Death's Mistress

by Karen Chance

  “After speaking with Dorina, I came up to confront Elyas about his duplicity,” Louis-Cesare said tersely. “I was ushered into the waiting area.” He nodded at the small room with the comfy chairs. “I waited. But after a time I became impatient and—”

  “How long a time?”

  “A minute, perhaps two. I was in no mood to indulge Elyas’s power games. In the end, I went through without an escort and found him as you see.”

  “Then explain why he died while you were standing over him, holding the knife used to sever his arteries!” Marlowe demanded.

  “I cannot. I smelled the blood when I opened the door, but I did not know that it was his. I only discovered what had been done when I bent over the body. The knife was on the floor, and I picked it up to get it out of the way of the spreading stain. As I stood up again, he died. I felt it when it rippled through the house, and a moment later, his family was there, along with half or more of his guests.”

  “Yes! Dozens of witnesses and a story a child wouldn’t believe.” Marlowe threw up his hands. “If you are going to lie to the Senate, at least make it plausible.”

  “I am not lying.” It was the king-to-peasant tone again, and it didn’t look like Marlowe liked it any better than I had.

  “The wooden knife was in the heart, Louis-Cesare,” Marlowe said, pointing at the gory thing that now resided on the desk. It wasn’t the usual plain-Jane stake, but a hand-carved specimen with a long, slender blade and a distinctive finial. I even thought I caught a glimpse of some metal—steel or silver—at the tip.

  Elyas had been stabbed with the Cadillac of stakes.

  Nothing but the best for a senator.

  “As soon as the wood penetrated the muscle, he died.” Marlowe continued. “There is no delayed reaction; you know this!”

  “There are two ways into the study, as you can plainly see,” Louis-Cesare said icily. “Someone must have entered from the hall, killed him, and left while I was waiting. The study is soundproofed—I would have heard nothing!”

  “And this mysterious murderer did this in what?” Marlowe demanded incredulously. “The thirty-second window of opportunity he’d have had?”

  “It is possible,” Mircea commented. “Elyas was playing host for most of the evening. He doubtless retired to the study to meet with Louis-Cesare only shortly before he was killed. It may well have been the first chance a murderer would have had to get him alone.”

  “It was also the first chance Louis-Cesare had.”

  “The master retired to the study not ten minutes before his death,” the old vamp put in, although no one had asked him. He was dressed like a butler, and he looked vaguely like one, too, with bushy salt-and-pepper hair, muttonchop sideburns and a mustache that said he was overcompensating for something. He was likely the senior vamp in Elyas’s household.

  I moved around the desk while Marlowe and Louis-Cesare glared at each other. “What is it?” Mircea asked, as I leaned over the body.

  “Don’t touch that!” Marlowe ordered, seeing what I was doing.

  “I hadn’t planned on it.” The wooden knife in Elyas’s heart hadn’t been disturbed, and the telltale sign was still on the bottom of the blade, on the portion that had stayed outside the flesh—a small ring of pale, almost translucent gray.

  “Dorina?” Mircea glanced from the hilt to my face, eyes suddenly sharp. He knew I was about to hand him something. And damn it, he was right.

  I stood back up. “Elyas could have been killed at any time during that ten minutes,” I told them.

  “He could not!” Marlowe barked. “We know when he died. The reaction was felt by everyone in the apartment—including you.”

  I sighed. This was going to cost me a fortune. “There’s a way to delay the reaction.”

  His eyes immediately narrowed on my face. “How?”

  “You asked me a question yesterday, about how I get out of clubs and homes after killing a master, without his servants immediately zeroing in on me.”

  “And?” His eyes had gone a bright, glittering black.

  “I behead the master first, because—I don’t care who you are—that’s going to be a shock to the system.”

  “Damn straight,” Ray commented.

  Marlowe never even glanced at him. “And then?”

  He was like a goddamned dog with a bone, I thought resentfully. “Then I tie his hands behind his back and jam the stake into his heart—a special one I previously coated in a thin layer of wax.”

  His eyes widened.

  “I don’t see why that would make a difference in the time of death,” Muttonchops said.

