Always the Vampire

He gave me the cocky grin I remembered from our youth. “We’ve still got the mojo.”


“What you have is the ego,” I zinged back, a hand on one hip.

“Same old Cesca,” he said with a wide grin. “The girl who’d take on any bully or BSer in town. My dear tyranoulitsa.”

I froze, my throat suddenly clamped around a sob. One word, echoing across the centuries, triggered emotions merely seeing him hadn’t.

A kaleidoscope of images flashed in my mind’s eye. Triton and me together, inseparable friends, occasional pranksters, clandestine adventurers.

Heart thudding, it took me three tries to gulp away the choking lump and draw a slow breath to speak.

“I-I’d forgotten that.”

Triton quirked a smile. “What?”

“That you used to call me little tyrant.”

The smile widened. “You used to box my ears for it, too, when you could catch me.”

His teasing eased the tightness in my chest.

“I caught you often then and I’m faster now, so don’t mess with me.”

“You two always got along this well, huh?”

I pivoted to Saber to find him grinning. An honest, full-out grin. An expression I hadn’t seen in weeks.

“Yeah,” Triton drawled. “I’d say this is typical.”

Saber laughed then, and the irritations I’d harbored with Triton fell away. It was worth any price if Saber stayed alive and healthy to laugh with me for a very long time to come.

“Now that old home week is out of the way,” Triton said, “come on back where we can be comfortable.”

Saber and I followed him to the ship’s bow setup where a cozy settee stretched along the wall. Saber settled next to me, while Triton took the creaky chair at the high point of our little conversation triangle.

“When I called,” Saber said, “I told you I needed help identifying the Void. Any luck getting in touch with Cosmil?”

“Afraid not. I haven’t seen him in over a week, and he isn’t answering his cell phone. I haven’t seen Pandora, either.”

Pandora, another magical shape-shifter, changed from a panther to a giant house cat. She also communicated with me telepathically, and apparently did the same with Cosmil and Triton. I didn’t know why Pandora had suddenly appeared last spring, but she’d helped me out of more than one jam.

Saber leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees. “I’ll lay this on the line, Triton. I need to find and shut down the Void, and I need to do it fast. Do you or Cosmil know what this thing is?”

“I can’t speak for Cos, but no. I don’t know what the Void is.”

“You were hiding from it in August,” I said. “You must’ve known something then.”

“Not the way you’re thinking.” He sighed and loosened his tie. “I came home in March to look over this building and hire contractors.”

“And you left your gold dolphin charm on the beach for me to find,” I said.

“Yeah. I knew you’d seen me, but I didn’t want to impose on you and Saber just then. I went back to California to pack up the business and finished moving here in early July. Right after a diving trip to the Bahamas. A week later, Cos found me.”

“Here in the store?” Saber asked.

“Actually, he came to my apartment upstairs. He told me he’d been keeping track of me.”

“Why?” I asked. “And for how long?”

Triton grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. “This is where it gets weird. He said he was responsible for me being a shifter. Something about a mermaid, a dolphin, and a spell gone wrong. Sounds like a bad ‘walked into a bar’ joke, doesn’t it?”

It did, but I didn’t say so.

“I take it,” Saber said, “that Cosmil told you to hide out.”

“Yeah. I made arrangements to delay the store opening, and he stashed me at his place in the country between here and Hastings.”

“What about the amulet?” Saber pressed. “Did the one you used at the comedy club come from Cosmil?”

Triton shook his head. “I got it from a kahuna in Hawaii. A shaman. That was last November when I went out there to dive.”

“Did the man know about the amulet’s power?” Saber asked.

“The kahuna was a woman, and hell, she was ancient enough to have powered the thing herself. She said it was for protection, but she didn’t mention from what. I took the amulet to be polite.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t know how it worked, Triton,” I scolded. “You didn’t seem the least bit surprised when it went all supernova and made the vamps go poof.”

“I wasn’t surprised. I was damn impressed. Cos gave me the chant that activates the magick and made me repeat it until it was as rote as reciting the alphabet. But, I only knew what should happen. I didn’t take the thing out for a test-drive. I swear to you both. Everything I know about the amulet, about the Void for that matter, I know directly from Cos.”

“Then we need to track down Cosmil and get answers,” Saber said.

Triton narrowed his eyes. “Any reason for the urgency?”