Heir to the Coven (21 page)

“That sounds like a plan. Can I let you know later?”

“Sure. While we’re on the subject of stories, what could possibly have you down here in the dust and mold?”

“As luck would have it, I’m doing a story on vampire society. Seems your visit has them thinking I am an expert on the underworld.”

“Don’t use Mike as your photographer, he’ll wind up dead in a night.”

“That’s a good piece of advice.”

“If you plan to do a companion piece on us, I am going to have lay down some ground rules about what you ask or see. I thought telling yourself your visit would be about work would make you feel more at ease when I offered it, not a true in-depth study.”

“I knew that, but I think rules in general would be a good thing. I don’t want to violate some cardinal rule and wind up dead.” He smiled. “But for right now, if I take your deal, I’m there for me only. Oh! All this deep conversation made me forget the other reason I was going to call Tash.”

“Ok.”

“Tom, the guy who wrote the article on the half-caste baby, got back from vacation. You mentioned you wanted to talk to him. He’s not in the office today because his kid is nursing a jellyfish sting, but I can set a meeting up for sometime this week if that works for you.”

“Get him on the phone now.”

“Or I can get him on the phone now,” Chris said dryly. He dialed. “I don’t know that he’s available right this second.”

“All I need to know is the name of the person that leaked the baby story to him.”

“We rarely get names and if we do they are usually fake. Maybe I can get a description. I – oh, hey Tom. How was Maui? Great. Sorry to bother you at home. How’s Luke? Good to hear. Listen, I need to ask you about that story you wrote on the baby. Yeah, that one. Did you get a name on the person that tipped you off? I didn’t think so. What did she look like? Thanks. Bye.” Chris put his phone away. “Ok. According to Tom the woman was average height, very tan and very blonde. He said she looked like she stepped right off the beach at Malibu. Does that ring a bell?”

An alarm bell to be exact. “Yes and it means I have some very big trouble brewing if this is accurate. Sorry, but I have to get going.”

I turned to go, but he stopped me. “Natasha?”

“Yeah?”

“You came here because you thought I had something to do with this, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

Silence. Then he said, “Is the only way to find my caste really to have a vampire drink my blood or was that a scare tactic?”

“If there was a half-caste of your line that was strong enough they could sense you. A vampire of your line could sense you too, but most of the vampires in the city are…related to me and while I can sense any vampire’s presence, I can also tell if a specific vampire is a Hadi.”

“Hadi?”

“That’s the name of the vampire line I descend from. They’ve gotten away from using their formal names these days. One thing I can tell you is that you aren’t a Hadi.” I was about to comment on how he should be glad since most Hadi were sneaky bastards, but I needed to get going.

“One more thing before you go,” Chris said. “Will you forgive me for sort of using you?”

“I’ve been used for worse and I was sort of using you too, you know. Call it even?”

“Dinner will make it even.”

“I think I can handle that now.”

“Could I get a firm yes if I promised potato salad won’t in any way, shape or form be involved?”

I grinned. “I’ll call you once things settle down. I really need to go now.”

“See you later.”

As soon as I left the library I called Fitch. “I need you to do some checking on another bank account for me Fitch and tell me if any large sums were deposited recently.”

“Sure thing Tash. What’s the name?”

“Megan McCoy.”

“I checked her account already and there was nothing.”

“But an immediate transfer of funds would look suspicious. Now that some time has passed and in light of recent events, I’d bet her bank account got larger. Just check.”

“Will do Mistress. I’ll call you back as soon as I have the scoop.” He hung up.

I got in my car and was about to turn it on when my phone rang back. Fitch had what I needed. There had been a cash deposit of a million dollars to Megan’s account an hour after we locked Kain up. Now there was a thanks for a job well done. But which job? Having a baby she didn’t really want or pointing a finger at Kain?

