by Chloe Neill
I didn’t like that he’d seen something I wasn’t entirely ready to talk about. But I’d already crossed that threshold with him once. “Because of the Eiffel Tower.”
He frowned. “The attack?”
I nodded. “It was bad, Connor. The vampires walked through a park where people were just hanging out, being happy. And they killed them because they were pissed at someone else. Vampires are fighting like damned children, and they’re hurting other people to do it.”
“You think vampires are behind this?”
“Not necessarily. But I think it’s wrapped up in the peace talks, and that’s a big, messy bundle of supernaturals. I know Riley wouldn’t do it. And I don’t like people using my father or his House for murder.”
There was something deeply considering in his eyes, and I nearly looked away from the intimacy of his evaluation. “You’ve gotten kind of impressive, brat.”
I narrowed my gaze. “I’m not sure that’s a compliment.”
“It is.” He gestured toward the door. “Fascinating as it is to see this other side of you, I need to get back to work. But you’ll let me know if you find anything?”
“Sure,” I said, and I left him to prepare for his journey.
* * *
• • •
Lulu had grown up in a house in Wicker Park not far from Little Red. When she got a place for herself, she changed neighborhoods, moving to the Near North Side and a loft apartment. Since I’d failed on the souvenir front, I stopped for coffee on the way.
I climbed out of the Auto to look up at the unassuming brick building, the long rows of windows. It looked like a warehouse, which was the architectural calling card for this particular neighborhood.
The other tenants had names listed beside the buzzers for their apartments. The one I assumed was hers, since her name wasn’t listed, bore a splotch of red paint. I mashed the button with an elbow.
“What? I’m working.” Her voice was irritable.
“It’s me,” I said, and the locks disengaged with a snick. I rearranged the coffee cups and yanked open the door before it locked again, then slipped inside and climbed the wide and beaten stairs in the unassuming lobby.
She was on the fourth floor, and one of only two doors in the long hallway. I walked to hers, and since my hands were full, knocked with an elbow.
“It’s open!” she yelled out.
I managed it awkwardly, found myself looking down at a slender black cat. It stared up with green eyes, a swishing tail, and a very suspicious expression.
“A cat is giving me dirty looks,” I said.
“That’s Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
“Hi, Eleanor.” I gave her a smile.
In response, she hissed at me.
“She doesn’t like nicknames,” Lulu called out. “It’s Eleanor of Aquitaine or nothing.”
I lifted an eyebrow at the cat. She stared back, unblinking and unmoved.
It occurred to me that I didn’t know any vampires who had cats. Maybe cats didn’t like vampires. But I was an adult, so I’d try again.
“Hello, Eleanor of Aquitaine.”
Her tail stopped flicking, but her expression didn’t change. Then she turned and walked away, tail still swishing as she moved.
“Rude,” I murmured, and kicked the door closed.
Lulu’s loft was a rectangle of space with a cluster of rooms in the middle. The floors were wide planks of well-used wood. The walls were sandblasted brick, and were hung with enormous paintings in brilliant colors, art show posters, and weavings of tufted yarn. She’d put some kind of colored plastic over the glass in the long row of casement windows, so a rainbow spilled into the loft from the streetlight outside.
There was a low couch along one wall, a plank coffee table in front of it. In the middle of the room sat a long table topped with rolls of canvas, cups of paintbrushes, and tubes and jars of paint. Part of the table slanted up to hold a work in progress at an angle for easier painting. Lulu stood in front of it, dowsing a brush in clear liquid.
There was a kitchen along the wall in the middle, a long bank of open shelves and cabinets with an island in front. And on the facing wall, an old-fashioned secretary cabinet with an aluminum chair in front, a pile of bills on the open desktop.
“This place is . . . amazing.”
“Thanks.” She went to the sink, washed her hands.
“I brought coffee from Leo’s. Mocha for you; double espresso for me.” I put hers on the island, took mine, and opened the tab that kept liquid from sloshing in the Auto. They deducted extra funds from your account if you dirtied up the interior.
Lulu laughed. “You made it nearly forty-eight hours without a Leo’s run.”
“Not even,” I said. “My parents met me at the airport with a cup.”
“Addict.”
“Loud and proud.”
Lulu snorted. “Either way, thank you, because I need the jolt. I’ve been at this for hours.” She rolled her shoulders as she dried off her hands, then moved toward the coffee.
I walked to a bookshelf made of plumbing fixtures and unpainted boards, surveyed the photographs spread across the top. There was one of Lulu’s parents, one of the cat, and one of us. We’d been in junior high—made up almost entirely of knees and elbows—and convinced we were badasses.
“A lot of leggings in this picture,” I said lightly.
“And pointy eyeliner. We must have been going through a phase.”
“Evidently so.”
“Riley didn’t kill anyone,” Lulu said suddenly.
So much for the preliminaries.
I looked back and found Lulu at the island, one leg crossed over the other, the drink cradled in her hands. And misery in her eyes.
“No,” I said, walking back. “I don’t think he did. I think someone else did, then set him up for it.”
