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

it was getting perilously close to dark when he stumbled once more onto the Oxford train.
    He slept all the way up. As he had feared, his dreams were troubled by the image of the coffin full of ashes in Highgate Cemetery and by the dim sense of dread that, if he went there and listened, those ashes might whisper to him in a voice that he could understand,
    Lydia was waiting for him, simply but beautifully dressed and carefully veiled to hide the fact that she was far less wan and pale than he. On the train down, fortified by yet more of the black coffee that had latterly kept his body and soul together, Asher explained the message-drop system he'd worked out at the cloakroom of the Museum's reading room, and the signals between Bruton Place and Prince of Wales Colonnade: one curtain open, one shut, if a meeting was necessary, and a telegram to follow; a lamp in the window in case of an emergency.
    “I'd suggest you start at Somerset House,” he said as the leaden dusk flashed by the windows. Coming over the hills that afternoon had been pleasant; but, as the cold of the night closed in, he admitted there was a great deal to be said for the cozy stuffiness of a train after all. “You can match information from the Wills Office and Registry with the old Property Rolls in the Public Records Office—it's my guess that at least some of the vampires own property. I can't see Ysidro entrusting his Bond Street suits, let alone his coffin, to the care of a ten-bob-a-month landlady. Get me records of places where the leasehold hasn't changed ownership for—oh, seventy years or longer. Reader's Passes are easy enough to get. All the records of the original estate ground-landlords should be available. You might also see what you can get me on death certificates for which there was no body. We're eventually going to have to check back issues of newspapers as well for deaths which could be attributed to vampires, but, from the sound of it, those may be concealed. God knows how many cases of malnutrition or typhus were really Ysidro and his friends. I suspect that, during epidemics of jail fever at Newgate and Fleet, a vampire could feed for weeks without anyone being the wiser or caring. Poor devils,” he added and studied in silence that clear-cut white profile against the compartment's sepia gloom.
    More quietly, he asked, “Will you mind learning what you can about Albert Westmoreland's death? I'll look into that, if you'd rather not.”
    She shook her head, a tiny gesture, understanding that she was affected, not because she had particularly cared about the man, but simply because it brought the reality of her own danger closer. Without her spectacles, her brown eyes seemed softer, more dreamy. “No. You're going to need your time to follow the main trail. Besides, I knew him and his friends. I don't suppose I could look up Dennis Blaydon again without him pouting and fretting because I married you instead of him, but I could talk to Frank Ellis—Viscount Haverford he is now—or to the Equally Honorable Evelyn—Bertie's brother. He was a freshman, I think, the year Bertie . . . died.”
    “I don't like it,” Asher said slowly. “Having you do research in London is one thing; when I send a letter to my leftover Foreign Office connections on the Daily Mail, it won't introduce you under your own name. Ysidro spoke of vampires knowing when a human—a friend or relative of a recent victim—is on their trail; they go about interviewing people or loitering in churchyards, and the vampires eventually see them at it. I don't want them to see you, Lydia. That would surely be the death of us both,”
    Her back stiffened--“I don't see how, . .”
    “Nor do I,” he cut her off. “But for the moment, I'm going to have to assume that it's true--They have powers we do not; until we know more about them, I'm not disposed to take chances.”
    “Maybe,” she said. “But they also have weaknesses, and the more we learn about