Art in the Blood - Chapter Seven
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i_read_whatSorry for the break! I had family over the weekend. Then I was lazy. But I'm back now.
As an FYI, I have tentatively settled on the next two books for review. It will be the second book of the Cleric Quintet, In Sylvan Shadows, and the third Bardic Voices book, Eagle and the Nightingale. (I am also adding the second Dragaera novel, Yendi, to my "to review" queue, but that will be farther down the line.) Thank you for your suggestions, I really appreciate them!
But now, back to Vampire Files. If Bloodlist was like "the Shadow", Art in the Blood has felt a lot like an episode of Midsomer Murders. We've had a lot of quiet, calm set up, with our heroes getting to hang out with some weird yet friendly artists for about six chapters.
But now we've finally got our murder.
So we start the chapter with Jack and Alex. We can be pretty sure that, whatever happened with Alex's wife, he hadn't killed Sandra because he was just with Bobbi and Jack. But yeah, dude's not taking this well. He's pretty unresponsive.
Jack's taking it badly too:
I backed out and followed, utterly heartsick and with knees like jelly.
“Jack?”
Bottom of the stairs. Bobbi’s arms. Her warmth, her living warmth. I said something to her, answering her question, and held on to her a little longer. When the worst was over, I was just able to talk.
“This is going to be a mess. Do you want to go home?”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You haven’t really seen anything. The police—”
She shook her head Firmly. “I need to be here.”
Aw.
So Jack goes to ask the super on for his phone, the super, by the way, has a great description as "a little peach-colored man with flyaway gray hair clinging to the back of his scalp".
Jack calls the police. And Escott. Actually, we're told, he calls Escott first, but he was farther away. The police question Evan, Jack and Bobbi. When the detective arrives, it's a recurring character!
Escott glanced at me, one brow raised.
“Thought it’d be a good idea to call someone we know,” I said.
“It cannot hurt,” he agreed.
I’d specifically talked to Lieutenant Blair despite the fact that the last time I’d seen him he’d been one short step away from booking me for murder. We’d worked things out, sort of, but he had no memory of how I’d convinced him to let me go. He only knew we were friends. At the time I’d felt like a heel for artificially inducing the friendship, but now it seemed more like a good investment.
Sometimes it pays to be a vampire.
Confession: I don't actually remember this guy, but I feel like he probably turned up in Lifeblood. Jack was solving his own murder in Bloodlist, and was in New York for Bloodcircle. Probably when Braxton got murdered. That'd make sense. I'm too lazy to dig out my copy and look though.
Lieutenant Blair is interesting:
Blair walked around Evan, looked Adrian up and down, then came over to us. We didn’t shake hands, it wouldn’t have been appropriate. He nodded at Escott.
“Charles. Thought you might turn up since Jack phoned it in.”
Escott nodded back. “I’m here solely as moral support.”
“Sure you are.” He went to one side with the cop who questioned me and listened to him, then made the pilgrimage upstairs. More uniforms appeared and followed, keeping emerging tenants out of the way and asking more questions.
He's been hypnotized to like Jack, but he definitely seems more ambivalent toward Escott. Interesting.
Unfortunately, they're still asking questions after a few hours. Both Evan and Alex are pretty much in shock. Jack and Bobbi do get the chance to talk to Escott.
Oh, apparently Jack and Bobbi might not be good alibis, since Alex had driven up to find them, Escott notes that there is a possibility he'd come BACK from killing Sandra. Though he admits, it's only one of a number of possibilities.
Bobbi's pretty protective of Alex, which makes a certain sense when we think about it. Escott seems on board with the Alex-is-innocent idea, but points out that the police believe she knew her killer and may be reading his devastation as guilt. He suggests Jack talk to the Lieutenant.
I'm not sure what I think about this:
He started to say something else, but there was a muted commotion in the hallway and all eyes except Evan’s turned toward the open door. Two beefy men were thumping heavily down the stairs. No one spoke as they carried the long wicker basket past the door and out into the night. I felt Bobbi’s slim hand grip my arm tightly and she gulped breath back as the reality of Sandra’s death hit her all over again. She had taken it all quietly enough when I’d broken the news to her, but there’s a big difference between hearing and seeing.
