The Beast

Jo sat back in the chair and felt all the noise and the people around her disappear. Brother? And her mother had died . . .

“I wonder if she would have kept me,” she said quietly.

“Your father—your adoptive one, that is—had asked a lawyer to keep his eyes out for possible babies at St. Francis here in town. As soon as your birth mom died, he paid to claim you and it was done.”

“And that’s that.”

“Not exactly.” Bill took a deep breath. “I found your brother. Kind of.”

The reporter put a black-and-white photograph down on the table. It was of a dark-haired man she didn’t recognize. Who was about forty years old.

“His name is Dr. Manuel Manello. He was the chief of surgery at St. Francis. But he went off the grid over a year ago, and no one’s really seen him since.”

With a shaking hand, Jo picked up the picture, searching the features, finding some that, yes, were like her own. “We both ended up in the same place . . .”

“Caldwell has a way of bringing people together.”

“We have the same-shaped eyes.”

“Yes, you do.”

“They look hazel, don’t you think? Or maybe they’re brown eyes.”

“I can’t tell.”

“May I keep this?”

“Please. And I’m sorry I stuck my nose in where it arguably didn’t belong. But I just started digging and couldn’t stop. I wasn’t sure what I’d find, so I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s okay,” she said without looking up. “And thank you. I . . . I always wondered what my blood looked like.”

“We can try to find him, you know?”

Now she lifted her eyes. “You think?”

“Sure. We’re investigative reporters, right? Even if he’s left Caldwell, there must be some way of locating him. It’s extremely hard in modern life to go completely blank. Too many electronic records, you know.”

“Bill, are you some kind of fairy godfather?”

He nodded and toasted with his latte. “At your service.”

A brother, Jo thought as she resumed staring at the image of an arguably handsome face.

“Just one brother?” she murmured, even though it was greedy, she supposed, to want more.

“Who knows. That’s all your mom seems to have given birth to. But maybe through your dad’s side? Anyway, maybe there’s some way of finding him. The trail might be cold, but we could get lucky.”

“You know, this whole vampire search is such a distraction.” She smiled ruefully. “I’m well aware that they don’t really exist, and certainly not in Caldwell. I think it would be better to start looking for my real family than some fake fantasy, don’t you think.”

“Maybe that’s why you went a little crazy with it all. Although I admit, I’ve been right there with you.”

“Family,” she murmured, still staring at the picture. “Real family. That’s what I want to find.”

SEVENTY-THREE

“Should I wear a suit?”

As Rhage came out of the bathroom, he had a cleanly shaven face, mostly dry hair, and a towel around his waist. “Mary—”

“Coming,” he heard from out in the hall. “I’m just helping Bitty.”

“No hurries.”

He was smiling as he crossed the carpet and headed for the walk-in closet. The ceremony was supposed to start in half an hour, so there was still time to get thought up about which black silk shirt to put on—

“Motherfucker!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Are you fucking kidding me!”

As soon as he let fly with the f-bombs, all twelve kinds of laughter bubbled into the room, his Brothers and his shellan and his Bitty girl streaming in, yukking it up like the total defacement of his wardrobe was sooooooooo frickin’ hilarious.

It was like Baywatch had thrown up all over his shit.

“A surfboard! Fishnets? Is this a . . . a harpoon?” He stuck his head back out of the jambs. “Where do you bunch of lunatics even find a harpoon in Caldwell?”

“Internet,” someone said.

“Amazon,” somebody interjected.

He rolled his eyes and pointed at Bitty. “And you’re in on this, too? Et tu, Brutus Bits?”

As the girl laughed harder, he went back into the closet and picked up the blow-up great white shark. “How many hours did someone spend putting air into this thing?”

While Rhage threw the nightmare out into the bedroom, Vishous raised his hand. “That was me. But I used a tire pump—and actually, I blew up the first one.”

“Good thing we had a back-up,” Butch pointed out.

“You guys are insane. Insane!”

“Never gets old,” Wrath announced. “Ever. Even without the visual, it’s some priceless shi—ah, shitake. Mushroom. That is.”

“Ha!” Rhage said to his King. “Having fun with that? Not quite so easy, my Lord, is it.”

“Technically, I can have you beheaded for that kind of insubordination.”

“Promises, promises.”

Rhage rolled his eyes as the crowd began to disperse, and he had to fight to get to his clothes, beating back the—OMG, was that a taxidermied tarpon, for fuck’s sake?

“You people have too much time on your hands,” he shouted at no one in particular.

Five minutes later, he came out dressed in the same version of black and tailored that he’d put on to get interviewed by Rhym.