The demons and half-demons huddled together in a corner, and just after a very skinny female said something, they all burst into laughter. Dahlia looked for one half-demon computer geek she knew better than the others. With a frisson of pleasure, she spotted Melponeus’s reddish skin and chestnut curls in the cluster. Their eyes met. The half-demon and Dahlia exchanged personal smiles. They had had some memorable evenings together in Dahlia’s bedroom on the lower level of the mansion. The glitter in Melponeus’s pale eyes told Dahlia that the demon wouldn’t mind a replay.
She might retrieve some pleasure from this dismal evening, after all.
A few creatures Dahlia didn’t recognize were scattered through the crowd. No fairies, of course; vampires loved fairies to death, literally. But there were other creatures of the fae present, and a witch. Joaquin had a reputation as a liberal, and he’d made up the party list and presented it to Lakeisha, who’d retained her post as the executive assistant to the sheriff despite the change in regimes. Lakeisha had sniffed at some of the inclusions, but she had obeyed without a verbal comment. All the vampires were walking softly and carefully until they learned their new leader’s character. Since he’d lived on his own, not in the nest, until his appointment as sheriff, Joaquin was a largely unknown element.
As Taffy took Dahlia’s arm to steer her over to the buffet to join Don, Dahlia said, “I’m not enjoying myself, though I ought to be.”
“Why not?” Taffy asked. “The humans will be gone soon, and we can be ourselves. It’s not like we haven’t seen this coming. Cedric has been getting more and more set in his ways. He’s lazy. He’s sloppy. A waistcoat every day. So dated! He can’t even pretend to belong to this century.”
Like all successful vampires, Dahlia knew that the key to surviving for centuries was adaptation. And the most conspicuous adaptation was following the trend in clothes and language. This had been essential when vampires existed in secret, so they could blend in with a crowd long enough to cut out their prey. Vampires were an increasingly familiar presence in business and politics, but they found that society still accepted them more easily if they mimicked modern Americans. It was true, too, that old habits died hard. It had been only six years since the undead had “come out,” and to vampires that was less than the blink of an eye.
“I did see that Cedric would have to be replaced,” Dahlia said. “I don’t know Joaquin well, and maybe I’m worried about how he will rule, and how living in the nest will be with him in residence. At least he had a very conventional ascension.”
“It couldn’t have been more standard,” Taffy agreed. “And soon the guests will be gone and we can amuse ourselves. I’m pleased with Joaquin’s first steps. The mansion is looking beautiful, more beautiful than it did for my wedding.” Taffy tapped the newly polished wooden floor with the toe of her boot. The reception room, which was large and full of dark leather furniture and scattered rugs, was at the back of the mansion and looked out onto the garden. Taffy had gotten married in that garden one memorable night. Though the night was chilly the fountain was splashing away in the dimly lit courtyard outside the French doors. The lights didn’t need to be bright; vampires have excellent night vision.
Dahlia was proud that the mansion, which housed the vampire nest of Rhodes and was the area headquarters for all vampires, was polished and sparkling, clean and newly redecorated. However, Dahlia’s pride had a certain nostalgic tinge. Though for decades they’d all tried to prod the old sheriff, Cedric, into installing new carpet and modernizing the bathrooms, she found that she missed the old fixtures. And she missed the former sheriff, too. Maybe he counted as an old fixture.
“I’m going to talk to Cedric,” she said.
“Not the smartest move, homes,” Taffy cautioned. Taffy always tried to use current slang, though sometimes she got it wrong or was off by five years . . . or ten.
“I know,” Dahlia said. The new sheriff, Joaquin, was certainly keeping an eye open to see who approached Cedric; but Dahlia was not afraid of Joaquin, though she did regard him with a certain respect for his devious ways. The ousting of Cedric had been handled with a sort of ruthless finesse. Cedric, sunk into what he thought would always be his cushy job, had been foolishly complacent and unaware. “I’ll join you later,” she told Taffy. “Though I may stop to have a word with Melponeus, too.”
