Death's Mistress (30 page)

“Whether the rune was stolen last night or tonight, it gives us something to offer the Senate,” Mircea said. “Anyone at that auction is a suspect—”

“And at least one who wasn’t,” I added reluctantly. I didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to tell them about
subrand without landing Claire in the middle of this. But they had to know. The ice-cold prince of the fey was probably the prime suspect.

Mircea had been putting the carrier in his suit pocket, but he paused at my tone. “Dorina?”

I got a reprieve because Muttonchops took that moment to return with the list of party guests, and everyone crowded around the desk. “Was anyone on this list at the auction?” I asked Ray.

“It doesn’t have to have been someone who was invited,” Marlowe pointed out.

Muttonchops shook his head. “On the contrary. We had someone on the door. No one who was not on that list would have been allowed in. Other than Louis-Cesare, of course, who was expected.”

“What level?” Marlowe asked.

“What?”

“What level of master was acting as doorkeeper?”

“We do not typically use a master for such a menial task,” he was told.

“Menial? Is that how you consider your frontline defenses?”

The small amount of cheek showing between Muttonchops’s mustache and sideburns reddened. “This is a home, not a fortress!”

Marlowe looked pointedly at the dead man. “So I see.”

“It could have been anyone at the auction,” Mircea said calmly. “None of them would have had difficulty fogging the mind of even a low-level master.”

“That goes for a lot of other people,” I pointed out.

He shook his head. “I do not think any of the participants would have been eager to discuss the auction. Some of their families doubtless knew, but they were under their direct control. It would have been foolish to tell anyone else and increase the competition.”

And the chance that the fey will hear about it and hack your head off,
I thought silently.

“Any one of them could have determined to do as Elyas did,” Mircea mused, “and have gone to the nightclub in search of the fey, either to make a bargain with him or to kill him.”

“Only when they arrived, they found that someone had beaten them to it,” I said. “And they either smelled Elyas on the air or actually saw him leaving. But why not attack him last night? Why wait?”

“Perhaps because the idea of killing a Senate member was more daunting than merely disposing of a fey guard,” Louis-Cesare said.

Marlowe shot him a cynical look. “Or perhaps because he had been invited here tonight and thought the party would be a good cover. If the culprit was on the guest list, he didn’t have to fog any minds to get in!”

Ray still hadn’t said anything, so I poked him. “Who was at the auction?”

He licked his lips, looking between Mircea and Marlowe. “I—I won’t have to testify, will I?”

“Yes,” Mircea told him, holding up the list so he could see it.

“But . . . but . . . in front of the
Senate
?” Ray’s voice dropped to a whisper. He looked terrified.

“I can tell them only hearsay. You were there,” Mircea pointed out.

“Yes, but . . .”

“And testifying might help your case.”

“My case?”

“The smuggling case against you.”

Ray looked like he’d almost forgotten that trivial detail.

“He also has master problems,” I put in.

Mircea’s lips twisted. “We will see what can be done. Assuming his memory improves.”

“Ming-de, Elyas, Radu, Geminus, and Peter Lutkin,” Ray said quickly.

“Cosmopolitan group,” I commented. “Ming-de from the Chinese court, Elyas from the European Senate, Radu bidding for Mircea, and Geminus—”

“Also North American Senate,” Mircea said, somewhat grimly.

“Oh, yeah. The prick.” He was one of the older senators, rivaling the consul in age, but not in power—or in anything else except ego. He also believed he was God’s gift to women and didn’t know how to take no for an answer. He’d grabbed my ass within thirty seconds of meeting me, and had not taken the resulting knife through the wrist well.

“I don’t know any vampires named Lutkin,” Marlowe said thoughtfully.

“He’s a mage.” Everyone looked at Ray. “Their money spends, too,” he said defensively.

“Lutkin was here tonight,” Louis-Cesare pointed out, tapping a name near the bottom of the list. “And Geminus. But none of the others.”

Marlowe’s expression brightened. “We can blame it on the mage. The others are too prominent or too unreachable in any case.”

“And if he did not do it?”

Marlowe looked at him like he didn’t understand the question.

“There were no silent bidders?” I asked Ray. “Nobody bidding by phone?”

“No. Seller insisted on a binding spell. And that don’t work unless someone’s physically there.”

“He was worried about fraud?” I asked incredulously. “With that group?”

“He was worried
period
. The guy was freaking paranoid.”

“He probably knew who was chasing him. He didn’t want to risk anyone using a glamourie and impersonating one of the bidders.”

“That’s what I figured.”

I frowned. “So he knew he was being hunted, knew he was in serious jeopardy, yet he still let his guard down enough for someone to . . .”

There was a sudden silence around the desk. I looked up to find everyone staring at me, a ring of bright, narrowed eyes. “Hunted by whom?” Mircea asked quietly.

There was no point in postponing it. “
subrand.”

Louis-Cesare’s head jerked, like he’d been stung.
“Comment?”

“And you know this how?” Marlowe asked, his expression darkening.

“He dropped by the house last night.”

“Dropped by?” Mircea asked sharply.

“In a manner of speaking.”

Marlowe glared at me. “Our spies have reported no such escape.”

“Then maybe you should get new ones.”

“I don’t need new ones. You clearly mistook another fey for him.”

“Doubt it,” I said drily.

“You are sure?” Mircea pressed. “You saw him clearly?”

