“All right, Bird Girl.” He tugged on the end of the loose pants she wore. “Tell me what we’re doing here?”
Her eyes flashed to his and she gave him a fanged grin. “What? You wanted to practice your Mandarin, didn’t you?”
“Yes, so obviously we went to a place where half the population doesn’t even speak it.”
“So you can learn some Uyghur, too.”
“Tenzin.”
She flew up and hovered over him on the bed. “Don’t be cross.”
“I’m not. I just want to know what we’re really doing here.”
“I have an errand to run. And I thought you could keep me company.”
“What kind of errand?”
She clammed up. Typical.
Ben sighed and leaned back against the headboard. “You know, I heard Xi’an is really nice. And the terra cotta army—”
“All the tourists go to see that. Don’t be boring.”
“They see it because it kicks ass, Tenzin.”
She sneered. “It’s packaged history.”
“So is any museum. What are we doing here?”
“I just have a few things to take care of, then we can—”
“Tenzin.”
“I’ll let you know when you need to know.”
“Listen,” he growled as he leaned forward. “You needed me here, otherwise you wouldn’t have suggested I come. So tell me now or I’m out of here.”
She said nothing, hovering with her back against the far wall, a petulant expression on her face.
He shook his head, swung his legs over the side of the bed and walked to his suitcase. “Packing now. I’ll see you back in LA.”
“Benjamin—”
“Nope. Done now.”
“Don’t be like this.”
“Like what?” He unplugged his laptop and slid it into the case. “Impatient with your pathological secrecy?”
“You’re being immature.”
“Nice try, playing that card.” He pushed down the loose pants he’d been wearing to sleep and pulled on jeans. “But it stopped working a few years ago. This is not me being immature. This is me being sick of your shit.”
“Ben—”
“Xinjiang isn’t top on my dream destinations list, so if you don’t want to tell me—”
“I need to move approximately twenty million dollars’ worth of gold and antiquities out of a cache in Kashgar before the old city is demolished.”
Ben froze.
“And obviously, I need a human to help me. Since you had time before school started, I thought it would be fun.”
She thought it would be fun? Of course she did.
He took a measured breath. “Twenty million?”
“Approximately.”
“In gold?”
“And antiquities. Some porcelain. Jewelry.” She floated down to the edge of the bed. “A few rugs, but those might be damaged.”
“Yeah, that can happen with rugs.”
She shrugged. “They’re silk, so they might still be good. I’m mostly concerned with the gold.”
“Twenty million?”
“Mostly in gold.”
He nodded silently, then went to sit down next to her, rubbing a hand over his face. “When was the last time you moved this cache?”
Tenzin scrunched up her face. “Maybe… two or three hundred years ago? I was still killing vampires with Gio. Sometime then. We had a job in Samarkand, and I had some extra time.”
“Of course you did.” He cleared his throat. “Two or three hundred years? Are you sure it’s still there?”
“There is a family who guards it. They don’t know what it is, of course. They just guard it. Nima handled all of that. Of course, I don’t know if anyone is paying the family anymore, so they might be gone…” Her eyes were distant for a moment until they snapped back to his. “I forgot about it until that news broadcast.”
“You forgot about twenty million in gold?”
She shrugged.
“How many gold caches do you have?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
Ben took another deep breath and blew it out slowly. “And do you have a plan to get this gold out of the People’s Republic of China, who might have a problem with you taking valuable cultural treasures—that are probably worth a lot of money—out of the country?”
She frowned. “But they’re my treasures.”
“I know that, but—”
“Mine. I’m the one who…” She considered her words. “…acquired them. I stored them. They’re mine.”
“I realize that, but the government might think differently.”
“I have a plan.”
Ben nodded. “That’s good.” Twenty million dollars? “Plans are good.”
Especially when you’re trying to move twenty million in gold.
Tenzin smiled. “I know a relatively trustworthy pirate who owes me a few favors.”
“A pirate? Like, an actual… pirate?”
“Yes!” She seemed delighted. Of course she did. Because pirates were so delightful. “Well, I don’t think he’s a pirate anymore. Precisely. He’s relatively—”
“Trustworthy. Yeah, I heard that part.” Ben stood up and raked a hand through his hair. “Is the sun down? I need food.”
“Oooh!” Tenzin clapped her hands. “Let’s go get noodles. Xinjiang noodles are the best.”
Ben grabbed his wallet and Tenzin’s hand. “Good to know. We’re walking out the lobby. Put your fangs away.”
“Relax. Sometimes, Benjamin, you have no sense of adventure.”
CHAPTER THREE
They walked through the market after the sun set, enjoying the smell of spices and cooking oil that filled the air. The night market in Ürümqi was a melange of faces, scents, and colors. Children ran about in brightly colored dresses and shirts. Stylish Uyghur women in intricately embroidered hijab surveyed wares with a critical eye. Caps and scarves. Bread and fruit. Everything was for sale in the market that night.
“You fit here,” he said, looking around.
“I fit where? China?” Tenzin asked. “I can’t imagine why.”
