Blood Spirits (63 page)

The cook had kicked the castle staff into high gear. In spite of the fact that they have no microwaves, a hot dinner appeared. It was mainly steamed cabbage, with pickled vegetables and dried venison cooked up in a kind of instant wine sauce, with the remains of the morning's bread.

We hadn't eaten all day. I was ravenous. Tony had to be, too, but he ate about half of his then jumped up and started out, pausing at the door. “No, go off to bed, Boris. I'll put it away.” He stepped into the hall. “Ah, there you are, Niklos. Listen, I want you and Teo to go through everyone in the staff. Find out the last time they saw Ruli, and where. Get Anna and Horst to look through every room.”

Their voices faded away down the hall.

We'd retrieved our diamonds and crystals on the way back in, but I hadn't put the necklace on yet. It sat there on the table in front of me, tiny lights in it winking.

A few bites in, I said to Phaedra, “I'd be happy to believe she's not as evil as she acts toward me, but why is it so easy to excuse Cerisette from plotting? Seems to me she likes organizing things, and she certainly seems to be ambitious.”

“Not Cerisette. Beka Ridotski may be annoying, but she was right in saying once that Cerisette wants to reign at Alec's side, not to rule.”

“Is she really that into him?” It might explain the total hate she had going on me.

“Tchah!” Phaedra shrugged. “I think she would be as happy marrying a piece of plaster made in Alec's shape, if it made her queen. Happier.” Phaedra grinned and saluted me with her mulled wine. “Then she would never hear the words ‘tax' or ‘mine,' and would be spared him talking about poetry.”

As she spoke, I watched the light shards in my necklace glimmer like light on water from another world. Those lights were clearly hooked in with Vrajhus, and maybe even the Nasdrafus. Would they be clearer if I tried the prism? I set aside my fork and took the prism out of my pocket.

Phaedra leaned forward. “I was just thinking that,” she said. “Can you look at the twenty-first? I'll wager anything Uncle Robert passed out and didn't make the treaty. Maybe that's why the vampires are swarming. Nothing else makes sense.”

I rubbed the prism on my grubby jeans. “It doesn't work that way. I can't pick a date then look into this thing like it's a video recording. Maybe someone else can, but I'm a beginner at this. I need a person or an object to concentrate on.”

“Then think about this room. Everyone uses it in winter. Though I must say, if you think about Uncle Robert, you'll see him a thousand times,” Phaedra said dubiously. “Over his lifetime.”

“I have to be more specific than that. Objects are better. At least, it was that way with Alec's Daimler. Maybe I should get the Rose and Thorn back,” I said, reluctant to have anything to do with those implements.

Boris entered, carrying another tray of mulled wine. As he set it out, I gazed at the mug, an association almost there . . . almost there . . . there! “The thermos,” I said, as soon as Boris shut the door again.

“Thermos?” Phaedra sipped wine, eyes closed. “Oh, that tastes good.”

“If Robert was roofied, he said it has to have been in that coffee thermos. Maybe if I get the thermos, and look at it in the prism. Even if it tells us nothing about whether or not the treaty was made, if someone puts something in there that isn't coffee, we might have our poisoner, at least.”

“If the poisoner is the same person who roofied Alec.” Phaedra huffed to her feet. “I will get the thermos. I know where those things are kept.”

I was going to sip my mulled wine, then changed my mind and put it down. Not because I thought it was poisoned so much as I wanted to keep my mind clear. Or as clear as it was going to get, considering the wine already in me, and the very,
very
long day. On top of a series of long days.

Phaedra was back in a moment, carrying three thermoses. “Sorry. No one could remember which one they used that night. These three are reserved for the family. The household staff keep theirs in the north pantry.”

I bent over the first one, thinking
coffee, ritual
, and a lot of other stuff that was probably useless. The prism flickered between a lot of people I don't know, some drinking from the thermos, others pouring from it, and it was washed a number of times, water splashing toward me in a kind of 3D perspective.

I clenched the prism, trying to narrow the criteria, but the harder I tried, the more splintered the images were. My head began to thump in time to my heartbeat. So I did some breathing, then set aside the first one. If I learned to filter images better, I'd come back to it. I'd try the second one just for a change.

