Although this isn't my first post, it's actually the first Forever Knight story 
I wrote, and the one in which I discovered the terrible proclivity of some 
characters to insist on having bigger and better scenes written for them (for 
example, Lacroix was never meant to appear in this story at all, but it would 
take a braver writer than I am to tell Lacroix to go away!). My thanks to Mary 
Williams for putting up with my whining when the characters started getting out 
of control,  to Kathy Whelton for medical advice and general all-around 
improvements, and to Nancy Kaminski and her Green Pen for making more sense of 
all this, grammatically speaking.  All lapses in authenticity and syntax are the 
sole fault of the author.
This story is set - oh, sometime later in second season, probably  between 
"Crazy Love" and  "Be My Valentine", and contains brief references to "Queen of 
Harps" and "Baby, Baby".
The Forever Knight characters belong (probably much against their will) to TPTB.
Permission granted to archive at FKFanfic 1 & 2 and the ftp site.


"Black Ice"
Mary Chamberlain
November 2000
 	
	The snow had been expected all day. It finally began falling late in the 
evening, a soft, chill curtain of white drifting in from the lake, melting 
almost immediately on the pavement but gradually accumulating in quieter, 
untravelled areas.
	To Natalie Lambert, emerging from the Christmas Eve performance of the 
Nutcracker at the Hummingbird Centre, it was an enchanting sight, almost magical 
both in appearance and timing. "Look, Nick, isn't it beautiful? Now it really 
feels like Christmas Eve."
	Nick Knight had never been able to understand the importance of a specific 
set of meteorological conditions to the proper enjoyment of Christmas, but he 
accepted the fact that a large number of people seemed to set great store by the 
presence of snow at this particular time of the year. Apparently Natalie was one 
of them.
	"Spoken like a true apartment dweller," he said teasingly. "You won't be 
the one having to shovel a way out to the street in the morning."
	"I've done my share of snow shovelling in my time, I'll have you know. And 
I always thought it was beautiful, even then."
	They strolled slowly along Front Street, pausing occasionally to examine a 
shop window. The sidewalks were crowded, not only with  people leaving the 
ballet but with customers from the multitude of pubs and restaurants in the 
area. Many of those  out tonight seemed to be in the festive spirit; it might 
have been the snow; Nick decided that a more probable, if more prosaic, reason 
was liquid Christmas cheer. Whatever the cause, when a large, jolly woman in a 
peacock-blue coat emerged suddenly from a restaurant doorway and nearly collided 
with him, he found the "Merry Christmas" that accompanied her apology oddly 
pleasing.
	His Cadillac was parked on a side street by the St. Lawrence market. Nick 
had always liked the look of the old, red brick market, constructed in an age 
when even practical, utilitarian buildings were designed with a modicum of 
elegance. It was just unfortunate that it was permeated after all this time by 
the smell of - well, market.
	On this chilly December night, however, the scent of food was negligible. 
It was no hardship to stand outside the car and brush off the layer of snow that 
had already piled up on the windshield. When a couple arrived at the car parked 
in front of the Caddy, on an impulse he wished them a merry Christmas, wondering 
if they would think he was a mental case for talking to total strangers - after 
all, no normal person did that in a big city. But they smiled and returned the 
greeting, and he got into the car wondering if there still might be something 
real about all this seasonal goodwill after all.
	"Where to?" he asked Natalie, pulling out into traffic. "Shall I take you 
home?"
	"No, why don't we go back to your place for a little while. That's why I 
lugged your Christmas present with me."
	Nick knew that her apartment was looking far more festive at the moment 
than his own, but who was he to argue? He turned onto Front Street and drove 
eastward, leaving the crowds behind, through a dark grimy section of the city 
where there were few signs of Christmas. There was a brief gleam from the river 
as they crossed it, then a minute later two quick left turns brought them into 
the parking lot of the dilapidated old warehouse which contained his loft 
apartment. The Caddy slewed slightly in the snow despite his careful driving, 
and Nick foresaw a goodly amount of shovelling to get the car out again the next 
night if this kept up.
	"Let's go for a walk," suggested Natalie as soon as he'd turned off the 
engine.
	"A walk?" he repeated, rather bemused by the idea. In all the time he'd 
lived at the loft, he'd never once even considered going for a walk simply for 
the sake of it. As a vampire he certainly didn't need the exercise. If he wanted 
to relax or mull over a case or sort out a problem in his personal life, he got 
in the Caddy and drove. If he couldn't drive, he flew. And in any case, the 
neighbourhood wasn't exactly conducive to casual strolling. He knew perfectly 
well how carefully Natalie always locked her car doors when she came here, and 
how she tended to scurry from car to warehouse when she arrived at night. But if 
she wanted to go for a walk now, he certainly wasn't about to say no.
	She waited for him in the parking lot as he locked the Caddy and lowered 
the garage door. Catching a movement out of the corner of his eye, he turned 
just in time to see a fluffy white missile come sailing towards him. It passed 
through the space where he had been standing an instant before and struck the 
doorframe of the garage with a soft thump.
	Natalie spun around, searching for him. There was a brief swirling in the 
falling snow several yards away and a snowball hit her squarely on one shoulder.
	"Hey! No fair!" she yelped.
	Nick solicitously brushed the snow from her coat. "Neither was that 
attempt at a Bailey's- flavoured protein shake last week. You could have at 
least warned me."
	"I always drink Bailey's at Christmas," she objected. "I was just trying 
to share some of my holiday traditions with you."
	He gave a theatrical groan and steered her towards the sidewalk. "I 
suppose it could have been worse - it could have been eggnog."
	"Now that's a thought. Eggnog's very high in protein, you know."
	"Maybe next year." The wistfulness in Nick's voice made Natalie decide 
against making a comment about big bad vampires who were afraid of a little 
glass of eggnog. Besides, even though Nick had mellowed somewhat since she'd 
first met him - at the beginning of their relationship, even something as 
innocuous as lobbing a snowball at him would have been perceived as a mortal 
insult - he still didn't deal well with being teased, no matter how gently. Not 
that that was a trait unique to vampires.
	So instead she took his arm and turned the conversation to the ballet they 
had just seen. The tickets had been Nick's Christmas present to her, after she 
had made an offhand remark one day about having gone to see it every year when 
she was little. And she had enjoyed it, even though this one wasn't the 
traditional production of the Hoffman tale that had been a fixture of childhood 
Christmases, with little Clara and the Nutcracker Prince dancing off into a 
lifetime of happily-ever-after. But the music hadn't changed. No one had tried 
to make Tchaikovsky's grand score more contemporary. No matter how many times 
she heard "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" in shopping mall Muzak, or was told of 
the fact that Tchaikovsky had actually hated his own score, it would remain one 
of her favourites.
	And, at least as much as the performance itself, she had enjoyed the sight 
of Nick sitting beside her and staying relaxed even when surrounded in close 
proximity by  hundreds and hundreds of warm bodies and beating mortal hearts. 
True, she hadn't really expected him to go into full-fledged vampire mode in the 
middle of the theatre, but she had thought he might start to get a little antsy. 
However, he appeared to have weathered the experience nicely.
	They turned up a residential street, leaving behind the industrial 
wasteland that lay between Nick's loft and the lake. The night and the falling 
snow softened the rough edges of the neighbourhood. An occasional string of 
Christmas lights or a lit window gave definition to some of the tall, gaunt 
houses. The street was hushed; even on the main roads at either end of the long 
block only a few cars passed by. 
	The silence was deep enough that even Natalie's mortal ears could hear the 
music from the church before the reached it.
	It was only a small, battered-looking church, with plain windows and grimy 
brick walls and a front step of badly cracked concrete. Nick hadn't realized 
that it was even still in use.
	The music had stopped by the time they reached it, yet Nick stood on the 
sidewalk and stared at the tired little building as if transfixed. Natalie stood 
beside him, glancing worriedly from him to the church, wondering whether a full-
fledged angst attack was imminent.
	Out of the silence the communion bell rang once, then three times more. 
Still Nick stared at the church, and Natalie stared anxiously at Nick.
	Then he shook his head, smiled at her, and held out his arm again. She 
took it and they continued walking. "Sorry. I was just thinking - have you ever 
been to Paris, Nat?"
	"Once. Back in my wild and misspent youth."
	He reached across with his right hand and squeezed her fingers lying 
across his left arm. "Which was considerably more recent and probably less wild 
than mine, so stop fishing for compliments. Did you go to Notre Dame?"
	"Um - for about fifteen minutes," she admitted shamefacedly.
	He shook his head in mock reproach. "Natalie Lambert, I would never have 
suspected you of being such a cultural barbarian."
	"Alright then, give me the history lecture. What was it like in your wild 
and misspent youth?"
	"Actually, not terribly impressive. It was still under construction. The 
Delabarres had just built a townhouse in Paris, the last year I was a page with 
the family, and the entire household went off to Mass at the cathedral on 
Christmas Eve. Even only half-built, there was something about it - maybe it was 
because of the candlelight, and the incense, and the chanting - but there was 
something utterly magnificent about the place. It gave me the shivers." He was 
silent for a moment, then added, deadpan, "Or it could have been the draughts."
	Natalie swatted his shoulder. "Sometimes, Nick, I think you just make up 
this history stuff as you go along."
	"It's true," he protested. "Draughts were the one great constant in 
medieval life. Ask anyone who was there."
	"Right at the moment, I'd rather just go back to your draught-free 
twentieth century loft. I'm starting to get cold."
	"What, is the beauty of all this snow starting to pall on you?"
	"Beauty warms the soul, not necessarily the body."
	"Is that Natalie Lambert's profound quote of the day?"
	"Come on, Mr. I'm-Just-Wearing-This-Heavy-Coat-To-Fit-In. Some day you too 
will be freezing your backside off in a blizzard, and I'd like to hear you come 
up with a profound remark through your chattering teeth."
	"Do you want to borrow my coat?"
	"No, I want to go inside where it's warm - well, warmer than out here, 
anyway - and have some mulled wine."
	"Now that sounds a whole lot more appealing than a protein drink with a 
shot of Bailey's tossed in."
	Natalie grinned. "In that case, Mr. Knight, come with me and I'll indulge 
you with a taste of great-grandmother Lambert's traditional holiday hooch. 
Unless you'd care to share Grandmere de Brabant's recipe?"
	"Sorry, I only drank the stuff. Preparing it was never in the job 
description of a knight- in- arms."
	"We'll have none of that attitude, mister, or I'll be force-feeding you 
protein shakes from now till Twelfth Night."
	When they returned to the darkened warehouse, Nick unlocked the Caddy for 
Natalie to retrieve the parcel she had brought. "Wait here for a minute, will 
you Nat? I'll send the elevator back down for you." And he was gone before she 
could say a word.
	The elevator returned, empty, a moment later. When the door opened to let 
her out at the level of Nick's apartment, she froze, eyes going wide with 
wonder.
	The loft was filled with candlelight. Tall elegant tapers, broad pillar 
candles, multi-branched candelabra, tiny votive lights. They were everywhere, on 
almost every surface, more candles than she had ever seen in one place before. 
They, and the fireplace, were the only light.
	She had never seen the loft like this.
	The effect was glorious.
	She was so entranced by the sight that for a minute she completely forgot 
about Nick, until he emerged from one of the few shadows and began to help her 
out of her coat. "Well, do you like it?"
	"It's - it's lovely," she said, then, realizing how inadequate that 
sounded, she added, "It's the most beautiful festival of lights I've ever seen."
	He smiled, obviously pleased. She couldn't resist adding, "Just out of 
curiosity, where in the world did you get all these candles?"
	Nick looked around vaguely, apparently never having considered that he had 
a peculiar plenitude of candles. "Oh, I just picked them up here and there." He 
suddenly grinned. "That one came from a Boxing Day sale a few years ago." He 
pointed to a jolly wax Santa Claus with a wick stuck out of its red cap, perched 
on the kitchen counter next to an antique chased silver candelabra.
	Natalie could only shake her head in disbelief.
	Half an hour later the mulled wine was ready and they were in the living 
room watching the fire, with Christmas music playing softly in the background. 
Natalie had felt a flicker of trepidation when Nick had gone over to the stereo, 
worried that he was about to turn on the Nightcrawler, but instead he had 
slipped in a Windham Hill Winter Solstice CD.
	Natalie, sunk back on the couch, poked with one foot at the brightly 
wrapped parcel on the coffee table. "Aren't you going to open your present?"
	Nick, smiling, picked up the box and inspected it curiously. It was fairly 
large, rather heavy, and made no noise when he gave it a cautious shake.
	"Open it, already!" said Natalie, a grin spreading across her face.
	He pulled the paper apart to reveal a brown cardboard box. He lifted the 
lid and found a pair of - 
	"Skates?" he asked blankly.
	Natalie had been prepared for him to be somewhat underwhelmed. "Yep. 
You're always so concerned about fitting in, Nick, and I've gotta tell you that 
a Canadian male who's never been on ice skates is as rare as the proverbial 
hen's teeth." She paused. "Not that I'm an expert on the dentition of poultry, 
but I'm willing to bet there isn't another cop in the entire 96th Precinct who 
hasn't at least played a game of shinny."
	"Come on, Nat - a vampire on skates?"
	"Come on, Nick - a vampire homicide detective?" she countered.
	He was examining the skates as if he'd never seen a pair before, then said 
firmly, "All right. But you're going to have to teach me - and I want to see you 
out there on the ice, not shouting from behind the boards."
	"Of course."
	"And I'm not going to wear a toque."
	"I wouldn't dream of telling you what to wear," she answered, managing to 
keep a straight face, although the image of Nick in a woolly toque made her 
desperately want to snicker.
	He reached over from his chair, caught her hand and gave it a brief kiss. 
"Thanks, Nat."
	"You're most welcome. Merry Christmas, Nick - if it ain't out of keeping 
with the situation."
	"Mrs. Dilber, 'A Christmas Carol'," he said immediately.
	"My all-time favourite Christmas movie," she answered, pleased that he'd 
recognized the quote. Up until this evening, she'd hardly expected Christmas to 
be a significant event for vampires. She had thought they would be more likely 
to ignore the occasion altogether. Perhaps Nick, in this as in so many other 
ways, was different.
	He smiled at her as if reading her thoughts. "Don't worry. It's perfectly 
in keeping with the situation."

	Two days later the season of peace and goodwill appeared to be officially 
over. The consumer world was enmeshed in Boxing Week frenzy. Nick was fervently 
hoping that Natalie would have forgotten all about the Christmas present she had 
given him.
	However, when he awoke on the day of his first shift back at work, she had 
left an almost repulsively cheerful message on his answering machine telling him 
to meet her at work at eight o'clock that night with his skates. Listening to 
her voice, some part of Nick's mind wondered if there was something about the 
daylight that caused people to be more cheerful than they tended to be at night, 
or if the reason he often found that messages left during the day sounded 
excessively happy was because he just  wasn't an evening person. In any case, 
Natalie sounded as if she was looking forward to this far too much.
	Downing his glass of breakfast blood, he vowed that if she thought she was 
going to see him flat on his backside on the ice, she was going to be 
disappointed. He tried to bolster his self-confidence by recalling just how 
quickly vampires could levitate.

	The weather had grown milder - it had rained downtown on Boxing Day - and 
now the only remnants of the snow that had fallen Christmas Eve were ugly grit-
encrusted piles lining the streets.
	Natalie was waiting for him at the Coroner's Building with her own skates 
slung over her shoulder. He took a surreptitious look at them; they had 
obviously seen a good deal of use. Still sounding far more cheerful than he 
thought the occasion warranted, she led him briskly over to Yonge and turned 
right.
	"Isn't it a bit warm for skating?" he asked hopefully.
	"Don't worry, the ice will be fine. And in case you're worried, there 
probably won't be a soul in sight. No little kiddies zipping around like mini 
Gretzkys."
	Nick gave a mental sigh of relief. The fewer people who saw him on skates, 
the better.
	Natalie took him to the small outdoor rink behind College Park. It was 
screened off from the street by buildings and trees and, as she had predicted, 
they had it to themselves. They sat down on the cement steps that circled the 
rink and laced on their skates.
	Using Natalie for support, Nick teetered to the edge of the ice, looked 
across the gleaming surface, and could suddenly think of at least twenty-five 
ways in which he could better spend his evening than by sacrificing himself to 
some cultural icon, fitting in be damned.
	"Nat, do people from Jamaica know how to skate?"
	"I've no idea," she answered blankly. "Why?"
	"Because if nobody expects Jamaicans to be able to skate, I'm thinking of 
getting all my birth records changed."
	"Don't be such a stick in the mud, you big chicken. Put your right foot on 
the ice." A pause, and nothing happened. Nick remained immobile.  "Do it, or 
I'll push you."
	Eventually, with a combination of coaxing and dire threats, she got him 
out on the ice, where he discovered that he wouldn't instantly fall as soon as 
he stopped clutching her. Eventually, he was able to make a wobbly circuit of 
the rink under his own power. He fell several times, but found that it didn't 
hurt as much as he'd expected.
	Eventually, he began to enjoy it.
	Natalie had to haul him off the ice in the end, while he was still trying 
to decide whether he wanted to be the next Wayne Gretzky or Elvis Stojko. "Come 
on, Nick - we both have to go in to work, remember? Even partaking in the Great 
Canadian Pastime isn't going to save you from your captain's wrath if you're 
late the first day back."
	They walked back to the Coroner's Building. Natalie was amused to note 
that Nick casually slung his skates over his shoulder this time instead of 
tucking them under his arm as if trying to hide them. Not much to her surprise, 
he was suddenly as enthusiastic about the whole thing as he had been lukewarm 
before.
	"Same time tomorrow?" he asked eagerly as they said goodbye at his car.
	"Let's wait and see how you feel. You're probably going to be stiff, 
vampire or no vampire. You don't want to overdo it." Natalie wasn't going to 
admit it, but she suspected she was going to be the stiff one. She was a 
proficient skater, but it had been a while.
	"I'll call you." Nick gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, carefully set 
his skates on the Caddy's passenger side floor mat, and drove off.

	Nick didn't call the following night, which was just as well, because by 
then Natalie wasn't feeling nearly as jolly as she had been.
	The morning after the skating lesson she had decided to make a quick raid 
on a shopping mall to check out the Boxing Day sales. The place was relatively 
uncrowded at the start of the day, and she bought a cup of coffee in the food 
court to fortify herself for a good bargain-hunting session. Wending her way 
through the tables to an unoccupied one, she caught sight of a familiar face and 
stopped for a chat.
	She had first met Sandy Wilkes at med school. They had become good 
friends, but after Sandy had chosen a residency in OB/gyne and Natalie had gone 
into pathology, their paths had diverged and they had seen little of each other. 
The last time they had talked was two years ago. By that time Sandy was on staff 
at a large downtown hospital, had a husband and a little daughter who was almost 
three, and had just been diagnosed with breast cancer.
	It was unusual in someone of Sandy's age. She had had youth, health, and 
determination on her side. Some time later, Natalie had heard through the 
grapevine that she had, in fact, beaten it. But now it was back again.
	"You look fine, Sandy," said Natalie, feeling that the remark was utterly 
inane, but it was true for all that. The woman sitting across the table >from her 
didn't look like someone who'd just been given a potential death sentence.
	"I start chemo tomorrow," Sandy replied matter-of-factly. "That's why we 
came out here today." She waved cheerily to her daughter, who was standing in 
line with her father to get a muffin while Sandy and Natalie talked. "By the end 
of the week I'll feel like I've been hit by a freight train."
	"What about a bone marrow transplant? Wouldn't that be a better way to 
go?"
	"We looked into that before. An allogeneic transplant is out, we couldn't 
find a good enough match. I might be able to go the autologous transplant route, 
though. We're keeping our fingers crossed that that will work out. Whatever 
happens, it'll be interesting." She shrugged. "But I'm getting bored talking 
about myself all the time. What about you? What are you up to these days?" And 
with that Sandy dismissed the entire topic as if she truly found Natalie's 
doings far more engrossing.
	"Oh, same old routine," said Natalie, hoping that she didn't sound 
evasive, or as if she didn't care about her own work, but feeling that a 
discussion about dissecting corpses was hardly appropriate here.
	"Must be fun working so much with the police," Sandy commented innocently. 
"You must meet a lot of interesting people."
	Natalie looked sharply at her, then sighed. "All right, what's the 
grapevine been saying about me?"
	Sandy grinned. "Only that there's one particular cop who seems to hang 
around the morgue a lot more than any normal person would - any normal person 
who didn't work there, that is," she amended. "I also hear he's pretty easy on 
the eyes."
	"We're - friends. There are a lot of issues to be worked out before it's 
going to be anything more than that." Natalie didn't really want to get into her 
relationship with Nick, but felt that giving Sandy a morsel of personal 
information was the least - maybe the only - thing she could do for her right 
now. "His family's pretty possessive about him, for one thing. And he's got a 
lot of emotional baggage that he carries around with him. He's a sweet guy, 
though. He's got a lot more going for him than he realizes."
	"Well, that sounds intriguing. Good luck to both of you." They gossipped 
for a few more minutes before Sandy's husband returned with their daughter, 
obviously having decided that it was time for Sandy to be going.
	Natalie sat staring at her half-finished cup of coffee after they had 
left. She was awestruck by the other woman's calmness and grace in discussing 
her illness. No hysterics or histrionics, no self-pity or wailing of "why me". 
Just a quiet determination to get over all the hurdles and on with her life, 
while disrupting other lives as little as possible.
	She had a sudden disloyal thought - that Sandy's attitude and courage 
could stand to be emulated by one particular individual that she knew, whose 
reserves of strength were surely far greater than those of any frail mortal.
	She squelched the thought as soon as it occurred to her. His reserves had 
been drained by several hundred years of dealing with guilt and grief. The 
comparison wasn't fair.
	But she knew it was going to haunt her now. And it wasn't just the thought 
itself, but the ease and speed with which it had come to her, that was troubling 
- as if the suspicion had been there already. Had it been? Had it simply been 
overlaid by the happiness he gave her so often, and the pleasantly anticipatory  
"what if's" she sometimes indulged in?
	Or maybe, she thought more prosaically as she took a sip of now-cold 
coffee and grimaced, the problem was as simple as the fact that she really 
wasn't up for a shopping session after a gruelling heart to heart chat, a long 
night of work, and an evening of fairly strenuous physical activity. Better to 
forget about the bargains, go home, and let sleep settle the issue - for now.