“Here here. In Xinjiang.”
It was true. He’d never been able to place Tenzin’s appearance. She was Asian, for certain, but didn’t have the typical features of the Han Chinese who dominated the Western view of China. Tibetan? Mongolian was probably closer. He didn’t suppose those kind of labels existed in her human years.
Her complexion was pale, but much of that had to do with her vampiric nature. Her eyes were a cloudy grey, but that could have happened during her transformation however many thousand years before. There was no way of knowing what she’d looked like as a human, but she’d been turned in her late teens or early twenties. Of that, he was fairly sure.
And in Central Asia—with its fascinating mix of people—she did, somehow, fit.
Tenzin shook her head, lifting the corner of her mouth in a smile. A hint of her ever-present fangs peeked out. “I don’t fit anywhere, Ben.”
“Whatever, oh ancient and mysterious one.” He nudged her shoulder to head down an alley that smelled particularly savory. “You fit with me.”
She raised an eyebrow, and Ben quickly added, “And all the other nocturnal weirdos. You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. This noodle shop is good.” She pointed toward one where a man in a cap was standing outside, cooking skewers of what smelled like lamb over a narrow, rectangular grill. “They have good noodles.”
“Is that rice?” There was a large metal cooking bowl, even bigger than a wok, sitting outside over a concrete oven.
“Polo,” she said. “Kind of like a pilaf. Very common here. Rice, chicken, carrots. It’s good. We can have some of both.”
She spoke to the man in quiet Uyghur and he held out a hand, guiding them inside where a smiling woman motioned them to a table and seated them with menus that Tenzin ignored. She spoke a bit more with the woman
who nodded and disappeared to the kitchen.
Tenzin said, “I ordered a few things. You can try some of everything that way. It’s a good thing you like spicy food.”
“But did you order enough?”
She shrugged. “For your appetite? They might have to kill another sheep.”
It was quiet in the restaurant, with only a few tables occupied, mostly by small groups of men. One table was full of children some older women hovered over. They were watching a soccer game on a small television and eating noodles as they laughed and joked. Cousins maybe? Ben knew some of the minority groups in China could have more than one child. Whoever they were, they looked like family and added a cheerful atmosphere to the tiny restaurant.
The walls were decorated with nice artwork in bad frames, but the ceiling was embellished with painted wooden beams that Ben suspected were hand-carved. He and Tenzin drew a few looks, but most of the patrons seemed far more interested in their own conversations.
“This is nice,” Ben said, sitting a moment before a pot of tea appeared at the table. It smelled like honey and saffron.
“The food will be good.”
“How do you know?”
She smiled. “Because it smells good, silly.”
Within minutes, the table was full of dishes. The golden rice dish he’d seen cooking outside, scented by cumin and dotted with raisins and carrots. Noodles topped with lamb and peppers. Small sticks of meat charred from the fire.
“How much of this are you going to want?” Ben asked, his mouth watering.
She smiled. “Not much. Go ahead.”
Vampires never had large appetites, but they did eat. Beatrice said that even though blood was all they truly needed, immortals who didn’t eat lived with a gnawing feeling in their bellies which was as uncomfortable for them as it was for humans. Since their digestion was slower, they never ate much. Small tastes of things here or there were all they needed.
Tenzin ate regularly, but that was partly because she liked to cook. Ben considered it fortunate that he liked to eat, because he was always available to dispose of the leftovers.
“Oh my gosh,” he mumbled around the first bite of noodles.
“I told you.”
“I’ll never doubt you again.”
She smiled. “Really?”
“No, of course I’ll doubt you.” He set down his chopsticks and picked up the spoon to try the rice. “You can barely operate in the modern world, Tenzin.”
She rolled her eyes and took a small bite of a lamb skewer. Ben ignored the eye-roll because they both knew he was right. He might have been young, but he’d assisted Giovanni’s butler, Caspar, for years. There were things that had to happen during daylight, and part of his job in the household was taking care of those things. Dealing with contractors and delivery personnel. Going to the market and sometimes paying bills. He’d been helping to run a household since he was twelve.
Tenzin, on the other hand, often had the lights shut off in her warehouse because she forgot to pay the bill. Sometimes it was days before she noticed. Bookkeeping was not her forte.
“Will anyone understand us here if we speak in English?” he asked.
“Probably not, but switch to Spanish if you want to be careful.”
He switched to Spanish.
“So, we’re moving a cache of valuables.”
“Yes. From Kashgar.”
“Which is close to Ürümqi?”
“It’s about fifteen hundred kilometers.”
Ben almost spit out his tea. “What?”
“It’ll take a day of driving or so to get there. The roads…” She waved a hand. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know.” He pushed back the annoyance. This was Tenzin, after all. The whole concept of driving amused and baffled her. “Why did we meet in Ürümqi instead of Kashgar? I saw connecting flights at the airport.”
“Because we have to pick up the truck here, of course.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, switching back to English and speaking quietly. “Okay, we’re starting from the beginning.”
Tenzin frowned. “I thought we were at the beginning.”
