After another sleepless night, I found myself riding shotgun next to the vampire. I don’t know what Darius had said to Jacky, but Noctis had him take over the case. I thought that would be the end of my involvement, but the vampire approached me at breakfast and asked if I would come with him to talk to Aubert.

We were driving into the city in the huge SUV that Vasil favored. Since our little town was at least a hundred miles from everything important, it was going to be another long drive. I spent the time eyeing my driver, trying to figure out what to make of him.

He didn’t turn to dust in the sunlight. I knew that because the sun was already up when we walked out to the garage. On the other hand, he was wearing the darkest set of Ray-Ban sunglasses I’d ever seen. He was also wearing yet another expensive-looking suit. I couldn’t tell if that was the modern version of an opera cape or if he liked to look professional.

It seemed unfair to me. The man was a vampire—he ought to look like a vampire. There should be some kind of warning.

I tried, once again, to catch a glimpse of his teeth, to see if he had any obvious fangs. It never worked. He had perfected a demure, closed-lip smile that kept his teeth hidden.

“Miss Cole, what is it?”

I blinked. “Huh?”

“You keep staring at me. It’s making me nervous.”

“I’m making you nervous?”

“A woman, rumored to be a seer, is boring a hole through me with her all-black eyes while I’m driving. That would be enough to make anyone nervous. What are you thinking?”

“At the moment I’m thinking about the fact I can intimidate a vampire. You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty cool.”

“Note to self,” he said with one of those demure smiles, “do not show this one any weakness.”

“Nah. I was only trying to figure out what I could, you know, ask you. Without annoying you. It’s probably not wise to annoy a vampire. I don’t even know if I have blood—”

“You have blood. If you cut yourself, it’ll be red.”

There was a thoughtful pause.

“Should I ask how you know that?”

He gave me a look.

“I’ll take your word for it,” I said.

“Wise.”

“So, do you drink blood?”

“Not your blood. Not Conrad’s or Olivia’s—”

“What about Kappa?”

I saw a flicker of disgust cross his face.

“Not his either.”

“You know, I had a feeling people wouldn’t think he was tasty.”

“But I do have to drink blood to survive. Jacky makes sure I have enough. It comes in anonymous bags, so I’ve never had to bite someone.”

“Wow. So you drink, like, the world’s creepiest Capri Sun.”

“…Yes, but I’ll thank you not to put it like that.”

Maybe he had some kind of diabolical vampire charm that he used to lull people into trusting him. If he did, it was working. I felt comfortable enough to ask him a few more questions.

“Do you have fangs?”

“Yes.”

“Can I see them?”

“I prefer not to show them when I can avoid it.”

That explained all his closed-lip smiling.

“What do they look like?”

“Most of the time, they’re subtle enough people could mistake them for oversized canines.”

“And the rest of the time?”

“People can’t mistake them.”

“Huh. Can you eat normal food?”

“Yes, but it’s a lot like trying to live off junk food. It doesn’t do me any good, and too much makes me ill.”

“Superpowers?”

“What is this? Twenty questions?

“Ha! Yeah. Sure. This is my first time talking to a real vampire, and you think I’m only going to have twenty questions?”

The count answered most of my questions. When he didn’t want to answer, he dodged them with enough grace, I couldn’t get upset about it. He wouldn’t tell me how to kill him, but he did admit that the sun bothered him—mostly because of his sensitive eyes. All his senses were keen, almost to the point of pain, which made him the world’s pickiest eater since both the smell and taste could upset him.

“So…the garlic thing?”

“The smell. Ugh.”

He admitted he had abilities that I would “probably call superpowers,” but the only one he was willing to be specific about was his strength.

“How strong are you?”

“During the witching hour, I’m slightly stronger than Conrad.”

“What’s the witching hour?”

“That’s the term I use for the deepest hour of the night, when the sun is the furthest away.”

“Your powers come and go?”

“Some of them. My senses stay the same, no matter what, and even in the daytime I’m stronger than a human—but not by much. If you want to see me with all my powers, you have to wait until the sun sets.”

He laughed when I asked if he could turn into a bat.

When he was done laughing, I said, “Now, you dress very nice.”

“Thank you.”

“And you seem like a man who’s careful about his appearance.”

“This is about the mirrors, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Mirrors used to be backed with silver. They aren’t anymore.”

That seemed to be all the answer he expected me to need. Foolish vampire.

“Yeah,” I said, “that means nothing to me.”

“Silver has interesting magical properties. The alchemists call it the ‘pure’ metal because it can hold power, especially blessings, better than any other metal.”

“Is it dangerous to you?”

