Tickle the Dragon's Tail

by Cate Lawley

  “Another dragon…as in Marge’s baby daddy?”

  “Oh, wow. I hope not.” It looked like I needed to have another chat with Marge. How did one ask an elephant-sized, fire-breathing creature with fangs and claws the size of Ben’s hands if her romantic interest might possibly have roasted our victim?

  Marge was pretty much a pussy cat. Pretty much. But… “Hey, Ben, maybe we save that conversation for after we’ve disposed of the corpse and have ticked a few suspects off our interview list.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “So, about that disposal—are you going to finish your autopsy?”

  What with all of the distraction of the discovery I’d made about the flame signature not matching Marge’s, I’d unknowingly been acclimating to the odor. I was ready to finish up.

  About five minutes into my head-to-toe inspection, Ben’s mobile phone rang. “Camille.” He handed it to me.

  Thank goodness this autopsy was hands-off.

  “Hey, Camille. What’s up?”

  “Suze came through. I’ve got you set up to see Lisette in an hour.”

  “An hour!” I pressed my lips together, but too late. I couldn’t take that screech of distress back.

  Ben’s hand landed on my shoulder, calming me a little. He rubbed my back and said, “I’ve got the body. We need to stash it, in case they need some kind of proof, but I have an idea about that. You make the meeting, and I’ll handle it.”

  Camille’s voice pulled my attention back to the phone. “Listen to your boyfriend. If you found something that points to another suspect, then you should stash it. Preferably not on the property.”

  I looked at Ben, and he nodded that he’d heard her.

  “All right,” I agreed. Poor Ben. He was not equipped for this, but I couldn’t be late and we couldn’t just leave the corpse hanging out in the prep room or the cooler. I sighed. “Where’s this meeting?”

  11

  Ben could handle hiding a charred body.

  Sure he could.

  No problem.

  And if he couldn’t, I had bigger—or at least more immediate—troubles. Lisette arranged to meet me at a quiet café in south Austin. They were known for their pancakes. I loved pancakes. Too bad I was on the verge of ralphing and wouldn’t be able to enjoy them. Actually, vamps couldn’t eat solids, so the good news was I wouldn’t have to watch Lisette devour a divine breakfast while I tried not to upchuck.

  Vamps generally made me a little nervous, because I didn’t have a ton of experience with them. Also, they were creepy and gross. Bloodsucking could do that to one’s image.

  But it was more the time factor that was stressing me out. I wasn’t in Austin. I was a good twenty-minute drive from the café, and I needed to get there early to set up some protections. We could hardly have a conversation about vampires, witches, magic, and dead people in the middle of a café without raising a few eyebrows. Sure, it was south Austin, but blood, gore, death, and magic were a little much even for the “keep Austin weird” crowd.

  I pulled into the café’s parking lot about thirty minutes before the designated meet time and still hadn’t beaten Lisette here. Unless the sparkling Mercedes convertible with the “I <3 Dracula” sticker and the plastic fangs swinging from the rearview mirror belonged to some other patron.

  Apparently Lisette had a sense of humor. I didn’t think vamps laughed—ever.

  My stomach swirled. Now I had to throw around some privacy shields like it was no big thing, when constructing one required all of my concentration.

  That might have explained my grumpy mood when I entered the café. Or it was the smell of complete perfection that assaulted my nose as I entered, combined with the certainty my stomach couldn’t handle the tasty awesomeness.

  Or maybe it was the lurking dragon in my boyfriend’s warehouse. The one whose life—and that of her unhatched eggling—was resting on my shoulders. Yeah, that was likely the biggest part.

  Whatever the cause, I walked in with my grumpy pants on.

  Imagine my surprise when Lisette—vampy, blood-drinking, take-no-prisoners Lisette—greeted me with a smile.

  It wasn’t even twitchy or showing fang.

  And then she reached out her hand like a friendly human would, all genuine warmth and southern charm. Was there a full moon?

