* * *
The First Lady was sedated and resting in her bedroom while Tony paced and the President toyed with a pack of gum he'd pulled from a desk drawer in the oval office. I was getting to see the room under less than ideal circumstances. "You're sure he was shouting Xenides?" Tony was grilling me. He wasn't happy; I could tell that right away.
"Yes, Tony." I was weariness itself at the moment.
"What do you know about Xenides?" Tony demanded. I stared at Tony, wondering what he knew about Xenides and what I should actually tell him about Xenides.
"Old," I said. I didn't say how old. In the brief scent I'd gotten off Xenides, he was at least a thousand years older than Wlodek. Maybe more. And he had mindspeech. The vampire I'd killed had been similar to me, having misting ability as well as mindspeech. That was frightening. "He can mindspeak," I went on. "Both vampires tonight had the same taint as the others."
The President was listening dispassionately while Tony played twenty questions. The man had nearly lost his wife earlier. I'm sure he was having a hard time separating that from the matters at hand.
"Is that all you know?" The words were snapped in my direction. Tony was being a hard-ass.
Xenides was Saxom's main contact, I think. I'm sure he was his right hand man and is now bent on destruction since his sire was whacked. I sent my reply as mindspeech; I wasn't sure what the President knew or should know about Xenides.
Say that's all you know, Lissa. Tony's mindspeech was now just as weary as mine.
"That's all I know," I said aloud.
"I expect you to keep me informed," the President told Tony as he rose from his chair.
"I will," Tony nodded. We picked up more Secret Service agents on our way out of the Oval Office and the President and his guards went one way, Tony and I went the other. We found Bill and our driver next to a car outside. I climbed in gratefully. It had to be close to four in the morning; I was exhausted and knew I'd need extra blood when we got home.
"What did you intend to do if I hadn't stopped you?" Tony asked as we drove away from the White House.
"Which time?" I was pouting, now. My treatment after saving the First Lady had been less than polite in my opinion.
"When Xenides took off."
"I was going to follow the f**ker and kill him if I could." I wasn't in any mood to mince words.
"Christ, Lissa." Tony rubbed his forehead as if he had a headache. He didn't say another thing on the drive home.
* * *
"Take a look at these results," Dr. Lawrence Frazier showed Tony two separate experiments simultaneously on two computer monitors. "This one on the left was done using the ash you gave me three days ago. The one on the right is using the last of the fresh blood and tissue we collected. The difference in the two is remarkable."
Tony watched as the special ops soldier on the left took five minutes to turn to invisible mist while the one on the right turned immediately. He knew what Frazier was angling for and he also knew his time with Lissa was winding down quickly. He only had two more weeks. Guilt was still eating at him from the first time. If he allowed Frazier to take blood and tissue again, Tony would have to make sure Lissa was kept in the house; she was too tired and weak afterward.
"Come to the house tomorrow morning at ten," Tony snarled and stalked out of Frazier's office.
* * *
I sent the information over the whole First Lady/Xenides incident to Merrill and Charles. I didn't have Wlodek's personal email account and wasn't likely to get it. I didn't really care whether Tony wanted the information passed over or not; this involved the vampires just as much or more than it involved him. I knew he had knowledge of Xenides that he wasn't giving me and I hinted at that to Merrill. The incident during the State Dinner had been hushed up for the most part, too. The news reported that it was a kitchen employee who went a little crazy and that the whole thing had been handled without injury. The First Lady wasn't even mentioned. As long as you weren't counting the dead vampire, I suppose the no-injury statement was true.
It was now three days since the State Dinner. Tony was working very late most nights and I was left to entertain myself. I finally picked up the folder he'd given me to read the final report on the kidnappings in Great Britain, receiving quite a shock. Tony had handed me the wrong folder—I could see that right away. The information on the top page concerned a terrorist named Rahim Alif. I almost slapped the folder shut so I could hand it back to Tony but another name on the top page caught my eye. It also had me reading the report front to back twice and then borrowing Tony's scanner, hoping like hell he wouldn't come home in the middle of what I was doing. I had all the pages scanned, saved in my computer and emailed to Charles just as quickly as my fingers and the computer could move. Then I put all the pages back in the folder and went to lay it on the kitchen counter.
Tony came in around ten, brushing rain off his trench coat. He looks nice in a trench, but I wasn't about to compliment him. I did offer to make a sandwich for him but he said he'd gotten something earlier during a meeting. "This isn't the folder on the kidnappings," I picked it up and handed it to him. "I looked at the first page, determined it was some secret spy stuff and left it here for you." Tony frowned and took the folder, opening it and then shutting it quickly. "You were right to give this back to me," he mumbled and stalked off toward his bedroom. He came back with another file. "This is yours," he said. I opened it and sure enough, it was mine.
"Thanks," I said, giving him the best smile I could. "Now I have something to read." I took off toward my bedroom. I never said I didn't read the first file. Everything I'd said was true, I'd just chosen my words carefully.
* * *
Charles was using curse words he didn't normally use. Ever. Unplugging the power source to his laptop, he raced up the stairs to Wlodek's study. "Honored One!" Charles almost screeched as he skidding to a halt in front of Wlodek's desk, leaving tracks in Wlodek's antique Persian rug.
"Charles, this is an unwarranted interruption," Wlodek frowned at his assistant. Charles set the laptop on Wlodek's desk and turned it around so Wlodek could look. There was a photograph with a handwritten caption, naming one of the persons in the photograph Xenides, the other Rahim Alif. Wlodek recognized Xenides. Oh, yes. He'd been introduced as someone else when he and Wlodek first met—centuries ago. The other looked to have a Middle Eastern background. Wlodek began to read.