“Would you please stop trying to figure out how to kill me? It’s not polite.”

“Just asking.”

“Silver was often blessed in the superstitious days of yore, so many old mirrors wouldn’t show a vampire’s reflection.”

I was catching on. “But it wasn’t about the reflection or the mirror.”

He nodded. “It was about the blessing. Same thing for holy water, crosses, and cemeteries.” He turned into a tight parking lot and stopped the car. “We’re here.”

“Already?”

We had talked for almost the entire drive.

Darius pulled his keys from the ignition. “Miss Cole—”

“Let me guess, you want me to keep my mouth shut?”

He rubbed his jaw. “Well, you have proved you’re good at asking questions.” He raised an eyebrow. “Can you be professional?”

“Ahhhh…no. Probably not.”

“Hmmmm.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Count. I went through this with Jacky. I’ll try to keep my mouth shut, and when I fail, I’ll try to sound professional.”

“And you’ll keep your eyes open?”

“I’ll keep my eyes open.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I’m glad to hear it.”

We got out of the car.

The apartment building had a look of aged quality. At one point it might have been the best building on the street, and whoever owned it had put in the money to keep it in good condition.

There was a security guard waiting inside the door. I knew I couldn’t pretend to be that professional, so I stepped behind Vasil. He could do the talking. If he wasn’t in the mood to talk, he could probably just stand there and his suit would get us through the door.

But the suit wasn’t the only trick he had.

As we got close to the front desk, he pulled out a billfold and held it open near his face.

“My name is Darius Vasil, I’m a Special Agent with the FBI. I’m here to meet with Mr. Joel Aubert in unit 303.”

It was a good thing I was standing behind the vampire. His body blocked the security guard’s view of my gobsmacked expression.

The guard made a show of inspecting the credentials and checking the count’s face against the photo on the ID.

When he was satisfied, he said, “Good afternoon, Agent. Mr. Aubert is expecting you. I’ll let you through.”

As we rode up in the elevator, I whispered, “Can I see your badge?”

“Maybe later. There’s a camera in this elevator.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Washington DC.”

“That’s a bit of a way to travel.”

“I travel a lot. It didn’t seem too out of the way.”

“Can I have one?”

“Um…no?”

“Why not?”

“Because you haven’t earned it.”

“Fine. How much ‘keeping my eyes open’ does it take to earn a fake badge?”

“I would never allow you to use a fake badge.”

The hypocrite!

“And why not, Count Vasil?”

“Because mine’s real.”

The elevator pinged, and the doors opened. Vasil strode into the hallway. One stunned second later, I scurried after him.

“Hey! You mean you’re a real FBI agent?”

“My position with the Bureau is complicated, but, yes.” When he saw my grin, he said, “If you’re about to make an X-Files joke, allow me to assure you, I’ve heard it before.”

“Does that mean that other people know?”

“A few of them.”

“Bu—how?…why?”

“Please articulate, Miss Cole. ‘Speak clearly, if you speak at all…’”

I thought about that for a while.

“Were you this nitpicky before you became a vampire, or is it a part of the package deal?”

His “what” came out with a laugh.

“I’ve heard that vampires are compulsive perfectionists.” I stared, meaningfully, at his suit.

His hand went to his tie, but it was already straight. “First of all, there’s nothing compulsive about my perfectionism. I enjoy it. Second of all, your question was complete gibberish. I had no way to answer. I would hardly call that being ‘nitpicky.’”

“What about that last sentence? Were you being nitpicky about how I use the word nitpicky?”

“To answer your previous question—I don’t know about other vampires, but I cared about quality and exactness long before I became one.”

“So if I threw a cup of rice on the floor, you wouldn’t stop to pick up all the grains?”

“If you threw a cup of rice on the floor, I would leave the room so I wouldn’t have to listen to Igor lecture you. And, believe me, you would pick up the rice. Every last grain.”

By then we were standing in front of a door with the brass number 303 beside it.

The count stopped. “Are you ready to be professional?”

I saluted.

He watched me for another second, then knocked.

When the door opened, Vasil spoke first.

“Mr. Aubert?”

Joel Aubert looked like he was in his late twenties. He had rumpled blond-brown hair and some matching scruff that was almost, but not quite, thick enough to qualify as a beard. His clothes were casual—nothing but jeans, a T-shirt, and an unbuttoned, collared shirt over that.

“That’s me,” he said. “Are you Agent Vasil?”

“I am.” Darius nodded to me. “This is Miss Cole. May we come in?”

Aubert stepped back and motioned for us to enter. Darius stepped inside. I followed.