She continued to hold on to my arm and stare long after they’d gone. Her reaction troubled Escott as well, and he covered the back of her other hand lightly with his long fingers, waking her from it.
“I’m very sorry,” he told her.
I suppose it makes sense. But Bobbi's an ex-mob moll who shot Lucky Lebredo dead. So it's a little surprising to see this moment of vulnerability. Bobbi is Bobbi though, so even as Escott slips off, she uses an excuse to go to the bathroom, giving Jack time alone with Blair.
So it's Jack's turn to be questioned, and he's not trying to hide anything this time, so it goes pretty smoothly. They intend to have Evan go look around to see if anything's stolen, but are interrupted by the arrival of Reva Stokes and Leighton Brett. Bobbi had called them in to support Evan.
Bobbi is great.
They do go upstairs, and Evan identifies Sandra's purse and confirms that the smaller change purse that would have held her money was gone. But apparently, it would have only held two dollars. She never carried more than that.
It's worth remembering that the story takes place in the 1930s. Two dollars would, per google, be about the equivalent of forty five dollars today.
Huh, inflation is crazy, isn't it? Anyway, it's enough for an evening out but not really enough to murder someone over.
Poor Evan ends up having a breakdown, even with Reva and Brett's support. Jack gets a uniformed cop to send a doctor up. And we see what effect hypnosis has in this situation:
I called his name, loudly. He matched it with more sound, which was beginning to rise into a full scream. I tried to focus onto him, but it was like squeezing quicksilver, he just wasn’t there. He was lost in a place I could not follow. Sending men into madness is one thing, bringing them out of it was another and beyond even my powers at the moment.
Not much.
The doctor does arrive, giving the poor guy a sedative and ordering him brought to the hospital for overnight care. Brett offers to take care of him, but the doctor insists. Jack ends up helping with some blankets and chatting with the doctor. He thinks Alex might want to go too, but he's missing.
It's time to bring Bobbi home, something she's pretty happy about, but going out the front door is a problem: there are reporters. Alex Adrian's a pretty famous artist after all, and murders are exciting.
There are even two in the alley at the back of the house. Jack notes that it's a hell of a way to make a living and "at the moment [he] was hard pressed to believe [he'd] been one of them only a month or so back.
Well, it definitely sounds like Jack's not inclined to go back to journalism. Bobbi wants to just go, but Jack's got some frustrated anger, and maybe shame, and decides to confront them.
“I want you to stand very still and not move for five minutes. You won’t see or hear anything during that time and you won’t remember me.”
It helps when they’re off guard. His partner’s cigarette sagged in puzzlement, but it only lasted as long as it took for me to give him the same instructions. I went in for Bobbi and we walked past them, two improbable statues on display in a dank setting.
Bobbi was all wide-eyed. “They’ll burn themselves—”
“Good point.” I went back and thoughtfully removed the cigarettes from slack mouths, dropping them into a handy puddle.
So Bobbi just had her first glimpse of hypnosis at work.
“You… I mean, you hypnotized them?” she asked. “You really hypnotized them?”
“It comes with the condition.”
“That’s just like in that book.”
“No, that’s just like me.”
“Do you do it a lot?”
“Not often.”
“How do you do it?”
“Beats me. Watch where you step, sweetheart.”
It's odd to think that it took this long, but then Jack does have some issues.
Bobbi is really more focused on Sandra right now anyway and wants to go home. She's scared and shaky, wants a shower, and wants Jack to talk to her and keep her company. Jack's on board, though there might be a hint or two that he's not okay either.
I watched her take her clothes off, her movements unselfconscious and automatic. That fist gripped my gut again as I thought of the young girl I’d killed. She’d been the same way.
While the water hissed on the other side of the protective curtain we talked of God knows what, about anything except what had happened tonight. She shut the water off and I handed her a towel.
Yeah, dude, you might want to talk to someone about that.
After the shower, they talk more. Bobbi surprises Jack by asking him if he'd been scared when he was killed.
...that might be a bad idea, considering that Jack's murder happened after a few days straight of mob torture.
Jack deflects a bit, asking what scares her.
