I took a seat at the table and watched him chop vegetables and crack eggs into a bowl. I waited for him to say something about Nikolas’s visit or last night, but he seemed content to focus on cooking. I figured it was as good a time as any to tell him what I had discovered last night.
“Tristan, when those vampires showed up I sensed them before I saw them.”
He stopped beating eggs to peer at me. “What do you mean?”
“I got this cold feeling in my chest just before the first one arrived, and it happened again when the other two came.” I saw his look of incredulity, and I didn’t blame him because I knew how it must sound. “It’s happened a couple of times before, only I didn’t put it together until last night.”
“It happened back in Maine?”
“No, only since I came here. The first time, I was out in the woods. It was the day Hugo and Woolf got loose. The other time was outside the movie theater in Boise.”
“We have twenty-four hour patrols in the woods around Westhorne. It is unlikely that a vampire would risk getting that close to us.”
“But it’s not impossible.”
He studied me for a moment before he shook his head. “No, not impossible. If not for the three dead vampires I saw last night, I would say the possibility of a vampire showing up in town was slim as well. I’ll have someone check the woods, and we’ll add another patrol to be safe.” He went back to preparing the omelet. “You said you felt the same thing in Boise?”
I told him about the cold sensation in my chest as we were leaving the movie theater. “I’m not suggesting the vampire I sensed had anything to do with the lamprey attack, but I am positive there was a vampire nearby.”
Tristan nodded, but he looked troubled as he poured the egg mixture into the skillet. “Boise is normally very quiet. We see some lower demon activity – like lampreys in the sewers – but rarely vampires. I’ll ask Chris to assemble a team and investigate. If there was a vampire, it might have been passing through, but I don’t believe in coincidences.”
His belief in me and his readiness to take action was both gratifying and reassuring. “Me either.”
“Tell me, why do you think you can sense vampires now?”
“Aine thinks it could have something do with the vampire blood on the knife I was stabbed with.”
This time he turned to face me. “You saw the sylph? Here?”
“No, at the lake a few days ago. She said she couldn’t come here because it would upset everyone.”
“Did she come to ask you to go to Faerie with her again?” His voice held an edge of worry, and I rushed to reassure him.
“No, she just wanted to catch up and make sure I’m doing okay.”
Tristan finished making the omelet and slid it onto a plate. He laid it in front of me with a glass of orange juice and sat across from me as I took a bite.
“This is amazing.” I moaned through a mouthful of food, earning a smile from him.
“I’m glad you like it.” He clasped his hands together on the table. “So, you believe you can actually sense a vampire’s presence? If that is so, it would be an incredible ability to have.”
“Yeah, and it’s a lot better than having to sniff them.”
“Sniff them?”
“You know – that awful odor vampires have. Of course, you can only smell it when you get really close to them.”
His brow furrowed. “Vampires don’t smell any different from humans.”
“You must have been too busy killing them to smell them because, trust me, they reek like road kill when you get up-close-and-personal with them. I only got that close to Eli, but I’ll never forget that smell.” I laid down my fork and shuddered at the memory.
Tristan stroked his chin. “It must be an elemental trait that allows you to smell them. Interesting.”
“You wouldn’t find it interesting if you were the one gagging on vampire BO.”
“No, I guess not.”
I took a few more bites of food. “Hey, we could always test my vampire radar. You could take me somewhere like Vegas and I can find them for you.”
To my surprise, he did not dismiss my idea. “We could do that once you get some more training under your belt.”
“Great, I’d like that. By the way, was Derek okay? Jordan threw him pretty hard.”
“We treated him and took him to the hospital. He has a mild concussion and as far as he knows, he fell trying to climb up to the barn loft while he was intoxicated.”
“How do you do that – make people forget seeing a vampire?”
“We manufacture a drug from several plant extracts that allows us to modify short-term memory in humans. We’ve found that most humans are happier not knowing about the supernatural.”