“He was about an inch from my face while he was trying to kill me,” I said sarcastically. “So, yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“He tried to—” Mircea broke off, his jaw tightening.

“Why did you say nothing of this?” That was Louis-Cesare.

I shrugged. “It didn’t come up.”

“It did not come up?”

“What happened?” Mircea demanded.

“I already told you: he tried to kill me; he failed. The point is that he’s here and he has a definite interest in the rune. His mother was the one who stole it in the first—”

“Stole it from whom?”

That was Marlowe, and if I hadn’t been so tired, I’d have really rubbed it in. The guy thought he knew everything. “The Blarestri royal house.”

“The
what
?” Marlowe was the only guy I knew who could bellow in an undertone.

I glanced at him impatiently. “Well, where the hell did you think they got it, Marlowe? Or didn’t you and Daddy bother to ask?”

He flushed. “You’re telling me that the rune up for sale was a royal fey relic?”

“Yeah. And they want it back.”

“And how do you come to know this?”

“I’m acting for the family.”

“Another fact you failed to mention before now,” Mircea said pointedly.

I smiled. “Like you failed to mention what you really wanted with Ray?”

“That is hardly the same thing.”

“It is exactly the same thing! You sent me after him under false pretenses.”

“There were no false pretenses.”

“You let me believe he was a smuggler.”

“Which he is.”

“And which had nothing to do with why you wanted him. If we’re going to keep working together, you have to—”

“You do not work with Lord Mircea,” Marlowe informed me. “You work
for
him. It is not your place to question his commands.”

“Is that how you think, too?” I asked Mircea.

Before he could answer, the door opened, and several vamps walked in like they owned the place. Which one of them did, I realized, as Muttonchops’s head jerked up. “Master!”

He obviously wasn’t talking to Elyas, so that cry could mean only one thing. Elyas’s servants hadn’t been the only ones to feel his passing. His master had done so, too.

“Anthony,” Mircea said, straightening, as Muttonchops almost fell over himself trying to get around the table. “I thought we were meeting in an hour.”

“Yes, I received your message,” the dark- haired vamp said carelessly. He wasn’t tall, maybe five nine, and his features were handsome but not outstanding. His nose looked like it had been broken at some point, and his skin was a little weather-beaten. It meant he wasn’t exerting power to alter his appearance, which was strange, considering how much he had to spare. It felt like it seared my skin, even from this far away.

“Anthony?” I asked Louis- Cesare, who was looking a little ill suddenly.

“My consul.”

Oh. That Anthony.

The vamp circled the desk, taking his time, getting a look at the body. “Oh, don’t mind me,” he said, looking up with a smile. “Continue with what you were doing.”

“We’ve already examined the body,” Mircea told him. “You are, of course, welcome to do so yourself—”

“How kind of you,” Anthony murmured.

“But we will be reporting the findings shortly.”

“Really? To whom?”

“To the Senate.”

“And which Senate would that be, Mircea?” Anthony asked, whiskey eyes gleaming as they looked up from examining the gory throat.

I felt Marlowe tense beside me, but Mircea showed no outward change. “This happened on North American soil.”

“But Elyas belonged to the European Senate.” He smiled. “As does Louis-Cesare.”

“That is under discussion,” Mircea said sharply, which was news to me.

“Yes. But you have not stolen him away from me yet.” The smile didn’t slip, but the tension in the room suddenly ratcheted up about a hundred notches. “Therefore he will be judged by his peers—not his family.”

“And defended by whom?” Mircea demanded.

“Whomever he likes.” Anthony waved over his companion—a young vamp with long, dark hair spilling over the shoulders of a tailored gray suit. “As Elyas’s master, Jérôme will, of course, be prosecuting.”

Not so young, then, I thought, staring at the vamp. I wouldn’t have guessed. Big eyes that matched his suit almost exactly in color, pretty, almost feminine features, delicate white hands—and a power signature no greater than that of the vamp I’d nailed to the bathroom wall at Ray’s. It was hardly even discernible next to the inferno of Anthony’s, like a single candle next to a bonfire.

But if he was prosecuting, he had to be a Senate member. So the signature was a lie. He had to be one of those rare vamps who could hide his true strength. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have mistaken him for a baby, something that would have gotten me killed very fast—if I was lucky.

“And you?” Mircea demanded.

“Oh, didn’t I say?” Anthony’s smile broadened slightly, showing some fang. “I’m the judge.”

Nobody moved; nobody blinked. But the air was starting to feel a little thick in my lungs. I suddenly really, really wanted to be somewhere else.

Luckily, Anthony agreed.

“And now, if you wouldn’t mind, we would appreciate the same recourse to the body you have enjoyed.”

No one had anything to say to that, so we retired to the adjacent sitting room. Or at least I tried to, before I was waylaid by an angry vampire and jerked into the hall. Christine had followed us out, and started to say something, then saw Louis-Cesare’s face and shied back.

“I—I thought I would go pack,” she said quickly, in French.

Louis-Cesare glanced at her, and his expression softened. “Yes, yes, please.” It was gentle enough, but she all but fled down the corridor. Too bad I couldn’t go, too, but I appeared to be trapped between his body and the wall.

“What bug crawled up your ass?” I demanded.

“If you mean, why I am upset? I should think that would be obvious!”

It took me a second, but I got it. “Oh, come on. You’re not still pissed about—you did the same damn thing to me!”