  I shook her hand and then joined her at the table she indicated. The table she’d already managed to enclose in a cone of magical privacy. It looked like Lisette had her own witchy resources. My bet was on a personal charm she could activate when needed. That had to be it, because there certainly wasn’t a witch hidden away on the premises.

  “Thank you for meeting me.” She had a slight accent, perhaps French, given her name. Camille had mentioned that Odette, Alistair’s most recent love interest, had fallen into the arm-candy arena. Looking at the curvy, petite brunette in front of me, I had to guess that Alistair liked his ladies lovely.

  “Ah, I think that’s my line?” Hadn’t we reached out to her? Via Suze, the trusty PA, my tired brain replied. And now I was having conversations in my head. I needed some more sleep. Nah. I needed to solve this mystery and reduce my stress.

  “Well, yes, you did schedule the meeting, but I would have contacted you had I realized you were investigating Alistair’s death.” She leaned forward, her chocolate-brown eyes wide. “It’s all been such a shock. I can’t believe anyone would do this to Alistair.” But then her eyes narrowed and a glint of red sparked in their depths. That was more like the vamps I’d come to know and dislike. “I find it very difficult to believe a simple-minded dragon got the drop on Alistair. You have to find the vamp who fried him.”

  Whoa. So not everyone thought Marge was guilty? This put a new spin on things. Unless this was typical vamp trickery and a preemptive strike. Maybe I was sitting across from Alistair’s murderer.

  As I contemplated her words, she flagged down our waitress and ordered a hot apple cider and two mimosas.

  “You look like you need a little pick-me-up.” Lisette arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow and waited for me to deny it.

  I wanted to say, “No, I just look this frazzled and frumpy all the time,” but I refrained. I was technically still a student, so jeans and a hoody weren’t that out of place. Also, I’d been rolled rather precipitously out of bed this morning and rushed out the door to attend to an emergency.

  Speaking of that emergency… “Everyone seems convinced that Marge is the responsible party.”

  Lisette waved a dismissive hand. “Please. Clarice is hardly the most competent choice to handle this matter. I don’t trust her conclusion. More importantly, Cornelius doesn’t, or you wouldn’t have been given an opportunity to examine the body.”

  Our waitress appeared, entering the protected space between Lisette and I as she leaned in to deliver our drinks. Once she’d moved outside Lisette’s protected circle and could no longer hear us, Lisette continued, “It’s lazy investigating. Any creature that possesses magical fire could have done the damage. Without a sample of the dragon’s flame, there’s no way that Clarice could definitively say it was dragon fire that did the damage, let alone a particular dragon’s fire.”

  The room warmed by about five degrees. Before she noticed the guilty flush splashed across my face, I said, “And why do you care?”

  There. My bold question would hopefully distract her, or she’d think asking such a direct question had flustered me. Which it had. Now the room felt like an oven.

  She considered me with her head tipped slightly at an angle, and I saw that flash of red deep in her eyes again. It was called bleeding red. When vamps lost control of their emotions or when they fed, so I heard, their eyes glowed a brilliant red. These brief glimpses were the only time I’d seen the effect up close and personal.

  “I always thought it would be me that killed him.” The words were quiet, barely a whisper.

  “You hated him for leaving you?” I couldn’t believe the question popped out of my mouth.

&nbs
p; But she just smiled. Not even a glimpse of fang. “No, I loved him. In a way that may be foreign to you, but it’s love as I know it.”

  If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was putting the whammy on me, because I believed her. I had protections in place to avoid mental manipulation. I fingered the thin bracelet I wore. It was still packed full of magical juice, which meant I was still protected.

  And yet—I believed her.

  She smiled again. “And if I’d killed him, the world would know. I’d have ripped his throat out and watched him bleed to death.” There was an amused twinkle in her eyes as she watched my reaction, and yet I didn’t think she was pulling my leg.

  Nope. She wasn’t kidding. She would have ripped his throat out, killed him with all the passion she held in her heart—or what was left of her heart. What she wouldn’t have done was gone to elaborate lengths to hide her crime. No charred body. No false accusation of death by dragon.