“All of it. I’m afraid it might hurt or take days and days, but mostly that it won’t make any difference, that I’ll just not be here and no one will notice. I know you would, and Charles, and some of my friends, but the world will go on and I won’t be here to see it. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t want to leave you.”
“You won’t.” But my heart was aching already. With care and caution I could live for centuries, but Bobbi… I shied away from that agonizing thought.
Aw.
He thinks about Maureen, and how they'd faced the same decision, though Jack had been less afraid of his own mortality and had seen it more as a choice made for love.
Though Bobbi is also motivated by love, and admits she's most afraid of leaving him behind.
And well:
As though reading my thoughts, Bobbi said, “I love you, Jack. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you. That’s what scares me the most.”
“What did you say?”
“I love you, I don’t ever want to leave you.” She turned to look up at me, her hazel eyes searching mine for a response. “The only other thing that scared me was telling you that, but after tonight I knew I had to.”
“You were afraid of telling me…”
“It’s an important word to me and everything that goes with it is frightening—at least for me.”
I hadn't really noticed that they hadn't exchanged the words yet. Maybe Jack isn't the only one with commitment issues.
They, ahem, get comfort with each other. After, Bobbi wonders if they're awful for doing this right after Sandra's murder. Jack thinks it's normal: you get close to death and want to reaffirm life. Hence babies born after war.
They start talking about the idea of exchanging blood. Bobbi seems undecided about the concept:
“What about to me?”
“How do you feel about it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I know enough yet to tell you.”
“That’s a good answer.”
“It’s not easy for you, is it?”
I drew a breath and sighed. “It’s just at times all I see are the disadvantages. My life is limited in a lot of ways, ways I’d never thought about until it was too late.”
Or maybe she's not so undecided after all:
Did she feel the same way?” She was referring to Maureen.
“She let me know what to expect, but she never complained, except about mirrors whenever she bought new clothes.” But Maureen had had decades to adjust to things and I was still grass green. Maybe in time…
“Then why did you want to change?”
“I loved her.”
“Don’t you believe I love you just as much?”
“Yes. I see what you’re getting at, Bobbi, but you need to know there are no guarantees. We could do it, but it might not work.”
“And then again, it might. I don’t see it as a promise or even as insurance, but it is hope. That’s all I really want, Jack, just that piece of hope.”
Fair enough. Jack thinks so too. He does think though that she should see exactly what it's like, "the worst of it", and if she still feels the same, he'll do it.
By that, he means taking her to the Stockyards. Bobbi is puzzled by this and we get a peek again at Jack's weird issues.
"You want to show me how you eat?”
Things twisted inside. “I don’t eat, Bobbi. I open up a vein in a live animal with my teeth and drink its blood.”
I suppose it's a fair thing to get hung up on, but it is funny. You don't even have to hurt people, dude.
But Bobbi is Bobbi and is awesome:
She shifted around a little and crossed her arms, prepared for hostilities. “Are you trying to put me off?”
“I’m trying to give you an idea of what it’s like to live this way.”
“And painting anything but a rosy picture about it. Don’t you think you’re being too hard on yourself?”
“Well, I—”
“ And passing that attitude on to me is hardly fair to either of us.”
“Uh…”
“Exactly,” she said. “Now, how about some straight honesty? Is what you do really so horrible? What happens to the cow after you’re through with it?”
“Well, nothing. I don’t drain them dry, you know.”
“I didn’t know, but I’m not too surprised or you’d have to have a hollow leg. As for the cow, she hangs around in a smelly pen until driven to the slaughterhouse, then some guy smacks her between the eyes with a sledgehammer. Depending on how she’s processed, sooner or later she ends up on my dinner table. Does that make me better than you just because I pay to have someone else do the dirty work?”
Look at how she absolutely punctures Jack's angst. Because she's right. At least with Jack's version of vampirism, there really isn't anything inherently more monstrous than what humans do. The hypnosis and shapeshifting are great powers that could be horrifically abused, but they're not inherently evil.
And if you think about it, while Jack's killed two people in the series (Gaylen and Laura) to her one (Lucky), she was the one who killed first. With justification of course, but it's a nice twist on vampire expectations.
