Falling Apart Read Free Page A

do?’
    â€˜Yes. He could just wait for you to die. And, as ninety per cent of the world seems to have a grudge against you, Jessica, he probably would not have to wait long.’
    â€˜Bitch.’
    â€˜I beg your pardon?’
    â€˜Nothing, just … clearing my throat.’
    â€˜What do you wish me to do?’
    I hated it when Zan talked to me as though I were an equal. It was downright scary. Here he was, actual vampire in charge of the Otherworld occupants of York, possessor of a demon that gave him enhanced strength, speed, hearing and all the other
Buffy
stuff plus a ridiculously long lifespan, asking me, York Council Human/Otherworld Liaison employee, possessor of millions of pairs of laddered tights and a store card for Gap on which I owed a fortune, for advice. It made me even more resentful of my undersized pay packet than I already was. ‘Let’s give it another couple of days. He might just have got really absorbed in something.’ As long as the ‘something’ wasn’t an acid bath – there was a human faction that opposed the Others and would gladly seize the opportunity to remove one of its more high-profile members. And vampires weren’t that hard to kill, a stake or a bullet would do it, as long as you could move faster than a rattlesnake on military-strength drugs. ‘Sil can look after himself. And anyway, if anything
had
happened to him, we would have heard about it – I can’t believe that if someone took out a vampire as powerful as Sil it wouldn’t be splashed all over the
Ten O’Clock News
, can you?’
    Zan dipped his head in a slight bow. ‘Very well.’
    I
really
wished he wouldn’t do that whole ‘humble servant’ thing. I knew that he could tear my throat out in a second if he wanted to. Actually, he probably
did
want to, but the vampires owed their entire success to sublimated urges and artificial blood, and Zan was extremely successful. Only in the wary depths of his eyes could I find any trace of anything other than an obsessively tidy beta-male geek with nice eyes and a
very
understanding dentist.
    â€˜Just … you know, if you hear anything …’
    Zan turned back to his computer. ‘You will, of course, be among the first to know.’
    Gee, thanks.
    â€˜So, where did you get to?’
    After Vamp Central our office looked like something out of a Dickens novel. ‘I went to see Zan. I know it sounds weird but … when Sil went, he didn’t tell me where he was going or anything, and I thought Zan might have some kind of insight. But since “Zan” and “insight” are words that cancel each other out and leave a kind of verbal white noise …’
    â€˜Nope, not weird at all.’ Liam swung around to face me. ‘What do you mean Sil’s gone and you don’t know where?’
    Even the words were painful.
Gone.
‘If you think about that question, does it not answer itself?’
    â€˜Oh. Yeah, suppose it does, really.’ He stood up, scrubbed both hands down his thighs and then patted me on the shoulder. ‘But you don’t need to worry about Sil, Jess, let’s face it. He’s a hundred and thirty years old, give or take a candle, and he hasn’t got to that age without learning how to handle himself and if you so much as snigger at that last statement then you’ve had the last sympathy from me you’re ever going to get.’ Another pat. ‘Coffee?’
    â€˜Mmmm. But why would he do that? Go off? Okay, I can imagine that he might …’ I swallowed down the personal fear of abandonment and faced the practicalities, ‘but not to tell
Zan
?
That would be like me emigrating and not telling you … Oh, no, wait a minute, that’s not odd, that’s sensible.’ I finally let the spiralling doubt move from where it had been hiding low down in my belly and auger its way up to