  “You didn’t do it.” This time, it wasn’t a slip of the tongue. I didn’t believe that she had.

  “I did not.” She frowned and shook her head. “It’s difficult to believe that anyone did. He was cautious.”

  “Okay, so who was more devious or cleverer than Alistair?” At her contemptuous look, I added, “Or was within his circle of trust and may have caught him unawares?”

  She laughed.

  It was a rusty sound, as if laughter was foreign to her. I was sure it was, all signs of a possible lurking sense of humor aside.

  “What about the three Ms?” I asked, cutting off the last of her chuckles.

  “The three Ms? Ah, Alistair’s entourage. They couldn’t harm him.”

  “But they had the greatest access, and—”

  “No. You misunderstand. It’s not that they wouldn’t, but that they are incapable. The idiots are bound by a blood contract to do him no harm.”

  “You’re certain?” Because this not only confirmed the rumor Camille had heard, but it made it almost impossible for one of them to harm Alistair.

  “Oh, yes. Complete chuckleheads, those three. Why anyone would make such a contract with Alistair, I don’t know.” My confusion must have shown, because she rolled her eyes and said, “Just because I loved the egocentric jerk doesn’t mean I was blind to his faults or that I trusted him.”

  What an interesting life to live. Not one I’d want, but certainly interesting. I’d stick with my much less complicated love life, thank you very much.

  I didn’t need complicated or difficult or messy. I just needed Ben. And if things went the direction of complicated or difficult or messy at some point, we’d deal with it because we loved each other. But none of those things were in themselves attractive to me. I suspected that was part of Alistair’s charm for Lisette.

  “What about Odette?”

  Lisette shrugged. “Perhaps, but doubtful.”

  “You don’t seem…bothered by her existence.” That was about as subtly as I could word it. Lisette was the discarded woman, one who still carried a torch for her former lover. Odette was the more current mistress of the dead man. How could Alistair inspire passion in the woman sitting so serenely across the table from me, and yet mention of her replacement didn’t elicit any observable emotion?

  “I’m not particularly bothered. Her relationship with Alistair was separate from my own.” She arched that fine eyebrow again. “Have you been listening to rumors, little witch? Alistair and I were still very much involved.”

  “But you’re no longer business partners.”

  A humorless bark of laughter erupted from her mouth. “By my choice. Because Alistair was an abysmal businessman. He only skated by on his connections. Fresh money always coming in to shore up his terrible financial decisions. The man was a disaster in business.”

  If that was case, then who better to resent him and wish him dead than his closest business partner? “Then Bob Smith must have motive.”

  “Darling, who have you been talking to? Bob Smith is worth a fortune. Not a meager, human-sized fortune. A vampire-sized fortune. Bob kept Alistair around for his connections, certainly not for his business acumen. In fact, you’ll find that the oh-so-clever Bob didn’t let Alistair anywhere near the decision-making.”

  “But then who wanted Alistair dead?” My suspect list had just been shredded. I’d have to follow up, naturally, but if what she was saying was true, who had a motive to kill Alistair?

  She leveled me with a cold stare. “I haven’t a clue. And that, little witch, is why we’re meeting today.”

  Our mimosas, which had been happily fizzing away as we spoke, now looked even more absurdly merry.

  If Lisette wasn’t completely off base, I hadn’t a single suspect.

  She lifted her mimosa and said, “To finding Alistair’s killer.”

  Except when I raised my glass in response, it didn’t feel like a toast. It felt like a threat.

  12

  As I contemplated how I was going to corroborate—or disprove—the information I’d received from Lisette, I tried to keep the hint of panic edging ever nearer at bay. Having a meltdown while driving my boyfriend’s car down the freeway wasn’t a good plan.

  Besides, Lisette was likely wrong and had overlooked some motivation or desire to do Alistair harm.

  But what if she was right? What if her information was good? Then I had no suspects.

