Vampire Instinct by Joey W. Hill Page B

be well if living things learned to live in harmony. But if they made it bad and ugly again, it would once again be destroyed.”
    As he glanced toward her, she showed her appreciation with a curve of her lips. “Dev would like you. He tells Aboriginal stories, because he has their blood. What kind of Indian is Mr. Malachi?”
    “His mother was Cherokee; his father was a white trapper. But Mal doesn’t tell Tsalagi stories, or speak the language.”
    “He’s never learned?” she ventured.
    “I never said that. I said he doesn’t speak it. Doesn’t tell the old stories.”
    Since Mal would hardly talk to her about the children, let alone something personal about himself, she wondered why she heard a warning in Kohana’s voice.
    “He hired all Indians to work here. So he must feel some connection.”
    Kohana made a rather irritable grunt. “That’s a story for him to tell. Mal’s put all of himself into this. Too much. You two may have more in common than you know.”
    Reclaiming his crutch, he hopped back toward the door. She noted he’d left a stack of bedding on the arm of the couch. “Is that for the guest quarters?”
    “No. I expect you and Thomas don’t need a linen change yet. Unlike some other people who live here, I assume you don’t fall into your bed at dawn still wearing your dirty clothes, and get leaves and dirt on the sheets.”
    Elisa bit back a smile. “No, I try to wash off a bit before bedtime.”
    “We might as well give him a hole in the backyard,” Kohana snorted. “He wouldn’t notice the difference, and I wouldn’t have to keep it clean.”
    “I’m about done with the windows. Would you like me to take it to his room and change them out?”
    “Be happy to let you do that.” He waved her in that direction. “Downstairs, last bedroom at the end of the hallway. I usually straighten up a little in there, but don’t get too fussy about it. He won’t be able to find anything and he’ll bitch about it for half the night.”
    Nodding, she returned her window-cleaning supplies to the supply closet as he disappeared around the corner, headed back to the kitchen area. He’d told her he started cooking for the staff just before midnight to give them a good supper break, so she’d do the linens and then come back to help. She was pleased she’d worked hard enough that her muscles were aching. Fatigue dogged her all the time now, but this felt like a physical tiredness, not a stress-caused one, and that was an improvement, to her way of thinking. While she wished Mal had taken her with him, it was quiet here. She liked it, and Kohana’s company. Liked not being the center of so many sympathetic or tsk ing countenances. She liked those new sounds in the night, the idea she might see things she’d never seen before.
    Kohana seemed to trust her well enough, though it was probably because she’d come from Lady Danny’s household versus any merit of her own. Still, she’d take the opening it provided. There were puzzles here to engage her interest, like Kohana’s cryptic comments about the island and Mal’s dedication to it.
    The other doors along the wide corridor downstairs held guest bedrooms. They were a bit nicer than what was provided for the humans on the second level, but not by much. The walls were stone, as were the floors, giving a castle impression to her fanciful imagination. The gaslight sconces added to the feeling, casting dim, shadowed light across the rock. They illuminated drawings on the wall, or rather, one big drawing. A mural of cats.
    They weren’t polished, not like a painting in a museum, yet there was a rough realism to them, reminding her of the Aboriginal drawings one came upon in caves in the Outback. It was apparent the mural had been done over time, no real plan for it, as if the artist was merely idling away spare time, drawing what captured his imagination. For instance, there was a picture of a lion lying down, but a domestic cat’s tail lay