I set the thermos on my tray, put the prism before it, bent over it, and this time I let the images flow. Hands holding the thermos . . . water running in it . . . steam coming up from it as someone poured soup, a wood pile in the distance. Coffee pouring out, held by a feminine hand, then it's set on the dashboard of an old car, right-hand drive. Coffee . . . wash . . . tea. Wash. Another load of soup . . . wash . . . powder—

“What?” Phaedra asked, her high voice going shrill. “You yelped.”

“I did?” I sat back, fighting dizziness. “Powder. Someone put powder in it.”

“Powder?” She leaned forward, glaring at the thermos and then the prism. “Who?”

“It could be something perfectly innocent,” I began.

Phaedra's lip curled.

“Right. Let me try again.” I bent over the prism, blinked, concentrated on the hand, the powder, the thermos.

And there he was, facing me with the thermos between us, a tall, elegant man with curly red hair touched with silver at the temples and over the ears. He was still, as if listening, his chin raised. The perspective was strange, as if I held the thermos for him as he measured in a dose of powder from a rolled paper. He dusted the paper to make sure all the powder went into the thermos. Then his hand reached toward me, he picked up the thermos—and it went away.

“It was Uncle Jerzy.”

Phaedra burst out laughing. “Uncle Jerzy? Tchah! Some villain! What could he possibly gain? All he cares about is the Paris flat. And whatever Tante Sisi wants. It must be a different day.”

“I thought he was forbidden to come to Dobrenica. Until this visit.”

She waved a dismissive hand. “He was here all the time, forty years ago.”

“His hair is silvery in the prism. Was his hair silvery in the old days? Also, his face was old.”

“Then it must be powdered milk.” She scowled. “Except he despises powdered milk. He only drinks freshly roasted coffee and nothing to mar the taste.”

The door opened, and Tony entered. “No sign of Ruli. I wonder if we should try again tomorrow with the treaty, as Jakov insists there's snow coming through. Maybe scout the records. See if we've ever missed a Night of the Thorn, and what they did about it. If I can find any records. Damn! This is Honoré's business to sort—what is it?”

Phaedra had been waving her hand in a circle to get him to hurry up. “Tell him, Kim.” She turned to me.

“I looked in the prism. I don't know when, of course, but I saw your Uncle Jerzy putting powder in this thermos.”

“It can't possibly be Jerzy,” Tony said, sitting down heavily. “He hasn't left Paris in forty years. Except when he was on the hunt for a chef. In fact, on the twentieth, wasn't he in Chantilly? Or was he in Epernay?”

Phaedra shrugged sharply. “Tante Sisi bored on about it constantly. I remember he was interviewing a man in Chantilly, and a woman in Compiegne. Anyway Uncle Jerzy left the day before I reached Paris, but I was there on the night of the twenty-first, when he returned emptyhanded to report that they all refused to leave France.”

“But he
was
here,” I said. “In Dobrenica, I mean.” And when the others looked my way, I added, “That is, an inkri driver at the inn last week said that Jerzy was the same guy he picked up at the train station the week before. He asked a lot of questions about me at the Waleskas'. Is there some way to check the records of arrivals?” I asked, without much hope, considering no one had ever asked for my papers on my arrivals. “Why don't you have passports, or at least I.D. papers?”

Tony leaned back, blinking tiredly. “Honoré says that papers were issued in the bad old days, but they were useless. He's seen MVD records, neatly recording visitors such as Red Baron of Flying Ace, Austria, and N. Buono Parte of St. Helene, France.” He flashed a grin. “Honoré showed us an entry a year or so ago, where a man whose papers listed him as A.J. Raffles, of Albanos Village, was flagged with a note:
This is Ysvorod—arrest on sight!
The Soviet guards did not know enough Western history to see the jokes.”

Phaedra dismissed jokes with an airy wave. “Anyway, there has to be some obvious explanation. Uncle Jerzy? He's just a—”

“Just a steward,” Tony said. “Loyal Uncle Jerzy! Everybody loves Uncle Jerzy, who knows how to make Maman happy, who always keeps the Paris house running. Who, we've heard our entire lives, won't inherit anything.”

