“That could not have gone much worse,” he said in a flat tone.
I shrugged. “It probably won’t get any better when Donnie shows up to swab her nails—he’s digging out all the cotton swabs and sandwich bags we have in storage. We don’t have enough evidence kits for all forty donors and can’t exactly run out for more while we’re on lockdown.”
“I think we can safely skip the extra trauma for Ms. Tillman.”
“Why?” I snorted. “Do they not teach theater at Darkly? Or do royal vamps develop a flawless bullshit detector on their one hundred and fiftieth birthday?”
Dante closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I realize that you are not fond of the girls from Darkly Hall. I can appreciate your resentment, but I must ask that you refrain from intimidating them into fleeing.”
“I wasn’t trying to scare her off.” I folded my arms and leaned against his desk. “And why should I resent her or anyone else from Darkly?”
“Ms. Skye, you are an open book.” Dante sighed and gave me a patronizing smile. “Audrey has trained and prepared for this life, while it was thrust upon you. She is taking it in stride, bypassing most of the growing pains you have endured.”
“Taking it in stride?” I scoffed. “So, all her screaming and squawking hysterics earlier, that’s what you consider ‘taking it in stride’?”
“We all grieve in our own way—”
“And that’s not why I dislike Audrey,” I snapped. “You know better than that.”
He pushed away from the doors and walked to me, stopping a few inches away. “There are blood lovers, and there are blood children. I was to Alexander what Audrey will be to me.”
I thought of the marks on her wrist, of the way she lit up at his every touch and compliment. “Does she know that?” I asked.
Dante nodded and eased in closer. “But I need you to know it.”
A knock at the door broke our standoff, and Dante backed away before circling his desk. “Enter,” he called.
The doors opened, and Polly was led into the room. Her face was a swollen mess of tears and snot that she dabbed at with a shredded wad of tissues. I snatched a few fresh ones from a box on Dante’s desk and handed them to her, trying to hide my relief when she didn’t offer me the spent ones to dispose of for her. Still, I played it safe and edged around the duke’s desk, opting to stand beside his chair.
“Ms. Hughes,” Dante began softly as Polly took the chair Kate had sat in moments before. “Do you recall the last time you saw Ms. Onishi, my harem manager?”
“She took…my blood…after dinner,” Polly rasped in between heaving breaths. Then she dissolved into a fit of sobs that I had to raise my voice to be heard over.
“Do you know who else’s blood she was planning to draw tonight?”
“No,” Polly wailed. “I don’t know anything.”
“Well, clearly you know something,” I said under my breath. Dante shot me a warning glare. “What? Why else would she be carrying on like this?”
“That guard was so angry.” Polly covered her face with both the new and old tissues. “I thought he was going to kill someone. Did he kill someone?”
“You were in the lounge. I saw you at the top of the stairs.” I frowned at her. “But you didn’t see Yoshiko come through with the blood?”
Polly shook her head and hiccupped. “I was watching a movie with the others. I heard a scream, and then the guard came upstairs and attacked Noah.” She paused to sob. “Is Noah okay?”
“He’s fine—maybe a little sore,” I added, remembering the upturned sofa and the way Murphy had had the poor guy pinned to the floor. “Who else was in the lounge with you, watching the movie?”
Polly shook her head. “I…I don’t have all of their names memorized yet. Hannah, maybe? Oh God, I don’t know.” The pitch of her voice spiked, threatening to degrade into a wail.
“That will be all, Ms. Hughes,” Dante said. “I’ll have one of the guards take you to Audrey’s room where you can stay until we sort all of this out.”
“Thank you,” she sobbed, covering her face again.
After the duke had walked her out and spoke with the guards, we had another moment alone before the next donor was brought down.
“Please tell me whoever you requested next isn’t from Darkly,” I said, squeezing the back of my neck with one hand. The damsel in distress bawling was already grating on my nerves.
