Box Office Poison (Linnet Ellery)

by Bornikova, Phillipa

  “Yes, it’s simplistic, and you would probably call it blatant fear mongering, but I’m working this issue because I am actually very concerned. We have inhuman creatures—for God’s sake, some of them are dead—taking greater and greater control of our institutions and industries. The position of humans in this brave new world is in question. I’m damned worried, and you should be too.”

  You hate to admit an opponent might have a point, but she had a point. Vampires were scary, and I could attest to how frightening a ravening werewolf could be, but then I saw the flaw in her logic.

  “But why target the Álfar?” I asked. “They’re probably the least involved in human affairs in any significant way, and unlike vampires they don’t have to prey on humans to survive.”

  “Not true. Their conquest of Hollywood is deeply troubling. The more they fill our television and movie screens, the more accepted the Powers become. We’ll be conquered, and we won’t have seen it happening.”

  “So why aren’t you involved in this lawsuit?” Maslin asked, and I wanted to kick him.

  Cartwright read my dismay and gave me an edged smile. “Already in the works. Our attorneys are preparing papers and will be petitioning Mr. Sullivan to be joined in the same fashion as Jeff Montolbano and that Álfar. Getting the Álfar off our televisions and out of our movies would go a long way to neutralizing their influence on our children.”

  “Let’s get back to Proposition 9. Why marriage?” Maslin asked.

  “Because it’s visceral. No daddy thinks any man is good enough for his little princess. If we can make all those daddies—and mommies for that matter—think a monster is after their daughters, it’ll be the first step. If we can convince people that the Álfar aren’t human—which they aren’t—we’re a step closer to having humans take a look at all the Powers and realizing how dangerous they are.”

  “You’re giving me whiplash here,” Maslin complained. “So which is it? Are the Powers secret masters of the universe controlling every human institution and our very lives, or are they undeserving minorities looking for special treatment?”

  “Both. And any other argument that’s going to work and rally the humans.”

  “Wow, cynical much?”

  I jumped in. “So you must be very pleased about these killings.”

  “Naturally we’re always deeply saddened when someone loses their life, but this did shine a bright light on the issues we are raising.” It was a politician’s answer, smooth and noncommittal.

  “Kind of convenient how the murders started happening right when you’re flogging this proposition,” Maslin said.

  “Are you implying we had something to do with them? You people on the left always ascribe nefarious plots to conservatives. I suppose we should thank you for believing we’re so powerful, but it’s utter nonsense. And our members aren’t violent.”

  “Well, I certainly hope not, because I’ve been getting threatening phone calls, and I think they’re from someone in your group.”

  “Do they identify themselves?”

  “No. It’s a threatening phone call. They don’t usually introduce themselves,” I said, more tartly than I intended.

  “Then you have absolutely no proof. It might be some Álfar making the calls to make us look bad.”

  Maslin let out a snort. “I think you manage that pretty much all on your own.”

  I shot him a shut up look and got us back on track. “But back to these murders: you will take advantage of them,” I said.

  “Why wouldn’t we? It’s the Álfar finally showing their true colors.”

  “Okay, now, that’s utter nonsense,” Maslin broke in again. “If the Álfar are a bunch of murdering whack jobs, why hasn’t it happened before now? Why didn’t it happen forty years ago, or thirty years ago, or twenty years ago? What’s so different about now?” Maslin asked.

  “I have no idea. Maybe you should ask an Álfar.” Despite Cartwright’s best efforts, Maslin was starting to get under her skin so she focused back on me. “Miss Ellery, I understand that you work for a white-fang law firm, that you were fostered by vampires, but you’re a human, and a very intelligent one. Put aside some of our more colorful claims and look at the underlying facts. The Powers have been manipulating us for generations, but suddenly they have come into the open.” She looked back at Maslin. “You might want to consider that question too, Mr. Ambinder. Why have they gone public? What are they planning? And what do they want?”

  * * *

  Human First is high on my list of suspects, but how in the hell could they have gotten the two Álfar to go rogue?

