Free Blood Guilt by Marie Treanor Page A

you’re not. You can’t talk without speaking, and you don’t drink people’s blood.”
    “That’s true,” she said faintly, then added more firmly, “But Robbie…you do know it isn’t right to drink people’s blood?”
    He glanced at her, head leaning to one side. “Is that why you don’t want to like him?”
    “Yes,” she said, dropping her eyes back to her cards. It was as good a reason as any other.
    “He likes you,” Robbie volunteered. “He drew a picture of you. So did I.”
    Startled, she played her card without looking at it, and Robbie gleefully took the snap.
    A vampire who drew pictures?
    Why was she surprised? In life, he’d been an artist, a sculptor. Even undead, he’d carved the exquisite angel over the vampires’ club in Budapest.
    “May I see your picture?” she asked Robbie, and the boy went and dug a crumpled piece of paper out of his anorak pocket. Smoothing it out, Mihaela discovered a little more than the expected child’s drawing of a head with arms and legs. Robbie had only drawn the head, as if that was all he saw. And despite its stark, childish nature, something about the eyes and lips really did look like her. She smiled. “You’re going to be an artist when you grow up.”
    He seemed pleased by that, so as he sat down again, Mihaela risked the questions she needed to ask. “When you were talking to these vampires, did any of them…hurt you? Drink your blood?”
    Robbie shook his head. His attention was back on the cards as if he sensed victory. “Nah. He asked me the same thing.”
    According to Elizabeth, it was one of Saloman’s rules that children never be bitten. It was an Ancient law ignored or forgotten by most modern hybrid vampires until Saloman enforced it. But Maximilian was Saloman’s “creation,” his “child.” Did he follow his upbringing or rebel?
    Even fellow vampires found it difficult to trust Maximilian, who’d betrayed his creator for power, which he’d subsequently lost; who’d emerged on Saloman’s side—the winning side—a couple of times since the Ancient’s awakening. And yet no one had been sure which side he was truly on in the battle for the hunters’ library. Both Luk and Saloman believed he was theirs, until he’d made his position plain by killing Luk’s followers.
    He saved my life that night. He was on our side.
    But whose side was he on now? Why had it taken him so long to get home from Budapest? If he meant to eschew the world again, why was he hanging around Edinburgh instead of skulking on his hidden island? There had to be some connection between him and the congregation of young, inexplicably strong vampires gathered in the same place. Whatever, it was, she didn’t trust him, and she didn’t trust whatever instinct had led her to save him with her own blood.
    Lust and curiosity, she slammed herself. Women’s besetting sins since Eve first walked the earth. At least according to men.
    Robbie gave a little crow of laughter and scooped up the last of her cards. “Want a dog’s chance?” he asked her. “I’ll deal my cards, and if you get the snap first, you get back in the game.”
    Mihaela smiled. “Dog’s chance it is, then. Give me a second, though.”
    She stood up from her lounging position on the floor and went through to the bedroom. She dragged her almost empty suitcase from under the bed and opened it. Inside one pocket were the two vampire detectors she’d brought with her and ignored until now. It struck her that it would be useful to know if Maximilian still lurked close by or if he really had gone back to Edinburgh. If he wasn’t close by, the detector couldn’t locate him, of course. But at least she’d know he wasn’t here.
    Extracting both detectors, she closed the case, shoved it back under the bed and stood up. She dropped the Ancient detector into the pocket of her long cardigan, since Saloman was the only vampire it was any use for, and switched the other one on as she wandered back