“Playing with fire,” Taffy said, grinning broadly.
“Yes, we did that last time.” Even half-demons could produce fireballs. The memory caused Dahlia to have her own tight smile on her lips as she approached the former sheriff.
“Cedric,” she said, inclining her head very slightly. Even Dahlia didn’t care to provoke Joaquin by appearing to offer Cedric obeisance.
“Dahlia,” he said, his voice laden with melancholy. “See how the peacock preens?”
Joaquin, in the center of a cluster of other vampires, was dressed to kill. Obviously Joaquin felt like the king of the world on his ascension night. In his thin, dark hand he held a goblet of Royalty (a blend of the blood of various European royals, who could keep their crumbling castles open with the money they made by tapping into their own veins). His favorite artiste, Jennifer Lopez, was playing in the background. He was wearing a very sharp dark gray suit with a pale gray silk shirt, and in his crimson tie was an antique pearl stickpin. Fawning all over Joaquin was Glenda, a flapper-era vamp who had never been Dahlia’s favorite nest sister.
“You could use a little preening, Cedric,” she observed. Cedric was wearing fawn-colored pants and a white linen shirt with a flowered waistcoat, his favorite ensemble. He had many near-duplicates of all three pieces hanging in his closet.
Cedric ignored her comment. “Glenda looks good,” he said. In the past Glenda had slipped into Cedric’s bedroom from time to time, more to keep the sheriff sweet than from any great affection. Dahlia had often seen the two clipping roses in the mansion garden at night. They’d both been ardent rose growers in life—or at least, Glenda said she had been.
Glenda, who was no more than ninety, did actually look very tempting this evening in a thin blue silk slip dress with absolutely no undergarments. She was smoothing Joaquin’s shirt with the air of someone who knew what lay beneath the silk. Dahlia harbored a certain appreciation for Glenda’s cleverness.
“You know she’s trash,” Dahlia told Cedric.
“But such delicious trash.” After tossing his head to get his long pale hair out of his way, Cedric took a pull on his bottle of Red Stuff, a cheap brand of the synthetic blood vampires drank so they could pretend they didn’t crave or require the real thing. This was sheer affectation; Dahlia had watched Cedric approach a donor.
Red Stuff was a far cry from Royalty in a crystal goblet. Cedric’s mustache drooped, and even the golden flowers and vines in the pattern on his waistcoat looked withered.
Having served their purpose, the human donors were being ushered out of the large reception room by a smiling young vampire. They’d be taken to the kitchen and fed a snack, allowed to recover from their “donation,” and returned to their collection point. This had been found to be the most efficient method of dealing with the humans the agency sent. If they weren’t shepherded every step of the way, these humans showed a distressing tendency to want to hide in the mansion so they could donate again and again. Some vampires weren’t strong-willed enough to resist, and then . . . dead donors and unwelcome attention from the police followed.
The only donor left in the room was the young man who’d irritated Dahlia. He seemed to be in the process of irritating Don, Taffy’s husband, packmaster of Rhodes. That proved his stupidity. Dahlia turned back to Cedric.
“Will you stay in the nest?” Dahlia asked. She was genuinely curious. If she’d found herself in Cedric’s position, she would have packed her bags the second the king chose Joaquin.
“I’ll find an apartment elsewhere, sooner or later,” Cedric said indifferently, and Dahlia thought that this perfectly illustrated Cedric’s drawbacks
as a leader.
Though he’d been a dynamic sheriff in his heyday, Cedric had gradually become slow . . . and that was the nicest way to put it. This indolence and complacency, creeping into Cedric’s rulings and decisions over the decades, had been his downfall. It was no surprise to anyone but Cedric that he’d been challenged and ousted. To the newer vamps, the only surprise was that Cedric had ever been named to the position in the first place.
“The situation won’t change,” Dahlia said. Cedric would make himself a figure of fun if he gloomed around the mansion during Joaquin’s reign. “I’m sure you’ve saved money during your time in office,” she added, by way of encouragement. After all, all the vampires who lived in the nest contributed to their sheriff’s bank account, and so did the other vampires of Rhodes who chose to live on their own.
