FORTY-TWO

A Phone Call

When Allegra returned home to Riverside Drive, Ben was waiting for her. He was sitting on the stoop and he had his hands folded in his lap. “I know where you were last night,” he said. “I know you went to him….”

“It’s not like that….”

“It’s all right. Please. It’s killing me. I don’t even know what to make of it. I don’t want to know what to make of it,”

Ben said. “But it’s sick, whatever is between you guys. It’s not… right.”

“Ben, please.”

“But hear me out—” Ben coughed into his handkerchief.

Allegra saw that the cloth was red with blood. He’d started coughing last week and was supposed to go to a doctor, but had been too busy to take care of it. Allegra would have to remind him. It was beginning to worry her so much that she didn’t even want to think about it.

She led him inside the town house, and they sat together in Cordelia’s formal living room.

“Allegra,” Ben said. It hurt her to hear her full name from his lips. He’d never called her that before. “I will love you no matter what. I don’t care that you were with Charles last night.

I don’t. I just want you,” he said.

Allegra swallowed her tears. She couldn’t do it, she thought. She couldn’t. She’d been so sure when she’d left Charles that she would renew her bond with him again, that she had chosen the right path, but now, seeing Ben, her resolve wavered. She couldn’t leave Ben. She loved him too much. Just then, the upstairs phone rang. It was the Conclave line, that only the Venators and Wardens used.

“Ben, I’m so sorry. I have to take this. I think it’s important.”

Ben waved his hand. “Go ahead,” he said, coughing again.

She ran upstairs and picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

“Martin here. Sorry to bother you, but I thought you might find this interesting,” Kingsley said. “I wanted to tell you before I left for my next assignment and forgot about it.”

“This isn’t a good time,” she said. “Can it wait?”

“When is?” The Venator sighed. “Sorry—I promise this won’t take long, what I have to say.”

“Get on with it, then.”

He cleared his throat. “So I looked into that thing you told me about—the diseased Red Bloods?”

“And?”

“I couldn’t find anything on it, not in any of the official files.”

Allegra bit her fingernails. “No?”

“Forsyth laughed. He said he’d never heard of such a thing. Said I was letting the voices in my head drive me crazy,”

Kingsley said, not sounding terribly insulted. Over the centuries, Allegra knew, he must have gotten used to the barbs and comments from the Blue Bloods. “I didn’t tell him I heard it from you. I didn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“He’s lying. There was a body in that van. I saw it.”

“Yes,” Kingsley said. “I found the ambulance records, the one for the clinic that the Conduits use. Here’s the thing: the records show there was a dead body in that van, but I checked San Francisco; there aren’t any familiars who have been reported missing or recently deceased.”

Allegra could not believe what she was hearing. Charles had told her to her face that it was a human familiar in the body bag. She had seen it herself—she tried to remember—the body had certainly looked human. “So what, then?”

“I don’t know. I can’t get any answers. But I asked around a little more and… I don’t know what to make of it, but apparently there’ve been a few vampires missing.” Kingsley exhaled.

“Missing?” No. It couldn’t be. Allegra thought of her fear that had led her to check the body. The fear that those who hunted the vampires were loose in the world again; an enemy they had eradicated centuries ago. It couldn’t be happening again. She thought of Roanoke and the missing colony. And there’d been others over the years—one or two here and there—vampires who’d gone off-Coven, maybe, or did not report to the Wardens. It was nothing, Charles had assured her.

There was nothing to fear. She’d had her doubts—she’d had so many doubts over the years, she realized, but she’d done nothing about them. All those doubts about what had truly happened in Florence; the secret Charles had been keeping from her.

“Yes. A few of the new Committee members who’d just been inducted can’t be accounted for.”

“What did the Elders say?”

“They won’t speak to me,” Kingsley said. “Anyway, I don’t know what to make of it. I’m sure it’s nothing. maybe a couple of kids playing hooky. But I thought I should tell you. You’ll tell Charles, right? I mean, he should know that someone’s not telling the truth.”

“Yes. Yes I will.” Allegra said. They said good-bye and hung up.

She returned downstairs, almost surprised to find Ben sitting on the living room couch. “I’m so sorry, but I have to go to Charles right now.”

“I understand,” Ben said bravely. Allegra wanted to comfort him, but she had no time to explain.