Fury’s Kiss (18 page)

“Hypoxia occurs when the body is deprived of oxygen, often due to poor circulation,” Rachel answered. “It’s sometimes induced on purpose to train athletes at high altitudes. Anoxia, on the other hand, refers to total deprivation of oxygen and can lead to tissue death.”

Surprise flickered across Graves’s even, handsome features and I closed my eyes momentarily, wishing Rachel hadn’t just given away how much we knew about Miller’s cause of death. But it was too late. She was a walking, talking encyclopedia and answering Graves’s question was second nature to her.

“The guy was basically vacuumed out,” Dewey offered helpfully.

“But that’s impossible,” Rachel pointed out. “Complete anoxia of the entire body just can’t happen. Not outside of outer space, anyway. Or, I don’t know, a vacuum chamber used to train astronauts.”

Yes, exactly. There was no way we nude yoga enthusiasts could have had anything to do with it.
Now go away
.

“If Deputy Randolph hadn’t vouched for you,” Graves said, watching Rachel intently, “I’d swear you knew something about what happened to that man.”

“Oh, please.” Rachel rolled her eyes. “Spending too much time on Wikipedia is hardly a crime.”

Dewey opened his mouth to stick up for his ladylove but I put a hand on his arm to restrain him. His help was the last thing we needed right now.

“Now if you’ll excuse us,” Rachel said, getting to her feet, “we should see about poor Mrs. Hadley. Dewey, thank you for telling us personally. We appreciate it.”

She showed them to the door and Dewey filed out obediently. Graves followed, then paused on the threshold.

“You might be comforted to know we found a partial fingerprint on the body. And it doesn’t belong to the accused.” He smiled a toothy, shark-like smile at us as he turned to go. “Whoever else was there that night, we’ll get them soon enough.”

I felt far from comforted.

Chapter 15

As soon as Dewey and Agent Graves were on their way, Rachel put her hands on her hips and started to pace. I got out of her way, ready to take orders. When she got into full-on planning mode, there was no point in arguing. It was better to just buckle up and do what you were told.

“OK.” Rachel whirled to face me as she reached the end of the room. “Here’s the plan. We need to know why you’re being stalked, what happened to Mrs. Hadley, and what exactly is up with Alecto and Ruby. I’ll go online and find out as much as I can about DeVille. You go next door and see if there are any clues at Mrs. Hadley’s. Oh, and tell Nora to meet us at the track tonight instead of tomorrow—there’s no time to waste.”

She resumed her pacing. “The fingerprint issue will still need to be resolved,” she muttered, “but you’re not on record, so that will buy us some time until I think of something.”

Still talking to herself, she wandered off to set up her laptop while I called Nora. I didn’t know whether I was relieved or disappointed that Jackson didn’t answer the phone, and I restrained myself from asking whether he would be meeting us at the track later, too. When Alex got home from her friend Jayda’s house, where she’d spent the night, I filled her in on everything that had happened and we headed next door to Mrs. Hadley’s house.

The yard was as pristine as always, with just a few trampled flowers to tell the tale of what had happened the night before. The inside looked like any other old lady’s home, with doilies, photos and knickknacks scattered throughout. All signs of Mrs. Hadley’s double identity had disappeared, and there was nothing to suggest that the house had been filled with a mysterious black ooze just twelve hours before. Or that Mrs. Hadley had fed me ambrosia at the kitchen table.

Reminded of the recipe card she’d pushed on me, we returned to our place to ask Rachel if she needed any ingredients for the potion. Since our investigation of Mrs. Hadley’s property had turned up exactly nothing, Alex and I could kill some time before our meet-up at the track by picking up whatever was needed.

“Find anything?” I asked Rachel, sprawling into a chair across from her in the kitchen. Alex leaned against the counter and tossed me an apple from the fruit bowl. My hand shot out and snatched it from the air.

“Man, I cannot get used to that,” Alex commented on my reflexes around a mouth full of fruit.

