The bright lights in the dark night were an unpleasant reminder of the recovery of Basim al Saud’s body. It was hard to think properly about Miss Caroline’s life and legacy with all the conjecture rattling around in my head. And why hadn’t anything already happened? I felt as though I were living waiting for the other shoe to drop. I wasn’t aware my hand had tightened on Sam’s arm until he turned to look at me with some alarm. I forced my fingers to relax and bowed my head for the prayer.

The family, I heard, was going to Belle Rive for a buffet meal after the service. I wondered if they’d gotten Bill his favorite blood. Bill looked awful. He was using a cane at the grave site. Something had to be done about finding his sibling, since he wasn’t taking action himself. If there was a chance his sibling’s blood might cure him, the effort had to be made.

I’d driven to the funeral with Sam, and since my house was so close, I told Sam I’d walk back from the grave site. I’d stuck a little flashlight in my purse, and I reminded Sam I knew the cemetery like the back of my hand. So when all the other attendees took off, including Bill, to go to Belle Rive for the buffet meal, I waited in the shadows until the cemetery employees started filling in the hole, and then I walked through the trees to Bill’s house.

I still had a key.

Yes, I knew I was being a terrible busybody. And maybe I was doing the wrong thing. But Bill was wasting away, and I just couldn’t sit by and let him do it.

I unlocked the front door and went to Bill’s office, which had been the Compton formal dining room. Bill had all his computer gear set up on a huge table, and he had a rolling chair he’d gotten at Office Depot. A smaller table served as a mailing station, where Bill prepared copies of his vampire database to send to purchasers. He advertised heavily in vampire magazines—Fang, of course, and Dead Life, which appeared in so many languages. Bill’s newest marketing effort involved hiring vampires who spoke many different languages to translate all the information so he could sell foreign-language editions of his worldwide vampire listing service. As I remembered from a previous visit, there were a dozen CD copies of his database in cases by his mailing station. I double-checked to make sure I had one that was in English. Wouldn’t do me much good to get one in Russian.

Of course, Russian reminded me of Alexei, and thinking of Alexei reminded me all over of how worried/angry/frightened I was about Eric’s silence.