“I called for Noah,” Dante said, giving me a tight smile that suggested he was getting tired of the waterworks, too. “We should confirm that he does not require medical attention, and perhaps he will be able to give us a better idea of who all was in the lounge at the time of Yoshiko’s death.”
“If they were watching a movie, like Kate said, it’s doubtful anyone saw anything.” A lump pushed its way up my throat. Dante touched my chin and then my arm, letting his fingers trail softly down my skin. I wanted to take comfort in him, but we had such a long way to go yet.
“I imagine whoever the culprit is will be hesitant to let us swab under their nails,” he said, offering a morsel of hope. It also cued my brain to start working again.
“We need a guard stationed upstairs in the harem’s private quarters, and we should pull roommates back to back, so Yoshiko’s murderer doesn’t get tipped off before we have a chance to collect a sample from them.”
“Good thinking, Ms. Skye.” The inner corners of his eyebrows curled upward, painting his face with the sympathetic light I was so drawn to. “Thank you for your help with this difficult matter. I am ever so grateful to have you by my side this night.”
Another knock cut our moment short, and we parted to begin the interrogation process anew.
* * * * *
By some miracle, we made it through all forty donors with half an hour to spare before sunrise. And not a single damn one of them had seen anything or even flinched when we asked to swab under their nails. Most also cried their eyes out upon hearing about Yoshiko’s death. Even the most recently recruited donors welled up at the news.
I left Dante’s office feeling foolish and defeated. And hungry. It had been over six hours since we’d regrouped over the werewolf blood, but I didn’t have it in me to complain. The guards had to be thirsty, too, and they’d gone without for longer than I had. Of course, I had bigger bats to fry.
I slipped down the back hallway to Dante’s room to see how Ursula was faring. She’d deemed his room safer than her own for the time being, despite the obnoxious number of windows, and had remained behind with a half-full blood pot to keep her company. As my sire, I felt obligated to at least check on her.
All the lights in Dante’s room were off except for the reading lamp on his bedside table. Ursula sat under its pale glow on the floor, in the same spot I’d left her. The black tights she wore blended into the shadows under Dante’s bed, almost as if she’d been hiding under there and had just come out—for a refill on her blood, apparently.
The princess clutched a bloodstained espresso cup in one hand and a teapot in the other, pouring out the last of the blood. I was surprised there was any left at all. She didn’t seem the type who understood the concept of rationing.
“Did you find the assassin?” she asked, her wild, blue eyes searching mine for answers.
“Not yet.”
“Then what are you doing in here? Go do your job!” She chucked the empty blood pot at me. It landed at my feet and bounced off one of my ankles before skittering away. The lid popped open, and a trickle of blood trailed across the hardwood floor.
“Sunrise is in thirty minutes, and we’re waiting for DNA results from the lab,” I said through clenched teeth. “Rest in peace, Your Highness.” I threw my arm to one side for a mocking bow.
I expected Ursula to lob the espresso cup at me next, but it contained the last of her safe-room blood supply. She glared at me as she gulped it down, but I managed to slip out of Dante’s room before she finished it. She’d have to leave her hidey-ho
le if she wanted to have a food fight.
The south wing was quiet. I slowed as I passed the stairwell. The blood had been cleaned from the floor, but the two wolf guards watching the stairs were a dark reminder of all that had happened tonight. I nodded to them before heading on toward my room.
My head ached. I pulled the elastic out of my hair and looped it over my wrist so I could massage my scalp with both hands. A bath sounded like a great idea, but there wasn’t enough time. The sun was already quieting my bones, sapping the energy from my muscles. I needed to lie down.
I opened my bedroom door and was surprised to find the bed empty but the lights on.
“Ms. Starsgard’s shift began an hour ago.” Dante reclined in the chair at my drawing desk with one of my library books open in his hands. “I wondered what had happened to my copy of Ambrogio’s poems,” he said, flipping through the pages fondly. He paused and hummed to himself before reading aloud. “You are sand, traveling across the lifeline of my ageless hand, gathering in the grooves of no woman’s land.”
