Free James Asher 1 - Those Who Hunt The Night by Barbara Hambly

Bertie—he made straight for the shadiest seat and spent the whole time being terrified the bench would leave spots on his trousers, lemonade would drip onto his sleeve, or his buttonhole would wilt. His brother, the Equally Honorable Evelyn, was on the Gloucester side and nearly died of embarrassment.”
    What a thing to be remembered for, she thought. She wondered if he had cried out, if he had known what was happening to him, or if this vampire woman had taken him in his sleep, as Ysidro could so easily have done to them all. Her hand closed tighter around James'. After a very long silence, she asked, “Can we meet in the daytime?” “I don't know,” he said quietly. “Not safely, I don't think. The killer can be about by day, even if the vampires can't. Until I can contact him —talk to him—see how and why he's doing this—I don't want anyone knowing where to get at you.” His arm tightened a little around her, his fingers feeling hers, gently, as if treasuring even the bones within her thin flesh. She felt the tension in his body and turned to look up into his face.
    “And it isn't only that,” he said. “There's something Ysidro isn't telling me, Lydia, something critical. Whatever he says, he'd be a fool to hire a human; and whatever else he is, Don Simon Ysidro isn't a fool. He had a reason beyond what he's telling me. And whatever that reason is—whatever it is that he knows—it's the first thing I'm going to have to find out if either of us is going to make it to Guy Fawkes' Day alive.”
    Before noon Asher was on his way back to London. Over breakfast he had informed Ellen and Mrs. Grimes that the night's events had left Lydia in such a state of nervous prostration that he thought it better to arrange for her to see a specialist in London, a story which disgusted the phlegmatic Lydia and puzzled Ellen. “She was fine, Mr. Asher, sir, indeed she was, when she woke up me and Cook. And she's never been one to take on.”
    “Well, Fve just spent the morning with her, and, believe me, she needs to see a specialist,” Asher said firmly. Twenty-four hours without sleep on top of the events and exertions of the night had left him in no mood for invention.
    Ellen had regarded his pallor and his dark-circled eyes with deep disapproval. “It isn't my place to say so, sir, but if anyone needs a nerve doctor ...”
    “No, it isn't your place to say so,” Asher retorted, draining his coffee. “So just assist Mrs. Asher to pack her things, and I'll be back to fetch her this evening.” It would probably take that long, he reflected bemusedly, for Lydia to assemble everything she considered essential for a few weeks in London.
    The mere thought of another train trip before nightfall made his bones ache, but no husband as worried about the state of his wife's health as he currently purported to be would entrust her on the journey with no other escort than her maid. Besides, once in London it would be difficult to get rid of Ellen, who, in addition to being more intelligent than she sometimes seemed, was incurably inquisitive.
    Why was it, Asher wondered, crossing the Magdalen Bridge on his way out of Oxford a short time later, that qualities deemed laudable in anyone else were nothing but a damned nuisance in servants? Past the bridge's gray stone balustrade, he had a flying glimpse of the tops of the willows and a distant fragment of brown-green waters; he recalled Ysidro's words about teak and cottonwood and smiled in spite of himself. Coming off the bridge, he veered onto St. Clement's Street, which led through wooded byways toward the green rise of the downs.
    In preference to another two hours on the Great Western, he had elected to take his motorcycle down to London, a five horsepower American V-twin Indian that had always been a bone of contention between himself and the other dons. There were Lecturers of All Souls and Fellows of Christ Church who might possess motorcars, but, it was implied, such