Killer's Gambit

by Hermione Stark

  By the number of sleek and expensive cars parked in their driveway, the soiree was well underway.

  The servant tried to lead us in the opposite direction to the rose garden cavern where the soiree was taking place, but I refused to follow her and headed straight for the cavern. She cried out in dismay, trying to stop me, but she seemed hesitant to actually touch me, no doubt having heard that I was the one who had skewered Marielle with a magical sword that had appeared out of thin air.

  We could hear music playing as we approached the cavern, and the sounds of many voices. Perhaps another servant had scurried ahead to warn Audriett, because she stalked out of the cavern to intercept us before we could disturb her party. She was closely followed by Marielle and Rodrigge. The two women were dressed in sweeping floor-length evening gowns that looked worth my annual salary. Rodrigge’s tuxedo did nothing to improve his usual slimy, greasy-haired self. I really could not imagine what the gorgeous Marielle saw in him.

  Marielle was eying Storm up with great interest. Rodrigge was sulking at her side.

  “I cannot allow you to disturb my guests,” said Audriett in a perfectly pleasant tone. “If you’ll follow me…” She tried to lead us away to a private room, but I refused to move.

  “Here it’s fine.” I said.

  Here was the perfect spot; it was near enough to the vicinity of her guests to make the vampires feel uncomfortable and far enough away that the guests would not overhear our conversation.

  Audriett shooed her servant away, her smile still pasted on her face, as this is if this was an entirely ordinary situation. When the servant was gone, leaving the five of us alone, she said, “How can we help you?”

  “Some new information has come to light about the Leonie Ashbeck murder case,” I said. “And we needed to speak with you about it immediately.”

  Behind Audriett, Marielle was glaring at me. She looked like she would happily leap onto me and rip my throat out like she had tried the other night. Clearly her encounter with my sword had not dampened her desire for my blood. It felt good to have Storm’s large comforting presence at my back. Storm was fully armed, of course. It would have been interesting to see a supposedly especially powerful angelus like him battle it out with a vampire, but I had no intention of letting it come to that.

  The next part of what I planned to say was going to be tricky. I had been up all night tormenting myself with how I was going to make this little confrontation work, and got absolutely nowhere. No fresh ideas had magically appeared in my mind. This morning, with the long hours of today spread before me and nothing to do but agonize about how I was going to wing this conversation with the Ronins, I had resorted to passing time by watching some TV shows. It must have been fate, or perhaps my psychic skills had led me towards the exact right show, because something I had seen in one of them had given me the flash of inspiration that had made a very important piece of the puzzle drop into place. And now I just had to hope that the conclusion that I had reached was the correct one.

  “This would really be best if your husband joined us,” I said to Audriett.

  “I have already informed you that Gaius is in seclusion,” she replied coolly.

  Marielle spoke up in a sly voice. “Audriett, perhaps Gaius would be the best person to handle—”

  “Quiet,” Audriett snapped at her.

  I had a feeling that Marielle was not accustomed to being spoken to in this manner, and indeed Marielle glowered at Audriette as if she would like to do something very unpleasant to her.

  “What did you have to tell us?” said Audriett to me.

  “One thing I never mentioned when I came to visit you all the other day was that I am a psychic,” I said.

  I noticed that all three of the Ronins appeared to stiffened slightly. Good.

  I continued, “When I was in this house I had a psychic vision, but I never fully understood what I was seeing at the time. Since then it’s become clear to me.”

  “A psychic vision?” said Rodrigge in a scathing tone.

  However the two female vampires did not seem to take my words slightly. “What did you see?” said Audriett.

  “Your son Steffane has insisted that he was innocent, and we now know that in fact Steffane and Leonie really were in love, just like he claimed. Which leaves Steffane without a motive for murdering Leonie.”

  “That means nothing,” said Marielle. “You are wasting our time.”

  I ignored her. “This makes more plausible that perhaps someone else did murder Leonie. Yet the fact that he and Leonie were found behind a locked door was the one thing I could not figure out. Audriett, you said yourself that Steffane had heavily imbibed his narcotics that night. So in theory he could have been completely passed out, leaving Leonie vulnerable to being murdered by someone.”

  “Impossible,” said Audriett.

