"Oh," her voice lowers, "she fancied him. She was very put out that he left without saying goodbye. Ah, yes, we still have them in a box in the back, I can go get them for you if you'll wait here..?"

"Aha. Yes, he's very fanciable, I understand. I'll be waiting here, thank you."

”You’re welcome!” she chirps, then away she goes.

She returns with a little modest bag of items. ”Please let him know he’s welcome to come stay with us anytime he’s in the city!”

"I will, thank you very much! Have a nice day!"

Okay, and once he's out of sight—scent from inside the box?

”You too!”

The bag contains: one (1) knife that folds in on itself, one (1) razor, three (3) socks, none of which match.

The socks are the only things that could possibly hold a scent that long, and have unfortunately been helpfully washed.

Sigh. This isn't useful.

The guy disappearing suddenly is... ominous. That smells of kidnapping, no pun intended. He wraps the knife and the razor in the socks and stores them all inside his backpack. Part of him wants to give up now, to return and inform Yvette that her brother has disappeared, but—no. No, he has not done all he could.

He waits until night, until it's dark enough that no one will be looking, and returns to the bed-and-breakfast, but this time from the rooftop. And it's stalker time—he will try to go window by window to see if he finds anything, anything at all that's supicioius.

There are several couples that are shagging, but nothing is obviously out of the ordinary.

Grrr.

He runs around the place some more, trying to find anything out of the ordinary but—no, nothing. Okay, time to talk to more people. The following day is... not sufficiently overcast, so he grumps all day and decides to explore the surrounding area, far enough to not be seen sparkling.

(Also a pause for a snack, but no one from the village, just some animal somewhere.)

No one sees him sparkling, and no one will miss the critter he ate.

The next day is a light drizzle that is much more friendly to vampires.

And then he can go looking for a certain maid...

There are a couple maids! It is not immediately clear which one of them was sweet on Blair.

... But one of them does jump a little upon seeing him, and keeps apologizing for no reason and stealing glances at James's eyes.

His eyes.

Fuck. He was trying not to think of that, it's too much of a coincidence—but nearly all Blair's stuff was taken, why would that happen if it was a regular kidnapping? They wanted to make him—comfortable, keeping his things—fuck he might not even remember Yvette, James knows he had a sister only because he visited his town later and saw his family, he remembers her face but with no fondness, that would wreck Yvette—

—it might have wrecked his sister, he doesn't know, he never thought about it—

—he puts these thoughts out of his mind, smiles brightly, and says, "There's no need to apologize. Are you alright?"

"Ah—yes, monsieur, no problem, sorry for bothering you ifyou'llexcuseme—"

"Please, wait just a moment. I wanted to ask you a question, it shouldn't be long." He doesn't quite reach for her but he does take a half-step towards her.

She shrinks, but stops fleeing.

"Yesmonsieur."

"A few months ago, a friend of mine was here—goes by Blair, legal name Albert. He's English. Then he—left, but we haven't heard from him since and his family is really worried. Do you know—anything, anything at all...?"

She swallows and looks a little bit like she would like very much to sink into the ground and disappear.

"There was, um." She shrinks some more and looks at her shoes. "A married couple that looked like you were asking after him. I didn't, they, um. They made me very nervous."

Fuckity fuck fuck. He furrows his eyebrows in worry. "Looked like me, like—the eyes, and skin? Were they looking for him specifically?"

"Ah, yes. They wanted to know more about him, are they, um... family of yours...?"

"More or less, but we're—estranged. I don't like it that they found Blair and then Blair disappeared. Do you know anything about where they might have gone? Did they maybe have an accent?" Not that that means much, he learnt French after becoming a vampire and got a Parisian accent just because that's where he did it but it's something.

"Ah, no, they didn't mention. Parisian, like yours, monsieur."

He nods, and smiles at her. "Thank you very much, madame, you were very helpful. If I find him I will be sure to come here and tell you."

"You're, um, you're welcome. I hope he's okay."

And with that, she flees.

He curses some more in a tone much too high for human hearing then starts looking around the town again, this time looking for evidence of vampires. Dead or kidnapped people, especially, but then he'll have to look around in other cities nearby to see if they suggest a direction—unless Liège gets news like that.

There are the expected number of missing persons for a city, but not the expected number of missing persons for a city that regularly houses vampires, and there aren't any notable vampiric scents floating around in the area. They probably moved on, but the direction they went isn't clear.