Spell Bound - Kelley Armstrong [92]
“Really?” Cassandra murmured.
“Me and some friends—supernatural friends, of course—we love vamps. I’ve met more than anyone else. The next thing on my list is to, you know . . . party with one.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “That would be so hot. Do you think there’s any chance I could meet Aaron? Maybe later?”
“No,” Cassandra said.
I leaned forward. “Between us, I’d strike vamp-screwing off your list. Ain’t gonna happen. It can’t. You know that, right?”
She stared at me.
“Basic biology,” I said. “Guys need blood to get it up. Vampires don’t have blood.”
“So you mean . . .”
“Yep.”
“Viagra?”
“Nope.”
“That’s awful.”
“The true tragedy of a vampire’s immortality.”
Cassandra nodded sadly. She’s a very good actor. Truth is, biology is bullshit, at least when it comes to supernaturals. I had a feeling I’d just started a very nasty urban legend, one that would not endear me to the male half of the vampire community. Cassandra seemed okay with it, though.
“Now, about Anita Barrington . . .”
It took a few minutes—and a fizzy pink drink—to ease Eloise’s depression, but once she got talking about Anita, she zoomed back on track. Seems Eloise was an amateur immortality quester herself, which came as no surprise. A fascination with vampires and a hunger for immortality went hand in hand.
Questers usually wanted a literal piece of vampires, something they could study. Matthew Hull had almost lopped off Zoe’s head to get the biggest lab specimen of all for his experiments.
“Anita Barrington is famous,” Eloise gushed. “When we heard she was dead, we all said ‘no way.’ It’s a cover-up. She’s found the secret to immortality and she’s used it.”
“Then you saw her last week.”
“Uh-huh. Right here in L.A.”
When I asked her to describe the woman, she took out her cell phone and showed me a picture. I did a double-take. Then I cursed myself for not asking someone for a description of Anita, because if I had, I might have realized I’d already met her.
Anita Barrington was Giles’s partner, Althea. Now I knew why she’d thought I might recognize her, and had been happy that I hadn’t.
“Why didn’t you send this to Aaron?” Cassandra asked.
“Over an unsecured connection? No way. Do you want me to send it to your phone now?”
I gave her my number, and she sent it. How there was any difference between sending it when I was two feet away or two thousand miles away, I don’t know.
“And you said she was meeting someone who tried to recruit you to the group?”
“Right. See, I’ve got a lot of friends. Supernatural friends. A bunch of them work for the Nasts. I used to, but I didn’t like it there.”
In other words, she’d been fired for incompetence. That was about the only way out of a Cabal.
“These people must have thought I was, like, the leader of our group, because they wanted to talk to me.”
More likely, they’d simply picked one who didn’t work for the Nasts. Safer that way.
“They set up this meeting with me in a real swanky bar. Bought me drinks and everything.”
“They?” I said.
“Two women. Said their names were Lillian and Jeanne.”
Jeanne was one of the younger women I’d met before Giles’s big revival—one of the names I’d stored for future reference.
“They told me all about this revolution of theirs. It sounded lame. I mean, why would we want humans knowing what we are? My friend, Em—she’s a witch—says that if people knew about our powers, they’d get all paranoid, you know? She couldn’t use her unlock spells anymore, and even if she didn’t, people would be thinking she did, and building special locks that witches can’t bust. Where’s the advantage? I don’t see it.”
Proving Eloise was smarter than she seemed. Or she had smarter friends.
“I was nice about it, though. I promised I’d tell all my friends. Then I left, and I got all the way down the street before I remembered my sunglasses. That was karma, you know.”
“Karma?”
“Fate or something. That I forgot my sunglasses. Because when I went back in, who was sitting