	She was in  no shape to go skating that evening, having found an 
absolutely obese blister on one heel caused by her skate boot, another sign that 
it had been a while since she'd been on blades. All the same, she thought as she 
pulled her car into the underground parking lot at work, it would have been nice 
if Nick had called as he had promised, as if having a normal conversation with 
him could erase the morning's traitorous little denigration. She reminded 
herself with a sigh that reliability had never exactly been Nick's strong suit.
	 In her current agitated frame of mind, she was hoping she wouldn't have 
to deal with anything more traumatic tonight than some elderly person who'd 
slipped easily into death while sleeping. Instead, the lineup of customers 
consisted of two probable suicides: one a fifty-seven-year-old man found hanging   
in the tiny room he rented in a Parkdale boarding house, the other a teenage 
subway jumper. There was some question over whether the latter might have 
actually been pushed, but there was no debating the cause of death in either 
case. Natalie's work consisted of little more than an alcohol and tox screen. As 
she rolled the stretcher carrying the teenager back into the fridge, she thought 
about the time of year and wondered if both deaths had occurred as a result of 
holiday depression.
	When Nick walked into the morgue just as her shift was ending, she was too 
depressed herself to be very welcoming. "What is it?"
	He stopped and looked at her carefully. "I think I should be asking you 
the same thing. Is something wrong?"
	Natalie flapped a hand in halfhearted denial. "Just kind of a bad night, 
that's all. And one or two other things. Nothing major. So what brings you 
here?"
	"Well - this." He pulled off one of his gloves and hesitantly extended his 
hand towards her. She took it, led him over to where the light was better and 
peered at the smooth pale flesh, frowning.
	"I don't see anything wrong."
	He poked at the tip of his right index finger with the nail of his left. 
"There. See? It's a splinter - I got it from digging around in a desk drawer at 
work. I couldn't get it out by myself."
	She looked at him in flat disbelief, then wordlessly fetched a magnifying 
glass and a pair of tweezers. She couldn't stop herself from thinking about 
cancer patients, and pain, and courage, as she pulled out the particle of wood 
that was so minute she could barely see it without the aid of the glass. He gave 
a slight hiss as the splinter was removed - obviously it had caused a degree of 
discomfort far out of proportion to its size.
	Still without comment, she wiped his finger with an alcohol swab, and left 
him leaning against the dissecting table cradling his right hand while she went 
to the sink and started scrubbing her hands preparatory to leaving.
	She jumped when he materialized soundlessly at her elbow as she was drying 
off. "Nat, I'm sorry if I came at a bad time. Is there anything I can do?"
	She wished he would stop looking as if he'd just had his finger completely 
amputated. Then she chided herself for over-reacting. What he was feeling from 
that tiny little bit of wood was probably comparable to her having received a 
third-degree burn. And after all, he wasn't a mind reader.
	But still, she had the feeling that, in spite of the concern for her 
evident on his face, he was wishing she could kiss his finger and magically make 
the pain go away.
	Now you're being totally ridiculous, Lambert, she told herself. And 
unfair.
	She glanced at the clock on the wall, thinking of suggesting that he could 
take her down the street for a coffee, but it was later than she'd thought. Nick 
would be cutting it close as it was, to get home before daylight.
	"I'm sorry for being snarly, Nick. It was just a bad night, like I said. 
Two suicides. One was just a kid. God, I hate dealing with subway jumpers."
	He put his arms around her briefly, then released her. "Maybe we should 
try skating again tonight to cheer you up."
	She smiled ruefully. "No skates for me for a few days. I've got the mother 
of all blisters on my foot. That's probably one reason I'm cranky."
	He looked disappointed. "Well then, go home, put your feet up, and have 
some chocolate ice cream."
	She didn't have the heart to point out that people didn't usually eat 
chocolate ice cream at eight o'clock in the morning. Then again, there was no 
rule that said she couldn't. Maybe she could justify it as an alternative to 
yoghurt.
	He walked her to her car, and as she drove home she pondered on the fact - 
insignificant, really, but for some reason notable to her tired brain - that 
when he was wearing his heavy winter coat, you couldn't tell how cold his body 
really was. When he'd put his arms around her quickly in the morgue, it felt no 
different from being embraced by any normal human being.

	Nick passed the day in his usual death-like sleep. He was awake again by 
five in the afternoon - there was no sleeping late, when the nights were so long 
with the winter solstice only just past - and started his daily routine at a 
leisurely pace. He came downstairs fully dressed but with his hair still 
slightly damp from the shower, and stopped on the last step, suddenly aware that 
he had a visitor.
	She emerged from the darkness under the stairs, wearing one of her 
trademark low-cut, filmy dark gowns that would have probably looked ridiculous 
on anyone but her. "Hello, Nicolas. It's been a long time."
	"It's been two weeks. What brings you here, Janette?"
	She pouted. " 'What brings you here?' That's it? No 'hello, darling, it's 
nice to see you'? Not even a 'how are you feeling'? I realized 'I've missed you' 
was far too much to hope for, but I had expected something at least civil."
	He grinned, unrepentant. "I know how you're feeling. And you know that 
it's nice to see you."
	"Hmm. Well, that's something, I suppose. Actually, I came to give you a 
preview of my new colours. I thought for the new year that I would try something 
different from black. What do you think of hunter green? Very appropriate, no?"
	"Very nice," he said, looking rather blank. She groaned.
	"Vraiment, mon cher, I think I came just in time to give <you> some advice 
on colour. Wherever did you get those shades in that new picture of yours? 
They're positively garish. It must make your eyes hurt just to look at them in 
the light." She waved her hand towards his most recent canvas, which she had 
evidently been studying before he came downstairs.
	"Oh, so now you're an art critic," he teased.
	"Not at all. I know what I like, and what I like is more subtlety, more 
shadows, more - "
	"Dark?" he supplied, raising an eyebrow.
	"Of course. That goes without saying."
	"I like bright colours," he said obstinately, moving past her towards the 
refrigerator. "Perhaps they're an acquired taste."
	"Hmm. They go along with cow blood, no doubt."
	He refused to rise to her baiting. "I take it that means I can't tempt you 
to join me in a glass." He pulled a bottle from the fridge and waggled it in her 
direction. Janette shuddered in response, watching with a sort of revolted 
fascination as he poured a glass and downed it.
	"I don't like to see you drinking that swill, Nicolas. It's not healthy."
	"I hope you didn't come here to give me advice about my diet, as well as 
my painting."
	She came up behind him as he turned to rinse the glass out in the sink, 
put her arms around him and whispered in his ear, "Of course not. I came to ask 
if you would come to my little New Year's Eve celebration at the Raven."
	That surprised him. He turned to face her, and she smiled innocently up at 
him. "New Year's Eve? Janette, you've never gone in for champagne and singing 
Auld Lang Syne - "
	"Not that sort of party, Nicolas. I meant yourself, and a few - select - 
friends... possibly your charming partner and his wife. That would make it more 
- entertaining, non?" She smiled again, and just for an instant the tips of her 
fangs showed.
	Then she grew serious. "In any case, friends, and a rare vintage or two, 
and some good music. We have not danced together for so long, Nicolas..." One 
arm began to twine itself sensuously around his waist, pulling him towards her. 
"And no, I have not invited Lacroix. I knew you would never come if he were 
there...and besides, he thinks of such celebrations as silly mortal foibles. I, 
on the other hand, think it's a wonderful excuse for a party."
	It did sound...appealing...a way of amusing himself that he hadn't 
indulged in for a long time. But he knew what Janette meant by 'rare vintage'. 
That was a temptation he didn't care to expose himself to. And besides, he'd 
assumed that he and Natalie would be spending New Year's Eve together.
	Janette understood only half his hesitation. "Come along, Nicolas, don't 
be a stick in the mud - or should I say, a stick in the blood? I can always find 
you something other than human to drink. Everyone there will know your taste, no 
one will comment."
	He didn't hear the last part, thinking bemusedly that  Nat had called him 
the same thing - a stick in the mud - when he'd been reluctant to step onto the 
skating rink. As if he'd spoken her name out loud, Janette realized his other 
reason for hesitating.
	She turned away from him without speaking and went into the living area, 
finding the remote and sliding open the steel shutters. A dim, diffuse glow 
filled the loft, the lights of the city reflecting off the overcast sky. It was 
more than enough light for them to see by, but Nick went slowly around the loft 
lighting candles, feeling a sudden need to appear busy while he tried to think 
of something to say.
	At last Janette spoke again, with more calmness than he had expected. 
"This arrangement you have is very convenient, is it not?"
	He knew better than to make any attempt at answering that, and 
concentrated on lighting the tapers in an ornate silver gilt candelabra, all the 
while cursing himself for a coward. There were things he'd known that he would 
have to say to Janette one day, and yet now that that day had apparently come, 
he found that he couldn't get the words out of his mouth.
	"Whenever you want moral support, or intelligent conversation, or to be 
comforted when the big bad mortal world gets a bit too overwhelming, you turn to 
your little Natalie. When you want information about some petty criminal, or 
when you want sex with no strings attached, you come to me. Does your coroner 
friend have any idea that you are as unfaithful to her in the flesh as you are 
to me in your mind?"
	"Wait a minute, Janette," he protested. "You know I can't have a physical 
relationship with Nat without hurting her, probably even killing her. I don't 
see how wanting to protect her life makes me unfaithful. As for the rest of it, 
you've never complained about my company before, or been upset if I - satisfied 
myself elsewhere."
	She looked at him as if speculating  how any one being could be so utterly 
dense. "I will admit that  fidelity is not a concept that has ever been - 
embraced, as it were, by vampires in general. And I have certainly satisfied 
myself, as you put it, without you many times. But I knew I would always 
eventually come back to you - and you would come back to me.
	"But now - don't you see the difference? You want a place in the mortal 
world so badly that you only come to me when you can't stand it any more. And 
then you feel guilty afterwards, because you gave in, because I'm everything 
you're so busily trying to reject - but you had to do something, since you are 
after all a reasonably red-blooded male, so you come running to Janette. As I 
said, very convenient. I satisfy your lust, and provide you with more fuel for 
your damned unending guilt.
	"Well, I'm getting tired of being convenient, Nicolas! Especially when you 
regret everything afterwards that I do for you! I wouldn't care if you laid out 
every woman in this city and took them all, one after the other, just to satisfy 
a casual desire - as a matter of fact, I should like to see it - but I will not 
be a mere convenience, a substitute for someone else you feel you can't have!"
	He realized he was staring at her with his mouth slightly open. Janette 
had never been averse to throwing a well-timed tantrum, but there was something 
more to it this time. "Janette," he tried, "you're not a substitute for anyone. 
You're - " He spread his hands, knowing how lame he must sound. "You're - you."
	"What a comfort that is to know," she replied caustically.
	"You're the main reason that my existence has been bearable all these 
centuries. You've always known how important you are to me. If I've hurt you in 
the past little while - with Natalie - then I'm sorry, I never meant - "
	"Enough, Nicolas," she said, more quietly. "Your apologies have become 
rather repetitive lately." She thought for a moment, staring down absently at 
her strappy Italian shoes, while he cursed inwardly again for still not saying 
what he should have - or at least not saying it the way he should have done.  At 
last she looked up again and said, " I didn't mean to frighten you away >from my 
party. You'll still be welcome. But just keep in mind - some day soon, you will 
have to choose. I don't like sharing my bed with a guilty conscience."
	Then she was gone, up through the skylight, leaving Nick staring after her 
with his mouth still slightly agape.
	He went back to the refrigerator, feeling in need of another drink, slowly 
digesting Janette's words. He couldn't understand why she had suddenly blown up 
like that, when he was totally unprepared. Although it was sometimes hard with 
Janette to separate the dramatics from genuine feeling, he had no doubt that 
this time she was truly upset, and he'd been unable to give her the response she 
deserved.
	Janette. Sister, lover, sometime wife - they had had the same pattern for 
centuries. Coming together, drifting apart, finding others, then reuniting 
again, sometimes after a few months, sometimes after several decades. He had 
even made an ill-fated marriage with a mortal, and still she had welcomed him 
back afterwards, had helped assuage his grief and guilt.
	Then it struck him. He had intended to bring Alyssa across from the 
beginning. She would have become a member of an extended family, which included 
Janette. As Janette herself had said, faithfulness was an alien concept to most 
vampires, even - he had to admit - if jealousy and possessiveness weren't. Their 
relationship would have worked itself out in the end. (Although admittedly, at 
the time, he'd been so infatuated with his delicate, golden-haired new 
sweetheart that he'd failed to give Janette's feelings much more than fleeting 
consideration.) But now - Natalie was trying to bring him across, to a different 
world where Janette would have no place. He had been so sure for so long which 
he would choose - the light, or his lover in the darkness. But if Natalie 
succeeded, what would be left for Janette?
	He wandered aimlessly around the loft, flipping through a stack of 
canvases leaning against the wall, running his hand up and down the piano 
keyboard, staring sightlessly out into the night. He had always thought that 
Janette enjoyed tempting him back to the darkness. Was she afraid now, not just 
simply jealous?
	If so, he would have to tread very, very carefully. A frightened vampire 
could be just as dangerous as an angry one. He didn't want to think about a 
vampire who was both.
	The only upside to all this was that Janette's ultimatum had only a vague 
time frame. To a vampire, 'someday soon' had an entirely different connotation 
than to most mortals. Janette might not demand his decision for several decades 
yet. There was plenty of time to reassure her that he didn't ever intend to 
abandon her.
	And then she would probably ask just how he intended to keep this peculiar 
cake of Natalie and mortality, and Janette and undying passion, and eat it too. 
And what was the likelihood of his ever having an answer for her?
	What a fool I was, he thought morosely as he finally flung himself into a 
chair and switched on the TV news, to hope that a new year would bring me the 
slightest bit of peace.

	Natalie's unsettled mood was simply refusing to go away. No matter how 
much she told herself she was being irrational and unfair to the point of 
pettiness, her subconscious insisted on dredging up a litany of Nick's 
inconsistencies, foibles, the signs she had seen of weakness - no, never so far 
as that - instability, then, and occasional plain lack of common sense. That 
episode of him stealing that ancient harp, for instance - how self-indulgent 
that had been. And what he had told her about his creation of the vampire Serena 
- how could anyone mistake a plea to be given immortality through having a child 
for a desire to become a vampire?
	The list ran on and on, until she succeeded in upsetting herself so much 
that now she looked squarely at the face opposite her and said, "You know, Nick, 
I'm getting sick and tired of cossetting you and your guilt like you're some 
kind of fragile piece of china. All the times I've made excuses for you, covered 
for you, and now you just take me for granted - well, maybe not me, but my help 
whenever anything goes wrong, my collusion in things I'd just as soon not know 
anything about. I've spent so much time trying to find a cure for you, and when 
I ask you to do something as simple as drinking a glassful of a liquid that's 
taken me weeks or months to prepare, you act as if I've asked you to swallow 
strychnine. Everyone gets so concerned about you if you turn a whiter shade of 
pale for any reason, yet there are mortals with so much more to lose than you 
who can face pain and death with more fortitude than you've shown over a stupid 
splinter." She knew she was getting out of control now, but still she couldn't 
stop. "You don't need a lover, Nick, you need a mother, a nursemaid, a punching 
bag, a guardian angel - someone a whole lot stronger than I am." Her voice was 
beginning to shake. Staring at the reflection of two tears sliding down her 
face, she added more quietly, "And damn you for making me cry. I hate crying."
	Her mirror made no answer, but at least it had allowed her to say things 
that she knew, no matter how savage she ever came to feel, she would never be 
able to say directly to Nick - not if she ever wanted to see him again. The 
outburst left her feeling worn out, but it hadn't provided much in the way of 
catharsis. If anything, now that she had given form to her feelings by voicing 
them, she felt even more resentful and miserable. At him, for causing all this. 
At herself, for being a traitor.
	Oh God, she thought, now I'm getting as angsty as he is.
	She wiped her eyes and walked restlessly around the living room of her 
apartment. Sydney watched her curiously from his position curled up on the 
couch.
	"What am I going to do, Syd?" she asked rhetorically. Wouldn't it be nice 
if once, just once, he could actually answer? Even advice from a talking cat 
would be welcome at this point. "I can't face him feeling like this. He'll know 
what I'm thinking as soon as he lays eyes on me. I've probably got a big 'J' for 
Judas branded on my forehead. Oh God, why does everything I do always seem to 
come back to him?"
	Somewhere, in some deep place inside herself, the answer was quite 
obvious. But right at the moment she didn't want to acknowledge the existence of 
that place, and certainly not that answer.
	She pushed some papers aside and sat down on the couch, lifting Sydney 
into her lap. A purr rumbled in his throat as she scratched him under the chin. 
She began to feel marginally better; there was always something comforting in 
that sound.
	With her free hand she picked up an envelope sitting on top of the pile 
she had moved aside. Inside was her Christmas present from Grace and the rest of 
the staff at the morgue - a gift certificate for a day at a spa in the Caledon 
Hills, northwest of the city. Maybe this was the antidote to her poisonous mood. 
She hadn't intended to use the certificate right away, thinking instead that she 
might need a day of relaxation later in the winter when seasonal affective 
disorder, or flu, or whatever, was hitting everybody. But in her current state 
of mind, a day or two away from dead bodies - and vampires - might be just what 
she needed.
	She scanned the brochure enclosed with the certificate. It was only a 
small place, providing bed and breakfast as well as spa facilities. Naturally 
there was an award-winning chef. And, what a coincidence, they offered special 
package deals over the holiday season.
	She briefly considered what her chances were of getting time off at New 
Year's on such short notice, and decided that she should be able to work 
something out. With Sydney purring loudly as if in encouragement, she picked up 
the phone and dialled the number in the brochure.

	She called Nick at work that night to tell him she would be away for 
several days. Predictably, he was rather taken aback.
	"You're leaving when?" he said, as if, with his perfect vampire hearing, 
he hadn't understood what she'd just told him.
	"This morning, Nick. After work," she repeated patiently.
	"So you'll be gone for New Year's."
	"Yes. I'm coming back on the second."
	"Oh. Well - um - I'll miss you."
	"Nick, I'm only going to be gone for five days."
	"I know, but - you never said anything about wanting a break." Lowering 
his voice, glad that Schanke had left his desk for a few minutes, he added 
hesitantly, "This doesn't have anything to do with me coming over to the morgue 
last night, does it? I mean, I could tell you were upset about something - "
	"No, it doesn't, Nick," she replied tartly. "Why do you think that 
everything revolves around you?" She was immediately appalled that she'd 
actually said that. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Maybe it's post-
holiday depression or something. I tell you, getting ready for Christmas seems 
to get more and more stressful every year. I should have taken more time off to 
relax."
	"Oh. Sure," he replied. She could tell he didn't buy that flimsy 
explanation for a minute, but mercifully he wasn't going to press further. "Well 
- have a good time. Enjoy the mud baths," he added teasingly.
	"I think I'll skip the mud baths. But they do have a hot tub, massage 
therapy, aromatherapy - I promise you I'll come back a new and improved person."
	"I like the old one just fine."
	"I'm not so sure I do," she muttered, almost to herself. Then she added in 
a threatening voice, "And by the way, in case you were wondering, this has 
nothing to do with a bad case of PMS."
	"The thought never crossed my mind," he reassured her. He would have liked 
to know just what exactly this dreaded PMS was, but it seemed to be a question 
that one didn't ask.
	"Of course," Natalie was saying, "this is all assuming that I can get to 
the place at all. My car died on me last night - I had to take a cab into work. 
I'll have to find a rental place on the way home."
	Nick opened his mouth and answered without thinking. Not an unusual 
occurrence, but he didn't often say anything so completely earth-shattering. 
"Take mine, then."
	There was an incredulous silence on the other end of the phone, then 
Natalie said faintly, "What did you say?"
	"Take my car. You know, the Caddy. It's only a few days, I can get along 
without it just fine. And it'll save you the trouble of finding a rental."
	"But Nick - I can't take your car. I mean - "
	"Sure you can. No arguments. I'll pick you up after work."
	"Nick - "
	"See you in a few hours." He hung up, almost cheerfully. He still didn't 
understand what was causing Natalie's troubled mood and sudden decision to get 
away from the city, but if he really was at the root of the problem, then 
loaning her the Caddy would do something towards making amends.
	Besides, he thought guiltily, this would give him the chance to talk to 
Janette and try to make her see reason - whatever that might be.
	

	Natalie sat at her desk in the morgue, still staring at the receiver in 
her hand. Finally she hung up with a vicious clunk.
	Great. Now she was going to have to see him before she left. She was going 
to have to be in debt to him for the use of his car, because if she didn't take 
it he'd be terribly offended. But taking something that was so intrinsically his 
would defeat the greater part of the purpose of the whole thing, which was to 
give herself some breathing room away from him. And on top of it all she'd be 
stuck with that aircraft carrier of a vehicle. The cost of filling the tank 
would probably equal a five-day rental. And if it actually got a scratch on 
it...
	How the hell could it be, she thought in exasperation, that by giving her 
the physical means to leave, he was making it even harder for her to get away 
>from him?

	Nick had fervently hoped that he could make it to the end of the year 
without having to deal with another homicide, but that hope was dashed when he 
arrived at work that night. (He had come by cab and was ten minutes late, but 
felt virtuous for having used a mortal mode of transportation rather than simply 
flying.)
	"Don't take your coat off," Schanke greeted him. Then, unable to resist, 
he added, "Gee, Nick, didn't your alarm go off? Or did you zone out while you 
were trying to decide which leather jacket to wear?" It was a curious fact that 
Nick, in spite of all the times when he didn't seem to be quite on the same 
plane of existence as the rest of the world, was punctual much more often than 
his partner. Schanke was always inordinately gleeful whenever the tables were 
turned.
	He ignored the ribbing and said, "What have we got?"
	"Dead body at Union Station. I'll fill you in on the way over."
	Schanke drove. Nick was feeling pangs of regret already for having let 
Natalie have the Caddy. He hated sitting in the passenger seat.
	The corpse was in the parking lot behind the train station. It was a very 
dank, dimly lit, echoing space underneath the tracks, covering an entire city 
block. It reminded Nick of catacombs.
	Schanke shivered and pulled up the collar of his overcoat, although the 
night was more damp than cold. "This place gives me the creeps. You could hide a 
whole raft of bodies down here and people might not notice for weeks."
	"Well, at least somebody noticed this one," commented  Nick, as they 
approached the little knot of people huddled in one corner. The stark concrete 
was lit by spotlights and an occasional camera flash from one of the crime scene 
photographers.
	At first glance there was nothing about the corpse to concern the homicide 
division. The victim was female, probably somewhere in her forties, clad in a 
tattered assortment of garments, including a pair of worn-out Nikes, mismatched 
wool gloves, and a filthy toque jammed on her head. She was curled up on the 
concrete floor in what would normally have been a particularly poorly-lit 
corner, facing the wall. From the back she looked like little more than a pile 
of rags.
	Schanke shivered again. "Poor woman. She probably came in here looking for 
a warm spot and forgot to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find her way out 
again."
	Natalie's replacement, a middle-aged man with glasses and thinning hair, 
rose stiffly to his feet and murmured something to his assistants, who began to 
bag the woman's body. He peeled off his latex gloves and came over to them. 
"Detectives Knight and Schanke, I assume? I'm Dr. Burghardt."
	They shook hands, then Nick said, "What can you tell us about her?"
	"Not very much, I'm afraid. A security guard found her two hours ago. I 
would estimate she's been here for a couple of days. My preliminary diagnosis is 
death from hypothermia."
	Burghardt's assistants were efficiently tagging and bagging the body. Nick 
went to take a closer look before they loaded it into the van. As 
inconspicuously as possible, he sniffed the air. Just as the woman was lifted 
onto the stretcher, he caught the faintest scent of blood. There was no obvious 
injury, no sign of it on her clothes; surreptitiously he checked her neck, but 
could see no indication of a vampire attack. Maybe the blood trace had come from 
another source.
	The stretcher was loaded into the coroner's van. In another minute 
Burghardt and his team were gone, leaving Schanke and Nick, a handful of other 
investigators, and a worried-looking young man from the CN Rail police.
	"Where's the guy who found the body?" Schanke wanted to know.
	"He's inside," volunteered the CN cop, who looked glad to be able to offer 
some useful information. "Do you want to talk to him now?"
	"Yeah, let's go do that. You coming, Nick?"
	"You take his statement, Schank. I'll look around here for a while."
	Schanke and the other man headed off into the gloom and Nick began to 
examine the area more closely - not that he had any great hopes of finding 
anything. The woman had no doubt died a pathetic, lonely death, huddled in the 
silent cold, and there was probably no one to mourn her.
	By the time Schanke returned, though, he was beginning to wonder, just a 
little bit.
	"Well, that was pretty straightforward," announced his partner, who was 
now clutching a large styrofoam cup of coffee. "Security guard noticed her on a 
regular patrol, called us, end of story."
	"It can't have been too much of a regular patrol, if she was here for a 
couple of days before anyone noticed her."
	"Yeah, well, I don't suppose he was looking all that hard. You couldn't 
pay me enough to come down here on a regular basis."
	Nick was still prowling around the area. "Schank, take a look at the 
ground around where the body was. Does anything strike you about it, compared to 
the rest of the place?"
	Schanke stared at the concrete. "Well, maybe it looks a bit cleaner."
	"Exactly. Look." Nick moved several yards away and scuffed his foot 
against the floor, leaving a clearly visible pattern in the dust. "This 
obviously isn't a high traffic area. The ground is filthy - everywhere except 
where the body was found. There's enough dust to leave footprints. But there are 
no marks left in that one area. Come over here, where I'm standing." When 
Schanke had joined him, Nick squatted on his heels and pointed to the ground. 
"Look here. Doesn't that look like the trail the bristles of a broom would 
leave?"
	Schanke looked dubiously at the area Nick was indicating. "It's pretty 
hard to tell. I'm not an expert on domestic appliances."
	Nick rolled his eyes briefly. "Well then, consider this. Our Jane Doe was 
found lying facing the wall. If you were desperately trying to find someplace 
warm, wouldn't you sit with your back to the wall? It probably wouldn't make 
much difference down here, but it's what I would do."
	"So you're saying somebody put her body here, then swept the area to wipe 
out their tracks?"
	"I think it's a good possibility."
	"Then that means she probably didn't die of exposure."
	"Probably not."
	"Then she's probably not just an old bag lady."

