Blood Price

fancy."

    She sounded doubtful, so Vicki changed the subject. Her mother had liked Celluci well enough the few times they'd met, she just thought that temperamentally they'd both be better off with someone calmer. "It's spring?" Gusts of wind slapped what could've been rain but looked more like sleet against the windows.

    "It's April, dear. That makes it spring."

    "Yeah, what's your weather like?"

    Her mother laughed. "It's snowing."

    Vicki brushed cookie crumbs off her sweatshirt and got herself more coffee. "Look, Mom, this is going to be costing the department a fortune." Her mother had worked for eighteen years as the private secretary of the head of Life Sciences at Queen's University, Kingston and she abused the privileges that had accumulated as often as possible. "Although you know I enjoy talking to you, did you have an actual reason for calling?"

    "Well, I was wondering if you might be coming down for Easter."

    "Easter?"

    "It's this weekend. I won't be working tomorrow or Monday, we could have four whole days together."

    Darkness, demons, vampires, and six bodies, the life violently ripped from them.

    "I don't think so, Mom. The case I'm on could break at any time. . . ."

    After listening to a few more platitudes and promising to stay in touch, Vicki hung up and went to her weight bench to work off equal parts of cookies and guilt.

    * * *
    "Henry, it's Caroline. I've got tickets to the Phantom for May fourth. You said you wanted to see it and now's your chance. Give me a call in the next couple of days if you're free."

    It was the only message on the machine. Henry shook his head at his vague sense of disappointment. There was no reason for Vicki Nelson to call. No reason he should want her to.

    "All right," he glared at his reflection in the antique mirror over the telephone table, "you tell me why I trusted her. Circumstance?" He shook his head. "No. Circumstance said I should have disposed of her. A much neater solution with much less risk. Try again. She reminded you of someone? If you live long enough, and you will, everyone will remind you of someone."

    Turning away from the mirror, he sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. He could deny it all he wanted but she did remind him of someone, not in form perhaps but in manner.

    Ginevra Treschi had been the first mortal he had trusted after the change. There had been others with whom he had played at trust but in her arms he was himself, not needing to be anything more. Or less.

    When he found he could not live in Elizabeth's England-it was both too like and too unlike the England he had known-he had moved south, to Italy and finally to Venice. Venice had much to offer one of his kind for the ancient city came alive at night and in its shadows he could feed as he chose.

    It had been carnival, he remembered, and Ginevra had been standing by San Marco, at the edge of the square, watching the crowd surging back and forth before her like a living kaleidoscope. She'd seemed so very real amidst all the posturing that he'd moved closer. When she left, he followed her back to her father's house then spent the rest of the night discovering her name and situation.

    "Ginevra Treschi." Even three hundred years and many mortals later it still sounded in his mouth like a benediction.

    The next night, while the servants slept and the house was quiet and dark, he'd slipped into her room. Her heartbeat had drawn him to the bed and he'd gently pulled the covers back. Almost thirty and three years a widow, she wasn't beautiful, but she was so alive-even asleep- that he'd found himself staring. Only to find, a few moments later, that she was staring back at him.

    "I don't wish to hurry your decision," she'd said dryly. "But I'm getting chilled and I'd like to know if I should scream."

    He'd intended to convince her he was only a dream but he found he couldn't.

    They had almost a year of nights together.

    "A convent?" Henry raised himself up on one elbow, disentangling a long strand of ebony hair from around the back of his neck. "If you'll forgive me saying so, bella, I don't think you'd enjoy convent life."

    "I'm not making a joke, Enrico. I go with the Benedictine Sisters tomorrow after early Mass."

    For a moment, Henry couldn't speak. The thought of his Ginevra locked away from the world struck him as close to a physical blow. "Why?" he managed at last.

    She sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. "I had a choice, the Sisters or Giuseppe