  “So it would seem,” I said. “Because how could the murderer have got into that sealed room, murdered Leonie, and then left the room and locked behind them a door which could only be locked from the inside? It’s impossible. There is no way that anyone else got into that stone enclosed chamber. So how did they do it?”

  “They didn’t,” snapped Rodrigge. “It was Steffane. Only someone stupid or with their own agenda would want to believe it was anyone other than Steffane.”

  “In my vision I saw that Leonie had been wearing a gown with an extremely tight, corseted bodice that night. And I saw a skewer. A long thin skewer being thrust into her torso and removed so quickly that Leonie didn’t even notice it had happened.”

  Marielle gave a shrill bark of laughter. “Steffane always did enjoy his bedroom toys.” She took a quick glance at Rodrigge and quickly added, “Or so I heard.”

  “This happened before Steffane took Leonie up to his bedroom,” I said. “This happened during the party itself. But Leone did not bleed out immediately. Her bodice was corseted so tightly that it closed her own flesh up over the wound, and she carried on that night not aware that she had already been mortally injured. Then later, when Steffane took her up to his bedroom and removed her bodice, that extremely deep and well-placed wound opened up. Perhaps during their intimacy they did not even notice at first that she was bleeding to death. The two of them passed out. Her from the loss of blood, and him from his narcotics. And by the time he woke up again she was dead and all of her fresh blood was lying all around him. It must have driven him insane. No wonder he needed to feed from her. And that was how the Agents found him when they broke into his sealed room. Naturally everyone assumed he had done it.”

  There was a moment of silence while everyone absorbed what I had said.

  And then Rodrigge scoffed. “You have no proof. This is all some story that you’ve made up. A psychic vision? It means nothing.”

  “It would mean something to a jury,” I said, “Should the case come back to trial again.”

  “Absolutely not,” said Audriett in a steely voice. “That will not happen. You do not have enough evidence for a new trial. The incompetency of your Agency people led to Leonie’s body being lost, as I recall. You cannot prove any of this happened! You will be dredging up old ghosts for no purpose at all. What is the point of giving Steffane fresh hope when in the end it will not lead to his release from prison? This family has suffered enough. I will not allow this.”

  “Leonie’s body may have gone missing,” said Storm, “But that did not mean her autopsy had not already been partially completed. The coroner will take another look at his notes. With this new theory of the crime, who knows what evidence the judge will allow us to admit into the trial? But as you said, this need not be a painful experience for your family. We came here to offer you that opportunity.”

  I knew that Storm was bluffing, because he had told me that the autopsy on Leonie’s body had not been carried out. Nobody had known about the skewer wound in her body. It was just my theory. I didn’t even know for sure if it was true, but I was certain it must be true. It was the memory of those
skewers dangling at Steffane’s bedside which had given me the idea.

  Audriett certainly did not seem to think that we were bluffing. She seemed to think that my explanation of what had happened to Leonie was entirely plausible. Her brow had furrowed. She was probably agonizing over what her beloved husband Gaius would think of all this, and whether she really could use it to get their beloved Steffane out of prison.

  “What do you mean you came here to give us an opportunity?” she said sharply.

  “One of you murdered Leonie Ashbeck and paid Constance Ashbeck to lie about it,” I said. “And now one of you can pay us to keep our mouths shut. Make it worth our while and we can forget all about this conversation.”

  Audriett gasped. She was outraged at what I had just said. “You are officials from the Agency of Otherkind investigations!” she hissed. “This is beyond unprofessional!”

  I imagined that Storm would be looking at her coldly if he didn’t have a need to avoid her gaze. Nevertheless his tone was cold as he said, “You sent your council and embassy heavies to the Agency to threaten our jobs. Because of you we expect to be fired on Monday. I will not allow a bunch of vampires to ruin the future prospects of my entire team. If we are going down, we are taking you all down with us. Either that or you make sure we don’t leave our jobs empty-handed.”

  He said it with complete cold clinical detachment as if he meant every word. I was seriously impressed. It was all I could do to not cheer him on and applaud his wonderful performance. But Audriett Ronin did not know Constantine Storm at all. She believed he meant every word.

  “Leave!” she hissed in fury. “Leave our home at once!”

