Page 16 of Tell Me Why
He spread each of the piles fanwise in front of her and sat flat, now, waiting.
Tina glanced at him.
“Because we both have dark hair, now we’re soul sisters?” she asked.
Tell wrapped his fingers over the point of his knee then put his chin down on top of them, looking at the piles thoughtfully for a moment before he answered her.
“I want you to be magic, to just point to a file and say ‘that one’ and I walk away again and go prove you right, but Ithink that’s being… romantic and silly. What Ineedis for you to eliminate the lower probability locations by the criteriayouwould use, in choosing a place to go hide, because I’ve done that by my criteria, and I still have too many. If I was wrong, none of these are the right answer, anyway. If you’re wrong, we lose a week or more chasing after places that were never going to be right.”
Tina pursed her lips.
“So long as you’re not expecting me to have some kind of mysticallinkto this woman,” she said, turning to the work. “I’ll see what I can do.”
It was kind of gettingridiculous, the amount of information people posted freely about themselves to the internet.
Tina knew that the proper fountains, the ones that Kirsten employed, knew better than to post photos of the parties at places like Tell’s penthouse, but the more touristy ones, the ones who knew that there were exciting, secrety things going on but who didn’t actually know what they were, they had a habit of splashing just those pictures all over any place they could get attention for them, showing off the caliber of party they were allowed into, these days.
And these were just shockingly easy to find.
Sometimes Tina wondered if there was a vampire census of the world, someone who knew how many vampires there were at any given time, even in round numbers, but she knew that in the scope of everything, that number was small. That vampire parties were, ultimately, rare and difficult to get into. And that most of the party pictures she was easily able to come across online were of perfectly normal debaucheries, people enjoying their youth and their opportunities.
And yet.
She kept finding vampire parties.
One here and one there, sometimes only getting a picture of the vampire in a couple of them, but they were distinctive, and by the end, she could glance through a wall of photos and pick out the two that had been at vampire parties before she ever got close to look at the details.
She pulled all of the photos together at the end of the second night and went to sit with Tell, where he was working on another couch.
“I don’t think any of these look strikingly like me,” she said, “and I’m not good at picking the vampires out from among the rest of the guests, but this is what I’ve got.”
They spent an hour going through everything, then Tell nodded.
“It’s good work, but she’s not in any of those. I’ve got two more cities for you to look in.”
“You really think we can find her this way?” Tina asked. “I’d be willing to bet thatI’mnot in any pictures, here, and I’ve been here for almost two years, now. She’s been there for, how long, a few weeks? I get that it’s likely she’s entertaining, but are you sure she isn’t going to be better about avoiding pictures?”
Tell put his fingers through his hair, his eyes still on the screen of his own laptop.
“Patience is one of my more notable qualities,” he said. “If I don’t find her today or tomorrow or next week, I’ll keep hunting and I’ll eventually find her. But I’m… unusually concerned about this one, right now, and I can’t tell if there’s something intuitive that I’m missing, so far, or if it’s just that you’re involved in things that I wasn’t in control of, the last time I was involved with them, and I want to get us back out again as quickly as possible.”
“You got carried around in a duffel bag as Tell soup, not that long ago,” Tina said. “You thinkthisis out of control?”
“I do,” he answered, no trace of irony at all.
“Oh.”
She shifted to put her back against the arm of the couch.
“So…” Tina said. “The whole… shadowy group of powerful immortals secretly shaping the course of time and history…?”
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Vampires have played important parts in small pieces of history, but it’s too common for people to decide that we’re foreign and scary and just come kill us, on a historical scale. It’s too important to stay quiet and out of sight. This is just a powerful man who has a history of taking what he wants and walking away with it.”
“And you think he could do that withme,” Tina said. “That I wouldn’t just walk back away and come home?”
He looked over at her.