  Those had been Maslin’s final words when I dropped him off at his car. He had gone off to research. I had gone back to work, but a day spent banging my head had me no closer to an answer. I realized I needed to get out of my head and out of a chair, so I’d headed to the Equestrian Center. It was a foggy night. The white planks of the fencing formed ghostly lines, and the lights around the riding arena couldn’t really penetrate the mist. They just made it more pearlescent and reflective. Vento gave a disgusted snort as I brought him down from a flowing canter to a walk. It was clear he missed the pasture back at his barn in Brooklyn, and he was eager to stretch his legs and run.

  I had hoped that doing something physical would jump-start some ideas, but so far it hadn’t worked. All I could remember was Kerrinan’s bitter grief over the loss of his wife. Maybe it was just an Álfar trick, or maybe he was a great actor, but he seemed to genuinely have loved Michelle.

  I pulled back the edge of my glove and checked my watch. It was seven thirty p.m. and it was clear that neither Vento nor I had the patience for detailed dressage work. I nudged him forward off my leg and walked across the parking lot and over to the breezing track. I found the electrical box and flipped on the lights around the track. They didn’t help much, but it gave us a clearer sense of the edges of the track. Here, near the back of the Equestrian Center the hum from the cars on the 134 freeway was like droning deep in my chest.

  We reached the center of the track and I turned Vento to face the expanse of dragged dirt. His muscles vibrated beneath me, and he began to piaffe. I wrapped my hands in his flowing mane, sent my hips forward slightly, and backed it up with a touch of my calf. He rocketed into a canter, and within three strides we were at a full gallop. He didn’t have the bounding stride or the speed of the thoroughbreds I had breezed one summer when I was looking for extra cash, but he was still going plenty fast enough for a foggy February night. And what he lacked in speed he made up for in stamina. We had circled the quarter-mile track three times before I began to feel his hindquarters losing push.

  I began to reel him in. Then Vento leaped sideways, and I fought to maintain my seat. My intestinal tract seemed to be somewhere in the vicinity of my throat as I looked around wildly for what had spooked him. I spotted a dark figure vaulting over the rail and rushing toward me, hand outstretched toward the bridle. Vento took umbrage at that and went hopping backward.

  The figure was now close enough that I could recognize David. “You’re not helping!” I yelled, and he put on the brakes. A second later Vento was standing quietly, though I could feel his sides heaving against my legs, and his breath sounded like a bellows. He swung his head back toward me then looked at David with what I could only interpret as disapprobation.

  “Sorry, I guess I spooked him,” said the vampire.

  “Do you think?”

  “Sorry,” he repeated.

  “Why did you run at us?”

  “I thought you were in trouble … I was trying … it was stupid.”

  “Agreed. Don’t you know anything about horses?”

  “Not really.”

  Which was another clue to the cypher that was David. He clearly wasn’t as old as many of the vampires of my acquaintance since he wasn’t conversant with horses. I turned to a more pressing question.

  “What are you doing out here? And more to the point, where the hell were you yesterd
ay?” The fog was condensing on the brim of his fedora, threatening to become actual droplets of water. His face was a pale oval in the darkness.

  “I wanted to check in with you. I heard what happened in the arbitration yesterday.” I tensed waiting for a reprimand. “You did good.”

  It wasn’t what I expected. “Thank you.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “You guys tend to be a little stingy on the compliment front.”

  “You proved yourself. It’s why I decided to help you with the Securitech case,” he said.

  “Okay, I call bullshit. You started helping me as a way to get back at Ryan.” I said, laughing.

  David stiffened. Vampires hate to be laughed at, but he again surprised me. “All right, that’s true, but once I started to work with you I saw your quality.”

  “What exactly does quality mean?”

  He gave me a quick smile. “I’m not going to pander to your vanity, and I need to keep you striving to impress me.” There was the echo of laughter in his voice

  “And I need to head back to the barn.” I jerked my head behind me. “Want a ride?”