“I didn’t find much,” Rachel answered me, tearing her gaze away from the screen. “Aside from the usual public relations stuff, there isn’t really anything here.”

“Is that bad?”

Rachel shrugged. “With a corporation this size, you’d expect to find something. It’s unusual for a company this high-profile to have almost no negative commentary written about it.”

“So who owns DeVille? Priest said my stalker seemed like he was pretty high up in the organization.”

Rachel summarized her research. “DeVille Developments is a construction and development company owned and operated by the Perris family. It started out small, back in the 1920s, when the founder, Spiro Perris, came to America from Greece by way of Ellis Island. He built the company from the ground up, starting in New York, before becoming one of the largest commercial contractors in the business. Today, the company is worth billions. Spiro died in the 50s and his son took over, and it’s been passed down through the men in the family ever since. They prefer to focus on community interest type projects where possible—community centers, universities, green technology, that sort of thing.”

“And hospitals,” I added.

“Mm-hmm,” Rachel nodded. “Very into doing the right thing. Or the politically correct thing, anyway. The company is now run by Spiro’s great-grandson, Christos. There’s a great-granddaughter, too—Christos’s twin sister, Elena. She takes care of fundraising, hostessing, that sort of thing.”

“They sound like real do-gooders,” Alex observed.

“Get this,” Rachel added. “They even took in the orphaned son of an employee last year. Nikos, age twelve. Gave him their last name, the best education money can buy, the whole nine yards.” She tapped at the keyboard. “Home schooled, naturally, so he doesn’t have to mix with the riffraff.”

“What’s with the name?” Alex wanted to know. “Is it DeVille as in Coupe DeVille, Cruella DeVille, or what?”

“Hmm.” Rachel scanned the computer screen. “This is the only really juicy thing about the Perris family. The company was named after Spiro’s first wife, Hélène DeVille. She was French, from a rich family. They weren’t impressed that she married a penniless Greek immigrant, so they cut her off and Spiro named the company to spite them. When Hélène passed away a few years later, he married Chloris Theodori—a nice Greek heiress this time—but he kept the company name.”

“Any clues as to what one of them might want with me?” I asked.

“Nothing. The only dirt I can dig up is that the men in the family tend to be pretty accident-prone. Plane crashes, expensive car wrecks, that sort of thing.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s the risk you take when your hobbies all involve high-speed engines.”

She switched from a news site to celebrity gossip. “Looks like Christos is something of a playboy. His parents died when he was barely out of his teens, so he’s had lots of power and freedom from a young age. There are photos of him with models and actresses, and he was in a fraternity, but there’s nothing like what Priest told you about. He’s never been accused of anything illegal, much less stalking or attacking a woman.”

“How about his sister? What do you know about her?”

Rachel shook her head. “There’s even less on her. Thirty years old and she doesn’t even date. The press calls her the Virgin Heiress.”

“Keep digging,” I suggested. “Whoever’s after me is linked to DeVille. There must be something there that will give us a clue who it is—a sexual harassment charge, something. In the meantime, Alex and I’ll go pick up whatever you need to mix up a big batch of purple. Got that list of ingredients handy?”

“That’s another problem,” Rachel said, holding up the index card. “These aren’t exactly things you can pick up at the corner store.”

“Let me guess. Eye of newt, wing of bat?”

“Not quite,” she said. “Try proteins and polypeptides.”

“Say what?” Alex asked.

“The key ingredient in what Mrs. Hadley—a.k.a. Hecate—called ambrosia is snake venom.”

I thought of the sickly, stomach-turning taste of the stuff and shuddered. “Doesn’t it seem kind of dangerous for me to drink venom?” I wondered out loud.

“Not really. It’s just snake saliva. While it can cause death when injected through a bite, it’s harmless when ingested orally. In your case, my guess is that the venom provides something that’s required by the reptilian side you’ve developed that you can’t produce on your own.”

“So Furies have to drink snake spit on the regular?” Alex distilled Rachel’s explanation to its main point.

