Dark Currents by Jacqueline Carey

Author:Jacqueline Carey [Carey, Jacqueline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Urban
ISBN: 9781101615409
Google: ik336psNrt8C
Goodreads: 16082869
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2012-10-01T17:00:00+00:00

Twenty-four

Outside Cuypers and Sons funeral home, Stefan offered to buy me a cup of coffee.

“You’re serious?” I asked him. “Coffee?”

“Is that not the convention of the day?” He raised his eyebrows. “We should talk, Hel’s liaison.”

I ran my hands over my face. Now that the moment had passed, I felt acutely aware of the unique intimacy Stefan and I had just shared. “Okay. Yeah, sure. Meet me down at Callahan’s Café.”

Approximately twenty minutes later, he did, roaring into town on his Harley-Davidson.

At this hour of the afternoon, Callahan’s was quiet. Stefan slid into the farthest corner booth opposite me.

Even with the glamour lending him human semblance, dimming his aura and his ridiculous good looks, he was eye-catching. Tina, the waitress on duty, hastened to bring him a brimming mug of coffee.

Stefan sipped it. “Dear God. This is dreadful.”

“I know.” I poured creamer into mine. “But the refills are free. Did you learn anything today?”

“No.” He took another tentative sip. “No, I’m afraid not. Did you?”

“No.” I wrapped both hands around my mug, determined to keep this on a professional level. “Not there. But we spoke to Jerry Dunham. He wasn’t very cooperative, but he’s got a whole lot of fancy motorcycles he shouldn’t be able to afford. And it looks like the two of you turned up in Pemkowet around the same time, which is also the same time Ray D disappeared. Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Stefan blew on the surface of his coffee. “You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t know you,” I said. “I don’t know anything about you.”

“Untrue,” he said. “You trusted me today. Did I give you cause to regret it, Daisy?”

I shrugged. “Desperate times, desperate measures.”

His ice-blue eyes gazed at me with disconcerting directness. “Very well, Hel’s liaison. What do you desire to know?”

“Ever been to Seattle?” I asked him.

He shook his head. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“So you’d never met Jerry before?”

“No. He was already employed at the Wheelhouse when I arrived.” He lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “I had no previous cause to dismiss him.”

“Did you have anything to do with Ray D’s disappearance?” I asked.

“No.” Stefan’s tone took on an edge of asperity. “In fact, I’m quite perishingly weary of being questioned about someone I’ve never met.”

“Your territory, your responsibility,” I reminded him. “How about Mary Sudbury?”

He blinked. “Who?”

I stirred my coffee. “Remember the undines said there were two ghouls in the boat that dumped the body? One male and one female? Apparently, she’s Ray D’s lady love. Something none of your fellows have seen fit to divulge thus far.”

Something subtle altered in his expression. “He’s in love with another ghoul?”

“So it seems,” I said. “Does it matter?”

“It changes things.” Following my lead, Stefan stirred creamer into his coffee, frowning. “Two ghouls, as you call us, two of our kind cannot sustain each other. For both to attempt to feed on each other, it creates . . .” He gestured absently with his plastic stir stick. “I believe the term your modern science accords it is a closed feedback loop.

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