	"I don't know who she is, but she's not an old bag lady," said Dr. 
Burghardt's voice over the speaker phone. "Her hands have been far too well 
cared for. As a matter of fact, she seems to have had a manicure done quite 
recently. Her teeth are in excellent condition. This is a woman who's taken 
scrupulous care of herself. And then, of course, there's the cause of death."
	"Well?" demanded Schanke. "Don't keep us in suspense here."
	"I'm afraid it was quite obvious as soon as I got her clothing off. Her 
heart has been removed. Someone did a very neat job of it, as well as stitching 
her up and cleaning her off afterward."
	Schanke's eyebrows raised themselves towards his hairline, and he made a 
face of disgust. Nick wasn't quite so taken aback. So he had been right about 
the smell of blood. If the body had been fresher, or the ambient temperature 
warmer, he would have known right away and beyond a doubt.
	"I'm running a tox screen to see if she was drugged," Burghardt was 
continuing. "And we're looking for prints on the body. I'll let you know as soon 
as I have anything else."
	"Thanks, Dr. Burghardt." Nick broke the connection.
	"Man oh man," groaned Schanke. "What kind of psycho are we looking for 
now?"

	By the start of their next shift, their Jane Doe had a name.
	"Brenda Ann Joliette," Nick announced to his partner as Schanke came 
rushing into the squad room, shedding his overcoat as he went (Nick had managed 
to arrive fifteen minutes early this time, and was savouring his revenge).
	"Huh?" said Schanke, sliding into his chair and casting an apprehensive 
glance in the direction of Captain Cohen's door.
	"Our Jane Doe from the train station," said Nick patiently. "She's forty-
two years old, lived in Oakville, and worked as a director of product 
development at the Royal Bank."
	"Definitely not a bag lady," Schanke mused. "And how do we know all this 
so fast?" he added as Nick handed him a manila file folder.
	"Her boss at the bank reported her missing this afternoon. She was 
supposed to have been back at work after Christmas on the twenty-seventh, but no 
one's seen her since she left the office on Christmas Eve. The description 
matches our Jane Doe."
	"Says here she's married," said Schanke, perusing the file. "Why hasn't 
her husband reported her missing?"
	"He's in the hospital with terminal cancer."
	"Man oh man," said Schanke, shaking his head. "It seems everybody's dying 
of something these days."
	"Schank, please!" protested Nick. "Don't go all gloomy on me. You're the 
last person I'd expect to be suffering from post-Christmas depression."
	"Depression? You call that depression? Wait till I get my next Mastercard 
statement, then you'll see what I look like when I'm suffering from real 
depression." Schanke scowled over the file. "So - no kids, no immediate family, 
closest relative is a second cousin in Australia. Who's gonna ID the body?"
	"We'll have to check with Mr. Joliette and see if he's well enough to do 
it. Otherwise, I guess it'll have to be her boss, the one who reported her 
missing."
	"Says here her address is Deveron Crescent in Oakville. I remember driving 
Myra out there last year to drop off a Skin Pretty order for somebody on that 
street. Right down by the lake. Very upscale area."
	"Well, she drove a nice upscale BMW, too. According to her boss she took 
the GO train in to work every day. I haven't checked with GO security yet, but 
I'll bet that her car has been sitting at the stationin Oakville for several 
days."
	"Man. I hope nobody did her in just to get her seat on the train. Those 
rush hour commuters can be vicious."
	Nick rolled his eyes heavenward. "Put your coat back on, Schanke. We have 
to go talk to Mr. Joliette."
	
	It was obvious from the sight of Edgar Joliette that he wouldn't be going 
to the morgue to ID his wife. In fact, he looked as if he would never get up 
>from his hospital bed again.
	When Nick and Schanke, accompanied by a staff oncologist, went into his 
room in the intensive care unit at Toronto General, the man was unconscious, his 
skin pale and waxy, his face so drawn by pain that he looked almost like a 
death's head. Looking at him, Nick decided he must have been a fairly tall, big-
framed man, probably in good physical condition before the disease hit him. He 
was fifteen years older than this wife, which certainly didn't make him elderly 
even by human standards.
	"He's been like this for about a week now," said the doctor quietly. 
"Although yesterday he rallied pretty amazingly and was actually up and walking, 
but that only lasted for less than a day. He was asking where his wife was. She 
usually comes - came - every day after work, but since he got bad enough to be 
moved to the ICU he hardly even seemed to know she was there."
	"What type of cancer is it?" asked Nick, also speaking softly.
	The doctor edged back into the hallway, and the two detectives followed. 
"He was diagnosed six months ago with pancreatic cancer. It metastasized quite 
rapidly. I'd be surprised if he lasts another week."
	Nick nodded, his face grim. Violent death was horrible, of course, but in 
some ways this slow and painful leaching away of life was even worse. He handed 
the doctor a business card. "If he does wake up again and is lucid, will you 
call us, please? We'll have to ask if he has any idea who might have wanted to 
harm his wife."
	The doctor took the card, but said, "I think it's pretty unlikely - both 
him waking up and being able to give you any information. He's been in hospital 
for nearly two months now. But I'll write it in his chart."
	They thanked him and left the unit.
	As they waited for the elevator, Schanke said quietly, "Well, I guess 
there are worse things in life than having the mother of all credit card bills 
coming through your mail slot."

	At the same time that Nick and Schanke were leaving the hospital, Natalie, 
pleasantly worn out by a day of cross-country skiing (among the few virtues of 
Nick's car, as far as she was concerned, was that her skis could fit inside with 
no problem whatsoever) was settling into bed in the Riverbend Inn and Spa.
	And settling, she thought as she stretched luxuriously under the down 
duvet, was the right word for it. One didn't simply hop into bed here, one took 
one's time and enjoyed the experience.
	The Riverbend had been a hotel for most of its hundred-plus years, and 
there was an ambience of the nineteenth century that went deeper than the Laura 
Ashley decor in the bedrooms. There was no television, and only one radio in the 
guests' lounge.  Cell phones and pagers were not permitted in any of the common 
areas. There was a bookcase full of holiday reading in the lounge, though, and 
Natalie, with no one there who knew her, was three-quarters of the way through 
the latest Danielle Steele, which she would never have dared be seen reading at 
work.
	She had had a massage and a soak in the hot tub every day, and an 
aromatherapy consultation the first afternoon. She still thought that was a bit 
too New Age for her taste, but if someone wanted to scent her bedroom with 
lavender, mandarin, and cedarwood to promote relaxation, she certainly wasn't 
going to complain. And she couldn't say it wasn't effective.
	There was a sort of unofficial curfew of around eleven o'clock, simply 
because most of the guests, tired out by skiing or hiking, were too sleepy to 
stay up any later. After that, the inn was completely, blissfully quiet.
	Perhaps worried that people staying at the hotel on their own, especially 
those accustomed to the background noise of the city, might have difficulty 
sleeping in the strange silence, the management provided (on request) company at 
night - in the form of one of the two hotel cats. At the moment they were both 
in Natalie's bed, a svelte little tortoiseshell which had curled up next to her 
pillow, and a big gray and white Sydney lookalike who was trying to sprawl in 
the exact centre of the bed. Their mismatched purring, and the occasional creak 
>from the old building, were the only sounds.
	She just wished Nick could be there to experience the peace and quiet. And 
at the thought of Nick, her eyes shot wide open, accompanied by an almost 
physical jolt of disquiet. Here I go again, she thought miserably. I could stay 
at this place for a week, or a month, or probably even a year, and still not be 
able to get my feelings sorted out about him.
	Then she thought, damn you, Nicholas Knight, you are not going to mess up 
yet another night's sleep. I'm paying enough for this, I'm going to sleep if I 
have to drink that oil of lavender.
	In the end she did fall asleep, and at some point began to have a dream in 
which she was chasing after a heedless Nick through distorted Toronto streets, 
calling to him that she had finally found the cure. But when she eventually did 
get close to him he turned and snarled at her, his fangs showing and his eyes 
blood red. He seized the bottle containing the cure from her hand and dashed it 
to the street, where it shattered. Then he leaned towards her, hissing, and she 
knew he was going to bite her and drain her blood.
	She awoke with a gasp, reaching out for the bedside lamp almost in a 
reflex movement. Suddenly the darkness and quiet were no longer peaceful, but 
ominous. A vampire could be lurking right outside her window. Not that a table 
lamp would be much defence in that case, but it did help to dispel the 
nightmare.
	She checked her clock - not quite four-thirty, far too early to be getting 
up. Both the cats were looking at her askance. She patted them both until they 
began purring again, then pulled Danielle Steele from the bedside table.

	Breakfast was served in a small glass-enclosed conservatory, from which 
the diners could look down the hillside and catch a glimpse of the Credit River 
through the winter-bare trees. After polishing off a plate of perfectly-cooked 
bacon and decadently rich French toast - she thought wryly that misery rarely 
had much effect on her appetite - she went outside for a long walk along the 
trail that ran next to the river, hoping that an invigorating hike in the 
morning sunlight would dispel the last clinging tendrils of the nightmare.
	Returning late for lunch, feeling virtuous for almost certainly having 
worked off the French toast, she found only two other people in the dining room. 
One of them she recognized, and would have backed out of the room if the 
waitress hadn't been behind her in the doorway with a tray of soup.
	The woman saw her almost at the same time. "Natalie Lambert? Good grief, 
is that really you?" she exclaimed, in a throaty coo that had always affected 
Natalie only slightly less than a hacksaw scraping on metal.
	This must be Old Home Week, she thought. First Sandy, and now this one.
	She had actually known Elana in high school. Even in grade nine, Elana had 
been far more sophisticated than anyone else in her class. She had been quite a 
vamp - quite a tramp, actually, Natalie had always thought in less cordial 
moments. They had never been friendly, and yet for some peculiar reason their 
paths had often crossed since Elana departed school with the avowed intention of 
becoming the next supermodel. The next time Natalie bumped into her she was 
married to another model. Then she had become an interior designer. Then she was 
divorced, claiming that her husband was stifling her artistic freedom. The 
interior design had fallen through - apparently her avant-garde ideas had not 
been properly appreciated by the bourgeois public. Then she was married again, 
to an older man with a comfortably large bank account. And now here she was 
again, with the same ersatz husky voice, simpering manner, and icy eyes, which 
had always combined to set Natalie's teeth on edge.
	"Natalie, it's such a surprise to see you here. Are you actually taking a 
break from all those dead bodies? You certainly look like you need it."
	Yep, just the same Ms. Witchy-Bitchy, thought Natalie, teeth gritted. 
"Well, you know, every so often some people do need a break from serious work. 
You're looking amazingly well, Elana." She put extra emphasis on 'amazingly'.
	"I've always believed that women have an obligation to look after 
themselves,"purred Elana. "After all, we don't all have someone else to do it 
for us. Oh, let me introduce Matthew. He's a business associate of my 
husband's." She squeezed the hand of the perfectly-groomed, dark-haired man 
sitting opposite her, who looked as if he'd just stepped out of a catalogue ad 
for men's suits. "Johnny and I had tonight all booked and at the last minute his 
old mother down in Florida went and had a stroke, so he had to go down there and 
look after things. Matthew very kindly agreed to be my escort. Matthew, this is 
Natalie Lambert - it is still Lambert, isn't it?"
	"Of course," Natalie answered coolly, knowing that Elana would have 
already checked out her left hand for the presence of a ring. "Nice to meet you, 
Matthew. Enjoy your lunch."
	"Aren't you staying?" exclaimed Elana.
	"No, I only came in to look at tonight's menu," Natalie prevaricated, 
valiantly ignoring her hunger pangs. She made a hasty exit, fetched the keys to 
the Caddy, and decided to see if the village of Belfountain down the road could 
provide afternoon tea.
	Several hours later she returned to the inn, determined that the presence 
of the Wicked Witch and her toy boy wasn't going to ruin her New Year's Eve. 
After all, all the other guests at the inn were pleasant enough to make up for 
those two. Changing into her bathing suit and robe, she decided to hit the hot 
tub for a nice soak. Finding Elana and Matthew already ensconced there was a 
stern test of her resolve, but she managed to smile at them and slipped into the 
water as far away from them as she could get.
	"Natalie, did I really just see you drive up in that ancient car?" 
inquired Elana. "It's hardly your style, I would have thought. I always pegged 
you as a practical econobox type of person."
	"It belongs to a friend of mine," Natalie told her coolly, suddenly 
experiencing an overwhelming need to defend Nick's car.  "Mine's in the shop, so 
he loaned me his. It's actually a collector's item."
	"Oh! Most men I know wouldn't loan their precious car to anyone - 
especially if it's a collector's item."
	"Yes, well, I doubt you know anyone quite like Nick."
	"Nick, is it? Tell me about him." Natalie suspected the other woman wanted 
to hear that Nick was some kind of car fanatic of the hands-on, grease-
spattered, beer-guzzling variety, who could be unfavourably compared to the 
sleek, well-groomed Matthew. She shrugged mentally and decided to let her have 
it with both barrels.
	"He's a homicide detective."
	"Oh, I see. A cop." She managed to make the word sound somehow unsavoury - 
definitely downmarket. "It's all work-related, then, is it?"
	Natalie rolled on as if she hadn't heard. "He's also an art collector, an 
artist himself, and an amateur historian. He plays the piano. He's quite a 
philanthropist as well."
	She thought Elana looked rather stunned, but she rallied gamely and said, 
"Well, that's certainly far beyond the scope of most cops I've ever met. But it 
sounds kind of - sedentary."
	Natalie shrugged and said casually, "No, not at all. Nick's actually a 
pretty  physical guy. He keeps himself in great shape."
	"And is he coming up here to ring in the New Year with you?"
	She was tempted to say yes. After all, she knew that Nick was off tonight. 
She also knew that if she asked him to come up to the inn, then he would if he 
possibly could. Talking about him was one thing, but to actually produce a real, 
live, gorgeous boyfriend, one who would completely overshadow Matthew just by 
walking into the same room - that would wipe the obnoxious simper off Elana's 
face.
	Then she realized she couldn't possibly do it. It would be nothing more 
than an ego boost for her. It would put him on the same level as a performing 
dog. A snap of the fingers - "Nick! Come! Sit! Stay!" And he would come, no 
matter if he realized what her ulterior motive was or not, simply because he was 
kind and considerate, and because he would go to the ends of the earth if she 
asked him to. He'd never really come out and said that - he didn't have to. She 
had thought that he took her for granted - this would have wiped the slate clean 
in a big hurry. 
	So what if he had a few idiosyncrasies. So what if he didn't have Sandy 
Wilkes' rock-bottom courage. Not many people did, mortal or otherwise. Maybe 
Sandy was one of a kind. Nick had the determination and willpower to continue 
his search for humanity for centuries, to fight against the immutable fabric of 
his very nature, in the face of every form of opposition from apathy to ridicule 
to outright physical abuse. He was entitled to a little discouragement every so 
often. Maybe he wasn't a completely reliable individual - but how many humans 
did she know that were? Perhaps there were a few paragons out there, but if so, 
she'd never met any. She'd been so busy in the past few days comparing Nick to 
some unattainable ideal that perhaps she had subconsciously decided that, since 
he was physically perfect in so many ways, his character ought to be faultless 
as well.
	She began to smile without realizing it. Maybe she ought to get a bumper 
sticker for the Caddy that said, "Vampires are only human". Or maybe something 
totally preposterous, like "Have you hugged a vampire today?".
	"Earth to Natalie, is anyone home?"
	Oh my God, she thought as Elana's voice penetrated her reverie. I've done 
a Nick.
	"No, he won't be coming up tonight," she said happily."But I think I'll 
call him and wish him a happy New Year." She climbed out of the tub, hastily 
dried off, and went in search of a phone.
	It wasn't completely dark yet, so she wasn't surprised to only get his 
answering machine. She left a cheerful message saying that she hoped he wasn't 
planning to spend New Year's Eve brooding alone in his loft. "I'll call you when 
I get back," she finished. Then she added impulsively, "I've missed you, Nick."
	As she was changing for supper, a sudden mental image struck her. If Nick 
had come, she knew that Elana would have immediately tried to sink her hooks 
into him. Matthew or no Matthew, she would have come on to him like a forest 
fire. A picture of Elana's face if she pushed too far and Nick suddenly went 
into full vampire mode, hissing like an impatient teakettle with lust, formed 
with crystal clarity in her mind's eye.
	Alone in her room, she began to laugh out loud.

