Embraced By Darkness (Riley Jenson Guardian 5)

"You might."

"Excellent. Let's get down to coffee and cake then."

We did. And he did keep trying.

Rut he didn't get lucky.

Jared dropped the tour group back on the main island an hour later, and left me with a. promise to continue his seduction attempts during his lunch break. Grinning at his determination, I headed back to my little villa and rang my brother.

"Once again, she rings at an indecent hour," he said, by way of greeting.

I looked at my watch. "It's nearly lunchtime."

"Any hour before noon is an indecent hour after the night I've had."

"Self-inflicted pain garnishes no sympathy from me, bro."

"I'll remember that next time you want sympathy and coffee after a late night carousing."

I grinned. He'd feed me coffee no matter what, because he knew it was the only way to soothe the savage beast. Or at least shut her up. "You had a chance to look at the file yet?"

"No." He paused. "Why?"

"Because I've been asking around about Adrienne and the man she was supposedly seeing, and have hit an odd little wall." I told him about the two Jim Dentons. "It's rather odd to have two people with the same name, and yet no one seems to know or recognize the second man." No one except Jared, that was.

"You done a mind search?"

"Yeah, but without much luck. I found possible evidence of memory tampering on the older Jim, but I'm not yet skilled enough to undo the fudging."

"Memory tampering doesn't indicate foul play. It could just be a vampire not wanting her victim to remember their encounter."

Because drinking from unknowing or unwilling hosts was illegal in most states of Australia. Apparently Tasmania was a little more free and easy, allowing vamps to drink from whomever they pleased as long as they took minimum amounts. Which probably explained why human tourism to Tassie had fallen, and vamp tourism had increased.

"I couldn't see any evidence of bite marks."

"If it happened weeks ago, you wouldn't."

"Trust me, the fudging didn't feel like the work of a vamp."

"Then what did it feel like?"

"I don't know."

"Fat lot of good that'll do the investigation."

"This from the man lazing about in bed feeling sorry for himself." I paused, "Why isn't Liander there pampering you?"

"He had to go to work early. The apprentices are working on the goblin masks today, and he has to supervise."

Because they'd screwed up the goblin masks previously, no doubt. Those two weren't the sharpest pencils in the drawer from what I'd seen of them.

"So what are you going to do next?" he continued.

"I don't know. There's really nothing much more I can do here. I'll need to talk to the parents of the other victims and see if there's some other connector. There's something odd about it all."

"If you add, 'I feel it in my bones,' I'm going to come up there and hit you."

I grinned. "There's nothing wrong with that saying - aside from the fact you hate it."