No one was listening to her. As usual.
Luke was the only one who supported her, but everyone could see that he would have believed anything if it meant a chance to throw Leo out of town, or better yet, to kill him.
"What are you tryin' to tell us, girl? You sayin' he's some kind of a..."
"Vampire. Yes. And I'm not trying to tell you, I just did tell you. Aren't you even listening to me?"
"Dammit, girl! You speak proper to your betters, or you don't speak at all! And you don't speak trash about someone like Mr. Tolsty, either. He's done a lot for this town." The mayor shook his head, and sweat sprayed from his jiggling face. "Why would a...'vampire'...help our town?"
"Because he needs a place to live. He needs a place where he's trusted, where he can stay in his house during the day, where he can find...easy hunting..." Krissa trailed off into silence, unable to complete the thought.
"C'mon, look!" Luke cried, coming to her defense. "He's gone all day, and his excuse about the heat doesn't make much sense, seeing how he never sweats. You've all seen him. He's cold as ice, all day long. And, and talkin' all fancy...and what normal person would spend all his money helpin' other people build things? He's been actin' plain crazy...unless he doesn't need money, like he needs somethin' else. Where's he get all that money from, anyway? I don't know what 'investin' is, but he sure as hell ain't made money 'round here." Krissa's heart swelled. Luke could be sweet sometimes...and he'd actually made a few logical statements in that tirade. Maybe now someone would listen, now that a man had said something.
The mayor and the others paused, frowning. The silence stretched on so long that Krissa began to fear the worst. They weren't going to listen, and she was going to stay here and watch her town die, one by one, until it was too late for them to believe...
Suddenly, something like dawn appeared in the mayor's eyes, the light of reason rising up over the horizon of his muddled ignorance.
"Hell, then..." His voice, already unthinkably low for him, dropped down to an unprecedented whisper. "So then...Crazy Don, and the widow Jen..."
Impatiently Krissa interrupted, her own whisper harsh in the near silence of the council room. "Exactly. He's taking the old and the sick, the ones we won't miss at first. No one important is going to disappear until he's too firmly rooted in town to suspect."
The mayor shook his head again, and Krissa wiped some of his sweat from her face where it had landed, leaving streaks on her dusty skin.
"But I can't just...believe...I mean, a vampire?"
"Why not, mayor?" Hal said quietly, around a mouthful of tobacco he hadn't chewed since the revelation. "No worse than them witches over yonder..."
While she was waiting, boiling over with frustration at these clods, she glanced at Luke. He was looking at her with an expression she had never before seen on his tanned face: pride at her knowledge that might save them all, excitement at a chance to accuse Leo of anything, and...something else. Something she didn't like. Was this what religious fervor looked like, that strange glowing reaction that she had read about but never witnessed in these godless times? Whatever, it was directed at her in a way that made her shift uncomfortably on the creaky floor.
"Luke? Are you...what is it?"
Luke shook like a dog trying to dry himself, and looked away. She felt an unknown apprehension inside her chest, clenching...he hadn't been very pleasant, since she'd been spending time with Leo, and until recently she'd had to stay at her aunt's, to avoid Luke's ever-increasing beatings. Now that she had been avoiding Leo - ever since that day in the library when she first began to suspect - she'd moved back home, but he hadn't touched her in those few days. Just looked at her...like this.