The apartment was small and cheaply furnished, but it was also clean. There were a few things left out, giving it a homey kind of feel.

Aubert guided us over to his couch and had us sit while he grabbed a chair from his minuscule dining table.

“What can I do for you, Agent? I presume this is about Professor Wayde?”

“You know about his murder?”

“I heard yesterday, when I went on campus.”

“Are you a student there?”

“No, but I’m doing some research at the library, and I’ve applied to work there.”

“As a teacher?”

He smiled. It was tight and couldn’t quite hide his nervousness. “I’m not qualified to teach there. It would be a paperwork job.”

“But you knew Professor Wayde?”

“Oh, yes. He was kind enough to help me out with some questions.”

“How often did you see him?”

“Two or three times a week. Sometimes more. It depended on my schedule.”

“Did you only see him at the college?”

“No. He invited me back to his house a few times, when our discussions went on long enough he wanted a beer.”

“So you drank with him?”

“Occasionally.”

“Would you consider him a friend?”

Aubert hesitated. “Well, I liked him. I don’t know if I was close enough I’d count as a friend.”

“Was he hard to get close to?”

There was another pause.

I’d been looking around the apartment (getting a real badge would probably take a lot more keeping-my-eyes-open), but those two pauses caught my attention. I turned my eyes to him.

A hand was up on his face, hiding half of his expression. He moved it to say, “No, I wouldn’t say that either.”

“How would you say it, Mr. Aubert?”

“I’d say that Wayde was a friendly person. People were drawn to him, and he let all of them in, but I’m not sure that he had many close friendships.”

“Did he have any?”

Aubert shrugged. “There were people he hung out with more than others. If you want to know who his close friends were, you could try asking Frost.”

“Frost?”

“Professor Ryan Frost. He teaches at the same college. I think he’s been friends with Wayde the longest.”

“Do you know Professor Frost?”

“Sure. There were a few times he was there while Wayde and I talked.”

“This would be at Wayde’s house? With a beer in hand?”

Aubert nodded. “And I say hello to him whenever we come across each other on campus.”

“When you were at Wayde’s house, did he ever take you into his study?”

Joel Aubert offered us another nervous smile. “I don’t know if I’ve seen much more of his house. He loved his study. That’s where we always talked.”

“But he had a living room,” I said.

Aubert and Vasil looked at me.

A stapler. That’s what I needed to keep my mouth shut. Although, super glue sounded less painful.

“Excuse me?” Aubert said.

“He had a nice living room,” I said. “It looked comfortable.”

The armchairs in Wayde’s study also looked comfortable, but the room itself was so crowded, I couldn’t imagine that someone would rather be there than in the neat, spacious living room on the other side of the wall.

Aubert shrugged again. “I guess Wayde liked to talk about scholarly stuff in his scholarly room.”

“With all that stuff looking down at you?” I said. “That must have been distracting.”

“I’m sorry, who are you…Miss…?”

“Cole,” Darius said. “Miss Cole is assisting the investigation.”

Aubert’s eyes moved over to the count. “But she’s not an agent.”

“No.”

He looked at me. “Police?”

I shook my head.

“Then may I ask how you’re assisting, exactly?”

Before I could get past my moment of panic to blurt out something about how death wanted me to take a look around, Vasil said, “Do you want her to leave, Mr. Aubert?”

Joel looked startled, then said, “No—it’s…it’s fine.”

I mentally applauded the vampire’s quick thinking.

“So you were familiar with Wayde’s study?” Darius asked.

“Yes.”

“Did anything stand out about it?”

“Like she said, he had a lot of artifacts. But, otherwise, no.”

“Did you ever get a chance to look at the Egyptian scroll?”

Aubert didn’t answer.

Vasil went on, his voice smooth and quiet, “Were there any other magicians in contact with Wayde?”

Aubert’s face cracked with a brittle smile. “You’re an FBI agent?”

“Yes.”

“But you know about the scroll?”

“Have the police talked to you yet?”

Aubert shook his head.

Vasil said, “They’re investigating the murder. I’m here to talk about the scroll.”

Joel leaned forward. “Did the Torr send you?”

“Something like that.”

Joel’s eyes flicked over to me.

When it came to who or what I might be, the fact that Darius had come from the Torr must have opened up a whole world of possibilities.

I wondered what I could try to pass myself off as. Vampire was taken. I was too bald to be a werewolf, too tall to be a fairy, and Cosmo told me I couldn’t be a witch—which was a shame, because after seeing him, I knew they could wear colors.

Vasil’s voice dragged me from my thoughts.

“Mr. Aubert?”