She looked up. “Why would they do that?”
“I don’t know yet. Have you talked to him recently?”
“No.” She adjusted in her seat, obviously uncomfortable. “Not since the breakup, when we had to exchange some stuff. But other than that, no. I haven’t talked to him.”
She sipped her drink as if looking for something to do, something to fill the quiet that she couldn’t fill with words.
“He’s at the brick factory,” I said. “If you want to go see him, I mean.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.” But the look on her face said she was conflicted.
“Okay.” I climbed onto a stool, sipped my coffee. “What about the Pack? Do you know of anything weird going on with them? Anything someone might target Riley about?”
“No, or not that I’m aware of.”
“Would you be?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. I’ve been at Little Red more in the last few weeks than I have in the past four years. So I’m around.” She lifted a shoulder. “You know they’re going to Alaska?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Riley was supposed to go with them. He won’t be going now—at least not until this is cleared up. But I don’t see how that would matter enough for someone to kill over it.”
“Me, either.”
“Okay,” I said, and put down the coffee cup. I shifted on the stool to pull out the bauble I’d found at Cadogan House. “What about this?”
She didn’t take the handkerchief or the object, but leaned over to peer at it. “There’s magic in this,” Lulu said. “You don’t have to use magic to recognize it.”
I didn’t detect any magic, so it must have been faint. “Does it look familiar to you?”
“No. I mean, it’s pretty, but not familiar. What is it?”
“I don’t know. I found it at Cadogan House. Near where Tomas was killed.”
“Maybe someone dropped it,” Lulu said. “I mean, there was a party, ri
ght? Doesn’t mean it came from the killer.”
“No, it doesn’t.” But there was still something about it that seemed familiar, and that bugged me.
“Didn’t you take video of the reception or something?”
“Yeah, for Seri,” I said absently, peering at the gold. There was dirt in some of the filigree, but that might have been from my stepping on it. “Did you want to watch it?”
“No.” She chuckled. “Aren’t there supernaturals in that video? You know”—she waved a finger at the brooch—“dressed up?”
I looked up, stared at her for a moment. “Oh my god, you’re a genius.”
She huffed, sipped her drink. “You may be the Watson to my Sherlock.”
“Who’s your Moriarty?”
“TBD,” she said. “Let’s see some fringe and fangs.”
* * *
• • •
There wasn’t much of either in the reception. Plenty of silk and sequins, a dryad with skin patterned like birch bark, and, of course, Tabby, who was too sexy for her shirt.
But we didn’t see the brooch. Not pinned to a sash or a bodice or a hat.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe it’s a total coincidence. A bit of jewelry dropped sometime between 1883”—that’s when Cadogan House was founded—“and earlier tonight.”
“Or it could be a fairy.”
I tossed my empty cup in the recycling box. “Yeah, there were a few fairies there. But more vampires.”
“No. Not any fairy. This fairy.”
I turned back. “What?”
With a satisfied smile, she pointed at the screen. “I found your brooch wearer.”
“You are kidding.”
I hustled back to Lulu and the screen, watched the video she’d pulled up and enhanced. Something glinted on the tunic worn by one of the fairies—tall and pale, with sleek, dark hair and chiseled cheekbones—who followed Claudia and Ruadan in the procession down the runway. As he moved, the glint resolved. The gold knot was pinned at his throat.
“You were not kidding.”
“Nope. Do you know him?”
“No.” I hadn’t seen him at the party, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been skulking around.
Of course, the fact that a fairy had worn the pin found near the crime scene didn’t mean it had been used to commit murder. It could have just fallen off the tunic.
“Why would a fairy have killed an ambassador from Europe?” she asked, when the parade wound to a close.
“I don’t know. The fairies were dicks at the first session, and so was Tomas. Both of them railed about vampire and shifter conspiracies.”
“And then a shifter is accused of killing a vampire. That’s convenient.”
I looked at her. “Yeah,” I said slowly. “That is convenient. Maybe they did want to disrupt the peace talks. I mean, that mission was at least partially accomplished by the fairies when they barged in yesterday, but the murder got tonight’s session canceled, too. But it still seems really indirect. Why not just attack the talks themselves—literally, not in the fairy-interruption way? Or take credit for the murder because you think it will get you some political traction?”
“I don’t know.” She put down the screen, folded her hands on the island, and looked at me. “Maybe we should ask them.”
“Ask who?”
“The fairies. I have a car.” She held up her fists and mimed a steering wheel. “We get into it, go to the castle, and ask them.”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely not. That’s too dangerous.” And a violation of so many rules that even Connor might have balked at it.
“It’s not a risk-free idea,” she admitted. “But what’s the other option? We sit around while Riley’s in lockup?”
“We could end up dead.”
“That’s true for you every time the sun rises. The only thing that matters is what you do in the dark.”
I narrowed my gaze at her. “That was really philosophical.”
She lifted a shoulder. “I’ve been reading more since you’ve been gone. I’ve even got a card for the Cadogan House library.”
“How did you get a library card?”