“Not as much as you would think,” Cedric said, and Dahlia could not restrain a tiny gesture of irritation. Her sympathy with the ex-sheriff was exhausted. She excused herself. “Melponeus has asked to speak to me,” she lied.
Cedric waved a dismissive hand with a ghost of his former graciousness.
While Dahlia strode across the carpet to the cluster of demons, not the least hampered by her very high heels, she glanced back to see Cedric open the door to the hall leading to the kitchen. He stepped through at the same time as Taffy and Don. Glenda called, “Taffy!” and passed through after them.
Then Dahlia stopped in front of Melponeus, his fellow demons clearing the way for her with alacrity. Though Dahlia was a straightforward woman by nature, she was also incredibly conscious of her own dignity, and she didn’t care for the leering element in the smiles the demon’s buddies were giving her. Melponeus himself surely knew that. After the barest moment of conversation, he swept Dahlia away to an empty area.
“I apologize for my friends,” he said instantly. Dahlia forced her rigid little face to relax and look a bit more welcoming. “They see a woman as lovely as you, they can’t regulate their reactions.”
“You can, apparently?” Dahlia said, just to watch Melponeus flounder. He knew her better than she’d thought, because after a moment’s confused explanation, he laughed. For a few minutes, they had a wonderful time with verbal foreplay, and then they danced. “Perhaps later . . .” Melponeus began, but he was interrupted by a scream.
Screams were not such an unusual thing at the vampire nest, but since this one came in the middle of an important social occasion, it attracted universal attention. Every head whipped around to look east, to the wing occupied on the ground floor by the kitchen.
“Don’t move,” called Joaquin, to stem the surge of the crowd in the direction of the commotion. Somewhat to Dahlia’s surprise, everyone obeyed him. She found that interesting.
Even more interesting was the fact that Joaquin searched the crowd until his eyes met hers. “Dahlia,” he said, in lightly accented English, “take Katamori with you and find out what’s happened.” Katamori had been something of a policeman a couple of centuries ago.
Dahlia had to work to keep her face expressionless. “Yes, Sheriff,” she said, and jerked her head at Matsuda Katamori, a vampire who had an apartment near Little Japan. Katamori, who appeared just as surprised as Dahlia at being singled out, immediately glided to her side. They moved quickly to the door to the passage leading to the mansion’s kitchen.
It wasn’t a wide space, and the carpet had been installed to deaden sound, not to beautify. Both the vampires were alert as they moved silently down the passage to the kitchen. The swinging door had been propped open.
When the mansion had been built in the early 1900s, the builder could not have imagined that the kitchen would be used by non-eaters. The white tile floors and the huge fixtures had been maintained, even updated, once or twice during the century that had passed. When Cedric had bought the mansion at a bargain price (glamour had been involved), he’d left the kitchen as though it would still be needed to prepare a banquet. Normally, the stainless steel fixtures shone in the overhead lights suspended from the high ceiling.
Now the stainless steel was splashed with red. The smell of blood was overwhelming.
From where they stood just inside the doorway, Dahlia and Katamori couldn’t see the body because of the long wooden table running down the middle of the room, but a body was undoubtedly there. The only thing living in the kitchen was one of the half-demons, a skinny girl Dahlia hadn’t met before. The girl was standing absolutely still, very close to the corpse, if Dahlia’s nose was accurate, and her hands were up in the air. Smart.
Dahlia enjoyed the smell of blood, but she preferred her blood to be fresh and its source living, as did every vampire but the rare pervert. Once the blood had been out of the living body for more than a couple of minutes, it lost much of its enticing smell, at least to Dahlia’s nose. From the delicate twitch of Katamori’s nostrils, he felt much the same.
The girl’s feet were hidden from view by the old wooden table, originally intended for staff meals and food preparation. But the blood smell was emanating from the area around her, and red had splashed the gleaming range and refrigerator on the south wall. She was standing squarely in front of the refrigerator.