I hugged myself. “Sounds like something Murphy should read over Yoshiko’s ashes.”
The duke nodded. “Indeed, he might.”
“How’s your pending blood daughter?” I asked, trying to take his words at face value.
“Audrey is quite distraught over Kate’s plans to return to Austin.”
I shrugged. “Ursula is distraught, well…because she’s Ursula.”
Dante laughed softly, then he closed the book of poetry and set it back on my desk, on top of the etiquette book on eye contact. “Would you like to go somewhere with me tomorrow night?” he asked.
I blinked at him. “You mean leave the manor?”
“Yes.”
“Before solving Yoshiko’s murder?”
He sighed. “I am beginning to doubt the nature of her death.”
“But the scratches—”
“—could have been caused by any variety of things.” Dante rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face into his hands. “I have spoken with the forensics department at Blood Vice. The scratches are inconsistent with wounds caused by fingernails, and they contain no DNA other than Ms. Onishi’s own. Which makes me certain that we will not find her DNA in any of the donors’ swab results.”
I raked a hand through my hair and turned my back to him, hiding my disappointment. He’d done everything he could—well, besides set fire to the manor with everyone in it. That seemed like the only way Murphy was going to get the justice he wanted for Yoshiko.
“But it’s so soon after your potential scions were targeted. You’re not even a little bit concerned that this could be somehow be related?”
Dante groaned out an exhausted sigh. “If I suspected every tragedy that befell me was part of some grand conspiracy, I would be cowering in a corner somewhere like our poor princess.”
Maybe it had been just a tragic accident. Yoshiko could have lost her balance, misjudged a step on the stairs. Maybe House Lilith really was unlucky enough to suffer this much misfortune in such a short span of time. In which case, they could join the club. Or, I supposed, I could join the family.
“Does Murphy know about this yet?” I asked, moving on to our next impossible problem.
Dante sighed. “I will break the news to him after his return from the funeral home tomorrow, once he has had a chance to spread Ms. Onishi’s ashes over the lake. And after we’ve returned from Chicago.”
“Chicago?” I spun around to gape at him.
“As much as I sympathize with Mr. Murphy, this household has needs that cannot go unmet,” the duke said. “You may think Ursula…eccentric at times, but she is not incorrect about needing to keep up appearances before our enemies. I suspect that is why she acts out so boldly amongst us, to get it out of her system, as the young humans say.”
“What household need are we picking up in Chicago?” I asked, steering him back on track.
Dante stood and looped his fingers through the straps of my shoulder holster. It was a small, innocent gesture, but my heart reeled at his touch, at the full weight of his gaze. When he was this close, everything felt…intimate.
“We are down a donor-in-waiting for my scion-to-be,” he said, breaking the spell I was under. I didn’t want to talk about Audrey. I wanted his mouth on mine again. Maybe that would help distract me from the gloom saturating the air.
I groaned softly and leaned into him, hoping he would get the hint. His hands stayed on my shoulders though, fingers sliding up and down the holster straps.
“I would like you to come with me to pick out the replacement donor,” Dante continued. “I trust your judgement. And your interviewing skills.”
“My interviewing skills?” I smirked. “Right.”
“Are you turning down my offer, Ms. Skye?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Good.” His breath danced along my cheek and caused me to hold my own for a beat as I waited for him to close the gap. His lips swept in, just barely grazing mine. Then his hands fell away from my shoulders. He retreated, slipping past the bed and me. “Be ready by 7:00 P.M. tonight.”
I huffed out a frustrated sigh as he closed my bedroom door behind him.
Chapter Fifteen
I’d never been on a plane. It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal before Tuesday night, but now I was questioning my lax approach.