Anyway, the chapter ends here.
As an FYI, I have tentatively settled on the next two books for review. It will be the second book of the Cleric Quintet, In Sylvan Shadows, and the third Bardic Voices book, Eagle and the Nightingale. (I am also adding the second Dragaera novel, Yendi, to my "to review" queue, but that will be farther down the line.) Thank you for your suggestions, I really appreciate them!
But now, back to Vampire Files. If Bloodlist was like "the Shadow", Art in the Blood has felt a lot like an episode of Midsomer Murders. We've had a lot of quiet, calm set up, with our heroes getting to hang out with some weird yet friendly artists for about six chapters.
But now we've finally got our murder.
So we start the chapter with Jack and Alex. We can be pretty sure that, whatever happened with Alex's wife, he hadn't killed Sandra because he was just with Bobbi and Jack. But yeah, dude's not taking this well. He's pretty unresponsive.
Jack's taking it badly too:
I backed out and followed, utterly heartsick and with knees like jelly.
“Jack?”
Bottom of the stairs. Bobbi’s arms. Her warmth, her living warmth. I said something to her, answering her question, and held on to her a little longer. When the worst was over, I was just able to talk.
“This is going to be a mess. Do you want to go home?”
“I can’t.”
“You can. You haven’t really seen anything. The police—”
She shook her head Firmly. “I need to be here.”
Aw.
So Jack goes to ask the super on for his phone, the super, by the way, has a great description as "a little peach-colored man with flyaway gray hair clinging to the back of his scalp".
Jack calls the police. And Escott. Actually, we're told, he calls Escott first, but he was farther away. The police question Evan, Jack and Bobbi. When the detective arrives, it's a recurring character!
Escott glanced at me, one brow raised.
“Thought it’d be a good idea to call someone we know,” I said.
“It cannot hurt,” he agreed.
I’d specifically talked to Lieutenant Blair despite the fact that the last time I’d seen him he’d been one short step away from booking me for murder. We’d worked things out, sort of, but he had no memory of how I’d convinced him to let me go. He only knew we were friends. At the time I’d felt like a heel for artificially inducing the friendship, but now it seemed more like a good investment.
Sometimes it pays to be a vampire.
Confession: I don't actually remember this guy, but I feel like he probably turned up in Lifeblood. Jack was solving his own murder in Bloodlist, and was in New York for Bloodcircle. Probably when Braxton got murdered. That'd make sense. I'm too lazy to dig out my copy and look though.
Lieutenant Blair is interesting:
Blair walked around Evan, looked Adrian up and down, then came over to us. We didn’t shake hands, it wouldn’t have been appropriate. He nodded at Escott.
“Charles. Thought you might turn up since Jack phoned it in.”
Escott nodded back. “I’m here solely as moral support.”
“Sure you are.” He went to one side with the cop who questioned me and listened to him, then made the pilgrimage upstairs. More uniforms appeared and followed, keeping emerging tenants out of the way and asking more questions.
He's been hypnotized to like Jack, but he definitely seems more ambivalent toward Escott. Interesting.
Unfortunately, they're still asking questions after a few hours. Both Evan and Alex are pretty much in shock. Jack and Bobbi do get the chance to talk to Escott.
Oh, apparently Jack and Bobbi might not be good alibis, since Alex had driven up to find them, Escott notes that there is a possibility he'd come BACK from killing Sandra. Though he admits, it's only one of a number of possibilities.
Bobbi's pretty protective of Alex, which makes a certain sense when we think about it. Escott seems on board with the Alex-is-innocent idea, but points out that the police believe she knew her killer and may be reading his devastation as guilt. He suggests Jack talk to the Lieutenant.
I'm not sure what I think about this:
He started to say something else, but there was a muted commotion in the hallway and all eyes except Evan’s turned toward the open door. Two beefy men were thumping heavily down the stairs. No one spoke as they carried the long wicker basket past the door and out into the night. I felt Bobbi’s slim hand grip my arm tightly and she gulped breath back as the reality of Sandra’s death hit her all over again. She had taken it all quietly enough when I’d broken the news to her, but there’s a big difference between hearing and seeing.