  Could one of the three Ms break a blood contract? No way. If those binding contracts existed, then they were out. I had to agree with Lisette. It seemed foolish of them to have entered a contract under such terms, but if they had, they were off my list.

  The three Ms were all relatively new vampires, so perhaps they hadn’t understood the full ramifications of entering into such a contract, that they would be defenseless against Alistair. Or Alistair had more star power than I’d guessed. Or more something: money, access to easy blood—that was a pleasant thought—or maybe access to all his vaunted connections.

  My heart fluttered as panicky feelings pushed at me again. I happened to catch a glimpse of the speedometer in my peripheral vision and about gave myself a heart attack. I slowed down to a more reasonable five miles over the speed limit, considered my not-excellent state of mind, and slowed another five miles.

  Odette. She was still a prospect. Lisette might have dismissed Alistair’s other, newer mistress out of hand, but she didn’t say why, and I’d been too distracted to grill her.

  And the Bob Smith situation I should be able to easily confirm with Cornelius. Hm. Perhaps Alex. Alex would know, and he was easier to talk to.

  I groaned. I hated asking him for help. But I needed to use what resources I had because it was already midday, and Marge’s eggling was hatching day after tomorrow.

  Alex might also know who in the area would be the most informed about magical critters. Maybe a Djinn. They had a special relationship with their own animal partners, as Marge had with her Djinn before she’d passed, but they were also more closely connected to the nonverbal members of the enhanced community. They were the magical realm equivalent of the crazy cat and dog lovers in the mundane world.

  If there was a Djinn in Austin, I’d bet he or she knew what kind of animal would be capable of inflicting the damage done to Alistair.

  The edges of panic receded finally.

  I had a plan. Check out Bob Smith’s financial situation with Alex, set up an interview with Odette, and scope out local magical critters, possibly via a local Djinn, if there was one.

  The three Ms were basically off the list at this point. They’d never been good candidates to begin with, more proximity suspects than anything else.

  I pulled into the funeral home driveway with a sigh of relief. A plan. I had a plan. It would all be fine. Marge’s eggling would hatch safely. We’d keep the vampire horde away. Ben and I would find the killer.

  Or Ben, Alex, and I would, because Alex’s truck was parked in the parking lot.

  Just spiffy.

  The most pressing questi
on just became: which boyfriend was I going to strangle?

  The current one for calling in my ex without asking? Never mind that I’d planned to ask for Alex’s help myself. That was completely beside the point.

  Or my ex for showing up uninvited, because his hero complex wouldn’t let the little witch handle her own magical mess?

  As I pulled into Ben’s spot, they both turned with varying looks of guilt plastered on their faces.

  The moment I opened the door, Ben said, “I called him. Basically.”

  “Basically?” I looked at Alex, but, freakishly, he deferred to Ben.

  “I called Camille because I figured if anyone could hide a corpse in plain sight, she could.” He gave me sheepish smile.

  “So the plan you had in mind when I left for my appointment was to keep Alistair’s body here, but to use some kind of magic to shield him.” I mean, it wasn’t a terrible plan, but that wouldn’t have held up to close scrutiny.

  “Yeah, but Camille sent Alex to fetch it. She said she had a better spot, and that he owed her big.”

  Alex lifted his hand. “I do owe her a favor, one she’s cashing in, so technically I’m not interfering with your investigation.”

  I scratched my neck. “About that.” He waited with a neutral expression, but I could swear he reeked of smug satisfaction. “Lisette punched a huge hole in my suspect list, so I had a few questions for you.”

  “How huge?” Ben asked. He knew exactly how long the thing had been to begin with.

  “Huge enough to leave me with no suspects, if her information was good.”

  Alex whistled, then said, “Although, really, I don’t who would want him dead. He was powerfully connected, but not a real player in the business scene. And his women were always surprisingly loyal to him, even after he dumped them. He was an enigma.”

  “Oh, Lisette claims there were still an item. Her dumped status was a false rumor, per her. But really, why are they so enamored? He was creepy.”