“Tenzin!”
“Okay. So impatient.”
She refilled both cups with tea and spooned a small portion of rice onto her plate.
“The person who is helping me has many shipping operations, including some that use trucks. He owes me a number of favors, so he has arranged a truck for us here in Ürümqi.”
“Has he arranged permits, too?” He took some more noodles. “I can’t imagine that you ship anything in China without a ton of permits.”
She waved a hand. “He assures me that the papers are taken care of and will be with the truck, along with a manifesto.”
“I think you mean manifest.”
“Yes, that. There will be crates with the truck with vegetables in them. Some of them will be empty. We will use these to pack my things.” She ate some of the rice and watched Ben finish off the noodles. He thought about ordering more, but then a second round of meat sticks came to the table.
Score.
Tenzin continued, but switched back to Spanish. “So Cheng has arranged all this here in Ürümqi. He does not have trucks in Kashgar, so we will have to drive it there.”
“So, it’s a day of driving through what are probably mountains and deserts where I’ve never driven before.”
“Maybe two days,” she mused. “I forget you have to sleep.”
He rubbed a hand over his face. He needed something stronger than tea.
“Yeah, Tenzin, I have to sleep. So when you say a day of driving, do you actually mean twenty-four hours?”
She frowned. “I think that’s what it will be. I’ll fly, of course, so—”
“Oh no. You’re not flying.”
She looked up from her plate. “Of course I am.”
“I don’t think so. If I’m driving a truck to get your stuff, then you’re riding with me.”
“I do not ride in human vehicles,” she said with a sneer.
“Then you can sit on the top of the damn cab, for all I care. But you’re not flying your vampire butt to Kashgar in a couple hours while I drive a big-ass truck for two days on my own. If you think that’s the deal, then I can catch a flight home tomorrow.”
She scrunched up her face. “You are not nearly as cooperative as Nima.”
“Nima had a staff of people at her beck and call, Tenzin.” He was really trying to be patient, but sometimes Tenzin just pissed him off. “Nima probably had contacts of her own, like Caspar does, who could arrange anything and everything for the right price. You have me. Who you dragged out here on false pretenses—”
“What is false?” she protested. “Your conversational Mandarin is appalling.”
“Wh—appalling?” His mouth gaped. “It is not appalling!”
She said nothing, just sat back in her chair and pursed her lips in silent judgement.
“Fine,” he said. “It’s not great. I still think appalling is a little strong. But we’re not in Beijing or Xi’an, Tenzin. You brought me here so you could have a human to help you get your stuff.”
“So?”
He sat back. “So what’s in it for me?”
Tenzin mirrored his posture, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes. A slight smile came to her lips. Tenzin loved to bargain.
“I’ll pay you,” she said.
“Not interested. I have plenty of money.” It was true. The trust fund Giovanni and Beatrice had set up grew every year, and he’d been investing his own money since he was seventeen.
Her eyes lit up. “You don’t want money?”
“Nope.”
And he had her. A bargain for something other than money was irresistible.
“What do you want then?” she mused. “What does my Benjamin want?”
He said nothing and let her speculate. Ben also ignored her use of the possessive pronoun, because that wasn?
??t somewhere he needed to go just then.
She leaned forward and sipped the honey-scented tea. “Gold.”
“The first thing you’re going to agree to is driving with me. If I’m in that truck, then you are, too.”
Tenzin cocked her head. “This is part of the price?”
He nodded.
“Very well.” She kept watching him. “You don’t want gold.”
Ben shrugged.
“You want…” Then her eyes smiled. “You want something shiny, don’t you, Benjamin?”
She did know him, after all.
Ben had lived much of his life with nothing to carry but the clothes on his back and whatever he could fit in his pockets. A psychologist would probably have a field day with his acquisitive nature, but he knew—even before he met Giovanni—he liked nice things. More than once, he’d escaped his parents and spent all or most of the day wandering through the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was one of the few places in the city he could get into for free. Plus, it was full of beautiful things.
Then he’d met Giovanni Vecchio. And Benjamin would be the first to admit that part of the allure the vampire had was the elegant brownstone he owned in Manhattan. Filled with art, antiques, and books, it was a thief’s dream.
And when Giovanni told his new charge he could teach him how to get all those pretty things without the police dogging his steps, Ben listened. And he learned. He already had the skills his mother taught him, plus a hefty sense of self-preservation gleaned from dodging his father. Learning for Ben came easily. But while his Uncle Giovanni’s truest love in the world—other than his mate—was books, Benjamin Vecchio’s was art.
Paintings. Sculptures. Jewelry of all kinds. The older, the better. And if it had a story attached? Even more irresistible.
So yes, Ben wanted something shiny.
“How much art is there?” he asked.
“Not a lot,” she admitted. “But there is jewelry.”
“I want my pick. One piece.”
“My pick. Don’t you trust me?”
He grinned. “Not with the good stuff. You’re as big a magpie as me. You’re talking about two days of driving up to Kashgar. Packing your gold. Then driving all the way to… Where are we shipping this stuff to LA?