	Nick got her message as he was still trying to decide whether or not to go 
to Janette's party. He had to smile as he listened to her voice. That sounded 
more like the old Natalie. Whatever they did at that spa, it had obviously done 
her a world of good.
	In the end, he knew he would go to the Raven. Janette had given him a 
personal invitation; turning that down would be inconsiderate and boorish, and 
possibly hazardous to his health. He had no wish to burn any bridges with 
Janette unless it became absolutely necessary. And besides, he wanted to go. He 
wanted a night to enjoy himself, completely and without inhibitions. And now he 
practically had Natalie's benediction.
	He shaved and dressed with special care. Janette always set so much store 
by clothes, she would be sure to notice and appreciate his extra trouble - even 
if she didn't approve of his choice. He quickly checked his appearance - black 
raw silk shirt and trousers, vest made from skin-supple charcoal gray leather, 
jacket of softest black wool, onyx and gold cufflinks and an old, gold signet 
ring by way of ornament - and took to the air from the skylight. Tonight was 
definitely not a night for taking a cab.
	Janette was standing by the bar at the Raven, clad in something low-cut 
and velvet. It was black - either she'd tired already of hunter green, or had 
decided that this was more appropriate for a formal occasion. A diamond-studded 
comb held her hair in place. How many people, he wondered, knew that that comb 
had once been worn by an eighteenth-century queen of France, and belonged in a 
museum?
	She glided over to him as he stood just inside the door, surveying the 
guests. Vampires only, he noted, most of whom were at least nodding 
acquaintances of his, about two dozen in all. "Nicolas! I'm so glad you came. 
You look positively - delicious." She smiled, the tip of her tongue showing 
between her teeth.
	He took her hand and kissed the fingertips, then laid it briefly against 
his cheek. "And you, Janette, look absolutely ravishing, as if you needed me to 
tell you that."
	"Why, thank you, mon chevalier. Let me look at you - it's so nice to see 
you in something other than work clothes." She made a leisurely circle of 
inspection, touching a finger to her lips, and finally nodded in approval. "You 
are indeed a thing of beauty tonight - and hopefully a joy forever."
	He shrugged noncommittally.
	"Oh, don't worry. Tonight is not a night for raking over old 
disagreements. Come have a drink." She led him to the bar and nodded to Miklos, 
who swiftly produced a filled glass. Nick sniffed at it cautiously, ignoring 
Janette's moue of irritation at his suspicion, then drank deeply. It was bovine 
- she wouldn't dare feed him human - but the proportion of wine was much higher 
than what he normally drank. And there was something about it - a depth that was 
absent from the blandness of his usual diet. Still not the emotion and 
intelligence contained in human blood, but a sense of a creature that was 
physically powerful and unquestionably male. A rutting bull? He grinned, 
wondering how anyone - vampire or mortal - had managed to collect that.
	"Do say that you like it," Janette purred, watching him closely. "It's my 
own special recipe. I had it formulated just for you."
	"It's quite - palatable."
	"Of course, if there is something else you would like, you have only to 
ask." She ran a hand through his hair, twining a blond curl around one slender 
finger.
	"Janette, you're neglecting your other guests," he pointed out.
	"What of it? They're all adults. They can entertain themselves."
	Gently he extricated himself from her hands. "Go on. Be a good hostess. 
Mingle." He leaned forward again and whispered in her ear, "I'll wait for you."
	"Ooh, Nicolas. Dare I ask if you are feeling the slightest bit - amorous?"
	"The sooner you go and circulate, the sooner you can come back and find 
out."
	She leaned towards him, eyes tinged with amber, but with vampire swiftness 
he picked up his glass of blood and interposed it between their lips. She 
pouted, picked up her own glass and moved away to mingle with the other 
vampires. Not that she wasn't happy to see them; they were all friends, and 
besides, there were one or two rather luscious young ones who she could use to 
pay Nicolas back tit for tat if he decided to be a tease. Although the mood came 
upon him so rarely these days - at least in Janette's opinion- that she wanted 
to savour him to the utmost while it lasted.
	So she laughed and chatted and flirted mildly with the other vampires, all 
the while keeping an eye on Nicolas leaning on the bar, and when she finally 
returned to him they danced together, a long, languorous, slow dance such as 
they used to enjoy often together, and hadn't done for a long time. When it was 
over, Nick went back for another glass, which Janette took as a sign that he was 
having a good time, and intended to keep doing so.
	At midnight there was blood cut with champagne instead of wine, served in 
tall elegant flutes that had seen in over a hundred New Years. Nick and Janette 
had withdrawn to a small dim alcove partly screened from the dance floor and 
were sitting in contented silence. Nick had wrapped his arms around Janette's 
waist and was resting his cheek on her shoulder, eyes closed, while she nestled 
back against him. Together they still swayed ever so slightly to the rhythm of 
the music.
	"Come, Nicolas, let us toast to the New Year." Janette picked up her 
champagne. "May it be happy and prosperous and exciting for both of us."
	 And may it be the year in which I walk in the light again, thought Nick.
	Their glasses clinked together and they drank.
	When the champagne was gone, Janette settled back contentedly in Nick's 
arms again. "You know, Nicolas, I haven't seen you this relaxed in a long, long 
time. You should come and see me more often."
	"I do come and see you often."
	"Then you should stay longer when you do. I mean it, Nick. This constant 
trying to be something you're not - it will tear you apart before you ever 
achieve your goal."
	He kissed the top of her head and said, "I thought you didn't want to talk 
about that tonight."
	"I don't, but I feel I must strike while the iron is hot, so to speak. 
Can't you see that this is where you belong? With me? With the others here? Not 
with mortals. You can never fit in with them, no matter how hard you try. I 
don't like to see you putting yourself through so much pain."
	Good thing she doesn't know about Nat's latest protein shake, he thought 
with amusement. Aloud he said, "Janette, you know there's nothing you can say 
that will make me change my mind. Give it up. Beating your head against a brick 
wall isn't a good idea for mortals or vampires."
	"I'm just a masochist, I suppose. So you will be as determined to become 
human this year as you were last?"
	"Yes."
	She heaved a troubled sigh. "I'm not going to give you up gracefully, you 
know."
	"I'd be disappointed if you did."
	"Then I suppose I ought to enjoy you while I can."
	"Well then, come and dance."
	They danced again, another slow sensual dance, and then they danced with 
different partners, and then with each other again. It grew late into the night. 
Nick was well down in his second bottle of wine and bull's blood. Every pair of 
eyes in the club was golden. The tempo of the music became more urgent. All 
around the room the vampires' movements grew more frenzied, veering towards out 
of control.
	Nick whispered hoarsely in Janette's ear, "Let's go somewhere more 
private."
	"Shy, Nicolas?"
	"I'm thinking of the decibel level."
	"Whatever you like, mon amour." She wasn't about to deny him anything at 
this point. Quickly she led him from the room and down the corridor to her own 
apartment. Blindly Nick kicked the door shut behind them and began pulling off 
the black velvet gown, his hands roaming freely down her body. He snarled around 
fully descended fangs. Janette crushed her lips against his, kissing him as if 
she could devour him whole, while her hands unfastened his shirt - his jacket 
and vest had been shed hours ago, somewhere on the dance floor - and pushed it 
down his arms to come at that madly enticing pale throat.
	"Oh, Nicolas, mon ange dore," she gasped, and struck fiercely.
	The intensity of the sensation of Janette drinking from him was 
overwhelming, and he nearly went to his knees. He managed to steady himself and 
picked her up and carried her through to her bedroom, laying her on the queen-
sized bed. He pulled off the rest of his clothing, snarling in his haste, and 
lunged at her throat as she relinquished his. There was nothing in the world but 
gold and red and Janette's blood, rich with wine and passion, filling him 
utterly.
	When the initial frenzy had died down they made love slowly, gently, 
pleasuring each other with a skill born of intimate knowledge of one another's 
bodies - knowledge gained of old, of exactly where and when and how to touch, 
caress, kiss. The passion ignited again, building to its inevitable conclusion, 
and the need for the blood became paramount once more. All tenderness gone, they 
grappled with each other, snarling, striking for the vein.
	Neither of them noticed the sensation of displaced air in the doorway, or 
the figure in black who leaned there, indulgently watching the two vampires who 
were by now silent and almost immobile as they gorged on one another's blood. 
"Oh, Nicholas, I knew Janette would bring you back to the fold sooner or later. 
I see you haven't forgotten any of your technique." Speculatively he fingered 
his collar, debating about whether to join them, and reluctantly decided against 
it. Janette would probably not object to a trio, but Nicholas, even crazed with 
lust as he was, would treat the addition as an intrusion and most likely end up 
behaving like a complete boor, totally destroying the mood. And Lacroix hadn't 
come here tonight to see anything destroyed.
	So he remained in the doorway and watched as the pair drank their fill, 
then gradually released one another. He was amused to see that Janette, guzzling 
as usual, had torn open a fairly substantial gash in Nicholas' throat, and the 
blood was still slowly spreading down over his breast. Eyes shut, she was 
lapping at him as contentedly as a cat with a bowl of cream. It always amazed 
him that Nicholas should have turned out to be such a fastidious feeder in 
comparison.
	Still neither of them had noticed his presence. He watched for a few 
minutes longer as they settled down to rest, still tangled heedlessly together, 
totally sated. Nicholas would be spending the day here, he knew. By the time the 
pair of them recovered, it would be full daylight. All the better. The more time 
Nicholas spent with his own kind the more Lacroix was pleased. Dawn wasn't far 
off even now, which meant that he had no more time to spend gazing at his 
delectable offspring.
	He took a look around the main room of the club before leaving. Most of 
the vampires there were in a similar exhausted state. Janette certainly knew how 
to throw a good party, he thought as he slipped out the back entrance into the 
first morning of the new year.
	After his departure, the interior of the Raven was as silent as a tomb.

	Nick returned to the loft as soon as it was fully dark again, refusing 
Janette's invitation to stay and pick up where they had left off. He was feeling 
more cheerful and relaxed than he had done in a long while. There was no doubt 
that the interlude with Janette had completely revitalized him - if that term 
could be applied to someone who wasn't really alive at all. At the same time, he 
couldn't wait to see Natalie again. He knew he had to get his ebullience under 
control before he did, though. If she asked him why he was in such a good mood, 
he could hardly give her the real reason.
	First priority was a shower and a change of clothes. He examined his shirt 
when he had peeled it off, and shook his head. Somewhere along the way Janette 
had actually torn it. Well, hopefully the cleaners could repair the damage.
	Half an hour later he came hurrying down the stairs, clean, shaved, and 
dressed for work. Natalie and the Caddy wouldn't be back until tomorrow, which 
meant another cab ride to work tonight. Better leave extra time for that, since 
a taxi might not be that easy to come by on a holiday. He poured himself a glass 
of cow blood and sipped it while checking the answering machine.
	There was only one message.
	"Mr. Knight, this is Staff Sergeant Tompkins of the Peel Region Police. 
I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, sir. Your Cadillac was involved in a 
single-car accident earlier today and the driver, a Dr. Natalie Lambert, has 
been taken to hospital. If you'd like to give me a call, you can reach me at the 
following number. . ."
	There was a crash in the loft as the wine glass fell from Nick's suddenly 
nerveless hand and shattered on the floor. He didn't notice. Frantically he 
punched in the number the sergeant had given him, hitting the buttons with such 
force that he nearly broke the telephone in the process.
	Sergeant Tompkins had gone off duty, and it took several minutes to find 
someone who knew the details of the accident. By that time Nick was nearly in an 
outright panic. What he heard from the woman who eventually came on the line did 
nothing to calm him down.
	"Dr. Lambert was driving east along Forks of the Credit Road at about 
eleven this morning. I don't know if you're familiar with the area, Mr. Knight, 
but the roads are quite hilly and winding. That particular road has a pretty bad 
switchback. It looks like she may have hit some black ice at the top of the hill 
and lost control. In any case, the car hit the guardrail, bounced off, slid 
partway down the road, broke through the rail further down and rolled over. 
Fortunately she hit a tree on the hillside, or else the car would have ended up 
in the river. Someone who lives down below heard the crash and called us. I'm 
afraid your car is a complete write-off, sir."
	"To hell with the car," snarled Nick in a fear-roughened voice. "What 
happened to Natalie?"
	"She was unconscious when we got to her. There appeared to be a severe 
head injury. She was airlifted down to Toronto."
	"Which hospital?" he demanded.
	He could hear a page turning at the other end of the phone. Eventually the 
woman gave him the name of one of the large downtown hospitals.
	He slammed the phone down. A second later the loft was empty again.

	Lying in bed in intensive care, Natalie was almost as white as the sheets 
around her. Most of her head was covered in bandages, and there were damp gauze 
pads taped over her eyes. What was visible of her face was shockingly bruised. 
He almost couldn't recognize her. And she was still unconscious.
	Carefully, he picked up her hand, the one that didn't have an IV attached. 
She looked so fragile that he was afraid to touch her, but he desperately wanted 
to establish a physical contact, as if by doing so he could reach out to 
whatever still place she was in. He kissed her palm, touched it to the side of 
his face, then held the hand between both of his own. So strong and capable, 
that hand. Now it was limp and pale, except for the massive purple bruise across 
the back of it, and it seemed colder than normal. Slowly, with infinite 
gentleness, he began to rub a circle on the palm with his thumb.
	"Mr. Knight?" 
	He looked up to see a young bespectacled Asian man in a white lab coat 
standing beside the nurse in the doorway. "I'm Dr. Leung, Dr. Lambert's 
attending physician. Would you like to come with me?"
	Nick gently laid Natalie's hand back down on the blanket, patted it once, 
and followed the doctor down the hall to a small windowless room, furnished with 
several standard hospital-issue chairs. Dr. Leung showed him in and then shut 
the door behind them.
	"Is Natalie. . ."  he began, then found he couldn't say anything more.
	"Please sit down, Mr. Knight," said the doctor gently.
	Nick perched on the edge of one of the chairs, too tense to sit back. The 
doctor began, "Normally I wouldn't discuss this with anyone but a family member. 
But under the circumstances, especially since it was your car Dr. Lambert was 
driving, I think I can safely ignore the policy. As you've probably already been 
told, she has a fractured skull and is in a fairly deep coma. There are other 
injuries as well. Several cracked ribs, a fractured clavicle - collarbone - and 
multiple lacerations and extensive bruising, but the head injury is, of course, 
the thing that concerns us the most."
	"When will she wake up?" Nick asked in a voice stretched taut with 
anxiety, even as he recognized the tone from other voices asking the same 
question of him, in another time and place. And he already knew what the doctor 
would tell him, because he'd had to give that answer himself. But it was just 
possible that something had changed in the many years that had passed since he 
had last worked as a physician.
	"That's something I just can't tell you, I'm afraid. In these cases, all 
we can say is 'wait and see'. It could be a few days, or weeks. It might even be 
months. We have absolutely no way of knowing. Since we're discussing this, I may 
as well tell you that we also have no way of knowing, when she does wake up, 
what sort of changes might have taken place."
	"Changes?"
	"Most people awakening from a coma will exhibit varying degrees of speech 
difficulties, abnormal or irrational behaviour, memory loss...I'm not saying 
that all or any of these things will manifest themselves in Dr. Lambert's case, 
but you should be aware of the possibility."
	Nick buried his face in his hands, as if by doing so he could find some 
sort of oblivion where none of this was real. Of course that wasn't going to 
happen, and wishing for it did no good at all. This nightmare couldn't be 
banished so easily.
	Dr. Leung waited until Nick was looking at him again, the said, "There's 
something else we have no way of knowing, and that is just how much a person in 
a coma can hear or understand what's going on around them. Even though they may 
seem completely unaware, sometimes it turns out that they actually heard every 
word in a particular conversation. That's why I brought you in here to discuss 
Dr. Lambert's condition. Please keep that in mind when you're with her."
	That was really rather funny, Nick thought, because Natalie would 
definitely want to know everything there was to know about what was wrong with 
her.
	"Now, is there anyone else who should be notified? It's always hard to get 
that sort of information when the patient can't tell us."
	"Natalie doesn't have any immediate family," Nick answered dully. "There's 
her sister-in-law in Vancouver, and the people at work. I'll call them 
tomorrow." Grace would want to know. Maybe he should call her at home. And 
Natalie had a neighbour who usually looked after Sydney while she was away. He'd 
have to do something about that, before the neighbour called the police and 
reported Natalie missing.
	But tomorrow. He'd do all that tomorrow. Right now he had to go back to 
Natalie.
	He thanked Dr. Leung and headed back to Natalie's room. Passing the 
nurse's desk, he realized that there was a call he did have to make tonight. He 
had to talk to Captain Cohen, tell her he wouldn't be in. He didn't care if she 
docked his pay. There was no way he could leave Natalie and go into work.
	Cohen was understanding. Even if she hadn't been sympathetic, she could 
tell over the phone that Nick was virtually shell-shocked. He would be worse 
than useless at the precinct.
	He returned to Natalie, picking up her hand again and resuming his 
caresses. Maybe she could feel it; maybe she knew he was there, although, 
looking at her, he didn't see how that could be possible. But there was nothing 
else for him to do.
	He was vaguely aware of the nurses' shift change, but he didn't bother to 
look at the clock. His vampire instinct told him that now was the deepest part 
of the night, a time when in centuries past he would have been hunting, not only 
for sustenance, but for the intense thrill of pursuing and catching and draining 
a mortal to death. And now he sat at a mortal's bedside, wanting only to see 
life - true life - return. How ironic it all was. No doubt, if he found a radio 
right now and turned on the Nightcrawler, Lacroix would be delivering a 
monologue on the subject of irony, or perhaps the intertwining of life and 
death, how it was impossible to have one without the other in the mortal world. 
The thought was in no way comforting right now.
	Sometime later he heard a familiar voice at the door and looked up to see 
Schanke peering in anxiously. "Come on in, Schank," he called softly.
	His partner sidled a few steps into the room, looking apprehensively at 
the bed. "Oh jeez, Nick, I'm sorry. I'm terribly sorry."
	Nick was puzzled as to why Schanke seemed to be apologizing to him. It 
wasn't as if Schanke had had anything to do with Natalie's accident. Remembering 
what Dr. Leung had told him about talking in front of Natalie, he took his 
partner to the deserted corridor outside the ICU to repeat what he had been told 
about Natalie's injuries.
	"I'm sorry, Nick," said Schanke again, shaking his head.
	"Why?" asked Nick, genuinely curious. "It wasn't your car that nearly 
killed her."
	"Oh come on, Nick, that's not what I - "
	"She didn't even want to take it in the first place. I forced her to take 
it," continued Nick relentlessly, his need to excoriate himself almost bubbling 
out of him. "I should have let her get a rental car. A new, safe rental car that 
would have had proper shoulder belts and an airbag, that wouldn't have been a 
convertible without a roll bar." He knew that once the heavy car started to 
slide, it would have become a massive juggernaut. Sitting by Natalie's bed he 
had imagined over and over again what it must have felt like to have gone 
spinning out of control down the steep road, unable to stop no matter what she 
did, before smashing through the guardrail and out into space, landing upside 
down...his fists were clenched so tightly that his nails tore into his palms. 
Had she been screaming? Had she been cursing him?
	"Stop it, Nick! Any car will spin out on black ice, no matter how safe it 
is or how good the driver is. The Caddy's so big, she probably was better 
protected than in some little compact."
	"'Some little compact' would have protected her a whole lot more when it 
rolled over."
	"You can't know that. Nick, please don't beat yourself up over this. It's 
enough that Nat's been hurt without you going completely cuckoo."
	"Yeah, right," said Nick bitterly. "Nothing I do matters now anyway. It's 
my fault she's hurt, and nothing can change that."
	"Nick! Stop it! You're losing it, partner! Look, there's a twenty-four 
hour drug store around the corner. Why don't you go get something to help you 
sleep and go home."
	Nick shook his head. Schanke rolled his eyes and raised both hands in a 
gesture of helplessness. "Okay, then will you try to stop blaming yourself for 
all the wrongs in the universe, at least while you're with Nat? Positive 
thinking and all that, ya know. It's amazing what it can accomplish."
	"All right," said Nick quietly.
	"And go home in the morning, don't take up residence here. They don't want 
you underfoot twenty-four hours a day."
	Nick nodded, and Schanke gave him a light clap on the shoulder and headed 
for the elevators. Nick returned to Natalie's room.
	He tried to take Schanke's advice and stop blaming himself, mainly because 
he was worried now that he might inadvertently crush her hand while imagining 
the car's descent down the hillside. But the best he could do was to push the 
guilt back to a corner of his mind for the time being. Once he was alone, it 
would immediately surface again. And he wanted it to. He almost felt as if he 
needed it to. After all, it was only right that he should suffer for the pain he 
had caused Natalie, as if maybe this self-imposed penance would help to balance 
the scales in that place where the rights and wrongs of human actions were 
judged.
	Yes, it was fitting that he should be the one to suffer now. Because while 
Natalie had been lying in the wreckage of his car on that frozen hillside, he 
had been warm and snug in Janette's bed, both of them wrapped contentedly in one 
another's embrace. Logic told him that even had he known about the accident, he 
could have done nothing while it was still daylight. But to have been where he 
was, that day...it was one more burden to carry, one more charge to be laid at 
his door. Another injustice that he could see no way of rectifying, except by 
mute anguish.
	Eventually his innate sense of day and night told him that morning was not 
far off. With it came an odd, brief feeling that someone was watching him. He 
glanced over at the doorway. Of course someone was: there was a nurse on a chair 
there, just as there was outside almost every patient's room in the unit. She 
met his eyes and gave him a brief smile as she saw him looking at her, then 
looked down again at the chart spread out in front of her.
	If he was starting to imagine things that weren't there, it was time to be 
on his way. He heaved himself out of the chair and dropped a feather-light kiss 
on the bandages over Natalie's forehead. God, he hated to leave her. But he had 
no choice. There was a window in the room, and it faced east.
	He and the nurse murmured goodbyes as he passed. He took the elevator 
downstairs and walked outside into the waning night. 
	The eastern sky was showing just a faint streak of steely gray. Heedless 
of the fact that he was standing in the icy January predawn without a coat, Nick 
inhaled a deep breath of the freezing air to dispel the odour of the hospital 
>from his nostrils. In spite of feeling drained by the long stressful night, he 
was restless, unsettled, not ready to return to the prison of the loft. Instead 
he crossed the street and walked eastward, towards College Park.
	The skating rink was deserted. He wandered aimlessly around it, hands in 
his pockets. The whole area was silent, with just an occasional whisper of 
traffic on the surrounding streets. Only a few lights showed from the apartments 
overlooking the rink and the hotel away to the south. For a moment he stood on 
the ice surface, moving one foot back and forth, remembering how it had felt to 
glide effortlessly. To slide. To spin, out of control...
	The sky was lightening further. He pulled himself back to the here and 
now, and as he did so, in the split second of the transition, he felt again the 
sensation of eyes on his back. He withdrew into the deep shadows of a line of 
pine trees and glanced around. Still no one in sight.
	He shrugged, suddenly too tired to care. He moved another step into the 
shadows and took flight.

	He went home, polished off half a bottle of blood without bothering with a 
glass, and stared sightlessly at the shutters over the windows until office 
hours had begun and he could call the coroner's office. He asked particularly 
that Grace Balthazar be notified. Then he called directory assistance for 
Vancouver and got Sarah Lambert's number. It was only just after six o'clock 
there; he didn't want to phone now and wake her up. He'd leave that till 
tonight. He reminded himself to stop in and see Natalie's cat-sitting neighbour 
tonight as well.
	There was one more thing he knew he needed to take care of, and that was 
to do something about the Caddy. Presumably the Peel police hadn't just left it 
sitting on the hillside. At least he had to make some arrangement with the 
insurance company. But he couldn't bring himself to do that right now.
	In fact, he realized, he never even wanted to see the car again.
	