Lane drove us to the small airport downtown where Dante kept his private jet and, moments later, we were rolling down the runway. The two guards who were accompanying us on the outing were already stretched out in the back of the plane, one reading a paperback, and the other watching a movie on a small flat screen.
Dante sat across the aisle from me, the picture of calm. He tilted his head and offered a placid smile as if he’d done this a thousand times. For all I knew, he had.
“This plane is as old as you are,” he mused aloud.
“Is that supposed to be comforting?” I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through my nose, wondering if vampires were immune to motion sickness.
The sound of the jet as we gained momentum made my chest tighten. When the armrests on my seat groaned in protest, I realized that I was holding onto them for dear life. Dante’s hand closed over mine and squeezed softly. I strained to hear him over the hum of the engines.
“I have the plane serviced regularly, though I only use it when time or security is of the essence,” he said. “The wolf guards check it for signs of tampering or bombs before each liftoff. It is perfectly safe.”
“Bombs?” I squeaked. “Remind me again why being royalty is so great?”
“Besides holding the highest level of respect—insincere as most of it is—and financial freedom?” he asked, giving me a thoughtful frown. “I suppose that depends on your definition of great.”
The plane bounced over a bump on the runway. I clamped my knees together anxiously as we gained momentum and then sank deeper into my seat. Outside my window, the runway lights turned red. It seemed odd until I realized my panic had triggered the Eye of Blood. The lights blurred and slowly disappeared as we lifted off.
Dante squeezed my hand again, but I was too captivated by the darkness. And then the city appeared, defying the night. The Arch came into view, glowing brightly above the St. Louis skyline and reflecting off the river. The sight stole my breath.
We rose higher, and the city lights shrank below us. The force pressing me into my seat relented, and for a brief second, I felt weightless.
“I really should fly more often.” Dante’s voice sounded far away. I swallowed, and my ears popped.
“Ouch.” I shook my head.
“I’d offer you some gum, but it would only upset your stomach. But perhaps some blood will help.”
A flight attendant appeared with a cart holding a carafe of dark blood and several coffee mugs.
“Refreshment?” she asked.
Dante nodded, and she lifted out a couple of glossy, wooden tables from the side wal
ls of the plane, latching them into place before us. She filled a pair of mugs for Dante and me before moving on to the guards in back.
“Is this another adventure you intend to keep from Ursula?” I asked in between careful sips of blood. It was hotter than I expected, likely kept over a burner until served.
“It shouldn’t be too difficult.” Dante gave me a dry grin. “She’s in one of her moods, and you know how those work. She will sulk in her room for the next night or so until the excitement in the manor dies down.”
“Why don’t you fly more?” I asked, circling back to his earlier comment.
“It is wasteful, for one.” He snorted and gave me a dry grin. “I suppose I do not have Ursula’s same taste for excessive indulgence. There are also greenhouse gases and climate change to take into consideration. When you are immortal, the future of the planet becomes a bit more relevant. That is why House Lilith built wind farms in Colorado, Kansas, and Texas. It is how I ended up in St. Louis, the closest major city to the land where we intend to build our next wind farm, in Illinois.”
Dante paused to smile at me. This was the most I’d heard him talk about the family business—if it even was the family business. There was a chance this was just one iron in House Lilith’s fire. I didn’t know how much information I was privy to as duchess now.
“Listen to me, boring you with all this business talk.” Dante laughed and reached up as if to run his hand through his hair, remembering at the last moment that it was slicked into place with gel—part of his professional persona for the outside world.
“I don’t mind,” I said, setting my mug down on the table in front of me. “Though, I would like to know why we’re picking up this replacement donor personally. You didn’t do that with the others.”
“And you see how well that turned out.” Dante sighed and looked out his window. “It is difficult not to feel responsible for the deaths of those I previously chose.”
“The first one might still be alive,” I said, reaching across the aisle to take his hand this time.
Blood, Sweat, and Tears (Blood Vice Book 6) Page 10