Joel smiled, and this time, it looked real. He relaxed into his chair with a sigh.

“All right,” he said. “Thank you for letting me know. Let’s start back at the beginning.”

Vasil’s only response was to raise an eyebrow.

Aubert went on, “I really am doing research at the library, but I have to bring in all my own material because, god knows, they don’t have anything when it comes to what I’m studying. Going there was an excuse to get to know Wayde. I was assigned to watch him by the Torr—specifically because of the Egyptian scroll. Did you know all this?”

“Please, go on.”

With that line, I was satisfied that Darius Vasil was a real agent. And a talented one. He wasn’t giving away anything.

“I managed to ingratiate myself enough to get into Wayde’s house and check things out. I did get to see the scroll.” Aubert shrugged again. I couldn’t tell if he did it all the time, or if he was intimidated by the situation. “I’m a sorcerer, so I didn’t really know what to make of it, but it was there. It was fine, and it stayed crammed in the corner of his bookcase when he wasn’t showing it off, so I thought it was safe.”

“Did Wayde often show it off?”

“I’m not sure. He showed it to me.”

“Did he set any stock by it?”

“He kept it on a bookshelf. He told me it was a fake, and he never made even the smallest effort to protect it. I can’t imagine he thought it was valuable.”

“To the best of your knowledge, did he ever try to use it?”

“Use it how? Do you mean read it?”

“Could he read it?”

“I doubt it. When I asked him what it said, he said he didn’t know.”

“Did you ever learn what it said?”

Aubert smiled. “Sorry, Agent. I don’t read Egyptian.”

“Do you know how he got the scroll?” Darius asked.

“I asked, but he never told me.”

“Do you mean he refused to answer your question?”

“It was more like he shrugged it off or managed not to hear me. I can’t tell you if it was deliberate.”

“Did you ever try to take control of the scroll?”

“I’m a sorcerer. Why would I want a religious scroll?”

“You never tried to secure it so others couldn’t use it?”

“The only instructions I’d been given were to make sure it was safe and that he wasn’t experimenting with it.”

Aubert was getting nervous again. I could hear it in his voice.

“You did fine, Mr. Aubert,” Darius assured him. “I was only asking.”

Aubert nodded. Probably to assure himself.

“And my question about the other magicians?” Darius prompted.

“Ashworth and Thorburn obviously know about the scroll—they’re the ones who called me in. I don’t think there’s anyone else involved, but I should tell you, I wouldn’t be the right person to ask.”

“Why not?” Darius said.

“Well, I was lying to everyone, wasn’t I? They didn’t know I was a magician, so I wouldn’t expect them to announce themselves.”

“You can’t sense magic?”

“Are we talking about a witch? No. I can’t sense witches.” He cleared his throat. “I can’t actually sense magic unless I’m in the middle of a spell.”

“So as far as you know, there were no other magicians who were involved with Wayde?”

“No.”

“Do you know how many people knew he had the scroll?”

“I’m sorry, Agent Vasil. I didn’t know Wayde that well. You’ll have to ask someone else.”

“I understand. Mr. Aubert, circumstances have made it important for us to get our hands on that scroll. Do you know where it is?”

“Probably still in the bookcase. May I ask—”

“Do you know who inherits from Wayde?”

Aubert scoffed. “I have no idea.”

“Do you have any plans to leave town any time soon?”

“No. This is where I live. That’s why Ashworth called me.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’d like you to make yourself convenient, in case we have any other questions.”

“Of course.”

“We’re hoping to get permission to check Wayde’s study, to see if the scroll is still there. Since you know where the scroll’s supposed to be and what it looks like, would you be willing to help us?”

“I don’t think that’d be a problem.”

“Then you should be hearing from me soon. Thank you for your time, Mr. Aubert.”

We all stood up. Aubert led us to the door and shut it behind us when we left.

Darius and I walked down the hall in silence.

While we were waiting for the elevator, he said, “I noticed you were looking around his apartment. Did you see anything?”

“No.”

“Hmm.”

It was a very neutral “hmm,” but my stomach blanched all the same.

“Where are we going next?” I asked.

“We’re going to talk to Detective Moran.”

“Is he the guy who used to be in charge of the case before you got here?”

“The FBI does not take over investigations. I’ll be working with him while focusing on my own case. He’s looking for a murderer—”

“While you’re looking for a fake scroll?”

“Exactly.”

“Sounds complicated.”

He sighed. “You have no idea.”

“Darius, is the scroll really that important? I mean, are we sure that’s why Wayde’s soul is missing?”

“We’re not sure of anything at this point, but I’d still like to know what was on it.”