Chapter 22

There were two possible solutions to this situation, neither one was particularly pleasant to consider. One was that Dawn had set Kain up. The other was that Dawn and Kain were accomplices. I really didn’t think Dawn was smart enough to do this alone, which meant that someone with a brain had to be pulling her strings. But the big question was if that puppeteer lived between my walls or Anton’s. That meant I needed to pay another visit to the woman who identified Kain as her abductor and find out if she was paid to implicate him or if that was part of his master scheme with Dawn. A plot that included planting that pink piece of paper I slipped on yesterday so that I would believe his story about his trip to the vampire quarter whenever whoever eventually stumbled upon it recognized the address and commented on it. Even without the trial, anyone who read the receipt would mention that someone had been shopping in the vampires’ territory. Although I had simply thrown it away in annoyance, it did wind up working in Kain’s favor since it created doubt in my mind about his guilt.

I could see how the plan would have worked. Kain knew his trail was getting hot so he could have arranged to have Fitch report the transfer and left the receipt in the hall hoping someone would find it. He would have assumed that I would either believe him and let it drop if I heard about it or saw the receipt since we were friends, or decided if he landed on trial the receipt could exonerate him because surely a some decent person living in the house would speak up about seeing it when it was mysteriously missing from his jacket. Big flaw if that was the plan, I had kept quiet about it so no one but me could use it to corroborate his story. Even Rainor didn’t know about it, he went along with me based on the spoon code just like Kain had. Well if Kain was innocent I hoped he remembered the code and had a guess what I was up to with locking him up. But if he were guilty, the receipt had done its job since it did make me more inclined to believe his story, especially after Fitch reported a transfer to Megan’s bank account. Kain couldn’t have done it because he was in chains. More proof he did not do it or part of his partner’s scheme to get him freed? Dawn or Fitch could have made that deposit to take suspicion off of Kain.

It was time for my third trip to the suburbs this month. On your fourth visit I heard you got a minivan.

*****

Since this visit was in broad daylight, I made a show of pretending to knock before I forced the lock and let myself into Megan’s house. If I had to abduct her I didn’t want the neighbors catching wise and reporting me to the police, cops were nuisances when it came to this sort of thing. Her car wasn’t in the drive and the house was dark. Considering our conversation last night, and her recent wealth, there was a good chance she left town. I gave myself a self-guided tour of her house and found several suitcases by the staircase all ready to be loaded into a car for a quick get-a-way and her bedroom closet empty.

Out of curiosity I went into the baby’s room. I shouldn’t have, it was sad. The walls were plain white and bare of any decoration. There should have been a goofy clown mobile or a rabbit mural or whatever the current baby trend was. Even though my childhood room had been decorated inappropriately mature with gold sconces, silk curtains, Rembrandts on the walls and a dressing table I was years away from needing it had at least shown some effort. Someone had tried to make it look pretty for me. This kid’s room had all the charm of a prison cell. There wasn’t even a stuffed animal sitting on the dresser. I don’t know why I hoped to find a toy in the crib, but I did. Instead I found the crib’s bedding was gone. A deep sniff of the air picked up no trace of any sort of baby residue in the room as if it had been scrubbed clean to remove any reminders that a child had slept here. Megan’s room had not been cleaned to this degree and her sheets had still been on the bed. Looked like she gave the baby away to someone, but had she given it to an agency and cleaned to ease her guilt or to the vampires who cleaned to destroy evidence?

I heard the garage door opening and went downstairs to wait for Megan. I hoped she was in a chatty mood because if I had to pull teeth to get an answer I was going to
pull teeth
. Keys rattled as they were inserted into the lock and the door swung open. When the lights flipped on I said, “Hello Ms. McCoy. Looks like you’re taking a trip with all those suitcases by your stairs. Good thing I caught you before you left town you would have missed your last chance to tell me the truth before I made you scream it for me.”

“How-how can you be here during the day? The sun is supposed to kill you.”

“I never said I was a vampire. You see I’m the type of monster that can find you anytime, anywhere and even the bright light of day can’t keep you safe from me.” I let my eyes glow at her menacingly.