	He was back at the hospital again less than twelve hours later. Walking 
into Natalie's room, he was appalled to see that she was now attached to a 
respirator. And the bruising on what he could see of her skin looked even worse 
than it had yesterday. He knew that that was probably to be expected - a vampire 
would have healed long before the full extent of the same injury to a mortal 
could even be seen. But the machine?
	He spun around, found Natalie's nurse, and demanded, "What happened?"
	"Dr. Lambert started experiencing breathing difficulties due to an 
increase in intracranial pressure. Basically, her brain is still swelling from 
the injury, the same as any other part of the body would. We're trying to keep 
the pressure down with medication."
	"How long will she need to be on this thing?"
	"I wish I could tell you, Mr. Knight. It's all a game of wait and see."
	Game. Some game. With a muted sound of anguish he lowered himself into the 
same bedside chair and picked up Natalie's hand. "Hi, Nat. I'm back again," he 
said softly.
	Not long afterward, Schanke arrived on his way in to work. Nick gave him 
an update of Natalie's condition, as much as he understood it himself.
	"Listen, Nick," said Schanke, pulling another chair over from the corner 
to sit beside him. "Nobody's expecting you to be too into this right at the 
moment, but how about if I bring you up to speed on the Joliette case? Maybe 
it'll give you something to think about." He almost added, "Instead of driving 
yourself insane with a load of misplaced guilt that even a Mack truck couldn't 
carry", but decided not to go there. "And I might as well bounce ideas off you, 
rather than the wall. I mean, hey, I'm marginally more likely to get a response 
>from you, right?"
	Nick didn't take his eyes from Natalie's face. Schanke realized that maybe 
he shouldn't count on it.
	He ploughed on regardless. "First off, Brenda's boss ID'd the body today. 
And Burghardt says that whoever cut the heart out - "
	Nick looked up with a glare. Schanke dropped his voice to a furtive 
whisper. "Sorry. Burghardt says it looks like a proper surgical job. And also 
that - um - she was probably still alive when it was done."
	"Schanke, I really don't want to hear this right now."
	"Don't worry, that's it for the gory parts. We talked to some of the 
people around Union Station this morning - do you have any idea how many nooks 
and crannies there are in that place, by the way? I think it was designed by 
some crazed mole or something - anyhow, nobody remembers seeing her getting off 
the train from Oakville, ever. No surprise, half the population of the GTA goes 
through there every morning. But one of the day shift guys got lucky when he 
talked to some of the train crews from the lakeshore line. One of the conductors 
remembered seeing her getting on the train in Oakville the morning of the 
twenty-seventh. You were right about her car, by the way. It's apparently still 
sitting in the lot at the station in Oakville."
	Schanke waited for a response from his partner. When nothing was 
forthcoming, he said gently, "Nick? Did you hear a word I've said?"
	"Yes."
	"We'll do another canvass of the station in the morning. Maybe we can get 
lucky with somebody who was still on vacation yesterday. We'll get the house 
searched, talk to the neighbours, check out her work, have a look at her car. 
Unless we get a break, there's going to be an awful lot of plain legwork here."
	Nick made a vaguely assenting noise.
	Schanke hesitated. "You know, Nick, Edgar Joliette's just three doors down 
the hall. I looked in when I came past and there was a whole bunch of people in 
there. Maybe later on you could go see if you could talk to him?"
	Nick said nothing. Schanke sighed. "Never mind. The doctor was probably 
right - he's never gonna wake up again anyway. And if he does, he doesn't need 
to know that his wife's been killed. I gotta get going." He stood up. "Nat, if 
you can hear me, get well soon." He looked at Nick. "And you, partner, take care 
of yourself. Don't spend all your time sitting here brooding."
	"Goodnight, Schanke."
	"'Night, partner."
	For the next several hours he sat motionless except for his continual soft 
caressing of Natalie's hand and when he had to move aside for the medical team 
to attend to her. His very stillness was drawing some attention from the nurses, 
but he was oblivious to that.
	Sometime around midnight he heard a fragment of conversation from 
somewhere out of sight in the hallway. "...amazed he hasn't worn a hole in her 
hand by now..." He looked at Nat's hand in mild surprise, then put it down and 
stood up. Maybe it was time to stretch his legs. He went outside, past some 
rather startled-looking nurses, and walked down the hallway to Edgar Joliette's 
room.
	"How is he?" he asked the nurse in the doorway - fortunately the same 
woman who had been on duty when he and Schanke had first come to talk to 
Joliette.
	"He hasn't been lucid since you and your partner were here the other day. 
He seems to be in more pain, too." Dropping her voice, she murmured, "It looks 
pretty hopeless, Detective."
	"Thanks." He was turning to leave when he realized Joliette had actually 
had a visitor. There was a little girl curled up in a chair at the bedside, her 
back turned to the door. All he could see was fine shoulder-length blonde hair, 
a red sweatshirt and blue pants, and running shoes. From her position in the 
chair, he guessed she was asleep.
	"Who's that?" he asked the nurse in a low voice.
	"She's a relative, I think. I don't know her name. She comes and goes at 
all hours, never says anything to anybody, just sits with him. She's a funny 
little kid. Well, at least there's someone coming to see him."
	He went back thoughtfully to Natalie's room. Something struck him as soon 
as he entered, which he would have noticed when he first arrived if he hadn't 
been distracted by the sight of the respirator - a huge, brightly-coloured 
flower arrangement on a small table in the corner. He examined the tag on it and 
half-smiled.
	Sitting down beside her again, he said, "Looks like Grace was in to see 
you today. She must have gotten the message. I called Sarah in Vancouver and 
told her about the accident. She wants to come and see you but she wasn't sure 
if she could get any time off from work. I think the plane fare might be a 
problem, too. If she decides to come, I'll see if I can find some way of 
subsidizing it. And I talked to your next-door neighbour. She's going to keep on 
looking after Sydney, so you don't have to worry about him. In fact, if you 
want, I'll stop by and check on him sometimes - just to make sure he doesn't put 
on too much weight without you to play with him."
	There was no response from the bed, but after a while he continued anyway. 
"I went over to the rink at College Park after I left here yesterday, Nat. You 
know, next time I'll bring my skates with me. There won't be anyone there to see 
if I fall and make a total fool of myself. I'll practise, I swear. How about 
that? The next time you see me on skates, you'll be amazed. We can be like 
Torville and Dean."
	He stopped. Again he had the strange certainty that he was being watched. 
This time it couldn't have been the nurse - she must have left momentarily. But 
beyond her vacant chair, he caught a glimpse of someone wearing a red shirt 
leaving the intensive care unit. Curious, he got up and followed, only to hear 
the elevator doors closing just as he rounded the corner. Whoever it was had 
gone. The corridor was empty.
	He went back and looked in Joliette's room. The bedside chair was empty as 
well.
	"That little girl who was here earlier - did she leave just now?" he asked 
the nurse. The woman he had spoken to before must have left for a break; he had 
never seen this nurse before.
	She looked at him in surprise. "What little girl?"
	He looked back at the empty chair next to the dying man. "Never mind."
	He went back and sat at Natalie's bedside again. This time he picked up 
her hand, kissed it briefly so she would know it was him, and then simply held 
it without speaking. He desperately wanted to tell her he was sorry, but he was 
afraid that if he actually spoke the words in front of her then he would break 
down completely. And so he sat, silent and utterly still, until he knew it was 
time to leave again.

	When he awoke the following evening and went downstairs, he found Lacroix 
sitting on the leather couch, watching the fire, chin resting on steepled 
fingers.
	"Good evening, Nicholas," said the elder vampire without turning around.
	Nick made an expansive gesture around the loft with the full bottle of 
blood he pulled from the fridge. "Make yourself at home, Lacroix." In spite of 
his day's rest, he felt too worn to attempt any great heights of sarcasm. He 
wondered dully what the other wanted with him. In all of his nearly eight 
hundred years of vampire existence, he had rarely fallen into a depression which 
his master had been unable to make worse simply by his very presence.
	"Thank you. I've already availed myself of your hospitality, Nicholas - 
such as it is."
	"Don't complain. I don't recall asking you to come." Nick pulled the cork 
out and drank straight from the bottle, knowing how much that little mannerism 
of his irritated Lacroix.
	His master made a faint noise of disgust. "Really, Nicholas, such table 
manners." He still hadn't turned around.
	Nick slammed the bottle down on the dining table. "Tell me what you came 
here for and get out."
	Lacroix tsk'd in mock annoyance. Turning to look at Nick for the first 
time, he said, "I sensed that the Nightcrawler has lost one of his regular 
listeners the past few nights, and I was curious as to the reason. You missed a 
particularly good show the night before last. I took as a topic the irony of how 
closely life and death are intertwined in the mortal world, like the double 
helix of a strand of DNA, and the futility of attempting to separate the two."
	Nick slumped at the table, head in his hands. Lacroix had known. How the 
hell did he always know?
	"And now that I am here," Lacroix continued imperturbably, "I find myself 
nearly overwhelmed by outpourings of guilt and depression far exceeding your 
usual anguished norm. I had truly hoped that with your new year getting off to 
such a fine start as it did with Janette, that you might have decided to cast 
aside your penchant for mental suffering. But alas, that would appear to have 
been a false hope. Tell me, Nicholas, do you actually derive enjoyment >from all 
this despair? Or are you attempting to gain a place in the Guinness Book of 
World Records for being the individual with the greatest capacity for angst?"
	Without lifting his head from his hands, Nick replied, "Natalie was in an 
accident on New Year's Day. In my car."
	"Ah. So that explains all the depression. But surely the car can be 
repaired?"
	Nick lifted his head, eyes golden, and without warning lunged at Lacroix 
with a roar of fury. Lacroix batted him aside, and he landed in a sprawl across 
the leather armchair. "I take it from that reaction that I have attributed your 
concern to the wrong source," he said, feigning mild astonishment. "Can it be 
Dr. Lambert you're upset about, not the Cadillac?"
	"Lacroix, you bastard, she was nearly killed!"
	"Mortals do die, Nicholas. You ought to have listened to my show two 
nights ago. It's all part of what is called the human condition. They come, they 
go, we remain. Surely after all these centuries you've managed to grasp this 
concept. Perhaps you ought to listen to the tape of that show."
	"She's in a coma. She's lying in a hospital bed in a coma because of me."
	"A most unfortunate form of undeath," said Lacroix, and he did, indeed, 
almost sound regretful. "Why not bring her across, in that case?"
	Nick gave his master a venomous look. "Get out of here."
	"It's a logical solution. You feel responsible for what has happened to 
her. This is how you can make reparation and set things right again. If you feel 
you might run into difficulties, I'd be only too willing to assist you."
	"I said get out."
	Lacroix sighed. "Very well. But just remember, you have it in your power 
to heal her. If you choose not to do so, then you can hardly complain about her 
remaining in a hospital bed."
	Then he was gone, the only trace of his visit an eddy of cold air from the 
skylight.
	Nick dragged himself back to the table for another long pull from the 
bottle.

	Walking into Natalie's room, he was relieved to see that the respirator 
had been disconnected. "Is she doing better?" he asked the nurse eagerly.
	"Well, the intracranial pressure seems to be under control, so that's 
definitely a good thing. As for any other signs of recovery..." She tailed off 
with a resigned smile.
	"Well, that's something." Nick was determined to at least try to be 
optimistic. Think positive. Think positive.
	Schanke came in a few minutes later. He was rumpled-looking and unshaven, 
and Nick thought he was wearing the same clothes as yesterday. His partner 
pulled a chair to the bedside and sank into it with an enormous yawn.
	"Man oh man," he groaned. "These double shifts are gonna kill me." At 
Nick's questioning look, he elaborated, "Flu season's hit with a vengeance. Half 
the precinct called in sick this morning. I wound up having to cover for two 
other guys right when all I wanted to do was kiss the joint goodbye. I tell you 
though, there must be something to all these echinacea pills that Myra's been 
making me take practically since Labour Day. Not so much as a sniffle. Of 
course, what do I get out of it? The work of three guys, that's what - oh, I 
almost forgot." He opened the paper bag he'd been carrying and pulled out a 
small package wrapped in tissue paper, which he unwrapped to reveal a plush gray 
and white stuffed kitten. He placed the toy on Natalie's bed. "Myra picked it 
out and dropped it off this afternoon. Does it look anything like Sydney?"
	Nick laid Natalie's hand down on top of the kitten. "Pretty close. That 
was good of Myra."
	"Yeah, well, I'll tell her that you like it, anyway, even if you can't 
speak for Nat. Do you want to hear what's new with the Joliette case?"
	"Sure," said Nick automatically. 
	Schanke gave him a doubtful look, but proceeded anyway. "We've searched 
the house in Oakville and interviewed the neighbours. Nothing there. Nice area, 
everyone keeps pretty much behind their own hedges. But the Joliettes, as much 
as anyone knew them, were a nice, well-liked couple, the type who would always 
wave as they drove past in their his 'n hers matched BMWs. One guy said Joliette 
actually loaned him his snow blower once last winter - man, that's more than I'd 
do for any of my neighbours. Nobody ever noticed anyone suspicious hanging 
around. We've also talked to Brenda's boss and retrieved her diary from work, 
but I haven't had a chance to go through it yet. The one place we did luck out 
at was down at Union. I talked to a woman at a coffee stand in the GO concourse 
and she recognized Brenda's picture. Said she stopped there most mornings to 
grab a coffee. This woman remembered seeing her on the morning of the twenty-
seventh talking to a little blonde kid. She says she didn't overhear any of the 
conversation, but that it looked pretty intense - she thought Brenda looked kind 
of upset. I asked her if she could remember the kid well enough to help us with 
a sketch, but she said she really only saw her from the back. The best I could 
get for a description was straight shoulder-length blonde hair and about four 
foot ten - she only came up to about Brenda Joliette's shoulder. She thought the 
age was maybe around twelve or so."
	For the first time in the entire conversation Nick looked straight at 
Schanke, as if something his partner had said had rung a bell. "What?" said 
Schanke instantly.
	Nick stood up. Schanke followed him out and down the hall to Edgar 
Joliette's room. The only person there was Joliette himself, still oblivious, 
looking even more like a death's head than he had the day before.
	Nick said to the nurse on duty,"That little blonde girl who was here last 
night - has she been back?"
	"She was here for a while earlier. I think she left before you came in, 
though."
	"Look, is there anyone who might know anything about her? I need to know 
who she is."
	The nurse frowned. "Well, I know the nurses on the day shift hardly ever 
see her. She seems to come mostly in the evening and at night. But she's never 
actually said anything to me - in fact, she usually just dashes past with her 
head down. She seems terribly shy."
	"Has anyone ever come in with her? Parents or anyone?"
	"No, she's always on her own. I've always thought that was pretty strange 
- she only looks like she's about nine or ten. Look, if it's important, I can 
page Mr. Joliette's attending physician. Maybe Mr. Joliette said something to 
him."
	"I'd appreciate that, if you wouldn't mind."
	"No problem." The nurse went off to the desk to place the page. Schanke 
stared at Nick. "You think the kid from the train station is the same one who 
drops in here on the victim's husband?"
	"I don't know. I never really got a good look at this kid last night. But 
it's a pretty strange coincidence."
	Nick took the call when the doctor answered his page. Coming back to 
Schanke, he almost looked disappointed, as if his interest in the case had 
revived to the point that he was unhappy with a negative result. "He says that 
the one day this week that Joliette was conscious, he introduced the girl as his 
niece, so on that basis she's been allowed in to see him. But Joliette didn't 
actually give her name, or say anything else about her."
	"So this pre-pubescent kid just pops in here in the middle of the night 
and nobody thinks that's a little bit weird? Like, shouldn't she be at home in 
bed?"
	Nick pulled Schanke back down the hall to Natalie's room, out of earshot 
of Joliette's nurse. "Schank, the patient said she was a relative. That gives 
her visiting rights. This is an intensive care unit, not the Children's Aid 
Society."
	"But - "
	"Schank, you've been working for nearly twenty-four hours. Go home and get 
some sleep. I'll see if I can find out anything about this mystery kid."
	Schanke stifled another huge yawn. "Thanks, Nick. I'm gonna take you up on 
that. I just hope I can make it home without falling asleep at the wheel and 
wrapping myself around a light standard." He looked in again briefly at Natalie 
and trudged off.
	Nick dug into his wallet for a business card, then went back and handed it 
to the nurse. "Look, if that little girl comes back again, can you let me know? 
Give me a call at this number if I'm not here. It's very important that I speak 
to her."
	"Why?" asked the nurse, looking at the card curiously.
	"She may have been one of the last people to have seen Mr. Joliette's wife 
alive," Nick told her, and went back to Natalie.
	"Nat," he said softly, picking up the hand that was still resting atop the 
stuffed kitten (surely it required a conscious effort to hold that hand in place 
and not just slide off?), "I really wish I could have your help with this. But 
it looks like Schanke and I will have to do without for a while. And Schank 
looks totally beat. It's really not fair for him to be doing all the work for 
both of us plus a few others as well, while I just keep a chair warm here. So, 
if you don't mind, I think it's time I went and did something to earn my 
living."
	He kissed the palm of the hand he was holding, then touched his lips to 
her forehead. Laying her hand back down on the cat, he turned and quietly left.

	Settling in at his desk in the squad room, it seemed to Nick that the 
onslaught of the flu virus at the precinct had had one beneficial effect. The 
thinned ranks meant that everyone was busier than usual, and nobody had time for 
much more than a curious glance when he walked in, or a hasty inquiry about Nat. 
For her sake he was gratified to see their concern, but he felt awkward 
acknowledging it. The looks of idle curiosity he ignored.
	Pulling out the file folder on Brenda Joliette, he started to read through 
everything Schanke had put together so far, as well as the notes from the 
interviews with the staff at Union Station and the Joliettes' neighbours in 
Oakville. He needed to reconstruct the murdered woman's life in order to come to 
some kind of understanding of her death - there had to be a clue, somewhere in 
the papers on his desk. What had happened to her - having her heart cut >from her 
living body, and then being dressed in rags - had been far too well- planned and 
carefully executed to have been anything but premeditated. Therefore, quite 
possibly the killer was someone who she knew, or a stalker who had had a chance 
to watch her frequently.
	He dug through the papers and found the coroner's report from Dr. 
Burghardt. Brenda Joliette's chest had been opened and her heart removed by 
someone using admirable surgical techniques. The clamps tying off the major 
blood vessels had been left in place, preventing complete - and messy - 
exsanguination, and the epidermis almost casually stitched back together, 
probably simply to hold everything in place while the body was dumped at the 
train station. The surgical techniques had extended to the use of gloves - there 
were no fingerprints anywhere on the body or on the clamps in her thorax. Her 
blood showed traces of midazolam, a fast-acting intramuscular sedative, and the 
anaesthetic pentothal. There was no bruising or any other sign that force had 
been used on her at any time.
	So she had at least been unconscious when her heart was cut out, and she 
would never have awoken.
	Why the heart? Nick stared unseeing at his desk, pondering the question. 
If someone had simply wanted to kill her, they wouldn't have used such an 
elaborate, time-consuming, and bizarre  method. There had to be a good reason 
for it. Not many people possessed the skill and finesse, not to mention the 
access to drugs and medical equipment, that the killer had.. Were they looking 
for a surgeon? Or a surgical nurse? And just where had the drugs in question 
come from? He made a mental note to check if any hospitals had reported a theft 
>from their pharmacies.
	But he kept coming back to his original question. Why take the heart? Had 
the killer wanted an organ for some particular reason, and Brenda Joliette was 
simply a victim chosen for reasons of expediency?  Had she just been in the 
wrong place at the wrong time? The thought of someone stalking commuters on the 
GO train and killing them in order to harvest their organs was so ludicrous it 
was laughable. Through dealing with dead bodies so frequently, Nick was more 
familiar than most people with the Multiple Organ Retrieval and Exchange, the 
agency that provided organs for transplant in Ontario. He knew there was nobody 
out there lurking around morgues and hospitals trying to supply some kind of 
black market in body parts. So, if transplantation was out, then what else?
	He knew that specific body parts of some animals were in demand as 
ingredients in certain Asian medicines -the gall bladders of black bears for use 
as aphrodisiacs, for example. He'd never heard of humans being used for such 
things, but perhaps some extremely exotic potion used to treat a very rare 
disease required a human heart in the recipe. It was something else to check 
out. As bizarre as it seemed, he felt it was more likely than someone taking the 
heart for transplant.
	Or could the heart have been removed to satisfy some Gothic kind of vow or 
curse? Had Brenda been told that if she did, or failed to do, some specific 
deed, then her heart would be forfeit? Matters of the heart, affairs of the 
heart - maybe she'd been having an affair, and this was her husband's method of 
exacting retribution. But Edgar Joliette had been unconscious for several days 
already by the time Brenda was killed, and in the hospital for two months before 
that. If she had been killed on his orders, then the killer must have been 
following her for some time.
	And if she had been having an affair, then the evidence might well be 
somewhere in the file folder in front of him. He started to sift through all the 
papers again, hoping there would be a key that would let him into Brenda 
Joliette's private life.
	He'd been given only the barest bones. She was forty-two, and had worked 
at the Royal Bank for twelve years, the last three as a director of product 
development - whatever that was, Nick thought bemusedly. Her employment record 
was exemplary. There had been no time yet for anyone to talk to her co-workers, 
aside from her boss. He'd have to make sure someone got on that today. But 
Schanke said he'd gotten her daytimer from work. Nick filled out a requisition 
to have the diary brought from the evidence locker, and continued to peruse the 
file while he was waiting.
	Brenda and Edgar had celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary last 
August. This was her first marriage; she was his second wife. There were no 
children, no immediate family on either side. The second cousin in Australia was 
her closest relative. They had given each other power of attorney, and each was 
named as the major beneficiary in the other's will, with a few minor bequests to 
friends and charities. What had happened to Joliette's first wife? Here it was - 
divorced nearly fourteen years ago - unlikely that the scorned wife would be 
coming after her replacement at this late date. Besides, it appeared that, 
according to the will, she would still be getting some money from her ex-
husband, so the divorce must have been fairly amicable. The wills were last 
updated five years ago. Edgar Joliette must have known for some time that he was 
dying; if he suspected that his wife was having an affair, and was sufficiently 
bent on retribution to arrange her death because of it, then surely he would 
have rewritten his will to include her out. And if this mysterious little girl 
with the blonde hair was really his niece, then why was there no mention of her? 
Was she, perhaps, an illegitimate daughter? If so, he could hardly hold his 
wife's hypothetical affair against her.
	Nick looked up at the empty desk across from him, wishing that Schanke was 
there to bounce all these ideas off. He wasn't quite sure how coherent his 
thought processes were at this point. He realized belatedly why his partner had 
been so eager to talk to him about the case back at the hospital. When venturing 
into the realms of pure conjecture, it was nice to have a lifeline back to solid 
fact.
	He pulled himself away from the brink of dangerous territory, telling 
himself coldly that he had to be coherent about this - he was being paid to do a 
job, and in any case he owed it to Brenda Joliette, and even to Schanke, to be 
on his game.
	The diary arrived on his desk. It was bound in expensive dark red leather, 
with the initials 'B A J' stamped discreetly in the corner of the front cover. 
Flipping it open, he discovered that Brenda had apparently packed a lot into 
each workday. Every day there seemed to be at least two meetings jotted down, 
sometimes as many as six or seven. Sometimes there was a notation of 'lunch', 
with a name or two written next to it: he couldn't tell whether these were 
business or personal engagements, but the same name rarely appeared twice. Of 
course, if she was having a flaming clandestine affair with someone at work, she 
wouldn't be likely to write his name in her diary. If the affair was that 
flaming, she shouldn't need to remind herself about their meetings, anyway.
	There were several entries, though, where there was simply a time noted 
down and nothing else. That seemed to happen little more than once a week. Never 
the same day or time, but always within working hours. He flipped back through 
the book. The first of the mysterious entries seemed to have been in September. 
There had been one on Christmas Eve, and two more in the few days between Boxing 
Day and New Year's.
	He rubbed at his chin, wondering if he was looking at anything relevant to 
the case. With no name written down, it was impossible to know if these 
appointments were always with the same person. Yet Brenda seemed to be 
meticulous about recording everything else. Presumably she had a secretary. It 
would be worth checking with her to see if she had any idea what Brenda had been 
doing at those times.
	Outside of work hours, though, there seemed to be little happening in 
Brenda Joliette's life. There had been a dentist appointment at the beginning of 
December, a manicure the week before Christmas - he remembered Burghardt 
mentioning that her nails had been well looked after - and supper the Saturday 
before that with Sally and Matt, whoever they were. Someone else to be 
interviewed, he thought, mentally adding that to his 'to do' list.
	Of course, Edgar Joliette's doctor had said that she had come to see her 
husband every day after work, even when he didn't know that she was there. That 
sounded like a devoted, loving wife, not someone who was cheating on her 
incapacitated husband. In any case, by the time she had made the trek home after 
being at the hospital, she probably wouldn't have had the energy to do much more 
than eat supper and fall into bed.
	Setting aside the diary, he turned to the notes from the interviews with 
the Joliettes' neighbours. Not much of interest there. As Schanke had said, it 
appeared that everyone kept behind their own hedges. The Joliettes had moved 
into their house five years ago and seemed to be on amicable, but not close, 
terms with about everyone around them. No one had noticed any strangers hanging 
around.
	The neighbours looked like a dead end, but Nick was beginning to feel a 
need to check out the house for himself. If Brenda had been having an affair, 
there just might be some evidence of it in her home. After all, unless a miracle 
happened, her husband was never going back there again.
	He had his coat on and was halfway out to the parking lot when he 
remembered that the Caddy wasn't there. With a heavy heart, he went back to the 
desk to requisition an unmarked patrol car.
	Forty-five minutes later he was pulling up in the Joliettes' driveway. The 
house was a two-storey mock Tudor job set on a sizeable lot. He guessed that a 
swimming pool was concealed behind the tall cedar fence at the back of the 
house. The snow on the driveway, sidewalk, and front step had been trampled to 
dirty mush by the investigating officers during the day, but didn't look as if 
it had actually been shovelled. The windows were blank in the light of the half 
moon; illumination from the street lighting, beyond the tall hedge that fronted 
the property, barely reached this far. The drapes were wide open. Looking at the 
silent house, Nick felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
	He shook it off and unlocked the front door. Flipping on the first light 
switch that came to hand, and remembering to turn off the security system, he 
looked around.
	The house was immaculate. On the ground floor was an expansive living 
room, which he passed through with barely a glance. Whatever he was looking for 
wouldn't be here for anyone walking into the house to see. Beyond was a formal 
dining room - he could see quite clearly in the near-darkness how the crystal 
pendants of the chandelier gleamed - and a large kitchen, well equipped with the 
latest in stainless steel appliances. The kitchen area in his own loft wasn't 
even as big as the - what did they call these things, a breakfast nook? - in 
this one, which overlooked the tightly shrouded swimming pool, as did the next 
room, which appeared to be a sunroom. It had sliding glass doors and was more 
casually furnished than the living room.
	He turned on another light and made a cursory search of this room, without 
finding anything more personal than a photograph of the Joliettes with another 
couple, standing on what looked like the deck of a summer cottage, obviously 
taken before Edgar Joliette became ill.  He wondered if the other couple were 
the Sally and Matt of the dinner invitation.
	Past the sunroom was another room which was obviously used as a library 
and office. Two walls were lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves containing 
mostly erudite-looking novels, coffee-table art tomes, computer manuals and 
books on a range of financial topics: nothing that Nick would have chosen for a 
little light reading. Oddly, there was also a small but comprehensive selection 
of works dealing with the occult - mainly wicca and witchcraft. So one or both 
of the Joliettes had an interest in the supernatural. The books seemed out of 
place amongst the mundane contents of the shelves, and he wondered if they had 
hoped to find some help for Joliette's cancer from an unconventional source.
	 There was also a heavy desk with a computer and printer, and a fax 
machine on a table in a corner. He spent some time going through the desk 
drawers looking for any mention of Joliette's niece, but came up empty.
	He took a quick look around the basement, which contained a well-equipped 
home gym. Looking at the setup of the weight machines, he realized that this 
area must have been Edgar Joliette's domain. It was painful to think that the 
wasted shell of a man in the hospital bed had once been capable of lifting these 
pretty substantial weights.
	There were four bedrooms on the upper floor. Nick shook his head, 
wondering why the childless couple hadn't simply bought a large condo downtown. 
Three of the rooms were obviously for guests, and he only glanced briefly at 
them before moving on the master bedroom.
	Like the rest of the house, this was still in exactly the same state as it 
had been when Brenda had left it the morning of her death. There was a luxuriant 
ivory-coloured terrycloth bathrobe flung across the king-sized bed. Nick's 
thoughts turned unbidden to how lonely that huge bed must have been when Edgar 
Joliette went into the hospital. Or had it been? Did Brenda have someone else to 
share it with?
	On one of the matching night tables - he guessed it was Brenda's from the 
alarm clock in the shape of a delicate silver carriage clock - was another 
photograph, this one of Brenda and Edgar with their arms around one another. 
They were standing barefoot on a wide white beach, with a turquoise- coloured 
ocean in the background. They both looked happy and relaxed. Nick studied the 
tall, athletic-looking man for some sign of a man who could plan his wife's 
murder, but there was nothing remarkable about him except for his apparent 
glowing health,
	On the dresser was a package of snapshots. Nick opened the envelope and 
slid the pictures out into his hand.
	They had all been taken at what appeared to be an office Christmas party, 
and were datestamped in the bottom corner with what had been - he calculated for 
a moment - the Friday before Christmas. There were no negatives in the package; 
judging by the number of pictures with Brenda in them, these were probably extra 
prints taken by somebody else. Almost all of them were group shots, but there 
were three of Brenda and one other person alone.
	Bingo, he thought.
	The other person was male, dark-haired, in his late thirties or early 
forties, slim, reasonably good-looking. In one picture, they were sitting at a 
table covered with the remains of the party food, their hands on the tabletop, 
just touching. In another, his right arm was wrapped around her, her head 
leaning on his shoulder. In the third, they were kissing, mugging for the 
camera, while someone held a sprig of what looked like plastic mistletoe over 
their heads.
	They were the only pictures in the whole collection in which Brenda 
actually looked happy.
	He put the envelope of snaps in his pocket. He would drop it off back at 
the station and get someone from the day shift to show the pictures around at 
Brenda's office. The man should be easy enough to identify.
	For the sake of completeness he went through all the drawers in the 
bedroom, but found nothing else of use. He left the house, resetting the alarm 
and locking the door behind him.
	Just as he reached the car, he felt it again. That odd, disconcerting 
feeling of eyes on his back.
	Without turning, he pretended to fiddle with the lock, opening his 
preternaturally acute senses to the night around him. There were mortal 
heartbeats, but they came from the neighbouring houses. No one in sight, no 
sound except for the constant susurration of distant traffic.
	Wait - someone was approaching. He could hear only one set of footsteps 
but two heartbeats: one strong and steady, the other much more rapid and 
fluttery. A few seconds later he realized it was a man walking a dog.
	The pair came abreast of the driveway, with the man's feet and now the 
dog's paws still the only sound. Nick had a brief impression of someone bundled 
up to the ears against the pre-dawn cold, and a little hairy dog, also wearing a 
coat, when the animal suddenly began barking hysterically. Not at Nick, but 
apparently at something on the other side of the hedge.
	The sensation of being watched ceased abruptly.
	The dog's owner, trying to quiet his pet, hadn't even noticed Nick 
standing in the driveway. Nick considered taking flight in an attempt to track 
down the watcher, but his vampire senses were already beginning to warn him of 
the imminent dawn. He would barely have enough time as it was to drop off the 
photos at the station before he had to return to the loft.
	Another mystery, but unlike the murder investigation, this one was making 
the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