“Who always . . .” Phaedra stared fixedly at the fire. “. . . answers the telephone.”

The fire crackled. Tony's chin came up. “Who spoke to Magda Stos last?”

“Jerzy,” Phaedra stated, and with an ironic glance Tony's way, added, “Danilov, Honoré, and I have been over it a thousand times, since
you
weren't talking to anyone. It was the night of the twenty-first. He'd just arrived at the Paris house and was telling us the story about the cook in Chantilly and her ‘
Where
do you want me to go?
What
country? I've never heard of it! Is it in South America?' We were all laughing.”

Phaedra gazed into the fire. “When the phone rang, Jerzy got it, as always. He said ‘Magda, what's wrong?' And we all crowded around. He kept saying, ‘Calm down, calm down, it can't be as bad as you think.' Tante Sisi kept saying ‘What is it? What is it? Give me the phone,' then Jerzy started jiggling it, and said either she'd rung off or been cut off. He said she was calling from the road, with Marzio, and the phone box was in the rain. We were in suspense for what seemed like hours, but probably was one or two at most. Then Robert called with the news of Ruli's accident, and that's when Tante Sisi began calling you.” She pointed at Tony.

He said, “Uncle Jerzy spoke to her more recently than that. On Stefan-Zarbat, when she called from Paris.” He struck his hand on the edge of the table, then went on in a tight voice. “When I got to Paris to interview the new cook, the house was locked up tight. I called home. Jerzy answered and said I'd just missed Magda—she'd called earlier to say she was leaving by train for Riev.”

Phaedra's eyes were huge. “If that really was Marzio in that coffin, how could Dr. Kandras have made such an error?”

“We've been trying to talk to him,” Tony said. “He's been on holiday. He still has not yet returned. Niklos has checked every day.”

Phaedra counted on her fingers. “If something's happened to him, that's four missing people, or three and one set of bones.”

While they were talking, I thought back. “I can't claim to have any insight into motivation or intent,” I said. “But something's been bothering me for days. You two weren't around when I arrived at the ball, but Jerzy took me in your family sleigh, and we arrived right when Alec did. In fact, when I consider it, he seems to have gone to a lot of trouble to get me there exactly at eight—exactly when Alec was to arrive and kick off the gala. Then someone in the crowd . . .” I described it all, including what Miriam said about her grandfather and hirelings. “Now, maybe those people really were mad at Alec. After all, it did look pretty bad from the outside, I guess I see that. But why would Jerzy say to me that I had a claque? At the time I didn't notice, but later I thought it odd. A claque would be paid, right? Wouldn't a guy who'd hired someone to stand in that crowd and shout
Murderer
to incite a mob be thinking about claques?”

Phaedra opened her hands in question. “I wasn't there.”

Tony was staring at the fire.

“What I can't get,” I said, “is how any of this links up with those vampires. It seems impossible that the two things are coincidence.”

“The connection
is
the vampires,” Tony said, and cursed as he got to his feet. “I think we'd better leave for Riev as soon as the sun is up.”

He walked out, slamming the door behind him.

“What connection?” I asked.

Phaedra yawned and headed for the door as quickly as Tony had. “We may as well go to bed. I'll show you the guest wing. You can pick out any bedroom you want.”

“Don't you stay in the Sky Suite?”

She shuddered. “Only Tony likes it up there, and that's in spring and summer. It's impossible to heat in winter. That floor is entirely shut up until the thaw really sets in.”

I retrieved my backpack and stashed my prism in it. We trod up the grand stairway to the hall lined with suites, on the floor above the ballrooms,. Only a few had bathrooms, though. She pointed out the ones that did, and I picked a room done in shades of lavender and ivory, with beautiful Louis XV furnishings.

Since I didn't have any clean clothes, I wrapped myself in the hand-embroidered quilt, lay down . . . and next thing I knew, Phaedra was shaking my shoulder, her face barely outlined against the indigo window.

Hot
mammaglia
and bread awaited us, with fresh coffee. I forced down the coffee with a lot of milk in it, not wanting to ask for tea. At least I'd been able to brush my teeth, but otherwise I felt frowzy in yesterday's clothes. From the looks of the others, even though they were cleaner, their moods were no better.