I sighed. “Right, so how do I find this guy, if he exists? Look up Sunwalkers in the Yellow Pages? Take out an ad in the Oregonian, better yet, the Willamette Week? ” I named the two biggest newspapers in Portland.
He threw his head back and laughter spilled in waves. There was almost a magic to it. Certainly nicer on the ears that whatever he was playing on the stereo. “Now that would be interesting, but no, I don’t think it works that way.”
“What then?”
He stroked his lower lip. “Well, you obviously won’t be able to count on the usual vampire haunts, seeing as how, if he exists, he can walk around in daylight.” This guy really knew how to state the obvious. “Your idea might not be that bad after all.”
“What, taking out an ad?”
He chuckled. “Maybe not that exactly, but something similar. Imagine you are an ancient, mythical creature that’s been able to hide out for centuries without detection. Then some nosy person comes along and starts blabbing all over about looking for you. You might get a little nervous that her investigation would be heard about in certain circles, putting your very existence in jeopardy. What would you do about it?”
“Shut her up.”
He grinned. “Exactly.”
Great. I was about to go out and seriously piss off a centuries old Sunwalker. Yay, me.
Chapter Four
My first stop that night was Inigo’s. It’s a good idea to take back up along when going to piss off ancient, mythical creatures. Plus he was always good for a laugh. Not to mention great eye candy, which was not something I would ever admit to anyone, even under pain of death.
“Where to?” Inigo asked as we headed to my car.
I sighed. “Not sure. Basically, I need to blab to the mythical underworld that I’m looking for a Sunwalker. I’m not exactly sure where to start. I mean, I’m usually going to kill somebody in the mythical underworld, not have a chat over coffee.”
Both eyebrows hit his hairline. “Excuse me? Are you trying to piss this guy off?”
“Yep. Pretty much.” I wasn’t totally thrilled with the idea of turning myself into bait, but it was the best plan I had at the moment.
He rolled his eyes. “Great. Just great. You must be positively suicidal.”
“Cordelia’s contact — really interesting guy, by the way — seems to think it’s the only way to draw him out.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he does. He’s not the one who’s been appointed cannon fodder,” Inigo growled. I didn’t like it when Inigo growled. Or, rather, I liked it a little too much. It did things to me. I barely refrained from clenching my legs together. I seemed to be doing a lot of that lately. I really needed to find a boyfriend.
I cleared my throat. “Anyway, we’ve got to find the best place to start spreading the word. You know a good mystic bar or something?”
“Graveyard.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Graveyard. You’d be amazed at who you can find in a graveyard.”
“Is this one of your clairvoyant things?” He was always coming up with weird ideas which he conveniently blamed on his abilities.
“No, this is one of my common sense things. Best way to get word out to your Sunwalker is to hit the supernatural grapevine, and the most gossipy members of the grapevine have a bizarre tendency to hang out in cemeteries.”
Common sense. Right. The day Inigo exceeded me in common sense was the day hell froze over. Then again, with the way things were going, that wasn’t as unlikely as it might seem. “Fine. Graveyard, it is. And he’s not my Sunwalker.”
“Sure, if you say so.” His wolfish grin told me he wasn’t buying.
I started the car and pulled out into traffic, heading toward the oldest cemetery I knew. If you’re going to go creepy, you might as well make sure it was really old creepy. Too bad we weren’t still in London. They knew how to do creepy old graveyards properly in London.
As you can probably imagine, Portland has several old cemeteries, some dating back to the days of the pioneers. Nothing nearly as old as in London, of course, but old enough to ramp up the creepy factor.
This particular cemetery was certainly plenty creepy. Moonlight bounced off white marble headstones giving the place an eerie glow as we got out of the car. Despite the warmth of the evening, there were tendrils of mist swimming about the bases of trees and swarming over graves. The whole thing was incredibly, incredibly eerie. Did I mention it was seriously giving me the creeps?
“All right,” I said to Inigo, placing my hand on the grip of my UV gun, not that it would do any good unless the creepies were vampires. “Now what?”