In the Company of Vampires(61)

“Could what?” Isleif asked, flipping the long braids of his beard over each shoulder before donning a pair of sunglasses and squirting suntan oil on his belly.

“I wonder if I could touchy-feely my way to finding the guy who took the Vikingahärta.” I turned and looked speculatively at Imogen’s trailer.

“You are a goddess,” Eirik repeated, shooing me off the chaise so he could lie on it. He peeled off his shirt and used Isleif’s suntan lotion on his chest and arms.

“Eirik!” I said sternly.

“Aye?”

I pointed at his crotch, where the silk boxers were once again gaping in a manner that let everyone see clearly everything he’d been born with.

“Ah.” He yanked the boxers down and applied suntan lotion to his penis before pulling them back up. “It warms my heart to know you’re so concerned for the well-being of my rod, goddess. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to rut with me rather than the Dark One?”

“Quite sure, and that’s not what I meant for you to do.” His forehead wrinkled in confusion. “Oh, never mind. You guys stay here while I go talk to Imogen.”

“Finnvid is no doubt plowing her field, but he won’t mind if you watch,” Isleif called after me, pulling out an iPod. “He’s always been fond of audiences.”





Chapter 13




I knocked on Imogen’s door, waited a few seconds, and was about to use my T-shirt to open the door when it struck me that whoever entered her trailer most likely had to touch the door to do so. Taking a deep breath to calm my thoughts, I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob, allowing the imprints of the people who’d touched it recently to fill my head.

“Imogen, giddy and excited,” I murmured as I sorted through the images and emotions that were imbued on the metal. “Finnvid, filled with lust. Günter, annoyed and . . .” I tried to analyze the emotion that had been uppermost in Günter’s mind when he had touched the door. “Dutiful? Huh. Karl. Peter. Ben, very, very annoyed at Naomi.” I smiled at that before realizing there were no other traces that I could detect. Which either meant someone else had opened the door for the thief or he hadn’t gone into the trailer.

“Imogen? You decent and not in the middle of having your field plowed?” I poked my head in through the open doorway. I didn’t hear any sounds from her bedroom. “I’m really sorry to disturb you guys, but I kind of need to touch things in your trailer. You don’t have to come out if you’re busy.”

“Fran!” Imogen emerged from the bedroom, tying a belt around her white satin bathrobe. “Of course you are always welcome here. What did you need?”

“I’m sorry to bother you in the middle of . . .” I waved my hand toward the bedroom.

“You are no bother. We were finished.”

I looked beyond her, to where Finnvid stood naked, an irritated expression on his face. He looked anything but finished. I cleared my throat and turned so my back was to him. I heard the door slam behind me. “I thought it might help me figure out what’s going on with the Vikingahärta if I was to touch a few things in the trailer.”

“Oh!” She whirled around, the teakettle in her hand. “What an excellent idea! The lich must surely have touched things. You must start with the door.”

“I did.” I bit my lip, then listed the people who’d touched her door lately.

“That’s odd.” She frowned as she plugged in the teakettle. “There was no lich?”

“There was no one I didn’t recognize, no.”

Her clear blue gaze held mine. “Then how did the lich get in?”

“I think the question is more, who let him in? Or better, who took the Vikingahärta?”

“Fran!” she said in a shocked voice. “You can’t mean to imply that one of us took it?”

“No, not you, obviously.”

“But the only people who were here are our friends: Peter and Karl and Günter. And Ben! Surely you can’t think—”

“No, I know it wasn’t Ben. But . . . er . . . how well do you know Günter?”

She just stared at me for a minute. “You can’t think Günter took your Vikingahärta? Fran, I’ve known him for, oh, it must be six months. We haven’t dated that long, but we have been together for at least four months. Günter is a musician, so he is able to travel with me much of the time, although he does occasionally have to go off and record things.”

“What sort of things?” I looked around the trailer. There were no musical instruments of any sort.