The half-demon girl opened her mouth to speak, but Dahlia held up her hand. The girl closed her mouth instantly.
“Is any of this blood yours?” Dahlia asked.
The girl shook her head.
Dahlia and Katamori looked at each other. Dahlia didn’t have to look up far to meet his eyes. He waited for her instructions. She was the senior vampire. She liked this silent acknowledgment a lot. Dahlia said, “I’ll go right, you take left.” She didn’t know much about Katamori, but she did know that his reputation as a fighter was almost as formidable as her own.
Without a word, the slightly built Japanese vampire began working his way around the north side of the table, his eyes and ears and nose working overtime. The north wall featured huge windows, now black. The effect was unpleasant, as if the night were watching the scene in the kitchen, but Dahlia was not about to be distressed by any nighttime creepiness. She herself was the thing that went bump in the night.
She began circling the table to the south side. The stove tops and ovens, a stainless steel prep table with pots and pans on a shelf underneath, and an industrial refrigerator and a freezer filled the wall. A few steps revealed the crime scene. The half-demon girl was standing stock-still on the edge of the pool of blood that had flowed from the victim. Dahlia took in the whole picture, then began noting the details.
The corpse was that of the young man who had irritated her, the human donor she’d last observed having words with Don. The man’s throat had been torn out. Dahlia had seen much worse in her long, long existence, but she was irritated at the waste of the blood.
The half-demon girl had not a speck of blood on her, except for her shoes, which were red Converse high-tops, now somewhat darker around the rubber soles. Dahlia raised her delicate black eyebrows and looked across the room.
“Katamori?” she said.
“Lots of people have been through,” Katamori answered.
From this laconic response, Dahlia understood that he’d found nothing tangible on his side of the room, but that there were complex scent trails. That made sense. The north side of the kitchen was the natural route to take to get to the door on the far end of the long room. This door led into a mudroom with hooks for wet weather gear and gardening clothes. On the other side of the mudroom, a heavier door opened out onto the broad apron marking the end of the service driveway. All the humans who’d come to the mansion to donate earlier in the evening had both entered and left the mansion through that door.
“Please stay where you are for the moment,” Dahlia said to the half-demon, who bobbed her head in a series of sharp nods. Since the blood pool and the body took up the whole of the floor between the appliances and the table, Dahlia bent her knees and leaped over the table, landing lightly on her amazing heels on the other side.
She met Katamori at the end of the table, and together they looked back at the body. There was a series of bloody footprints leading away from the corpse, footprints too large to be those of the half-demon girl. These prints led to the first exit door, the door to the mudroom. Together, they examined it. There were no bloody fingerprints on the knob or the glass panes. Dahlia bent over to sniff the knob, then shrugged. “A bloody hand touched it, but that tells us nothing,” she said, and pushed the door open. Katamori tensed, ready for anything.
The mudroom was empty.
The two vampires stepped into the small space. The floor was covered with a rubber mat, and there was a bench running along each side. Underneath were stored a few pairs of boots, some of which had been there for forty years. A coat or two hung from the row of hooks mounted above the benches. At least one of the coats had been there for two decades, an elaborate black coat with a huge fur collar. “I don’t think anyone will return to get this one,” Katamori said, and pushed it with his finger. A cloud of dust rose up. Dahlia noticed that most of the hooks were similarly covered in dust. Only two of the hooks were shiny enough to indicate they’d been used recently.
The knob of the solid door that led to the outside was pristine to the eye, and when Dahlia bent to smell she got only a whiff of blood, a slightly weaker trace than that on the inner knob. “Left this way,” she told Katamori. “Let’s finish the kitchen, then we’ll report.”
They turned back into the kitchen.
Before they’d left, the humans had piled their plates and cups by the sink. Fainting humans were bad for business, so the agency had insisted the vampires take a tip from the blood bank in offering refreshments. Nothing to be found there; the victim hadn’t approached that area.
Down These Strange Streets Page 2