	There was a message waiting on his answering machine that evening from one 
of the day shift detectives with whom he had left the photographs. They had 
shown the pictures around at Brenda Joliette's office that day, and several 
people had recognized the dark-haired man. His name was Peter Jason, and he was 
a sales manager for the bank. Her secretary said that he occasionally came to 
Brenda's office for private meetings. The pictures had indeed been taken at an 
office Christmas party, and several people claimed that they had noticed how 
close the two of them seemed there, although Nick wondered cynically if their 
hindsight might be overly acute, or if much of Brenda's apparent 
lightheartedness had really been due to whatever alcohol had been on offer. 
Tomorrow, promised the laconic voice on his machine, they would go and talk to 
Jason.
	Still wrapped in his red and black robe, he was reaching into the fridge 
for a bottle of blood when someone buzzed at the door. Hastily he replaced the 
bottle and checked the security camera. His eyes widened at the sight of his 
visitor.
	"Well, well, well," he murmured, hitting the button that opened the door 
downstairs. While waiting for the elevator to arrive, he pulled the bottle of 
blood from the fridge again and took several quick gulps. He had a feeling he 
might need all the strength he could muster for this encounter.
	By the time the elevator deposited his visitor at the loft, the bottle was 
back in the fridge and he was waiting, one elbow resting on the piano, feeling 
just the smallest sliver of wariness - maybe even apprehension - nudging an 
overriding curiosity.
	The person who slowly emerged from the elevator looked, close up, nothing 
like what he had expected. The woman at the coffee stand at the train station 
had said she thought she was around twelve years old, Joliette's nurse in the 
ICU thought she was even younger than that - but what Nick saw walking towards 
him now, with an ever so slightly seductive sway of the hips, was unmistakably a 
woman.
	She stopped within an arm's length of him, meeting his frank scrutiny with 
a slightly amused smile. Nick thought that perhaps she could best be described 
as a woman in miniature. Her head barely came to halfway up his chest, and 
everything about her was delicate, as if one breath from him could blow her 
away. But there was no mistaking, beneath the long skin-tight gown she wore, the 
shape of a mature body.
	He straightened and began to walk in a circle around her, the instinctual 
movements of a predator. But the amused smile stayed on her lips and her heart 
maintained its unruffled tempo. He wasn't sure what manner of creature she truly 
was, or if she knew what < he> really was, but he sensed that she would be no 
easy prey of the vampire.
	He stood still, wondering where that thought had come from. He didn't 
normally think of people in terms of the hunt. But something about her and her 
scent, or her oddly old, hooded eyes, or the way her thin red lips were parted 
slightly over small pointed teeth, was stirring something feral inside him.
	He curbed the gut reaction, and said, "Edgar Joliette's niece, I presume. 
Did his nurse tell you I wanted to talk to you about his wife?"
	The smile widened. "I knew you were looking for me - Detective Knight."
	Nick inclined his head slightly in acknowledgment of his name. "And you 
are. . . ?"
	She appeared to be deliberating a moment, then said, "Well, it's not long 
past Christmas. You can call me Clara if you like."
	Nick wondered if that meant she expected him to play the part of the 
Nutcracker Prince in some little tale of her own devising. Well, he had no 
intention of dancing any romantic pas de deux with this one, no matter how 
mysteriously alluring she might be.
	She came forward another step and touched the loose sleeve of his robe, as 
if exploring the texture of the fabric. "And you're Nicholas," she said 
dreamily. "Saint Nicholas, perhaps?"
	Nick remained motionless. "What's your connection with the Joliettes, 
Clara?"
	She dropped his sleeve and wandered over to the piano, running her hand 
down the keys. Nick leaned over and lowered the keyboard cover. She smiled at 
him and sat down on the bench, placing the tiny black velvet evening bag she had 
been carrying on top of the instrument and tilting her head back to scan around 
the loft. "What an interesting home you have, Detective Knight. It's much more 
sophisticated than I had expected. Stark, but not without comfort."
	"Were you the Joliettes' decorator, then?"
	"Oh, not at all. My talents don't lie in that direction."
	"What makes you go and sit by a dying man's bedside, then?" Suddenly he 
began to wonder if he'd been going at this from the wrong angle. Was it Edgar 
Joliette, and not his wife, who had been unfaithful? Had Brenda been killed 
because of someone's truly twisted jealousy?	Clara smiled up at him. "You're 
quite the interrogator, aren't you, Detective?"
	"And you're quite the actress," answered Nick equably. "Or perhaps 
chameleon would be a better term."
	"Chameleon, yes, I rather like that. Well, Detective, if you really want 
to know, Edgar Joliette is my client. He paid me to find a cure for the cancer 
that is killing him."
	"Are you some kind of doctor, then?"
	"Not exactly. I practise. . . alternative medicine."
	Nick didn't want to think of what she might mean by that. Spells and 
incantations, maybe - he doubted she was into aromatherapy or magnets.
	"It doesn't look like you've been too successful," he said bluntly.
	Clara stiffened. "He was doing well for a while. He's had a relapse, but 
he'll come around. You'll see. He'll walk out of that hospital yet."
	"And then find out that his wife's been murdered."
	She flapped a hand dismissively. "Unfortunate, but not my concern."
	"And yet you were seen talking to Brenda Joliette at the train station the 
morning of her death."
	"Edgar had started to fail badly. I needed to talk to her - to tell her he 
needed more support than she was giving him. I felt it couldn't wait until the 
next time she came to the hospital."
	"She already came to see him every day. What more support could she offer 
him?"
	"She had agreed to certain. . . conditions, which were all in my agreement 
with Edgar. An agreement which is completely confidential, by the way."
	Nick decided to leave that for later. "And after you'd talked to her, then 
what?"
	"Then I went home." Clara looked at him with eyes that were solemn gray 
pools of innocence. Fathomless pools, that a man - or a woman - could fall into 
and drown. Nick pulled back from the brink, wondering incredulously if she had 
just tried to mesmerize him.
	"And Brenda?"
	"Went on to her office, I assume."
	"Is there anyone who can substantiate your whereabouts for the rest of the 
day?"
	"Goodness, Detective. Do you think I killed her?"
	The idea seemed patently ridiculous. Clara was so tiny and delicate. She 
couldn't possibly have dragged the body to the place where the security guard 
had found it. Of course, she could well have had help.
	"As far as we know you were the last person to have seen her alive. That 
makes you a suspect."
	"Motive, please, Detective."
	"I've no idea - yet," he replied, looking at her steadily, daring her to 
try drowning him again in her innocent gaze.
	Instead she smiled again and leaned over the piano towards him. "You know, 
Detective Knight, you're quite different from any police officer I've ever met." 
Her voice grew a little smokier. "As a matter of fact, you're a very unique 
individual altogether."
	He shrugged. "I suppose you know something about me. After all, you're the 
one who's been following me, aren't you?"
	She gave him a brilliant smile. "So you did know I was watching! I'd hoped 
you would. That makes it even better."
	"You weren't really all that subtle," he said carelessly, hiding his 
unease. Just how much did she know about what he was? "I have to leave soon, 
Clara, so why don't you tell me exactly why you came here tonight? I can't 
believe it was just to fulfill your civic duty by helping the police."
	"I came," she whispered, "because I find you very intriguing. And I wanted 
to find out more about you."
	Nick rolled his eyes. "Forget the seductress routine, please. Just what is 
it you want from me?"
	She sat straight. "Nothing much. Nothing you can't easily spare."
	"And that would be...?"
	"Something to help Edgar Joliette. I'd like you to give the gift of life."
	He stared at her blankly. Was she going to try to kill him? And what did 
she mean by him helping Joliette? Then he remembered that he'd come across that 
line before about the gift of life. It had been on a poster for blood donor 
recruitment at the precinct. Clara wanted his blood.
	"No," he said curtly.
	"I'm very close to a cure for Edgar, detective. I only need a few more 
ingredients. You'd be helping to save a man's life."
	"What else is in this cure?" he demanded. "A few newts' eyes? Some frogs' 
toes? The tongue of a dog or two? All thrown into a bubbling cauldron?"
	"Don't be ridiculous, Detective. I'm simply asking for a few vials of 
blood. You won't even miss it."
	A huge piece of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. "You did kill Brenda 
Joliette, didn't you? You cut out her heart and used it in your filthy potion 
and fed it to her husband. No wonder he's nearly dead!"
	"It was working!" protested Clara. "He was getting better. It was Brenda's 
fault that it wasn't potent enough. The formula needed a loving heart. Well, 
hers wasn't loving enough. I realized why when I saw you with those pictures at 
their house. She'd been having an affair with someone in her office, and that 
diluted the entire mixture."
	Nick stared at her, unable to remember when he had ever been so utterly 
appalled. Even his own actions in the past - he had killed out of hunger, or 
rage, or fear of discovery, none of them defensible reasons in his own eyes now, 
but he had never done anything as cold-blooded and horrific as this. "Tell me 
one thing," he hissed. "Did Edgar Joliette know what you were feeding him?"
	"Of course not. That would have completely counteracted the medicine. One 
of the conditions my clients must agree to at the outset of their treatment is 
to ask no questions. And no, Brenda Joliette never knew she was about to die. 
Her fear would have overcome her love - she was thinking about him as she died. 
Or about her paramour, maybe. Quite a good way to go, actually, don't you 
think?"
	The cow blood he had just consumed almost felt as if it was roiling in 
Nick's stomach. "Why leave her looking like a homeless woman?" he snarled. 
"That's hardly a dignified ending."
	"A body's a body, just an empty husk after you've taken what you need," 
she answered impatiently. "You're a killer too, Detective, I can sense it. You 
know what I'm talking about. I was as careful as I could, but her clothes had 
some bloodstains on them when I was done. So I traded them with some old bag 
lady on Front Street, who is now much warmer than she was before. I wanted 
everything to look as inconspicuous as possible. I must admit, though,  I 
underestimated the thoroughness of the authorities in investigating the simple 
death form hypothermia of a street person."
	"Why not just get rid of the body altogether?"
	"Really, Detective, be practical. I could hardly drag her down to the lake 
myself, and hacking her into pieces would have just made too much mess."
	Nick turned his back, trying to conceal the vampire which was threatening 
to emerge in his fury. He could sense Clara's silent approach.
	"Please, Nicholas," she said softly, slipping one arm around his waist. 
"Help me save Edgar. I can make it very rewarding for you. You're a man in pain, 
Nicholas. I can help heal you." Her voice was gentle, weaving itself around his 
senses, soothing his revulsion, making malleable his conviction. "Please, sweet 
Saint Nicholas," she repeated, and the voice was entreating and almost plaintive 
now, that of a little girl.
	She was good. But her skills of temptation and seduction couldn't 
manipulate someone who had practised them for nearly eight centuries. When her 
other hand slid sensuously over his shoulder, the fingertips reaching for the 
smooth pale skin underneath the robe, he spun around to face her, allowing the 
vampire to come surging forth. "Do you think Joliette wants to become this?" he 
hissed.
	Clara took a step away from him and stopped with her back against the 
piano. She scooped up her little purse and clutched it in front of her, as if 
desperately seeking a shield. Her face had gone somewhat paler and her heart was 
beating more rapidly, but she hadn't entirely lost her composure. In fact, the 
look she was giving him now was almost one of admiration. "Your strength, your 
vitality, Nicholas...they're even greater than I had hoped. They would make the 
medicine so much more potent."
	Nick moved slowly towards her, a growl reverberating in his chest. "I'm 
not alive, little girl." In less than a blink of an eye, he seized her hand and 
pressed it against his chest. "Do you feel a heartbeat? Do you feel any human 
warmth? There is no vitality in this cold body. I can't help you cure Joliette. 
But I will make you pay for killing his wife."
	Clara's heart rate had jumped again. But she lifted her chin and stared up 
at him in a determined affectation of bravado. "You're wrong, Nicholas. How can 
you be anything but alive? Whether your heart beats or not, it still loves. I've 
seen you at the hospital with your Natalie."
	He growled again at the mention of her name. That it was a sound formed in 
anguish did not lessen its fearsomeness. Clara continued earnestly, "I've seen 
you holding her hand for hours. I've heard you talking to her. She can hear you, 
you know. She listens to every word you say. Not the others, their voices are 
just a meaningless buzz most of the time, or nothing at all. But you, your 
voice, your presence, she marks."
	"That's a pretty story," he rasped. "Too bad it's sheer nonsense."
	"How do you know that?" she countered.
	"How do <you> know what you claim to know?" he snarled.
	"The same way I could tell that you were no ordinary man the first time I 
ever saw you. Why do you think I followed you to the skating rink two days ago? 
To the Joliettes' house this morning? And how do you think I followed you? I 
wasn't sure you were a vampire. But I could feel that you were far from a simple 
mortal. And I tell you now, Natalie Lambert is perfectly aware of you when 
you're with her."
	He was desperate to believe what she was saying. He glared at Clara with 
eyes that were still golden, but for a moment he wasn't seeing her. How tempting 
it was to think that Natalie still existed within that silent shell, that she 
had heard his remorse. But even if she had, would she be able to forgive him for 
practically forcing into her hand the instrument that had caused her injuries?
	In the frantic spin of his thoughts, his attention drifted from Clara 
until a sudden pricking sensation in his right arm abruptly brought him back to 
the here and now. Clara had pushed up the sleeve of his robe and was gripping 
his forearm with one hand, while the other held a small crystal flask against 
his skin. The flask was almost full of ruby red liquid - his own blood.
	With a roar of rage that literally shook the loft, he ripped the flask out 
of her hand and sent it flying across the room to shatter against the wall next 
to one of the high windows. Tiny fragments fell to the balcony in a fine crystal 
rain. The blood flowed down the bricks. Clara screamed in pain as his fingers 
clamped viciously around her wrist. He held her for a long, long beat, fangs 
bared in a snarling rictus, golden eyes glaring into hers, as he struggled to 
keep from being overwhelmed by the desire to crush the delicate bones beneath 
his hand and then suck the life from her.
	Finally, with an effort so great that it brought drops of blood sweat to 
his face, he shifted his grip to send her stumbling towards the door. "Go. Get 
out of my sight."
	Clara didn't wait for him to change his mind. She yanked open the elevator 
door and was gone.