  “The body’s heat melts the wax,” I said, spelling it out for him. “But not right away. I have anywhere from thirty seconds to a couple of minutes to get away before any of the actual wood touches the heart.”

  “And you can control the amount of time by the thickness of the wax,” Marlowe said, blinking. “It’s so bloody simple. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Maybe you don’t kill as many vamps as I do,” I said sourly. “The point is, anyone could have offed Elyas. Set him up like I described. Then hurry out into the hall, and either leave the apartment entirely or—”

  “Or rejoin the other guests as if nothing had happened.”

  “And remain to see the body being found to make certain that nothing went amiss,” Mircea added. He looked at Muttonchops. “I would appreciate a list of all your guests tonight. Invited and otherwise.”

  The vamp did affronted dignity well. “You cannot believe one of them to be responsible! I assure you, everyone here was of the finest—”

  “Of course,” Mircea murmured soothingly. “I would expect no less of an illustrious house. However, it is the usual protocol, and I will be asked for it.”

  The vamp nodded stiffly but made no move to leave. He concentrated for a moment, probably trying to summon a flunky, but they all appeared to be out of order. He gave a disgusted sound and walked to the door to bark an order to a human servant instead.

  Mircea thanked him and turned back to the body, still looking grim. “That’s how it was done,” I told him. “I promise you.”

  “I do not doubt your word, Dorina,” he said, with emphasis.

  “You don’t think the Senate will believe me?”

  “Well, I don’t believe you,” Muttonchops said. “It’s preposterous. I’ve never heard of such a thing. A first-level master would merely break the bonds and remove the knife.”

  “Not with his head just cut off and a stake through his heart,” I said drily.

  He gave me a purely venomous look. “I could do it. And I’m second-level.”

  “Want to try?”

  “Dorina.” Mircea gave me the look that said, “You’re not helping.”

  “Believe me, I’ve done this enough to know,” I told him. “It works. Maybe if the vamp in question had more time, he could figure a way out of it. But he has only seconds. They may struggle a bit, sure, but they are mostly paralyzed, and the majority don’t even realize the danger. They think I missed the heart and left them for dead, and that one of their servants will find them shortly. And they’re gone before they realize their mistake.”

  Muttonchops turned to Mircea. “Even if you accept this creature’s evidence, the fact remains that no one else had reason to kill the master!”

  “Like hell,” Ray said. I thumped him hard, and he shut up. But Mircea shot me a look.

  “You can point out to the Senate that Louis-Cesare had the rest of the week,” I told him. “If he planned to kill Elyas, he’d have done it later, after he had exhausted all other possibilities. There’d be no reason to do it tonight, especially in so public a way.”

  “It’s the best we’re going to get,” Marlowe said, looking at Mircea. “Will it be enough?”

  Mircea closed his eyes. He didn’t look optimistic. “The Senate is meeting in an hour in an emergency session. We will soon know.”

  A couple of large vamps app
roached with a stretcher, but Marlowe waved them off. “The Senate may ask to see the body in situ.”

  “But dawn approaches,” Muttonchops said, sounding scandalized.

  Since it was only about one a.m., the guy was exaggerating. But then, he was upset. And he didn’t know how long the Senate bigwigs intended to leave his master exposed.

  That sort of thing was a major taboo in the vamp world. Once a vamp’s power leaves him, his protection against the sun goes with it. Any stray beams after that will fry what is left to a crisp in a matter of seconds. The last service a vampire performs for his or her master is ensuring that the body is hidden away so that the sun can never touch it.

  Marlowe’s expression said he couldn’t give a shit, but Mircea moved in with soothing, reasonable arguments, his voice taking on the cadence that said power was being exerted, but subtly. Muttonchops’s frown smoothed out, and within moments he was nodding, as if leaving his master’s gory body slumped at the desk was the best idea he’d heard in a while.

  Marlowe met my eyes, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing: too bad that kind of thing wouldn’t work on the Senate.