  He stepped in close and put his hand on the pommel of the saddle. His arm rested against my hip. I kicked my foot out of the stirrup so he could use it. He looked up at me. I looked down at him. Then he abruptly stepped back and shook his head. “I’ll walk.” We started back toward the barns. “Your horse doesn’t seem very alarmed.”

  “Not now. You’re no longer a scary, shadowy figure in the darkness.”

  “Most animals object to my kind.”

  “They sense you’re a predator and…” I tried to think of a more tactful way to say dead.

  “Not alive,” David supplied.

  “Yeah.”

  “The staff reports you weren’t in the office today,” David said as we walked across the Equestrian Center.

  “I was off interviewing the Human First people, and while I don’t like them I just can’t see them engineering something like this. Really wish I could talk to Jondin so I could compare her statement to Kerrinan’s.”

  “Linnet, I want you to be careful with this.”

  “It won’t have any effect on the arbitration.”

  “That’s not what I meant. People have been killed.”

  We reached the barn, I kicked loose my stirrups and jumped down, and found David’s arm closing around me to help lower me gently to the ground. “He’s not that tall,” I said, indicating the horse. “But thank you. And thanks for the concern, but our two murderous Álfar are locked up.”

  “There are a lot of Álfar in Hollywood.”

  “Now you sound like you’re channeling Human First.”

  It felt cozy inside the barn and out of the fog and the dark. I put Vento in the tack-up area, pulled off his saddle, and began brushing him down. The smell of hay, dust, and horse was calming, and he was warm beneath my hand.

  David leaned his shoulders against the tall wood divider and said, “I’ll see what I can do about seeing Jondin, but don’t expect it to work. It might be easier to get your gnome in to see her.”

  I looked over my shoulder at David. “Gnome? Really? I call that tall-man bias. And I think Maslin’s a good height for a shrimp like me.”

  “You make up for the lack of inches in attitude.”

  I returned the dandy brush to the tack box and said carefully, “Okay, now you really are starting to freak me out with all the compliments.”

  “You’re showing live-person bias.”

  It wasn’t all that funny, but it still made me chuckle. “Okay, now I know you’re sick. Humor is not your strong suit.”

  “Vampires in general or me in particular?”

  “You in particular. You must have supped from a drunk.”

  “Well, if you’re going to be insulting, I’ll leave you. See you tomorrow.”

  For an instant the tall, broad-shouldered figure was silhouetted against the doorway of the barn, and then he was gone. Then I realized he never had answered the second question. So where had he been?

  16

  Even though intellectually I didn’t agree with Cartwright’s final words, they stayed with me. Maybe that’s what makes demagoguery work. Why had the Powers gone public? Historians argued that it was the times—the 1960s was a time of social and cultural turmoil. I wasn’t sure that held together. Sure, groups had been looking for a place—African Americans, women, gays, young people—but they were, for the most part, the disenfranchised. The Powers had a place—they were in charge. The vampires and the hounds had been pulling the strings from behind the scenes for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and it had worked really well for them. Why reveal themselves?

  I sat on the sofa in my apartment, elbows on knees, chin in hand. The winter night had crept in while I sat staring morosely into the fireplace, and I hadn’t really noticed. The only light was provided by the gas flames licking fitfully around the fake logs.

  I forced my thoughts back to the Álfar. They hadn’t been deeply involved in human affairs prior to 1963. Oh, they occasionally stole a human child or led an unwary human away into the Fey, but after the Powers went public they began spending more and more time on our side of the reality divide. So far their deep involvement had been just in the entertainment industry, but what if they decided to move into the political arena? If they could use their preternatural charisma to win parts, why not to win a seat in Congress? Or the White House?

  There was something in my last thought that had me straightening and considering, but before I could quite grasp it there was a knock on my door. I jumped because I wasn’t expecting anyone. I stood, hesitated, staring at the door. The knock came again. I stood on tiptoes and looked through the peep hole. It was Qwendar. I removed the chain and opened the door.

  “Pardon me for calling so late. I was hesitant to disturb you, but I wondered how your inquiries were proceeding?” He stood, holding his hat.

