“Don’t be alarmed, I’m just covering you up. I’ve never seen a woman eat that many bean burritos, so I’m preparing for the aftermath.”
I laughed tiredly, staring at Christian’s empty bed to my left. “That’s good to know. For a minute there, I thought you were being nice.”
“Wouldn’t want to ruin my reputation.” He fell onto the other bed, pillows propped behind his back. The TV light flickered against his bare chest in the dim room.
He almost looked like a regular man. In the low light, I couldn’t tell how flawless his skin was or how eerily black his eyes were. The short beard shadowed most of his face, and his dark eyes danced with the light from the television. Maybe now he seemed like less of a monster because I knew something personal about his past. A blind sister. He must have looked after her. What kind of man was Christian before he became a Vampire? I imagined him standing on a green hill, staring at the sea with the sky reflecting in his blue eyes, his hair tangling in the wind. If his father was illiterate, they must have been poor. Perhaps farmers. I pictured him in tall boots with suspenders holding up his dirty trousers. Was that how they dressed? Based on what he’d told me, my guess was that he’d left Ireland in the late eighteen hundreds or early twentieth century. I smiled when I imagined him plowing a field, mud spattered across his bare chest and a mule braying at the end of a rope.
“Enjoying the view?” he asked.
“I’m sleeping.”
“I can hear your lashes scraping against the pillow each time you blink.”
“Is that more interesting than the couple screwing next door?”
He reclined his head. “She’s faking it.”
I turned over on my side and tucked my arm beneath my head. “Where did you go earlier? I woke up and didn’t see you.”
“Out for a walk.”
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. “What do you think of the murder?”
“I think it’s peculiar,” he said flatly.
“How so? This is just us talking.”
He scraped his teeth against his bottom lip. “Even a Vampire who drinks too much has a habit of licking the wound to heal it. The fact that the perpetrator hasn’t is the only way they’ve been able to link these crimes.”
I scratched an itch on my neck. “Have you ever heard of a Breed serial killer? I mean a legit one. Not the crimes of passion or someone with bloodlust, but a bona fide killer who does it for pleasure.”
“That’s why the elders want to approve the younglings brought on—same with the Mageri. They don’t want anyone with mental instabilities running around. But there are ancients who were made for entirely different reasons. Fierce warriors. Men designed to kill in battle. It was how makers protected themselves. Imagine how those men are adjusting in today’s world where their services are no longer required. I’m not saying it’s common or not, but killers don’t usually dispose of the bodies in a public place.”
“You know what’s been bothering me?”
Christian finally turned to look at me. “What’s that?”
“She was missing a shoe. I didn’t give it much thought at first. I guess I assumed like everyone else that it fell off in the struggle or when he dragged her body, but I can’t stop thinking about it, and now I know why. She had lace-up shoes. The kind that fit snugly and are hard to remove. You can’t just tug them off; you have to loosen the laces by pulling them from several of the holes.”
“Why would he take off her shoe?”
I rolled onto my back. “I don’t know. Maybe he undressed her and then lost the shoe when putting her clothes back on. Maybe she kept diamonds hidden in her shoe, or maybe he was in her apartment during the attack when she was taking off her shoes. Maybe what bothers me is that no one mentioned it.”
“Aye. But you can hardly draw any conclusions from that.”
I sat up and stripped away my blanket. “You can’t ignore anything at a crime scene. He put her right next to the concrete so he wouldn’t have to walk in the dirt and leave any footprints behind.”
“Then why not leave her on the concrete?” Christian rose from the bed and strode toward the dresser to lean against it.
“Where were the other bodies found? Why do the authorities want us to look at new cases but not take the old ones into consideration?”
“Perhaps they’re afraid one of them might not be related and will lead us on a wild-goose chase. That’s how it works, Raven. We take what we’re given. And it’s better if we work a case with clues we can see with our own eyes.”
“So we have to sit around and wait for him to kill again?”
“It’s not like we have a choice.”
I peeled off one of my socks and tossed it to the floor. “Didyounotice anything unusual?”