	Nick made it to the refrigerator in three strides, flinging open the door 
and pulling out a fresh bottle of blood. He upended it and drained it in half a 
dozen gulps, then stood leaning against the counter, the empty bottle pressed 
against his forehead, until he felt his fangs withdraw and his eyes return to 
their normal colour.
	Eventually, with a sigh, he went back upstairs, cleaned himself up and 
dressed. When he came downstairs again he was still thinking about Clara, but in 
a somewhat more rational manner.
	He knew now beyond all doubt that she had killed Brenda Joliette, but how 
could he arrest her? He had no proof - at least, not yet. In front of witnesses, 
she would only deny what she had just confessed to him. And besides, she could 
completely expose him for what he truly was. People would scoff and say she was 
crazy, but enough evidence could be found to support her claim that the 
Enforcers would sweep down, bent on a mass, if discreet, slaughter of those who 
held that evidence. At the very least he would be compelled to leave his life 
here: the Enforcers, not to mention Lacroix, would see to that. And this time, 
there was no Natalie to run interference for him with the mortals.
	But maybe he could steer Schanke towards finding the proof they needed, 
while he himself stayed in the background. It might be worthwhile to have a look 
around the area of Union Station for a homeless woman wearing Brenda's clothes - 
that and tracking the source of the drugs Brenda had been given were their two 
best bets at the moment.
	Then he thought of something else, and it froze him in his tracks.
	Clara was still trying to cure Joliette, and she still needed a potent 
ingredient for her witch's brew. She must realize, after the confrontation that 
had just taken place, that she wouldn't be getting a drop of vampire blood. But 
what if she went back to her original recipe, the one that required a loving 
heart?
	She'd told him that Natalie, comatose, heard only his voice. What if she 
decided that Natalie's was the loving heart she needed?
	He didn't know if she had told him the truth about Natalie. Nor did he 
know if she honestly believed that this so-called cure of hers had any 
possibility of success, or if she would want to use the heart of a person who 
had never even known Joliette. He didn't even know how determined she would be, 
now that she had given herself away, to still carry on with her treatment. But 
he couldn't take the chance of any harm coming to Natalie.
	He didn't bother with the precinct car still parked downstairs. He left 
through the skylight and flew directly to the hospital, landing in a shadowed 
corner between two buildings. He hurried to the main entrance and up to the 
intensive care unit.
	Virtually nothing had changed from last night. Natalie looked exactly the 
same. The stuffed gray and white kitten still lay on the bed, although she 
wasn't touching it at the moment. There were more flowers on the table.
	Completely unaware of the startled looks his precipitate entrance had 
garnered, he sat down heavily in the bedside chair and took Natalie's hand. 
Looking closely at her face, he thought that the bruising seemed to be fading. 
Tentatively he ran one finger down her cheek, feeling the warmth, hearing the 
regular beat of her heart with almost unspeakable relief.
	"Nat, it's me," he said softly. "I met the strangest woman today. I think 
she's the key to the murder case Schanke and I are working on. She told me that 
you can hear me when I talk to you. I don't know whether to believe her or not. 
I don't want to believe some of the things she told me about the murder, but I 
do want to believe that. I don't know what place your mind is in right now, Nat, 
or what you're thinking, or even if you're able to think at all. But if you can 
hear me..." He trailed off. What could he say? Somehow "I'm sorry" wasn't even 
pitifully adequate.
	"I don't know why you suddenly left for vacation like that. You said it 
wasn't because of anything I'd said or done, but you weren't telling me the 
whole truth, were you? I need to find out what it was, why you were upset, so I 
can..." Again his voice died away. So he could - what? Apologize, uselessly 
again? As if anything he could do or say could make things right. He'd 
apologized himself into a corner, and there was no way out.
	He brushed her hand with his lips. "If saying I'm sorry could make you 
better, Nat, you'd be the strongest, healthiest person on the face of the Earth 
right now. But it doesn't help, does it? I just wish I knew what I could do to 
make everything better." Aside from following Lacroix's suggestion, he thought 
bitterly, but didn't voice that.
	"Are you feeling all right, Mr. Knight?" asked a voice from the doorway. 
Nick looked up to see Dr. Leung, Natalie's physician, standing there. "The 
nurses said you seemed agitated when you arrived. Is something wrong?" He made a 
gesture that encompassed the room. "Something other than this, I mean."
	Nick opened his mouth to reply when, over the doctor's shoulder, he caught 
a glimpse of blonde hair. He surged to his feet, dropping Natalie's hand. Even 
>from the back he could recognize Clara, dressed again in her little-girl's 
outfit of sweatshirt and track pants, just slipping out the door.
	So she had come back to the hospital. Did she have a scalpel with her, 
ready for some quick surgery?
	He ran for the door, pushing aside the astonished doctor. There was no one 
in sight in the corridor outside except for a few hospital personnel, who looked 
at him curiously as he paused, glancing left and right. He heard the quiet 
click, inaudible to mortal ears, of the stairwell door closing at the end of the 
hall, and instantly gave chase.
	The stairwell was empty, but he could hear footsteps rushing downwards a 
floor or more below him. Swiftly and silently he followed, tracking both the 
sound of feet and that of the accompanying heartbeat - unmistakably Clara's.
	He emerged from the stairwell into the basement. A gloomy corridor 
stretched before him, the ceiling festooned with pipes. Fifty feet ahead, he 
caught a glimpse of Clara's blonde hair and red sweatshirt disappearing around a 
corner. He sprinted after her, only to hear a door closing in an empty hallway.
	The door led to a mechanical room. Listening outside, he could tell it was 
deserted except for one rapid heartbeat. The door was locked - how had Clara 
managed to get in? Was this some kind of bolthole she used? - but it opened 
easily enough after he had crushed the doorknob.
	He stepped cautiously into a poorly lit cavern of a room. Peering around 
the machinery that filled the area, humming importantly to itself, he could see 
no immediate sign of his quarry. But he could still hear her heart, beating even 
more quickly now. She was ahead and above him - she must have scrambled up on 
top of one of the anonymous metal boxes.
	"You can't hide, Clara," he said conversationally. "You might as well come 
out now."
	"Leave me alone," she answered defiantly. "I don't mean you any harm. Why 
won't you just let me get on with helping Edgar?"
	"Because you murdered his wife. I have to arrest you." He moved deeper 
into the room, scanning the shadows effortlessly, hearing her heart rate 
accelerate even more. But where the hell was she?
	"You don't dare arrest me," her disembodied voice taunted him. "If you 
tried I'd make sure everyone knew just exactly what you are. There wouldn't be a 
safe haven for you in this entire city. There wouldn't be one place you could 
lay your head during the day where someone might not hunt you down and drive a 
stake through your heart. You'd have to fly off into the night and leave your 
Natalie behind."
	"No one would believe you," he scoffed. "All anyone will think of you is 
that you're some crazy deluded woman playing around with disgusting potions, 
taking money from a dying man."
	He heard a soft hiss from behind him, then a second and third, while he 
spun around trying to identify the source of the noise. There was an almost 
inaudible clatter as some small object struck against metal and fell to the 
floor. A dart gun, he thought in amazement. She was firing darts at him - from 
behind him. How had she managed to get between him and the door? And what was 
the purpose of the darts? He found another one lodged in the collar of his 
jacket and brushed it away.
	"I don't play with potions," she said from somewhere near the door. "I 
assure you, Detective, I'm quite serious about what I do. You're about to find 
out just how serious." The door opened and for a brief instant he saw her 
silhouetted against the light from the hallway. He lunged for the door and 
yanked it open again it time to see her running for another stairwell.
	He followed, up a flight of steps, out into another corridor - more 
brightly lit than the basement, but still deserted - then another stairwell, 
upward again - three floors? Four? How was she managing to stay ahead of him? 
And what had been on those darts? She'd fired three times. Where had the third 
dart gone?
	He'd walked straight into a not so cleverly laid trap. He couldn't believe 
how gullible he'd been. If he hadn't been so distracted by worry over 
Natalie...and yet here he was, still pursuing her. He had to stop her somehow, 
even if he couldn't arrest her; she was too dangerous to be left on the loose. 
She was only mortal, after all - at least, she was closer to mortality than he 
was; if he could corner her once and for all, she couldn't hope to overpower the 
vampire.
	He followed her out of the stairwell into yet another deserted, windowless 
corridor. She was only a few yards in front of him now, but as he reached for 
her he experienced a sudden onslaught of vertigo. He careened off the wall and 
she increased her lead, pulling open a door at the end of the hall and vanishing 
inside. He followed, moving more slowly now, his legs starting to feel as if 
they were made of rubber. The third dart. It must have hit home, and whatever 
was on it was beginning its work on him. He gritted his teeth against another 
spell of vertigo. He couldn't let this stop him now.
	On the other side of the door was another set of stairs. How many stairs 
were there in this damned hospital? The place was like a labyrinth. . .these 
stairs were narrow, steep and nearly in darkness. He stumbled again, caught 
himself on the handrail, then stumbled again, landing on his knees. A door above 
him opened, allowing a sliver of moonlight to enter the stairwell. He fought the 
urge to just stay where he was and rest, and hauled himself to his feet and up 
the last few steps to the door at the top.
	It led, not to the roof as he had expected, but to a large, square, high-
ceilinged room. Tall windows in each wall let in a flood of moonlight. The room 
was full of dust and little else. He had no energy left to wonder about the 
purpose of such an odd place; he needed all that he still had just to keep on 
his feet and confront Clara.
	"What do you want?" he asked, succeeding in instilling some strength in 
his voice.
	"What I wanted before," she replied. "The missing ingredient in the cure 
for Edgar Joliette."
	She was carrying something in her hand. He ought to have been able to tell 
what it was, but he couldn't see clearly. He squinted, trying to bring her into 
focus. Was she holding another of those crystal bottles?
	All he wanted to do was lie down on the floor and sleep, but he managed to 
put on a fair display of fearsomeness. "You won't be getting much love out of my 
blood right now," he snarled.
	"Your anger will be as potent as any love," she answered, approaching him 
cautiously. He lunged at her, lost his balance and fell to his knees again. This 
time he couldn't get up. He put a hand down on the floor to support himself and 
felt his head drooping. She reached out with one foot and gave him a push in the 
ribs, and he toppled to the floor.
	She bent over him, flask in hand. His eyes shot open, glowing blood red in 
the moonlit room, and one hand clamped around her wrist as he bared his fangs 
and hissed up at her.
	"Very good, Nicholas," she breathed. "Summon your rage. I want all of it. 
Every last drop in your veins."
	A second later his eyes closed again. He released her, sinking back to the 
floor and into oblivion.


	The clang of a streetcar bell somewhere close by awoke him. He stirred 
uneasily, wondering muzzily why his bed was so hard, why there was grit under 
his cheek, why his mouth was so dry.
	Why he was so hungry. . .
	With a roar of anger he came completely awake. Clara. The dart gun and the 
crystal flask. She hadn't drained him, but she had taken enough of his blood 
that now the hunger was rising in a red tide. He could hear mortal heartbeats 
now, not far away, just beyond the walls and windows the room he was in.
	Windows!  He stared at them in simple fear. They were huge, taller than he 
was, filling most of the wall space. Through the dusty glass he could see the 
sky, far brighter now than he would normally ever venture out in. Even as he 
stared, shielding his eyes against the glare with one hand, the full sun rose 
into sight, etching the pattern of the window panes on the floor.
	The door he had come through last night, the only one in the room, was in 
the southeast corner, about thirty feet away from where he was now crouched on 
the floor. The door itself was still in shadow, but in order to reach it he 
would have to run the full gauntlet of sunlight. He jumped to his feet and was 
just as quickly sent crashing back to the floor by overwhelming vertigo. 
Consumed by the vampire's paramount need to escape from the lethal light, he 
staggered up again and made his way to the north wall, working his way along the 
edge of the sun patterns.
	He was too late. The daylight had advanced too far. He made a desperate 
lunge for the door, hoping against hope that he could reach it before the 
burning forced him to retreat, but in his weakened state the light was too 
strong and the distance too great. He staggered back to the wall, the skin on 
his face and hands blistered and smoking.
	He stood for a moment in what shadows remained to him, marshalling all the 
strength he had left. A frantic visual search around the room revealed only 
scraps of useless litter - nothing that would protect him from the light. He 
tore off his jacket, draped it over his head and advanced into the brightness 
again.
	This time he didn't even make it as far as he had before when he was 
driven back to the swiftly diminishing shadows, burned, weak and disoriented 
>from the pain and the blood loss, and now terrified. He had nowhere left to 
hide.
							
	Don Schanke pounded up the stairs in the wake of a security guard, gasping 
for breath, wondering just how many stairways there were in this damned 
hospital. If he survived all this running up and down without having a major 
coronary, he was definitely going to have to lay off the doughnuts for awhile.
	There was a brief respite as the security guard unlocked a door out of the 
stairwell. "All the doors in this area are locked. If your partner really is up 
there, the only way he could have gotten there was if he flew in the window."
	"Just hurry," growled Schanke, not bothering to explain to the other man 
that minor details like locked doors never seemed to stand in his partner's way.
	He followed the guard down a dim, musty-smelling hallway. This part of the 
hospital was nearly a century old, and he wondered if anyone had come this way 
since the discovery of penicillin.
	He waited impatiently for the guard to unlock the door at the end of the 
corridor, then pushed past him up yet another flight of stairs. The door at the 
top was locked too. "Come on, come on, come on," he snapped, as the guard caught 
up. The landing was so minuscule that Schanke had to mash himself against the 
wall as the other man laboriously tried several keys before finding one that fit 
the lock.
	When the door finally opened, Schanke looked in at a sight that he would 
never forget for the rest of his life.
	Nick Knight, always cool under pressure, never afraid of danger, was 
crouching in the far corner of the room, now brilliantly lit by the sun. 
Cowering, in fact, would be a better term. He looked like a man trying to escape 
>from a wall of fire, not a few sunbeams. He'd pulled his jacket, which was 
filthy with dust, over his head, like a kid dressing up in a sheet as a 
Halloween ghost. What horrified Schanke the most were the columns of gray wispy 
smoke rising from his body. That and the sickly smell of raw burning flesh.
	"Nick!" he yelled, coming out of his trance and rushing across the room 
towards his partner.
	"Schanke," came the whispered reply. "Get me out of here."
	Schanke ripped off his winter overcoat and draped it around him, then 
half-carried him to the door where the security guard was still standing, 
staring open-mouthed. "Get out of the way," he ordered curtly.
	The man jumped aside. Schanke made his way awkwardly down the narrow 
stairs to the windowless hallway below with Nick almost a dead weight in his 
arms. He lowered him to the floor against the wall and unwrapped him >from the 
overcoat and jacket. Nick put a hand up in a futile effort to hide his face and 
Schanke gaped, appalled, at what looked like third-degree burns on both his face 
and hands.
	"Jesus Christ, Nick!" he gasped out. "What kind of an allergy can do 
this?"
	Nick still kept his hand over his face, huddled against the wall. He knew 
his eyes were crimson with hunger and his fangs had fallen into place. The 
vampire's overriding urge now, after so much trauma, was to feed on the closest 
living thing and heal itself. He was not going to attack his partner. His 
saviour, in this case. He <would> not. . .
	"Say something, Nick," Schanke was urging anxiously. "Nick!"
	"Take me home, Schank," said Nick when he could finally trust himself to 
speak.
	"Home? Are you crazy? Those look like third-degree burns you've got. I'm 
taking you to emergency."
	"No! I'll be fine. Just drive me home. Please, Schank."
	"You're out of your mind! I'll call a doctor to look at you if you won't 
go to emergency. This is a hospital, the place must be crawling with 'em - "
	"No!" repeated Nick, as forcefully as he could. "No doctors, no emergency. 
I just need to go home and get some rest. That's all."
	The security guard had joined them. He and Schanke exchanged uncertain 
glances. Finally Schanke sighed. "Well, I can't force you. But I still think 
you're crazy."
	Nick managed the barest ghost of a chuckle. "You've thought that all 
along."
	Schanke snorted. "What the hell were you doing up there, anyway? I came by 
on my break because you hadn't shown up for work, and I'm told you took off from 
the ICU like a bat out of hell chasing after that niece of Joliette's or whoever 
she is. I've spent the rest of the night with hospital security trying to figure 
out where the two of you could have gone. Then when it started getting light, 
somebody apparently saw you up in that room." He gestured at the ceiling. "But 
all the doors are locked. So how'd you get in there?"
	"I was just following Clara," Nick replied wearily. "Joliette's niece," he 
added at Schanke's blank look. "But she's not a relative of his. She claims 
she's working on some crazy cure for his cancer. Some potion that needs a human 
heart. She killed Brenda Joliette to get it. But her cure didn't work, so she 
decided to change the recipe. She hit me with some kind of tranquillizer - the 
darts should still be on the floor in a room in the basement, unless she went 
back and picked them up. I followed her this far before whatever she'd drugged 
me with kicked in. She wanted my blood for her damned brew."
	"This is too weird. Look, partner, you should really let me take you to 
emergency. You probably need a transfusion on top of everything else."
	Oh, how Schanke was right, but not for any reason he could ever be allowed 
to suspect. Nick struggled to quell the beast again, letting his head fall back 
against the wall. "Forget it, Schank," he said when he had regained enough 
control to speak again. "I've had enough of this place for one day. Let's put 
some uniforms down in intensive care in case she comes back. And have them keep 
a close eye on Natalie, too."
	"Nat? Why?"
	Nick had run out of strength for explanations. "I'll tell you later."

	Schanke drove him home in the trunk of his car. The trip was agonizing; he 
had lost too much blood for the burns to heal by the time they reached the loft. 
And he still had to retain enough control to hypnotize his partner into 
forgetting that he had ever seen Nick burning, or heard it or smelled it. All 
this as well as convincing him that he didn't need to make sure Nick made it up 
to the loft safely, because if he came upstairs, he was not going to behold a 
pretty sight.
	It wasn't a test of fortitude that Nick wanted to repeat any time soon. He 
was beyond rational thought by the time the elevator stopped at the loft. 
Getting the door open was such an effort that he could do no more than crawl 
across the floor to the refrigerator, where he gulped down three bottles of cow 
blood without pause. Clutching a fourth, he made his way to the couch and passed 
out.

