Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(42)

“Sister Margot says we don’t need it. That if we had it we’d be tempted to get radios, or even a television set, which would be a mistake. Sometimes I think she must have been Amish before she became a nun. I don’t think that little thing will be a problem, though.”

Caxton nodded her thanks and set up the recorder, putting a small microphone on the table where it could catch both their voices. She decided to get right to business. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about your father. Have you been in touch with him recently? I mean before he changed.”

The girl shook her head. “Not for about six months. The whole family is sort of estranged. Until two days ago I hadn’t seen Uncle Angus since I was a child. Mom I saw just a few weeks ago, but we didn’t speak for very long, we were—”

Caxton stopped her, not wanting to talk about Astarte. That would probably bring up a lot of emotional stuff she didn’t need. She needed to keep this interview on track. “When was the last time you spoke with your father?”

“I was in…Belgium,” Raleigh said. Her face clouded as if the memory was painful.

“You were in college at the time. Your father told me that. You were doing a semester abroad.”

Raleigh shrugged. “That was how it started. I wanted to study great art. They have a lot of amazing museums in Belgium. Have you ever been?”

Caxton smiled. “No.” She’d never been out of the country, except one quick visit to Canada when she was a kid. She’d rarely left her home state. “So you saw the museums,” she prompted.

“Yes. And they were wonderful. But you can’t just look at paintings all day, and write papers about them all night. I went with a friend of mine, Jane. She—”

Caxton took a notepad out of her pocket. “Last name?”

The girl frowned. “That’s not important to the story I’m telling.”

Caxton smiled through gritted teeth. “You never know what’s important. It’s often the little details that matter.”

“I suddenly feel like I’m being interrogated,” Raleigh said.

I don’t have time for this, Caxton thought. “I’m just trying to learn everything I can. This isn’t even an official conversation, just a backgrounder.”


“It’s just I don’t want to get Jane in any trouble. She’s—well. She’s living a certain lifestyle. Some people don’t approve of that lifestyle. It involves breaking some very silly laws.”

“You mean she’s a drug user,” Caxton said.

Raleigh looked startled. “Yes! How did you know that?”

“It’s not magic. Just experience.” She’d heard that kind of evasion before. “Is Jane currently within the borders of the United States?”

Raleigh shook her head.

“She’s still over in Europe?” That got a nod. “Then I couldn’t arrest her even if I wanted to. I don’t have any jurisdiction over there. But let’s forget about her last name. Just tell me what happened.”

Raleigh looked up at the ceiling. She exhaled a long and noisy breath and then launched into it. “I was young and very foolish at the time. I was also very bored. Jane and I were roommates in this tiny little place in Brussels. The rent was nothing, but we were always broke anyway. We ate a lot of French fries because they were cheap—they actually invented French fries in Belgium, did you know that? They aren’t really French at all. Living so cheaply was in some ways a very spiritual experience. There’s a liberation that comes with owning next to nothing. We would sit around talking about art, like, all night long. We didn’t get a lot of sleep, but we didn’t ever feel all that bad the next day. You know how it is when you’re young.”

Caxton smiled and nodded, though she didn’t know at all. Her own experience had been quite different.

“Jane really liked to party. You know what I mean? It was just drinking, at first. We had this really cheap wine that came in a blue bottle and it tasted awful, but you could buy cases of it for nothing. We would have people come over, other students, sometimes even Belgian kids, and we would just have so much fun. Laughing and singing until the people who lived downstairs would bang on their ceiling with a broom handle, which always just made us laugh more. Sometimes people would bring other things.”

“You mean drugs.”

Raleigh nodded and looked away. “That wasn’t my thing. I always said no. I mean at first. They would pass around a joint and it just looked nasty, with everybody’s spit on the end. Sometimes they had pills and then they wouldn’t sleep for days. Jane liked that. She loved doing her classwork at like four in the morning when it was quiet, she said. The guy who had the pills started coming around a lot more often. His name was Piet and he had really beautiful eyes. One time we were in the kitchen and he kissed me. Then he just stood there looking at me for so long, until I got embarrassed and ran out of the room. That same night he hooked up with Jane, and before long he moved in. He started bringing his own friends around and some of them weren’t so, well, nice.” Raleigh started to scratch at her arms as she spoke, digging her fingernails into the crooks of her elbows, through the sleeves of her shapeless dress. “They did heroin. Over there, it’s not like here. People don’t call you a junkie just because you tried something once. Jane started shooting up with Piet and then there were no more all-?nighters. Then they would just collapse on the couch and they wouldn’t get up. She stopped going to classes.”