"I'm going to ask you one more time. Is Sandra here?"

She shakes her head.

"Then why are you?"

She gestures to my hands, a plea to let her go.

My turn to shake my head. "Not likely."

A movement behind me and to my left draws my attention. I take a quick look. The skateboarder and his buddy have circled around and are coming back. They're whooping and pointing at us like we're an opening act for pro wrestling. It's drawing the attention of people coming out of the hotel.

Great.

I keep one hand on Tamara's arm while I open my car's pa.s.senger door with the other. I shove her inside. Then I s.n.a.t.c.h up Gloria's suitcase, run around to the driver's side and throw myself into the seat. In a second, we're hauling a.s.s away from the curb.

CHAPTER 41.

TAMARA HAS ONE HAND ON THE DASH, ONE AT her throat, ma.s.saging bruises already starting to form. "You're insane, you know that? You almost killed me back there."

Her voice sounds like it hurts to talk, like she's sc.r.a.ping the words across sandpaper. Good.

"Almost being the operative word. What were you doing at the hotel?"

"What do you think I was doing? I was there to see you."

"Did Sandra send you?"

She shakes her head.

"So, what? You tracked me down to finish what you started in the bar?"

For a moment she looks puzzled at the question. Then she smiles. "c.r.a.p. If I wanted to fight you, you'd already be bleeding in the dirt."

I jab the side of her head with a finger. She flinches, recovers and then smiles again, ruefully this time.

"Okay. You got the best of me back there, but only because I didn't see it coming. Would've never happened otherwise."

"Right. You do know what I am, don't you?" "A hot-s.h.i.t vampire? Is that supposed to scare me?"

"Unless you really are dumber than you look."

Tamara stops ma.s.saging her throat. I feel her tense. She's tired of my insults, tired of the verbal sparring. "So. You want to throw down? Pull the f.u.c.king car over and we'll do it."

For one second, I actually consider it. Beating the s.h.i.t out of Sandra's minion would really feel good. Except that I have no quarrel with Tamara. My quarrel is with Sandra.

"I don't want to fight you. I want you to tell me what you were doing sitting on the hood of my car. Think you can handle answering that simple question?"

Tamara is glaring at me. "I was ready to tell you that back at the hotel. Before you dumped my a.s.s on the sidewalk. You didn't ask then, though, did you?"

"No," I say through gritted teeth. "You scratched my car with those f.u.c.king chaps. What were you thinking?"

"It's only a car," she shoots back.

"Yeah, well, remember that sentiment when I drop-kick that Harley of yours from here to tomorrow."

For once, she doesn't have a comeback. In fact, when I sneak a look at her, she has a pensive look on her face. I don't know what surprises me more, that she might be considering the possibility that I feel about my car the way she does her Harley or that she's capable of thinking at all.

I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. "Let's start over. Why did you want to see me?"

But before she answers, she sits up in the seat. "Where are we going?"

She's finally noticed that we're heading out of the city. I'd hopped on 5 North and now swerve toward the Interstate 8 East exchange. "We're taking a drive to the mountains."

"The mountains? Why?"

"I've got someone to see."

"I don't want to go to the mountains."

"I don't remember asking you. I had only two hours to get up there and back. You made me late."

She snorts. "You'll never make it in two hours. Not in this."

"You insulting my car again?"

"Calling it like I see it. You want to make it to the mountains and back in two hours? I'll take you. On my bike."

I look over at her. I know she's right. The Jag's fast. On the highway. Half the trip to the cabin is on back roads. Dirt roads. I barely had enough time to get to David's cabin and back before my run-in with Tamara. If I want to get into Jason's house, I have to be back here as close to two as possible.

I don't remember seeing Tamara's bike parked anywhere near my car. As that thought percolates, I realize I'm going to accept her suggestion. Why not? Now I know I can take her. She's not Sandra.

And I'm curious. She still hasn't told me why she's here.

"Where's your bike?"

She smiles. "Pull off at the next exit and go back. I'm a block from the hotel."

I do it, putting as much menace as I can into my tone when I say, "You'd better not be f.u.c.king with me or . . ."

"Yadda, yadda, yadda," she says. "I know. You'll beat the c.r.a.p out of me and kick my bike. Christ, you vampires are all alike."

It takes us exactly fifteen minutes to get back to the hotel, find Tamara's bike and prepare to head out again. In the car I told her where we were going so I swing behind her on the Harley, watch while she slips on her helmet and ask if she has one for me. Now safety is not a concern for me. If we crashed, it'd take my landing on a wooden fence post to hurt me, but there are helmet laws in California and getting stopped by a cop would be one more delay.

When I mention that to Tamara, she reaches into a saddlebag and hands me an orange knit cap, hand knit it appears, with head flaps. Along with a headset. "So we can talk on the way," she says.

No kidding. I slip on the headset and adjust the microphone, eyeing the cap. "Jayne's mom know you have this?"

She doesn't say anything. Probably never saw Serenity. I jam the cap on my head, asking, "This really pa.s.ses for a helmet?"

"If you're going fast enough."

Then she proves what she means by gunning away from the curb at fifty miles an hour.

Obviously, cops aren't the concern to Tamara they are to me. She weaves in and out of city traffic, hits the freeway going about eighty and launches that Harley like a rocket once we hit open road. With all that, she doesn't draw as much as a raised eyebrow from the motorists we fly past. It's like we've become invisible.

Once I've gotten used to the breakneck speed, I relax my grip on her waist and sit up straighter.

"It's about time," she grumbles. "You were about to cut off my circulation."

I can hear her loud and clear through the headset but the knit cap offers no protection from the wind. My eyes are soon streaming.

"I feel like an idiot in this cap."