“I’m a friend of the House,” she said dryly. “Supernatural parentage has some advantages.”
“Doesn’t that violate the magic ban?” I asked.
“We aren’t talking about magic,” she said, hopping off the stool and emptying her cup. “We’re talking about murder and a friend of mine. Why do you think I’m painting that mural?”
She walked to the kitchen counter, plucked a key fob from a silver bowl, looked back at me with a dare in her eyes. “Are we doing this?”
I tapped fingers against the granite. I shouldn’t have been considering it. I don’t want this blowing back on my parents.
But I thought of Tomas, of blood spilled at my father’s House. I thought of Riley in his sad gray scrubs and the desperation in his eyes. And I thought of the future. If the perpetrator was willing to kill at Cadogan and frame a good man, what else were they willing to do? How could I just stand by?
“This has to be low-key,” I said, decision made. “No snark, no sarcasm. We just ask polite questions. I’d really prefer the Ombudsman not hear about this.”
Lulu winced. “Shit. I forgot about that—the deal with Cadogan House.”
“I think I have an out there,” I said, and told her my theory.
Her whistle was long and low. “Your dad is not going to like that—you not being an official Cadogan vampire.”
“No, he is not. And the Ombudsman might not buy it. So we need to be really, really careful.” And when it came to supernaturals, even “really careful” could go bad.
I tried to figure out how to politely phrase the next question without expressly mentioning her magic avoidance. “If things go bad, can you take care of yourself?”
“I’ve been learning Krav Maga. And there’s also this.” She moved to a narrow door, pushed aside a broom and mop that tried to escape, and pulled out a black duffel bag. She brought it back, put it on the counter, and unzipped it.
“Damn, Lulu.”
It was filled with weapons, mostly bladed. Sheathed knives. Throwing stars. Handguns. Even a wakizashi, a smaller sword carried by samurai as a companion to the longer katana.
“Dad taught me a few things,” she said.
I’d forgotten Catcher had been an expert, had given my mother her first katana lessons. From what I knew about him and his particularity where weapons were concerned, I didn’t think he’d approve of Lulu’s Everything in the Duffel Bag method of storage.
She pulled out the wakizashi and a handgun, then rezipped it and put it away again.
She belted the short sword expertly, checked the handgun expertly to see if it was loaded, then slipped it into her pocket. “Ready to go.”
“I can see that.”
“One thing,” she said, then held up a finger. She pulled a sticky note from a pad on the counter, scribbled something, and stuck the note to the refrigerator door.
I stepped closer to read it. GONE TO QUESTION FAIRIES, it read, then listed the date, followed immediately by, IF NOT BACK IN 24 HRS PLZ RETRIEVE BODIES.
“You’ve also gotten more morbid in my absence.”
“I dwell in darkness,” she said flatly. “The ravens are my minions and the moon my master.”
“I know I haven’t lived in Chicago for a while, but do you really think we can just drive right up to the castle and ask for an invite?”
“We’ll find out,” she said, then looked down at the cat. “Eleanor of Aquitaine, guard the door. We’re going hunting.”
THIRTEEN
Calling Lulu’s vehicle a car was too generous. It was, at best, a caricature of a car. A soup can rolled onto its side, with pasted-on tires that had more in
common with doughnuts than road-ready wheels.
“An Auto could be here in minutes,” I said with a grimace.
“Autos are corporate; corporations lie.” She unlocked the door, began to wedge her way inside. “It’s small and it’s ugly, but it runs on used cooking oil. Zero Waste, remember?”
That explained why it smelled like peanuts and fried chicken. I folded myself—origami style—into the front seat. “No point in paying for aesthetics or space.”
“Exactly.”
She hit the ignition, which I assumed released a snack to the hamsters under the hood.
I hoped to god we wouldn’t need a getaway car.
* * *
• • •
The moon was nearly full, only a fingernail of shadow along the edge, and it cast an eerily strong glow over the gravel where we’d parked across the street from the fairies’ home.
When they’d followed vampires, shifters, and sorcerers into the public sphere twenty years ago, they’d bought an unused tract of land in South Loop along the south fork of the Chicago River. The strip of land had been an empty lot for years. They’d built a fence around the property and a castle in the middle.
A narrow path of crushed white stone led onto the grounds beneath an arched gate in the iron fence. At the end of the straight drive was the dark stone wall of the castle. There were round, crenelated towers at each corner, square towers at the midpoint of each side, and a gatehouse in front.
“You have to go through the gatehouse to get in,” Lulu said. “The courtyard’s behind that—it’s called a bailey—and it circles the building that holds the living quarters. That’s called the keep. There will probably be a lot of guards.”
“You really looked into this fairy-castle thing.”
“I’m nosy. We could skip the steel,” she said, looking down at the wakizashi in her hand. “Reduces the odds of the OMB finding out about it.”
“No weapons is not an option. We both go in with what we can carry. And are people really calling it that?”
“OMB? Yes. Fewer syllables.”
“I don’t approve.”
“Color me shocked.”