She continued to hold on to my arm and stare long after they’d gone. Her reaction troubled Escott as well, and he covered the back of her other hand lightly with his long fingers, waking her from it.
“I’m very sorry,” he told her.
I suppose it makes sense. But Bobbi's an ex-mob moll who shot Lucky Lebredo dead. So it's a little surprising to see this moment of vulnerability. Bobbi is Bobbi though, so even as Escott slips off, she uses an excuse to go to the bathroom, giving Jack time alone with Blair.
So it's Jack's turn to be questioned, and he's not trying to hide anything this time, so it goes pretty smoothly. They intend to have Evan go look around to see if anything's stolen, but are interrupted by the arrival of Reva Stokes and Leighton Brett. Bobbi had called them in to support Evan.
Bobbi is great.
They do go upstairs, and Evan identifies Sandra's purse and confirms that the smaller change purse that would have held her money was gone. But apparently, it would have only held two dollars. She never carried more than that.
It's worth remembering that the story takes place in the 1930s. Two dollars would, per google, be about the equivalent of forty five dollars today.
Huh, inflation is crazy, isn't it? Anyway, it's enough for an evening out but not really enough to murder someone over.
Poor Evan ends up having a breakdown, even with Reva and Brett's support. Jack gets a uniformed cop to send a doctor up. And we see what effect hypnosis has in this situation:
I called his name, loudly. He matched it with more sound, which was beginning to rise into a full scream. I tried to focus onto him, but it was like squeezing quicksilver, he just wasn’t there. He was lost in a place I could not follow. Sending men into madness is one thing, bringing them out of it was another and beyond even my powers at the moment.
Not much.
The doctor does arrive, giving the poor guy a sedative and ordering him brought to the hospital for overnight care. Brett offers to take care of him, but the doctor insists. Jack ends up helping with some blankets and chatting with the doctor. He thinks Alex might want to go too, but he's missing.
It's time to bring Bobbi home, something she's pretty happy about, but going out the front door is a problem: there are reporters. Alex Adrian's a pretty famous artist after all, and murders are exciting.
There are even two in the alley at the back of the house. Jack notes that it's a hell of a way to make a living and "at the moment [he] was hard pressed to believe [he'd] been one of them only a month or so back.
Well, it definitely sounds like Jack's not inclined to go back to journalism. Bobbi wants to just go, but Jack's got some frustrated anger, and maybe shame, and decides to confront them.
“I want you to stand very still and not move for five minutes. You won’t see or hear anything during that time and you won’t remember me.”
It helps when they’re off guard. His partner’s cigarette sagged in puzzlement, but it only lasted as long as it took for me to give him the same instructions. I went in for Bobbi and we walked past them, two improbable statues on display in a dank setting.
Bobbi was all wide-eyed. “They’ll burn themselves—”
“Good point.” I went back and thoughtfully removed the cigarettes from slack mouths, dropping them into a handy puddle.
So Bobbi just had her first glimpse of hypnosis at work.
“You… I mean, you hypnotized them?” she asked. “You really hypnotized them?”
“It comes with the condition.”
“That’s just like in that book.”
“No, that’s just like me.”
“Do you do it a lot?”
“Not often.”
“How do you do it?”
“Beats me. Watch where you step, sweetheart.”
It's odd to think that it took this long, but then Jack does have some issues.
Bobbi is really more focused on Sandra right now anyway and wants to go home. She's scared and shaky, wants a shower, and wants Jack to talk to her and keep her company. Jack's on board, though there might be a hint or two that he's not okay either.
I watched her take her clothes off, her movements unselfconscious and automatic. That fist gripped my gut again as I thought of the young girl I’d killed. She’d been the same way.
While the water hissed on the other side of the protective curtain we talked of God knows what, about anything except what had happened tonight. She shut the water off and I handed her a towel.
Yeah, dude, you might want to talk to someone about that.
After the shower, they talk more. Bobbi surprises Jack by asking him if he'd been scared when he was killed.
...that might be a bad idea, considering that Jack's murder happened after a few days straight of mob torture.
Jack deflects a bit, asking what scares her.