  For a moment I just stood and blinked at him. How had he gotten my home address? And even though he wasn’t an actual party to the arbitration, this was pretty irregular. Then the slump in his shoulders and the deepened lines in his face penetrated. He looked exhausted, and I felt bad for my suspicions and rudeness. I stepped back and opened the door wider.

  “Please come in. And you’re not disturbing me. I won’t go to bed for hours yet. Can I get you anything?”

  “If you are going to have something.”

  “I thought I’d make hot chocolate.”

  “That sounds lovely.” I busied myself in the kitchen with a box of cocoa, sugar, and milk.

  “You don’t use a mix?” he asked, taking a seat at the small bar that divided the kitchen area from the rest of the apartment.

  “No, they’re too sweet.”

  “That would never be a problem for my kind. We love all manner of confection.”

  “The Álfar have a sweet tooth. Who knew?” I began to stir the milk to keep it from scorching. “I visited Human First.”

  “And?”

  “And … nothing. I don’t think they’re behind it. Oh, they’ll make hay over what happened with Kerrinan and Jondin, but I can’t see how they could have caused it.” I frowned.

  “You seem perturbed.”

  “I thought I had a train of thought that was going someplace, but…” I shrugged and mixed the chocolate and sugar paste into the milk.

  “And then I disturbed you, and you lost it,” he said rather ruefully.

  “It was probably just smoke.”

  “Why don’t you talk about it. It might help you pursue it to a conclusion.” I started to shake my head. “Linnet, our goals are the same. We joined this arbitration so I could try to protect my people. You think my people are being targeted and you’re trying to help them. Wouldn’t it make more sense if we pooled our information? Worked together?”

  I blew out a breath, pushed back my hair with my forearm. “Okay. I was just reflecting how the other Powers—vampires
and werewolves—had been affecting human events from behind the scenes, and now that they’re public they’re still doing it, just making no bones about it.” I filled two mugs with the bubbling chocolate. “But the Álfar haven’t really done that, and when you did decide to enter human society your people ended up in entertainment.”

  “Meaning?” he probed.

  “That’s the problem, I don’t really see where this is taking me. Other than the fact that vampires and werewolves have enormous influence over law and commerce, and the Álfar are actors or singers, and yeah, art and culture have a powerful impact on society, but it takes time. Vampires and werewolves are having a lot more immediate impact. So why target you guys?” I shrugged and sipped my hot chocolate. “And werewolves marry human woman too, and Human First isn’t going ape-shit about that. Wish I’d thought to say that to Belinda Cartwright.” I shook my head. “See, I’m just nattering, and it’s going nowhere.”

  Qwendar drained his mug and set it aside. “Perhaps we are both simply, what do you humans say … paranoid? Perhaps there’s nothing more here than simple jealousy.”

  “Doesn’t feel right. What makes two people go suddenly nuts within weeks of each other? Can you do the Álfar whammy on each other?”

  “The glamour works much better on humans. And we use it to make people like us … or love us.” He slid off the bar stool. “And vampires can mesmerize too, and blood is certainly an essential component in their existence.”

  “Interesting. I just can’t see why they’d want to make the Álfar look bad.”

  “It’s puzzling, yes. Well, thank you for the chocolate. I’ll leave you to your evening now.”

  I walked him to the door. He took my hand. “There is something here, I just can’t quite bring it into focus.” I gave his hand a squeeze. “We’ll figure this out.”

  “I believe you will.”

  * * *

  The arbitration resumed the next day. LeBlanc, realizing that Campos, the director, hadn’t actually helped her all that much, had a new expert witness. Unfortunately he was in New York City, which meant an AV expert had joined us in the conference room to handle the linkup. Computers had been placed strategically to create the illusion that Ashley Schultz was seated at the front of the room near to David and me, and our seats had been moved since we couldn’t look sideways at a computer screen. LeBlanc moved along the table handing out a sheaf of papers. They were emblazoned with a heading that read “Q Squared” in a logo that had overtones of an Escher drawing.