairs, I
wondered, reminding him of his days when he was alive?

I was about to say goodbye and turn away when
I noticed something about his face. There was something that looked
like blood coating his lower jaw and staining the front of his
shirt. I next had the strong hit of a single word:
tuberculosis.

So Leland had died here at the hotel, long
ago, and has been hanging around ever since, his chin and shirt
forever stained with the ghostly hint of perhaps his last coughing
fit.

“I have to go,” I whispered to him, “but
thank you for the offer to dance.”

As I turned to leave, I realized I had no
clue how to actually get up to the dome. I turned back to the young
man, and somehow, someway, he was able to read my thoughts, because
he was nodding excitedly and motioning for me to follow him. He
held out his hand and, feeling rather silly, I reached out and took
it—or simulated taking it—knowing full well I looked silly as hell
to just about everyone else. Everyone, that is, but the little
girl.

He led me quickly through the massive
hotel.

Chapter Forty-two

We went through some doors—well, he went
through them, I had to open them—and once in the outside courtyard,
moved quickly past an elegant restaurant that I had always wanted
to try. Back in the day, Danny and I were too poor to dine
elegantly. Drinks and chicken tenders were about all we could
afford.