“All of it. I’m afraid it might hurt or take days and days, but mostly that it won’t make any difference, that I’ll just not be here and no one will notice. I know you would, and Charles, and some of my friends, but the world will go on and I won’t be here to see it. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t want to leave you.”
“You won’t.” But my heart was aching already. With care and caution I could live for centuries, but Bobbi… I shied away from that agonizing thought.
Aw.
He thinks about Maureen, and how they'd faced the same decision, though Jack had been less afraid of his own mortality and had seen it more as a choice made for love.
Though Bobbi is also motivated by love, and admits she's most afraid of leaving him behind.
And well:
As though reading my thoughts, Bobbi said, “I love you, Jack. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you. That’s what scares me the most.”
“What did you say?”
“I love you, I don’t ever want to leave you.” She turned to look up at me, her hazel eyes searching mine for a response. “The only other thing that scared me was telling you that, but after tonight I knew I had to.”
“You were afraid of telling me…”
“It’s an important word to me and everything that goes with it is frightening—at least for me.”
I hadn't really noticed that they hadn't exchanged the words yet. Maybe Jack isn't the only one with commitment issues.
They, ahem, get comfort with each other. After, Bobbi wonders if they're awful for doing this right after Sandra's murder. Jack thinks it's normal: you get close to death and want to reaffirm life. Hence babies born after war.
They start talking about the idea of exchanging blood. Bobbi seems undecided about the concept:
“What about to me?”
“How do you feel about it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I know enough yet to tell you.”
“That’s a good answer.”
“It’s not easy for you, is it?”
I drew a breath and sighed. “It’s just at times all I see are the disadvantages. My life is limited in a lot of ways, ways I’d never thought about until it was too late.”
Or maybe she's not so undecided after all:
Did she feel the same way?” She was referring to Maureen.
“She let me know what to expect, but she never complained, except about mirrors whenever she bought new clothes.” But Maureen had had decades to adjust to things and I was still grass green. Maybe in time…
“Then why did you want to change?”
“I loved her.”
“Don’t you believe I love you just as much?”
“Yes. I see what you’re getting at, Bobbi, but you need to know there are no guarantees. We could do it, but it might not work.”
“And then again, it might. I don’t see it as a promise or even as insurance, but it is hope. That’s all I really want, Jack, just that piece of hope.”
Fair enough. Jack thinks so too. He does think though that she should see exactly what it's like, "the worst of it", and if she still feels the same, he'll do it.
By that, he means taking her to the Stockyards. Bobbi is puzzled by this and we get a peek again at Jack's weird issues.
"You want to show me how you eat?”
Things twisted inside. “I don’t eat, Bobbi. I open up a vein in a live animal with my teeth and drink its blood.”
I suppose it's a fair thing to get hung up on, but it is funny. You don't even have to hurt people, dude.
But Bobbi is Bobbi and is awesome:
She shifted around a little and crossed her arms, prepared for hostilities. “Are you trying to put me off?”
“I’m trying to give you an idea of what it’s like to live this way.”
“And painting anything but a rosy picture about it. Don’t you think you’re being too hard on yourself?”
“Well, I—”
“ And passing that attitude on to me is hardly fair to either of us.”
“Uh…”
“Exactly,” she said. “Now, how about some straight honesty? Is what you do really so horrible? What happens to the cow after you’re through with it?”
“Well, nothing. I don’t drain them dry, you know.”
“I didn’t know, but I’m not too surprised or you’d have to have a hollow leg. As for the cow, she hangs around in a smelly pen until driven to the slaughterhouse, then some guy smacks her between the eyes with a sledgehammer. Depending on how she’s processed, sooner or later she ends up on my dinner table. Does that make me better than you just because I pay to have someone else do the dirty work?”
Look at how she absolutely punctures Jack's angst. Because she's right. At least with Jack's version of vampirism, there really isn't anything inherently more monstrous than what humans do. The hypnosis and shapeshifting are great powers that could be horrifically abused, but they're not inherently evil.
And if you think about it, while Jack's killed two people in the series (Gaylen and Laura) to her one (Lucky), she was the one who killed first. With justification of course, but it's a nice twist on vampire expectations.
Anyway, the chapter ends here.