She doesn't laugh out loud, but I feel her shoulders shake. "You should see how you look."

I resist the urge to smack her. "Not a good idea to p.i.s.s off a vampire," I growl. "I could break your neck and take that helmet before your brain knows you're dead."

She's quiet for a moment, then she blows out a breath. "Listen, as much as I enjoy trading insults with you, there was a reason I came to see you today. I'm worried about Sandra."

Not exactly what I wanted to hear. My shoulders tighten, my stomach lurches. "And you're coming to me because Sandra and I are such good buddies?"

She shakes her head. "No, I'm coming to you because you're the only one who can save her."

That does provoke a laugh. "You can't be serious. Do you know what happened last night? She worked some kind of spell on me.

She had me seeing and hearing things. Things I didn't ever want to see or hear again. I've told everyone I know that I don't want Avery's estate. She can have it. All I want is for that b.i.t.c.h to leave me alone."

I can't see Tamara's face, but I feel her back stiffen, see her hands tighten on the handgrips. "It wasn't Sandra," she says.

"Oh, right. It wasn't Sandra. Listen, I don't know exactly how she did it, but somehow she knew things Avery said to me. She even wore a copy of the d.a.m.ned dress he gave me. She scared the s.h.i.t out of me, and I don't like being scared. So, if Sandra really is in some kind of trouble . . . Gee, how can I put this? I don't give a f.u.c.k."

"You should." Tamara's voice has become hard. "Didn't you wonder how she did it? How she knew so much about you and Avery?"

"I know how she did it. Listen, since I've become vampire I've seen all kinds of weird s.h.i.t. I've seen witches raise demons. I've seen shape-shifters shift. I know empaths and psychics. I know how she did it. It was a spell. I have no intention of ever letting her get close enough to do it to me again."

"It wasn't Sandra," Tamara says, more forcefully this time.

"Then who was it?" I'm so angry, blood pounds at my temples. I'm shaking at the memory of the wrenching terror that had me vomiting at the side of the road. "If it wasn't Sandra, who the f.u.c.k was it?"

"And you called me stupid," Tamara snaps. "It was Avery."

"Avery?" I repeat, loading the word with as much scorn as I possibly can. "You mean the Avery I staked during the fight that almost killed me? The Avery that dissolved into dust and blew away on a puff of air? That Avery?"

That's what I say to Tamara. Inside my head, though, a sudden, startling kernel of doubt turns my thoughts in a disturbing direction.

When Sandra looked at me, when she spoke Avery's words, she looked and sounded different. That had to be part of the spell, though, right? If possession was even remotely possible, Williams or Frey would have said something.

"Do you get it now?" Tamara says after a moment. "Avery has taken over Sandra's body. He's doing it to get back at you. He hates you so much he'll do anything, even kill Sandra to do it."

No. I shake off the doubt. It's not possible. "Avery is dead." It's unequivocal. "I killed him. I thought Sandra was psychotic. She's delusional as well. So are you if you believe what she's telling you. We're almost at my partner's cabin. I'll drive back with him.

You want to take a message to Sandra? How about this? I don't want to see either of you ever again. If I do, I'll kill you both."

CHAPTER 42.

AMARA STARTS TO SAY SOMETHING, BUT I CUT her off. "I know what Sandra is doing. She's getting revenge because her cheating husband was getting ready to dump her a.s.s. It's the only thing that makes sense. How she found out about Avery and me in such detail, I don't know. Maybe she's a voyeur and she was there that night watching us. Maybe that's how she gets her rocks off. What I do know is that possession isn't possible. I staked Avery and he didn't disappear or fly away or turn into a rat.

He dissolved into dust. Into dust."

"You don't understand," Tamara says.

The vibe she's sending off is hostile, anxious and powerful as a bad smell.

It triggers defense mechanisms of my own. If she tries anything, the vampire Anna is ready. I lean forward, tighten my grip around her waist again until she whimpers, and whisper, "I don't want to understand."

Tamara grows quiet. We're approaching the turnoff that takes us off the highway, into the woods. For the next fifteen minutes we bounce along on a dirt road. Then, dead ahead is the last turnoff to David's cabin. It's not marked, so I drop my hands, touch Tamara's shoulder and point to the left. She maneuvers the Harley smoothly into the turn. I had braced myself because I wasn't sure she would. I figured she might take it at breakneck speed, bank sharply and dump me off the bike.

The dirt road drops off after about half a mile and becomes hard-packed gravel. Tamara downshifts and reduces speed. She can't see the cabin. It's set back about a mile and completely hidden in the pines. I remember how I felt when I saw it for the first time.

Tamara is in for a surprise.

I point to the left again, to a paved driveway. She takes it, and I wait for her reaction when we round the last bend and the cabin comes into view.

Predictably, her shoulders jump. If I could see her face, I'm sure the eyes would be big and the mouth agape.

The "cabin" is a two-story affair, about twelve rooms and three thousand square feet. It's made of pine, stained a color close to that of a setting sun-or blood. David's father built it in the early seventies, right after the birth of his son, from logs harvested from their own land. Then David invested a lot of money during his football years to upgrade and renovate the place. There are two big stone chimneys, one at each end, and a wraparound porch in front. The windows are all open, and sheer curtains move with the breeze.

Tamara stops the bike in front and dismounts. "Who owns this place?" she asks.

I swing off the back and pull the cap off my head. "A friend."

I start away from the bike, but Tamara puts a hand on my arm. "This isn't over." It's spoken quietly, but the harshness of the threat comes through.

I shake off her hand. She's probably right. The next time I face Sandra, though, it will be on my terms.

I head toward the front door but sounds from the back stop me: the rhythmic swish of an ax through the air and the crack as it hits wood. I switch directions.