	Ten hours of sleep and two more bottles later, he felt almost back to 
normal. He shaved, showered, put on clean clothes and was ready to tackle the 
case of Clara again.
	Schanke arrived shortly afterwards. "I thought I'd better touch base with 
you, in case you weren't coming in to work tonight. You didn't look so hot this 
morning."
	Nick winced at the choice of words, but Schanke continued on, oblivious.
	"They found the tranquillizer darts in the basement, just like you said. 
They were coated with enough midazolam to have brought down an elephant, plus a 
few other ingredients they couldn't identify."
	"The same stuff that was found in Brenda Joliette's blood? The sedative?"
	"Exactly. And that room where I found you was full of vials that used to 
contain pentothal, also found in Brenda Joliette's blood, and the paraphernalia 
for administering it. If you'd gotten all the stuff that was in those bottles, 
partner, we'd have been planning your funeral service by now."
	Nick shrugged and answered lightly. "My strength is as the strength of 
ten, because my heart is pure." He just hoped that nobody ever started to wonder 
where the anaesthetic had gone that exceeded the dose everyone obviously assumed 
he'd been given.
	"I'd say it's more a case of you've got horseshoes up your backside," 
snorted Schanke. "Anyhow, as far as this Clara kid goes, we've run into a dead 
end. Plenty of prints on the darts and the stuff in that room, but they're not 
on record. And nobody knows anything about her. Not having a last name doesn't 
help. The only lead is a fax that came in from Montreal yesterday. They had a 
similar case there two years ago. Woman in her sixties found with her heart cut 
out. They thought her husband had something to do with it, but he died a few 
months later of Lou Gehrig's disease. That one was never solved, either."
	"We just have to keep watching the hospital," said Nick positively. "She 
took all that blood from me for one last try at a cure for Joliette. She'll be 
back to give it to him. She's probably holed up somewhere right now, frantically 
brewing." Although he was beginning to wonder at what point Clara might simply 
decide to cut her losses and run. There was no doubt in his mind that she had 
intended for him to burn up in the sun that morning. If it hadn't been for some 
unknown person's sharp eyes and Schanke's quick reaction, his clothes and the 
ashes that would have been his mortal remains might have lain undiscovered for 
days, and the investigation would have stalled. But if she knew that he was 
still alive, she might conclude that whatever she was being paid to save 
Joliette wasn't worth the risk of an angry vampire coming after her.
	But if she didn't go back to the hospital, where in the world could he 
start looking for her?
	A sudden thought occurred to him. Something she'd said when she first 
arrived at his loft the night before last. "And you're Nicholas. St. Nicholas, 
perhaps?" The way she'd smiled when she said it, almost as if she found 
something ironic or amusing about the name. "Schank, there's a St. Nicholas 
Street downtown, isn't there?" he asked abruptly.
	Schanke looked startled. "Yeah, it's a skinny little street that runs 
parallel to Yonge, just north of the Coroner's Building. Why? Do you think 
that's where she lives?"
	"I doubt it," Nick answered honestly.
	"You've got that look in your eye, partner. If this is a lead we should be 
checking out - "
	"No lead. And no look, either. Just remembering a fleeting impression."
	Schanke pulled himself out of the leather armchair, still not looking 
convinced. But he said, "I've gotta get moving. Are you coming in tonight or 
not?"
	"I'll see you there. I want to stop off and see Nat first."
	Schanke nodded and headed for the elevator. With one hand on the door, he 
turned around and said, "Oh yeah - I almost forgot. The day shift talked to that 
Peter Jason - the guy from the bank," he added, seeing Nick's uncomprehending 
expression. "Sales manager or something. You know, the one in the pictures from 
the Christmas party."
	"And?"
	"You know, maybe it's just the old thing about hindsight being perfect, 
but I don't think he could ever have been our killer. I think we were on the 
wrong track altogether thinking he and Brenda had something going. Turns out the 
guy lost his wife last year to breast cancer. He was pretty broken up about 
Brenda, but the impression I got was that they were just two lonely people 
trying to help each other through a hard time."
	Nick looked down at the floor, silenced by the poignancy of that image. 
And also, although he wasn't going to admit it, by the revelation that his 
occasionally obtuse partner possessed so much insight.
	"For what it's worth," Schanke tacked on diffidently. "See you at the 
station." He left hurriedly. Nick was willing to bet that he was suddenly 
worried that Nick might accuse him of being sensitive.
	He decided he'd better take the car to the hospital this time, rather than 
fly. Best to stick with the more conventional mode of transportation as much as 
possible. Besides, he needed some time to arrange his thoughts. That was one 
thing he missed about not having the Caddy.
	There were a few curious looks cast in his direction when he walked into 
the intensive care unit, but not as many as he'd feared there might be 
considering his abrupt departure the night before. The presence of the 
plainclothes cop sitting discreetly at the nurses' station, waiting for Clara to 
show up, probably helped to explain a lot. Nick had no idea that the staff of 
the ICU was now accustomed to his unpredictable behaviour.
	He nodded hello to Natalie's nurse and sat down in the now familiar 
bedside chair. "Hi, Nat," he began. "I'm sorry I had to leave in such a hurry 
last night. I was chasing a murder suspect, the woman I told you about. I still 
don't know much about her, except that she's a killer. But I do know this much. 
You won't believe me, but I honestly think she's some kind of witch. It's pretty 
hard to swallow, but no harder than - than some of the things you've seen. And 
what she can do, what I've actually seen her do with my own eyes - well, I just 
can't think of any other explanation.
	"I didn't catch her last night. Actually, I wound up having a pretty 
severe allergy attack. I owe Schanke big time now - he was the one who saved me. 
But I'm going to have to go after her again, because I'm probably the only one 
who can stop her. And she has to be stopped. She's as twisted a person as anyone 
I've ever come across, and she'll go out and kill all over again without 
thinking twice." He wondered why he was saying all this aloud. Maybe he was 
subconsciously trying to rationalize the unrationizable. Or maybe it was just to 
give Natalie a change from his apologies.
	"But don't worry. I'll be careful. I think I know what to expect now."
	To his astonishment, as he held her hand, he felt an answering pressure. 
It was only fleeting, but he knew he hadn't imagined it. "Nat!"
	He looked up at the nurse in the doorway with a delighted smile. "She just 
squeezed my hand! I think she's waking up!"
	The nurse smiled back noncommittally, not wanting to burst his bubble by 
pointing out that coma patients often responded randomly to such stimuli. For 
all anyone knew, maybe it was a good sign.
	Nick waited a while longer, but there were no more signs of an imminent 
return to consciousness. He bent down and kissed Natalie on the forehead. "I 
have to go. I'll be back as soon as I can. Tell you what, Nat, if you promise 
not to tell anyone, I'll try to smuggle Sydney in to see you tomorrow. They say 
pet therapy is good." He was hoping for another response, but this time there 
was nothing. Well, at least there had been <something>. He would carry that with 
him like a token into battle.
	Freezing rain had begun to fall as he went out to his car and drove 
northward. There was enough salt and sand on the roads that the driving wasn't 
affected, but there were puddles and piles of slush everywhere - a typical 
January night in Toronto. When Natalie got out of the hospital, maybe he could 
take her somewhere warm and sunny for a while. Or pay for a trip for her - after 
everything that had happened, he'd be lucky if she wanted to go as far as the 
corner store with him.
	And first, he had to find and stop Clara.
	The Leafs were playing at the Gardens, making the streets in the area more 
crowded than usual. As he waited to make a left turn on Bay, he thought of an 
analogy for the deadly serious game he and Clara were now playing. Witches and 
vampires were now tied at one goal apiece: the next confrontation would be a 
sudden-death tiebreaker.
	If Clara hadn't already run, that is, and if he'd been right in the first 
place about St. Nicholas Street. He was basing everything on the look on her 
face as she'd said the words - a clue which had all the substance of gossamer. 
Of course, he might have a better chance of apprehending her if he simply waited 
at the hospital. But if there was going to be a confrontation between the two of 
them, he wanted it to be well away from there - well away from anyone. And he 
wanted to make a pre-emptive strike.
	St. Nicholas Street, at its southern end, was hardly more than an alley. 
By sheer luck - Schanke's horseshoes working overtime? - he found a parking spot 
on Wellesley opposite the end of the narrow street that the hockey fans must 
have overlooked, and stood on the sidewalk for a moment, listening.
	Too many people, too many heartbeats. He crossed the road and cautiously 
entered the passageway, concentrating on finding that one distinctive heartbeat 
which, to a vampire, was as individual as a voice.
	And, as he prowled further up the street, he heard it. Faint and tangled 
amongst many others, but it was hers. His lips curled in a thin, predatory 
smile. So he had guessed right. She was somewhere close by - probably stirring a 
cauldron.
	There were a couple of tiny restaurants close to Wellesley, but once he 
was past them the narrow street was deserted, making it easier to focus on the 
one heartbeat he was searching for. She was still somewhere ahead of him - a 
block? Half a block? - and above him. On his right, a few yards ahead, was a 
nondescript building of dark grimy brick, five or six storeys tall; on the left 
was an office building, with only a few lights showing in small windows. It 
faced onto a cross street, and beyond that he could see that St. Nicholas became 
somewhat wider and better lit. But the heartbeat was close by now.
	He slipped into the doorway of the brick building on his right and tried 
the knob. The door opened onto a dark entranceway and a set of worn stairs 
leading downwards. Music, a pounding techno beat, and the smell of cigarette 
smoke and human sweat issued from the lower regions. He thought there were about 
ten or a dozen heartbeats - it was hard to tell with all the sensory 
distractions. But Clara's was definitely not one of them. He closed the door and 
moved up to another entrance a few yards away, a loading dock with a corrugated 
rolling door.
	This one was locked. He considered simply breaking the lock, but if Clara 
was close by he didn't want to take the chance of her hearing the noise. Instead 
he turned back the way he had come and went around the end of the building into 
a narrow alley. It led to a slightly wider yard enclosed on all sides by the 
back walls of the surrounding buildings, lined with trash cans, dumpsters, a 
couple of cars, and an assortment of fire escapes, including one belonging to 
Clara's building.
	Treading lightly on the slippery metal, he climbed cautiously upward, 
pausing to listen at each floor. It wasn't until he had reached the very top 
that he was sure he had her. A plain metal door - locked - led inside. Feeling 
even less inclined to break down this door than the one at street level, he 
backtracked several steps to where the fire escape went past the window on the 
floor below. It was a plain sash window, and it was even open a crack, just 
enough to get his fingers in. His luck was still holding. The room beyond was 
empty.
	The window appeared to have frozen in place. Even for him it was difficult 
to move. Eventually he managed to slide it upwards far enough to wriggle over 
the sill, fearful all the while that the noise would alert Clara. But her 
heartbeat continued in an unwavering placid rhythm almost directly above him.
	He slipped through the deserted room and into the hallway beyond. It was 
lit by a string of bare forty-watt bulbs, spaced for maximum economy and minimum 
illumination. At least that way the worst stains in the noisome carpeting were 
disguised. Clara obviously hadn't chosen this place for aesthetic reasons. The 
music from the basement still vibrated up here in the form of thumping bass. It 
was still annoying, but maybe it would help to numb her senses to his approach. 
There was an interior stairway at the end of the hall which he took to the next 
floor, and silently tracked her heartbeat until he found the room she was in. 
Standing with his hand on the knob of her door, he suddenly sensed her heart 
rate accelerating. She knew he was there.
	There was no time left for the subtle approach. He crushed the knob and 
flung the door open.
	He had a brief impression of a large room, a laboratory or workshop rather 
than a living space, with workbenches and storage cupboards lining the walls and 
ancient linoleum tiles on the floor instead of a carpet. That was all his brain 
had time to assimilate before he saw Clara, running for the window with a flask 
in her hand.
	He flew across the room and blocked her escape route. Glancing over his 
shoulder, he saw the fire escape about four feet away from the window - not an 
easy distance to negotiate, but certainly possible for someone who was both 
athletic and very motivated.
	"Don't feel obligated to leave because of me, Clara," he said genially, 
although the vampire within him was clawing to be let loose for its revenge.
	"What are you doing here? How did you find this place?" she snapped. 
"You're supposed to be - "
	"Dead?" he supplied. "Sorry. I've just never had the grace to die when I 
should. It's a failing of mine. Now, you don't really want to be going out 
there, do you? It's a terrible night outside. Is that your latest attempt at a 
cure for Mr. Joliette?" He nodded at the flask in her hand. It held about a 
cupful of clear liquid that could have been water, but probably wasn't.
	"It's not an attempt," she retorted angrily. "It will work. Are you going 
to stand there and stop me from saving his life?"
	"If that has my blood in it," he said harshly, "you'll be creating a 
monster."
	"I know what I'm doing."
	"Do you really? Because I'd like to know what you're doing, too. But more 
than that, I want to know why you're doing it. You're so concerned about saving 
Joliette, and yet you murdered his wife. Why? What did he pay you for this 
cure?"
	"Money, of course," she answered with a hard little smile. Seeing the look 
on his face, she added, "Nearly everyone wants money, Nicholas. Why should I be 
any different?"
	"I don't believe you. What does your kind need with money?"
	"My kind? What do you know about my kind?" she said contemptuously. "For 
that matter, what makes you think I have a kind at all?"
	"Well, somebody had to teach you how to brew up all these potions, didn't 
they? Or did you just get a book out of the library of witches' spells? Spells 
for evil, incompetent witches, that is."
	"Incompetent?" she snarled. He noticed that she took no issue with his 
accusation of being something evil. "You're no judge of that. I learned a few 
things about you today while I was preparing your blood. For an immortal 
creature of the night, you can be pretty soft - and soft-headed. Sometimes I got 
the impression that your life has been nothing but a series of bad decisions - 
decisions that you've spent centuries regretting, or ones that you made even 
against your so-called better judgment, but were bullied into by others who were 
stronger than you, or even simply more eloquent. I began to wonder if I'd chosen 
the right bloodsucker."
	"So you think my blood doesn't have what it takes to cure Joliette? Just 
as his wife's heart didn't have enough love? Sounds to me as if you need to be a 
bit more careful about choosing your ingredients, then. Or are you just trying 
to cover for yourself in advance when this cure doesn't work as advertised, just 
like the other ones you've tried? And what about the man with Lou Gehrig's 
disease in Montreal two years ago? You couldn't save him either, could you?" 
That was a shot in the dark, but it seemed to have hit home. Clara's eyes fairly 
glowed with rage.
	"He waited until it was too late to call me. If he'd had the sense to let 
me start treating him earlier he'd still be alive now."
	"Excuses, excuses." Nick waved his hand negligently. "I still say you're 
incompetent. I think the reason you're so desperate to cure Joliette is because 
you want to get some respect and make up for your past screwups. Some sort of 
professional recognition from the College of Witches or whatever you call it."
	The expression on her face made him wonder if she might literally explode 
with fury. Finally, after a long moment in which she appeared to be completely 
speechless, she said steadily, "On the contrary, Detective Knight. I've had 
many, many successes."
	He looked sceptical.
	"If you don't believe me, then try this one. I'm really rather pleased 
with the way it turned out."
	Moving faster than he would have believed any mortal could, she 
unstoppered the flask in her hand and tossed its contents directly into his 
face.
	He got his hands up in time to partially protect himself, but still some 
of the noxious liquid splashed into his eyes. He roared in pain, reaching out 
blindly. He could hear Clara laughing as she retreated from him.
	He couldn't see a thing. He had noticed a sink in the room when he had 
burst in, somewhere to his left as he came through the doorway. He groped his 
way towards where he thought it was, hoping that he wouldn't blunder into 
anything even worse than what he'd already encountered. His fangs had dropped in 
his pain and frenzy, but the vampire was almost as helpless as a human.
	He could smell the water, though. His burning hands brushed against the 
edge of a stainless steel sink. A second later and he was frantically splashing 
cold water on his face and in his eyes. He tore off his jacket - the acid had 
eaten great holes in it already - and drenched himself as much as he could 
without actually climbing into the sink.
	The door to the hallway closed with a soft click.
	He spun around, squinting across the room. He hadn't even realized that 
Clara hadn't left immediately after tossing the acid at him, but she must have 
stayed long enough to pick up the things she needed. He was lucky that her 
workroom wasn't stocked with stakes, because he was quite sure that she would 
gladly have finished the job.
	With the acid washed away his vision was improving, although it was still 
blurry and his eyes and skin continued to burn. He ignored that and took off 
after Clara, moving as quickly as he could on foot - flying was still out of the 
question. He reached the hallway in time to hear the door leading to the fire 
escape swing open and crash against the wall. He rounded the corner at a run and 
saw Clara, carrying yet another crystal flask, dart outside -
-	 and saw her immediately lose her footing and fall on the ice-covered 
metal, saw the flask fly from her hand and spin out into empty air, saw her 
follow it a second later as her frantic grab for the railing fell six inches 
short.
	Nick descended the stairs cautiously. He could tell there was no need to 
rush. Clara had fallen six storeys, and was lying quite still on the cracked 
asphalt. When he reached her, he found that she was also lying in the centre of 
a steadily increasing pool of dark liquid mixed with crystal shards. His fangs 
threatened to descend again as he recognized the scent of his own blood on the 
ground, mingled with other substances he couldn't identify. But by far the 
largest ingredient in the mixture flowing on the icy pavement was Clara's own 
blood.
	He knelt beside her, sensing the struggling rhythm of her heart. Suddenly 
her head turned so that she was looking straight at him. Her face was a filthy, 
bloody mask, and the eyes that glared out of it seemed to show no fear at all, 
only an ineffable hatred. Then her heart jerked to a stop and the eyes glazed 
over. For just an instant Nick sensed an echo of that hatred, as if she were 
watching him from over his shoulder; then even that was gone.

	Two nights later Nick sat on the leather couch in the loft, gazing at the 
flames dancing in the fireplace, his hands wrapped around a half-empty green 
bottle. He would leave for the hospital in a few minutes, but before he did, he 
needed to compose himself.
	It had been a week now since Natalie's accident, and he was finding it 
more difficult every night to walk into the hospital and see her lying in that 
bed. It wasn't that he didn't believe she was going to get better. She was so 
healthy and young and full of vitality, it was impossible for him to accept that 
she might never wake up. But for just that reason the waiting for it to happen 
was so damned hard. He had never wanted a fairy-tale ending more than he did 
right now - just to be able to walk into that room, give Natalie a kiss and have 
her wake up as if nothing had happened. He smiled grimly at the notion. Nat 
probably wouldn't be too happy at being compared to the Sleeping Beauty, and he 
was certainly no Prince Charming.
	But he never questioned whether he would go to the hospital or not. He 
still had absolutely no idea if Clara had been telling the truth when she had 
said that Natalie could hear his voice. But if there was even a minuscule chance 
that what she had said was true, then he would go and talk to Nat from now until 
the end of his unlife, no matter how much it hurt him. It was the only thing he 
could do for her.
	He took one last swallow from the bottle and put it away in the fridge 
with a tired sigh, which was echoed by the fireplace as he turned the flames off 
with the remote. He collected his gun, badge, keys and coat and headed for the 
elevator. On the ride down he turned up his collar. The temperature outside had 
risen and it was raining steadily. Nick wasn't bothered by the cold, but he 
disliked getting wet as much as anyone else. Stupid weather.
	When he got outside and saw what was sitting in front of the garage door, 
his eyes widened. Then they went hard.
	Gleaming in the security lights was his Cadillac. Freshly painted, 
completely unblemished, looking exactly as it had when he'd first driven it off 
the lot.
	He'd decided he didn't want the car back. So far as he knew, the insurance 
company was scrapping it. How had it gotten here? And who had arranged for the 
repairs and paid for it all?
	He stared at the car for a moment, his expression unyielding. He didn't 
even really want to touch it, but it was blocking the garage door. Using the 
spare key still attached to his key ring, he started the engine and drove it 
into the far corner of the yard. Then he opened the garage, got into the 
precinct car and headed for the hospital.
	He told Natalie about the mysterious resurrection of the Caddy. "I just 
can't imagine who could have been responsible for it," he mused. "Lacroix is the 
only one I can think of with the resources to get a job like that done so 
quickly. But he couldn't care less about my 'mortal toys', as he calls them." He 
was silent for a moment, then said half-bitterly, "Of course, he probably knew I 
never wanted to lay eyes on that car again, and that would have been a good 
enough reason for him to rush right out and do it. Nat, I'm sorry, I shouldn't 
be dumping all this on you - "
	"Howdy, partner." Schanke was looming in the doorway. Nick greeted him, 
grateful for the timely interruption. He had promised himself that he would be 
upbeat and optimistic around Natalie, and he'd been in imminent danger of 
breaking that promise. And he was glad to see that Schanke was being a little 
less stiff with him. Neither his partner nor Captain Cohen had been too pleased 
that he'd gone after Clara on his own, and he'd spent the last two shifts trying 
to keep a low profile.
	"I brought you something, Nat," said Schanke, handing over a folded sheet 
of paper to Nick, who looked at it quizzically. "It's a get-well card from 
Jenny," he explained. "She did it on the computer."
	"That's sweet of her, Schanke." Nick stood the card on the table by the 
bed, next to the stuffed kitten.
	"So, are you coming in to work tonight or not?"
	"In a little while." Nick had picked up Natalie's hand again. He was 
debating about whether he should ask his partner if he knew anything about the 
Caddy's reappearance, but decided against it. Schanke could never afford such a 
perfect restoration job - at least, not on such short notice - and besides, if 
he had been involved, Nick was sure his face would have given everything away 
the minute he walked in the room.
	Schanke snorted. "Well, we both might as well spend the night here, for 
all the good we're going to do trying to track down this Clara person. Two days 
of digging and we still don't even have a last name. We don't even know if 
that's really her <first> name."
	Nick suspected they would never find out who Clara really was. He had 
taunted her about being a second-rate witch, but there was no doubt in his mind 
that she had supernatural abilities of some sort, and that she could have thrown 
something much worse even than concentrated acid in his face. He still wasn't 
sure why she had used the two humdrum ordinary drugs in the attacks on him and 
on Brenda Joliette, rather than some exotic concoction of her own. Maybe time or 
availability of ingredients had been an issue. He supposed that some problems 
were universal, after all. Those drugs were an angle that he and Schanke were 
working on...but he would be willing to bet that it would eventually prove to be 
a dead end.
"Did you know that Edgar Joliette died today?" he said quietly.	
	Schanke shook his head. "Did he ever wake up?"
	"No. I doubt he ever knew what happened to his wife."
	"Just as well. For him, anyhow. It would have been nice if he could have 
given us something on Clara, though."
	"Never mind, Schank. Even if we never figure this one out completely, what 
does it matter? It's all past tense now, anyway."
	Schanke looked closely at him. He hated it when Nick sounded so defeatist. 
And his partner still didn't look as if he'd gotten one good night's sleep since 
Natalie's accident. He said briskly, "Lighten up, will ya? I told you, no gloom 
and doom in here. Think positive."
	Nick nodded, and managed a rather miserable smile. "Right."
	"Do you need a ride in to work?"
	"No. I've still got a car from the station." Which he would have to give 
up soon, he knew, or get a slap on the wrist from Cohen for using a police 
vehicle for his own private transportation. "I'll see you at the shop, Schank."
	"Bye, Nat," said Schanke, and squeezed past the ever present nurse in the 
doorway.
	Nick held Natalie's hand silently for a while, then smiled ruefully. "Poor 
Schanke. I wasn't really fair to him when I went after Clara. I was just so 
afraid that she'd say something about me that I didn't want him to hear. And I 
couldn't have found her as quickly if he'd been with me. But now he's probably 
back to thinking I don't trust him, and I can't think of a way of telling him 
that trust had nothing to do with it. I really wish you could help me out with 
this, Nat."
	Natalie gave a long, sibilant exhalation. It sounded to Nick as if she had 
very slowly said the word 'ice'.
	He looked up, startled, at the nurse, who was now staring intently at her 
patient.
	Natalie shifted on the bed ever so slightly, and made the sound again. 
This time Nick definitely heard "ice", then "...car...", then he saw Natalie's 
eyelids twitch open and then close again.
	The nurse shot into the room, calling to someone in the hallway. A quiet 
but purposeful commotion ensued, during which Nick found himself being edged to 
the periphery of a quickly-assembled group. He bounced up and down on his toes 
occasionally, trying to see Natalie over people's heads, a smile like the rising 
sun on his face.
	
	"I don't remember a thing after hitting the ice," said Natalie. Her voice 
still had a tendency to slur, and every so often it seemed to be a struggle for 
her to find the words she wanted. Nick didn't care. To see her awake and talking 
to him was as glorious as being able to watch a sunrise without fear. "I just 
remember thinking that you were going to kill me for messing up your car. Then - 
nothing."
	Nick leaned over and gave her a very brief, almost tentative hug. He had 
developed a tendency to treat her like a piece of Dresden china. "Not in a 
million years, Nat."
	"Nick - um - " Natalie's gaze slid away from his. She began to fidget with 
the edge of the blanket. "I'm sorry about your car. Was there anything left of 
it? Can I help pay for the repairs, or something?"
	Nick looked at her in utter astonishment. It had never once occurred to 
him, in the midst of his own despondency, that he might not be the only one 
feeling guilty. "I don't want you to give it a thought. The insurance has taken 
care of everything." Or someone had, at least.
	"Are you sure? I mean, I know you can afford it, but it was my fault - "
	"Ssh. Forget about the car."
	"Well, actually, um, if you're going to get it fixed, then there's 
something I need to ask you. You can say no if you want - "
	"Of course I won't say no. What is it?"
	"Even though I can't really remember the accident, I sort of get the 
shakes whenever I think of driving a car again - "
	"Nat, you've only been awake for three days. . ."
	"I know, I know! But when I get back to driving again, I was wondering if 
we could take your car and go back to - to where it happened, and I could drive 
down the hill, on the road this time, without taking out the guardrail, and 
just, you know, kind of get past it."
	He was suddenly glad that he hadn't simply driven the restored Caddy into 
the lake, which had been his first impulse when he'd found it at his door. "Of 
course we can do that if you want. We'll make a night of it."
	She looked relieved, and the something else struck her. "I don't suppose 
there was anything left of my suitcase, was there?"
	"Not really. The trunk broke open and everything in it sort of took 
flight."
	"Rats. I'd bought you a present at the inn. Something I thought might help 
you. Well, I suppose I can replace it around here somewhere."
	"Really?" he said, looking pleased.
	"Yup. Some aromatherapy stuff."
	His expression altered, indicating that he wasn't terribly enthusiastic. 
"And you claim that I'm always looking for a quick fix."
	She snickered. "It was some essential oils. Neroli and grapefruit. And I'd 
gotten a diffuser for you to put them in. They're supposed to promote a feeling 
of optimism."
	"And do they?"
	"Darned if I know."
	Nick grinned at her, then said suddenly, "What was your suitcase doing in 
the trunk anyway? You weren't supposed to be coming back for another day."
	"Well, I think I'd just decided that I'd had all the award-winning food I 
could manage. And that I'd sorted everything out and I didn't need to stay any 
longer."
	He looked at her quizzically, but she didn't elaborate. They sat for a 
moment in silence. Then he said, with a sudden urgency that made Natalie look up 
at him in surprise, "Nat, I have to know. Was that crazy woman right? Could you 
hear me when I would talk to you, when you were unconscious?"
	She answered thoughtfully, "Well - yes and no. I don't think I often heard 
you distinctly. It was usually more like hearing a voice in a dream. You know - 
you hear someone saying something, but it doesn't necessarily make sense. It's 
just a fragment, or it doesn't seem to fit the context of the dream, or you 
can't find the source of the voice. It was mostly like that. I think, though, it 
was always your voice I heard. I don't remember every hearing anyone else, 
except for a word here and there."
	So Clara hadn't lied about that. Embellished the truth, maybe, but not 
lied.
	"A few times, though, I could really understand what you were saying, and 
I wanted to answer, but I couldn't."
	"When I told you I was going after Clara?"
	"Yes. And then when you said something about bringing Sydney to see me." 
She grinned. "That was sweet of you, but it would have been a really terrible 
idea." At his surprised look, she clarified, "Sydney, like most cats, isn't a 
good traveller. You might not have had any hearing left by the time you made it 
to the hospital. <If> you made it to the hospital. And your car probably 
wouldn't have smelled so good."
	"Ah."
	"Never mind. I appreciate the thought. I'll just have to make do with 
Myra's kitten until I get home again."
	A nurse poked her head in the door - Natalie was in a regular ward by now 
- and said with a smile, "I'm sorry, but visiting hours are nearly over."
	"Off with you, Nick. It's time for you to go and make Schanke's life 
miserable."
	"How much longer will you have to be in here?"
	"Oh, probably only a few days. They just want to make sure I'm not going 
to have a major personality change and become an axe murderer, or start speaking 
in tongues, or something. And then I can look forward to weeks of physio and 
rehab."
	He looked a bit bemused. She wondered if there was a tongue she could find 
to speak in that he wouldn't understand.
	"Till tomorrow, then." He bent down and kissed her forehead, again with 
that Dresden china gentleness. He turned to go, but stopped in the doorway. Nat, 
I'm just so glad - "
	"I know," she finished. "So am I."
	
	His shift was quiet and he was able to slip out a few minutes early, 
leaving him just enough time before daybreak to search out Lacroix.
	"Ah, Nicholas," said his master coolly. "Come to extend a belated thank 
you for having fixed your little toy?"
	"So it was you."
	"Of course. Who else do you think could have gotten the work done so well 
and so quickly?"
	"I'll pay for it."
	"Nicholas, will you never learn to simply accept a gift and be thankful?"
	"I'll pay for it, Lacroix, or I'll smash it to pieces again."
	Lacroix rolled his eyes upward. "Very well, although I think a lesson in 
manners is in order. I'll send you the receipts. You may reimburse me."
	"Why did you do it? I didn't want the car back again."
	"My reasons are my own, and I am in no way obligated to impart them to 
you." Seeing Nick standing there with his arms folded across his chest and an 
obstinate look on his face, he added, "However, if it's of any comfort to you, I 
did not do it simply to make you miserable by inflicting something on you that 
would only bring back painful memories. Nor, in case you're thinking that your 
world is about to turn upside down, did I do it out of some latent sense of 
altruism."
	Nick didn't move.
	Lacroix finally sighed and said, "For once in your eight hundred years, 
Nicholas, be practical. If one wishes to masquerade as a part of this mortal 
world - and for you, the allure of it appears to be as irresistible as a siren's 
song, as pathetic as that seems - "
	"Spare me the lecture, Lacroix." Nick wanted to ask if his master was 
finally bowing to the inevitable, but for once he held his tongue. There would 
be other opportunities to explore that area - when morning wasn't quite so 
close. He had no desire to see the sunrise from anywhere other than the safety 
of his loft for some time to come.
	Lacroix continued as if there had been no digression. " - it helps to have 
a mortal method of conveyance. You might as well have this car as any other. As 
you yourself have claimed before, the trunk space is quite generous. Given your 
propensity for suicidally rash behaviour, it seems advisable to provide yourself 
with a mobile bolthole. And besides," he added maliciously, "the radio is <so> 
good."
	There was a silence, then Nick said ungraciously, "Well, whatever the 
reason - thank you. And send me the bill."
	"It's getting close to dawn, Nicholas. Would you care to spend the day 
here?"
	"Not on your unlife," snorted Nick, and vanished in a soft whoosh of air. 
Lacroix looked after him with a shrug.
	There was a phrase in the Bible, a book Lacroix abhorred but which 
Nicholas could quote at length, which he felt pertained somewhat to the 
situation - only somewhat, of course. Something about serpents' teeth and 
ungrateful children.
	
	Nick arrived at his loft minutes ahead of the dawn. Sipping a glass of 
blood, he stood by the window for a last glimpse of the light before he had to 
close the shutters.
	Outside, it began to snow again.


The End

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