“I imagine ambrosia would need to be species-specific should other, non-serpentine mythobiologicals manifest. But yes, basically.”

“Mythobiologicals?” I asked.

Rachel beamed. “I came up with it myself. I really feel that it captures the taxonomy, don’t you?”

“I might, if I knew what taxonomy meant.”

“The description, naming and classification of different organisms,” she explained. “Really, we should consider ourselves lucky to witness such an incredible phenomenon.”

I rolled my eyes. Oh yeah, I was lucky all right. I was so lucky I could hardly stand it.

“So where do we get the venom?” Alex asked. “Do we need to hit up a medical lab or something?”

“Luckily,” Rachel said, “You should be able to get what you need at the zoo.”

And there was that word again.
Luck
and
venom
were not words that went together, as far as I was concerned.

“
Vipera ammodytes
,” Rachel went on, “is a species of viper found in Europe and parts of the Middle East. Known for its large size, long fangs and high toxicity, it’s the most common species of snake in Greece. And the reptile house at the zoo in New Bedford just happens to have one.”

“You want us to steal a snake?” I asked.

“Of course not. We have nowhere to keep a poisonous, three-foot viper. We just need its venom.”

“Oh, right. Of course.” I rolled my eyes again. How had I not realized something so obvious? “And how are we supposed to get the venom?”

“No worries,” Alex said with a grin. “I’ve got an idea.”

I prayed for patience. For some reason, Alex’s plans always involved a makeover.

Sure enough, she hauled me into her room and positioned me in front of her closet, then began holding clothing up to me. I sighed and thought about trying to escape, then let my shoulders sag in resignation. It was better to just meet my fate head-on. At least then there would be no surprises when I looked in the mirror. Alex grabbed a palette of the heavy, dark eye makeup she used to get into character as Alexis Diamond and I submitted to her ministrations. There was no need to even ask what she was doing. Alex loved nothing better than an excuse to dress up in costume.

Or in this instance, in disguise.

I thought of Alex’s enthusiastic—and thankfully, brief—period of dedication to Marilyn Manson as a style icon, and hoped for the best. If I was lucky, the result of my makeover would be more Marilyn Monroe. When Alex had put the final touch on my liquid eyeliner with a flourish, I turned to the mirror to take a look.

Somehow, I didn’t think Nancy Drew would have approved.

Chapter 16

We got to the zoo at dusk, just before closing time, hoping to minimize the number of people who would be around when we put our plan into action. Alex hopped out of the car effortlessly, balancing on the super-high platform heels she insisted our roles demanded of us as I looked down at the ripped fishnets, black shorts and matching tank top she’d forced on me. Alex’s so-called plan amounted to using our feminine wiles to distract the reptile guy while I sneaked into the viper enclosure, and I was supposed to look like a gothic, snake-loving goddess.

Instead, I looked like Hot Topic had exploded all over me.

I wasn’t totally clear on why we had to look like a wannabe Elvira to accomplish the plan, but Alex had felt that the costumes lent authenticity to our act. We were supposed to be two alterna-chicks obsessed with all things macabre, including deadly, venomous snakes. I wasn’t sure that seeing me tug uncomfortably at my short shorts would convince anyone of that, but at least Alex looked the part. The tattoos that traced the curves of lean muscle on her arms and legs gave extra badass credibility to the costume, something I was sorely lacking.

With a mental admonition to get my head in the game, I forced myself out of the car, praying that no one I knew would see me. Regardless of how ridiculous I felt, this was still the best plan we had come up with on short notice, and we needed the venom. I didn’t know what would happen if I didn’t take the ambrosia Mrs. Hadley had prescribed, but I wasn’t anxious to find out.

I tried to match Alex’s seductive gait as she sauntered toward the reptile house but after a few steps, I had to bend over to adjust an ankle strap. The approach of a familiar, mechanical rumbling made me look up from my task and my stomach lurched up into my throat.

“You wouldn’t be this cruel,” I muttered at whichever gods were listening as I fumbled with the buckle of my shoe. “You couldn’t.”