Blood Price

dialed her number and listened to her complete message before hanging up. It told him nothing at all.

    Where was she?

    He considered going to her apartment and trying to pick up some kind of a trail but discarded the idea almost immediately. The feeling that he should stay in the condo was stronger than ever, keeping him in a perpetual sort of twitchy unease.

    As long as he had to hang around anyway, he'd been attempting to use that feeling in his writing.

    Smith stepped backward, sapphire eyes wide, and snatched the captain's straight razor off his small shaving stand. "Come one step closer, " she warned, an intriguing little catch in her voice, "and I'll cut you!"

    It wasn't going well. He sighed, saved, and turned off the computer. What was taking Vicki so long?

    Unable to remain still, he walked into the living room and peered down at the city. For the first time since he'd bought the condo, the lights failed to enthrall him. He could only think of them going dark and the darkness spreading until the world became lost in it.

    He moved to the stereo, turned it on, pulled out a CD, put it back, and turned the stereo off.
    Then he began to pace the length of the living room. Back and forth, back and forth, back. . . .

    Even through the glass doors of the bookcase he could feel the presence of the grimoire but, unlike Vicki, he named it evil without hesitation. A little over a hundred years ago it had been one of the last three true grimoires remaining in the world, or so he'd been told, and he had no reason to doubt the man who'd told him-not then, not now.

    * * *
    "So you're Henry Fitzroy." Dr. O'Mara gripped Henry's hand, his large pale eyes gleaming.
    "I've heard so much about you from Alfred here, I feel that I already know you."

    "And I you," Henry replied, stripping off his evening gloves and carefully returning exactly the amount of pressure applied. The hair on the back of his neck had risen and he had a feeling that appearing stronger than this man would be just as dangerous as appearing weaker. "Alfred admires you a great deal."

    Releasing Henry, Dr. O'Mara clapped Alfred on the shoulder. "Does he now?"

    The words held an edge and the Honorable Alfred Waverly hastened to fill the silence that followed, his shoulder dipping slightly under the white knuckled grip. "It's not that I've told him anything, Doctor, it's just that. . . ."

    "That he quotes you constantly," Henry finished with his most disarming grin.

    "Quotes me?" The grim expression eased. "Well, I suppose one can't object to that."

    Alfred beamed, eyes bright above slightly flushed cheeks, the expression of terror that had caused Henry to intervene gone as though it had never existed.

    "If you will excuse me, Mr. Fitzroy, I have a number of things I must attend to." The doctor waved an expansive hand. "Alfred will introduce you to the other guests."

    Henry inclined his head and watched his host leave the room through narrowed eyes.

    The ten other guests were all young men, much like the Honorable Alfred, wealthy, idle, and bored. Three of them, Henry already knew. The others were strangers.

    "Well, what do you think?" Alfred asked, accepting a whiskey from a blank-faced footman after introductions had been made, the proper things said, and they were standing alone again.

    "I think you've grossly misled me," Henry told him, refusing a drink. "This is hardly a den of iniquity."

    Alfred's smile jerked up nervously at the corners, his face paler than usual under the flickering gaslight. "Dash it, Henry, I never said it was." He ran his finger around the edge of his whiskey glass. "You're lucky to be here, you know. There's only ever twelve invited and Dr.
    O'Mara wanted you specifically after Charles . . . uh, had his accident."

    Accident; Charles was dead, but Alfred's Victorian sensibilities wouldn't let him say the word. "I've been meaning to ask you, why did Dr. O'Mara want me?"

    Alfred flushed. "Because I told him all about you."

    " All about me?" Given the laws against homosexuality and Alfred's preferences, Henry doubted it, but to his surprise the young man nodded.

    "I couldn't help myself. Dr. O'Mara, well, he's the kind of person you tell things to."

    "I'm sure he is," Henry muttered, thanking God and all the Saints that Alfred had no idea of what he actually was. "Do you sleep with him, too?"

    "I say, Henry!"

    The bastard son of Henry VIII, having little patience with social conventions, merely asked the