Eliza Ford - Cause of Death - Unnatural

She also needed to keep Nick away from Will's phone. If Will was stupid enough to keep a record of his customers her name was likely to be on it. Nick didn't need to see that.

"Nick," she said. "Search the rest of the warehouse, will you? See what you can find." She wanted him out of the way for a while.

"Yeah," he said, and slowly walked away after a last hard look at both Will and Jarek.

Em motioned to a crate nearby.

"Sit down, Will," she said. She motioned to Nick walking to the other end of the warehouse. "He's not going to find anything, is he?" she asked softly.

"No," said Will, and he sucked in a big breath of air and let it out slowly. "I'm sorry, Em. I really can't tell you."

"I get it, Will," she said resting a hand on his arm. "You can give me a hint though. Take your time. Think about what you can say. I'm not stupid, you know. Give me something that isn't going to incriminate you, something that I can use. I'll figure it out."

Will nodded, and looked at Jarek. "He's Family, isn't he?" he said. "Not English?"

Jarek chuckled. "Not English," he said. "And you're safe from me, Will. Em tells me you look after her. You're hers, as far as I'm concerned."

Will nodded again, and Em could tell he had relaxed and was beginning to think through his dilemma. He was sifting through a lot of information, mulling over what to say and what not to say.

Em looked at Jarek over Will's head. He gave a short nod.

Em stretched out a tendril of dark energy toward Will's mind. She slipped her mind into Will's like a mist and floated there carefully, not wanting to do anything to let Will know she was there. She watched Will thinking, and let the feel of Will's thoughts become obvious to her. Then she slowly adjusted her own mind to match the patterns of Will's thoughts. She was wrapped around his mind like a blanket. Every thought he made she could feel, every memory, every hope and every desire.

She drew in her breath as the power of it rushed through her. Will's thoughts bathed her in a thousand sensations at once, and her human body buzzed as her vampire half sorted everything out. There was a section of Will's mind that was pulsing with fear. Em hovered in it, amongst it, and revelled in the emotion. Fear was like a rich red wine and her darker self drank it in, while her human body quivered with the thrill of it, excited despite herself.

There it was. A building by the water, another old warehouse. Em could see it in Will's mind's eye, but Will's thoughts refused to take her any closer to it. His fear was welling up, throbbing. She swam through it playfully, loving the delicious paralysing chill of it, and then she remembered where she was and who she was doing this to. Will was her friend, she chided herself. Pull yourself together Em.

Above her Jarek smiled a long slow smile that twisted up at one corner. He knew what she was doing in there. He knew she was enjoying it.

It lasted just a moment, and then Em drew away. Will's rough voice shook her back to the present. He seemed unaware of what had just happened in his own mind.

"I can tell you this," he said. "But it's not much."

Nick wandered back over and stood just outside their little circle watching with his arms folded.

"The, erm, newcomer you're looking for doesn't take no for an answer. From anyone. Not even Alina. Has a big, erm, appetite, and needs to store things away from public view, if you know what I mean."

Will looked up at Em. She nodded encouragingly.

"You need to look for a warehouse." Will looked up sharply at Nick's derisive snort. "Another warehouse. Closer to the water than mine. Conveniently close to the water." He paused again. "This warehouse is going to have a history, that's how you're going to find it. A history ..."

He stopped. He actually looked like he was in pain, Em thought. Poor thing. This was brave of him.

Nick grunted. "A warehouse with history," he said. "Oh yeah, that's really helpful."

"Shut up, Nick," said Em. "Thanks, Will. Thanks for talking to us." She stood up and tilted her face so that Nick couldn't see the wink and the grateful smile she gave to Will. "If you think of anything else you can tell us..."

"Yeah," said Will. "I know where to find you."

Em had the spoonful of pasta halfway to her lips when Jarek materialized suddenly next to her on the sofa.

"Ugh," she said, juggling the bowl on her lap and clutching at the glass of red wine which had been balancing on the cloth arm of the sofa and was now tottering precariously. "What was wrong with the door?"

A few trails of black smoke pulled themselves into Jarek's figure. He had dropped the visiting English medical examiner form and returned to his favourite muscles-and-black-silk persona. Em was glad. That weedy British thing had been getting on her nerves. So not her type.

Jarek peered dubiously into her dinner and raised an eyebrow.

"It's pasta sauce," said Em. "Made with tomatoes. You should try it sometime."

Jarek snorted.

He stretched his legs out and rested them on the coffee table next to hers. His shoulders shuffled back into the cushions of the sofa. When he turned to look at her their eyes were level. Em held his gaze and felt him push out a subtle but demanding wave of dark energy toward her.

Em considered him. She allowed his mind to flow right up to the gates of her own then carefully strengthened her defences against him. Slowly and gently Jarek intensified his mental thrust until the weight of his existence swelled and swirled darkly against the edges of her mind. His eyes stared into hers and threatened to pull her into the deepening dark energy that pulsated between them.

She thought about how inviting that seemed - how exhilarating it would be to let herself fall.

She smiled, blinked, and with that Jarek's carefully constructed advance disintegrated and vanished, like a flurry of dandelion seeds in the breeze.

Jarek snarled. He unfolded himself from the sofa angrily and flopped down in an easy chair on the other side of the coffee table. Em's smile widened into a grin. He could be such a boy sometimes, and how easy it was to provoke him.

"It isn't funny, Emilia," Jarek said eventually. "Your father sent me here to bring Alina home to face her doom. You too if I decided you'd been aiding her. I'd have dragged you both off without a thought if it was anyone but you. You told me to wait, Emilia." He leant forward in his seat and rested his elbows on his knees, feet wide apart, shoulders square and strong. "I've played your silly game, lover, and I'm tired of it. This embarrasses the Family, it embarrasses your father, and it embarrasses me the longer you drag this out. My patience is nearly at an end."

Em sighed. She'd known this was coming.

After letting go of her hold on Will's mind she'd slipped into Jarek's - a skill she'd realized she had hundreds of years ago. Jarek couldn't enter her mind without her invitation, but she could penetrate his in a heartbeat, sometimes without him even knowing. It infuriated him, and she'd spent some very enjoyable centuries exploiting her talent and his weakness shamelessly. Perhaps now hadn't been a good time to remind him of that weakness, but she'd asked him, in his mind, to visit the warehouse location that Will had given her. She and Nick had to follow protocol and find the warehouse the hard way, the human way, but Em wanted to know now, and she'd sent Jarek on an errand. No wonder he'd come back in a foul mood. He didn't take orders meekly.

"I told you, Jarek, there's something bigger happening here. Alina's part of it, somehow. You don't want to go running back to his lordship with the wrong fish on the hook, do you?"

He said nothing.

"What was at the warehouse? Who was there?"

"Nothing," said Jarek, petulantly. "No one. Oh, there was a mess alright. Someone had been there recently, but there was no one there at all."