  Chapter Twenty

  Muttonchops left a moment later to arrange for extra blackout curtains. As soon as the door closed behind him, I got up and put the necklace on the desk. There was no way a dhampir was going to be allowed to address the Senate, which didn’t even recognize me as a person. But Mircea was going in there, and he needed more than a speck of wax.

  “Plenty of other people had a reason to kill Elyas,” I said simply.

  Mircea clicked on the lamp and bent over the desk to get a good look. Then sharp, dark eyes turned up to me. “Where did you get this?”

  “Off Elyas’s neck.”

  Marlowe started to squawk something, but Mircea held up a hand. “Tell me,” he said quietly. Louis-Cesare moved to the door, making sure that we had a moment of relative privacy.

  “Elyas tried to buy the rune before the auction, but was told he’d have to bid for it like everyone else. When Ming-de won, he was furious—”

  “A great many people were,” Marlowe said resentfully. “The auction was obviously rigged.”

  “Yeah, only Elyas wasn’t going to take that lying down. He went to the club, killed the fey and took it—”

  “Raymond saw him?” Mircea asked sharply.

  “No, he smelled him. You can ask him if you want details, but there aren’t many. Basically, the fey showed up, Ray left him alone for a few minutes, he returned and the guy was dead. Elyas’s scent was in the air, and the necklace was missing.”

  “How lovely,” Christine said breathily, her face alight. She’d come in so quietly that even the vamps hadn’t heard her. I saw Marlowe start.

  She didn’t notice, being too busy gazing raptly at the carrier. The cold electric light sparked a fountain of prisms off the intricate surface, bathing her face with rainbows as she leaned closer, seemingly mesmerized. And before anyone could stop her, she’d picked it up.

  “Drop it!” Marlowe barked.

  She looked up, eyes wide and startled. And the carrier slipped from her fingers, hitting the desk and sending dancing beams across the dead man as it rolled toward the edge. She stared at it. “Je regrette! I did not mean—”

  “You foolish girl!” Marlowe looked like he wanted to shake her. Christine transferred her gaze to him, looking part-mortified, part-confused.

  “No harm done,” Mircea told her, and caught the heavy disk with a handkerchief.

  “No harm done?” Marlowe demanded. “You’ll never get anything off it now!”

  The supernatural community didn’t usually check fingerprints, because there are plenty of things that don’t leave any. But a good clairvoyant might be able to get something off the thing, if not too many people had touched it in the meantime. It was why I’d been careful not to handle it.

  “That remains to be seen,” Mircea said mildly.

  Christine backed into the wall, looking like she wished she could melt into it. She seemed on the verge of tears again. Louis-Cesare came over and led her to a chair. “Ça ne fait rien.”

  Marlowe looked disgusted. “Oh, no. Not important at all. Just one less piece of evidence that might have exonerated you!”

  “This held Naudiz?” Mircea asked me, wrapping it securely in the square of linen. “You are sure?”

  “Originally. Ray saw it when the fey first arrived, but it was empty when I took it off Elyas’s neck. There’s a space in back where the rune should be, but there’s nothing there now.”

  He frowned. “But . . . did Elyas steal an empty carrier, or did he succeed in stealing the rune and was killed for it tonight?”

  “If he’d had the rune, he wouldn’t be dead,” I pointed out.

  “Not necessarily. I have seen other runes from the same set. If this one functioned similarly, then it had to be cast in order to function. Wearing it alone, particularly when not touching the skin, might not have been enough.”

  “If he was fighting for his life, I think he’d have cast it!”

  “But was he?” Mircea nodded at the body. “He did not die in a fighting pose and there are no wounds on the body other than the ones that killed him. It appears that he was caught off guard.”

  Marlowe nodded. “If he knew his attacker or did not expect to be assaulted when surrounded by his family—”

  “They never do,” I muttered.

  “—he might well have chosen not to use the stone. It is a talisman with a set amount of power at its disposal. Exhausting it for no purpose would be foolish.”

  “Unlike wearing it around his neck while somebody killed him,” I said sarcastically. Louis-Cesare had said that Elyas liked to take risks. It looked like he’d taken one too many.

  “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 aboutsubrand 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 t
o 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.