She spun on her heel to bolt, but I inserted myself in her path. She blinked in surprise and tried to dart around me. It didn’t work.

“Please don’t try to run; as you can see you won’t get far and it won’t improve my mood. I came to ask you some more questions.”

The woman was shaking. She should be scared. She had lied to me and quite possibly tarnished the name of one of my closest friends. “What do you want?”

“Well I want the truth. You told me a very tall man, a giant I believe you said, held you prisoner during your pregnancy. I have to give you credit for being a good liar; it would have worked if I were human and couldn’t hear your heart beat speed up every time you lied. So I played along to make you think your ruse worked, but you made a big mistake depositing all that money into your bank account. Tell me about that windfall of money you recently came into.”

Megan McCoy put her bags down and clasped her trembling hands behind her back. “That was a settlement for an accident I had a couple years ago.”

“Hmmm. Did I not just tell you I can hear when your lying heart speeds up? Let’s try again. You have a lot of money in your bank account and we both know it didn’t come from an insurance company. And remember I don’t have much patience and you don’t have very long to live if you lie to me again.” I dragged my nails down the glass pane next to her door and left five cuts in the glass.

Megan began to talk. A lot. I knew about every speeding ticket she had gotten since she was sixteen, the time she shoplifted a bracelet, how she lost her virginity in a closet and that she had given her baby to a childless cousin who had been trying to adopt for enough years the “freak” factor didn’t matter and then returned home to try to erase all clues the baby had ever been born. I did ask if that meant she had taken all the baby decorations down and got a blank look. I should have known better than to ask. I also knew in under ten minutes that she had no idea what vampire had supplied the blood used to caste her baby, but she did know who had paid her to let her baby be caste, say she had been abducted and implicate Kain who Megan said she had never seen before in her life. Her heart rate stayed nice and steady during her story. The truth at last.

It was Dawn.

Reckless, guy crazy, stupid, soon to be dead Dawn.

Having vomited up every deep dark secret she had, Megan sank down to the floor and stared off into space blankly. Elvis had left the building. I grabbed my cell phone and called the house. I had hoped Fitch would answer, but Mercy picked up. I told her the truth, that I had had my suspicions about Megan’s story but had gone along with it to try to smoke out the real traitor. I explained how I had thrown out the receipt Kain mentioned and it was his bringing it up that tipped me off that he was telling the truth or possibly acting with an accomplice. Then I told her about the spoon code that had had Kain, Rainor and I in on a plan to make everyone think I was certain Kain was to blame.

After she got done shouting at me, I said, “I know this is a lot to take in Mercy, but I need you to do something for me.”

“Why should I? You ripped my heart out letting me think he was to blame.”

“Because I could have killed him the instant I suspected he might be the one behind all this and I didn’t. I played this so he had a chance to survive and he will.”

Mercy was quiet for a time and then she asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“I need you to put Harris on the phone so I can tell him it’s ok to release Kain and then I need you to incapacitate Dawn.”

“Fine.”

Harris got on the line. “What’s up Tash?”

“Kain is innocent. It was all a ruse to get the real traitor to slip up and show their hand. Mission accomplished. Now I need you to let him out and let me talk to him. I would have had Mercy do it, but no one would believe her story that I ordered it and I wanted to let her get a little revenge.”

No answer.

“Harris?”

“Um, yeah?”

“What’s wrong? You stopped talking. You never stop talking. Don’t tell me you were stunned speechless by my revelation, I’ll lose all respect for you if that’s the case. What was that noise? I heard a thud. And now a crash. Harris, what in the hell is going on?”

“Dawn set Kain up didn’t she?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because Mercy dropped kicked her down the stairs, through the living room to the kitchen door which she kicked Dawn through to the dining room, where I assume Dawn landed on the dishes being laid out for lunch after that crash or else she put her through a window. Damn! That was hot. Why didn’t you tell me so I could record it to watch for my viewing pleasure later? You are so inconsiderate Tash. I think I need a cold shower.”

“You know cold showers only make it worse?”

“That was the point.”