“A university?” he wondered.

Turning back to his computer, he reread the bio on the television show Web site. He scanned her academic credentials. She’d spent a summer at Columbia.

“Bingo.”

16

“I didn’t know you had a place in New York,” Annja said as Garin tapped out the entrance code on a digital pad beside the door.

“I do now. With real estate at such a delicious low, how could I resist? I do love to catch a Broadway show now and then.”

Annja couldn’t help but grin widely. Wonders did never cease.

“I’d give you the official ‘Enter freely and of your own will,’” Garin said as he stepped inside, “but I suspect you’d reserve that statement for me.”

He had that one right. She never found vampires on her trip to Transylvania. Maybe because the closest thing to one stood right before her. Immortal and hungry for blood, be it racing or spilled.

Annja entered the thirtieth-floor Manhattan apartment with reluctance. She peeked around the corner as she entered the foyer, expecting to see a half-clad nymph scrambling away like a blood-drained Renfield into the shadows. The few times Garin had called her, she’d heard feminine giggles in the background. Gentleman he may be, he wasn’t discriminating by any means.

“There are no booby traps,” he said as he closed the door behind her.

“Just want to steer clear from the giggle brigade.”

“It’s just you and me, Annja. I would never be so rude to impose on your presence by including another woman.”

“I’m honored.”

“You’re being snarky.”

“Yeah, well.” A brush of her palm still sifted dirt from her jacket. It landed on the polished hardwood floor. “Where’s that shower?”

“Down the hall and left is the guest room. Let me take a look at you first. Those clothes are too filthy.” He drew his dark gaze up and down her body. Her coat was unzipped, and he lingered at her breasts, which should have offended, but it was just so Garin. “You’re still a size six, I’d guess.”

Annja nodded. “You going shopping?”

“Annja, please, I have people who do that for me.”

She rolled her eyes, and twisted her hips to start down the hallway. People? The man was a real item. Tall, dark and too knowing for her own good. He’d once before arranged to have her dressed by some high-fashion name she couldn’t recall.

With a reluctant nod, Annja had to admit the dress had rocked. It made her look and feel sexy. Not something she felt when mucking about on a dig or swimming through toxic canals.

That had also been the time Garin had kissed her.

She would maintain vigilance this time.

WRISTS CROSSED UPON his lap, he knelt within the circle on the bare cement floor. The circle had been painted with tar. It was wide enough for him to kneel comfortably and to work the bone powder on the floor before him.

He wore a black linen coat over his shirt. The coat was not his and it gave off a musty odor. It was once worn by the man he now conjured to help him, one of his closest spirit contacts. It was important to wear a piece of the dead subject’s clothing to open the connections.

He’d crushed the bone sample taken from Annja Creed in a mortar and had placed half in a vial for later use.

Serge slipped a slim silver lighter from the coat pocket. Holding the flame low over the bone fragments he moved it to singe the particles. Wifts of smoke rose but it did not take to flame. Unnecessary.

The scent of burned bone wavered through his nostrils. Sweet, always, a scent he’d grown up with.

It had been a serendipitous accident that night his father had been burning some old junk found in the field—unearthed clothing, half a wagon wheel and a human leg bone. Serge had inhaled the smoke and the next moment had felt the presence within him. He’d been occupied by something not himself. Yet he’d been calm, leery to tell his father about it. The spirit had whispered of a lynching and his death. He’d left Serge with the idea he could learn anything he wished by contacting the dead.

Serge’s very soul spoke to the dead.

After mentioning the experience to his mother, she’d brought out an old ring her deceased mother had worn. Serge hadn’t been able to contact his grandmother. He needed the bones—the visceral evidence of what was once life.

Now, after years of training, he only needed an item the spirit had once worn or treasured. But still he needed bone if he wished to summon regarding a living being.

Serge hummed, low in his throat. It vibrated in his chest and throbbed against his ribs. The space between life and death was vast and navigated with vibration. A unique trip he enjoyed making.

He bowed his head low, moving his forehead to his wrists. Closing his eyes pushed away all unnecessary thoughts from his mind.

Humming continuously, he moved up an octave, notching the tone higher in his throat. It was an ancient means of communication, taught to him by his grandfather. This language of no words was his own. It belonged to the Greater All. An All he was humbled to be a part of.

Stretching out his arms, and holding his fingers parallel to the floor, he began to keen, a high-pitched wailing that crackled in his ears and filled his sinuses.

There were a few particular spirits he worked with often. They treaded the edges of his reality, willing and oftentimes curious to communicate with the corporeal realm.

Alone in this soundproof room behind his bedroom, Serge touched the Greater All. It emerged swiftly and filled his being with presence. It tasted the burned bone and assumed the constitution of the bone’s owner.

Moving throughout Serge’s body the All gave him glimpses, for that is what he mentally asked to know. Glimpses from hereyes. The familiar walls of a loft Serge had only yesterday trashed. The screen of a laptop, scanning through text, and the photos of a skull he had found with his own search online.

Snowflakes dusted her forearms. She walked briskly. A huge building stretched before her. She stood inside. The face of a man with curly hair smiled. He accepted the skull and—the images faded.

The All left him. It gave only what he asked, and left with a painful tug to his soul.

Would he simply give it over one day? His own soul?

Not yet. Not until he was free.

With a groaning noise, Serge slapped his palms on the floor as his body shuddered back to the present. He would remain in this position for a few minutes until all was as it had been before the summoning. His heartbeat slowed.

But his thoughts raced. What was the building? It had looked like a school of sorts. Some kind of college? Where would the Creed woman study? Was there an archaeological center here in the city?

He swallowed, in need of water. Reaching for the small brush and dustpan outside the tar circle, he quickly swept up the bone fragments. When the floor was spotless, he went to the kitchen, passing the hematite bedposts in the bedroom and tapping them four, then three, times successively.

Tapping the stone before the kitchen entry, he then lifted the spigot and put his head down to drink a long drag.

A university, he decided. Somewhere in Manhattan.

17