  Chapter 26

  DIANA

  “Er, so that went kind of okay, I thought?” I said to Storm as we walked out.

  He shot me a disbelieving look. “You thought that went like you expected?”

  “Sure!” I said cheerily. “They were just posturing. One of them is going call us. I’m sure of it.”

  “We have no evidence to back up your theory,” said Storm somberly. “This is not how I envisaged my career ending.”

  “Look on the bright side,” I said. “We laid the best of plans. If it all comes crashing down on us, you can go to Otherworld to be an almighty Archon, the rest of us can start our own cozy detective agency. It’ll be brilliant!”

  Storm did not look happy at my suggestion. We agreed to meet tomorrow in the office just before midday. That was the deadline we had given to the Ronins.

  I returned home to find Beastie outside the apartment building waiting for me. I scooped her up and took her upstairs, and gave her a cuddle. “Well, Beastie my friend,” I said. “It looks like I’m going to have to kill a monstrous beast of a serial killer soon. What do you think about that?”

  AngelBeastie gave a meow that sounded distinctly unimpressed.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have a secret weapon.”

  I went to stand in front of my mirror like I had done for a good part of yesterday, and pulled my T-shirt up to take a look at my navelstone. It looked the way it always did. Just like a stone. Certainly not like the end of a sword.

  I closed my eyes and remembered the moment when Marielle had tried to kill me. I envisaged every little detail. The expression on her face. The snarl that had exposed her long sharp fangs. How she had seemed to come towards me in slow motion. How my body had seemed frozen on the spot, refusing to move. And my navelstone had started fiercely vibrating, though I had been barely aware of it at the time. And there had been a sharp pain, and then the sword had been in my hand and Marielle had been screaming in pain because it had gone right through her.

  I let myself focus on that moment right before the sword had appeared in my hand. The way I had felt. Had it been panic? Had my life flashed before my eyes? Had I been intensely aware of my own mortality? But the thing is I couldn’t remember what I had thought or felt, because the whole thing had happened so fast.

  If I really wanted to get the damn sword out again, it looked like I was going to have to go outside and pick a fight with someone large and dangerous. Then maybe the sword would appear. The problem was what if they charged me like Marielle had, and what if I couldn’t stop myself from injuring them with it? Maybe even killing them. That was the last thing I wanted to happen.

  Storm would never forgive me. My life as I knew it would be over. I’d have to go on the run, and it would be Storm’s job to track me down. That would totally suck.

  I called Theo to find out if he had had any fresh thoughts about the sword, or even if he’d discovered what the hell it was in one of those ancient books of his. Perhaps there was some incantation that I could say that would make the sword appear in my hand at my command.

  Theo had no such good news. He cautioned me that if I thought the sword would not appear, then perhaps it was best for me to avoid a confrontation with DCK entirely. Perhaps it would be best for me to allow the team to arrest the murderer instead. I informed Theo that I had fully prepared for the situation.

  The problem was that I was not prepared. I had no idea what sort what manner of creature DCK actually was. Was he a vampire? Werewolf? Perhaps a really powerful mage? Heaven forbid that he would be a sorcerer. A full-blown sorcerer might be able to pound me into dust by uttering a mere word from his lips. It was not like I had any magical skills to counteract that sort of power.

  Heck, I didn’t even know how I was going to lure DCK to my kill room, or how I was going to get him away from whatever trap Storm and the team would set to catch him.. There were so many things I did not know. I was trusting that my psychic instincts would help me to wing it. All I really had in my arsenal was a sword that might or might not appear when I needed it most.

  I messaged Finch to ask him if he had made any progress towards finding Zezi. He did not respond.

  There was only one thing left to do. I switched on my current favorite TV show. Unfortunately even that failed to be enough of a distraction. Several hours later I went to bed feeling thoroughly dissatisfied.

  Chapter 27

  STORM

  It was Sunday. Crunch time. Storm had been doing his best to keep his cool ever since the meeting with the Ronins yesterday evening. All night he had told himself things would work out. He had decided to trust Diana, as had the rest of the team, and things would definitely work out. He had told himself the same thing all morning too, but right now, at 11:45 pm, fifteen minutes before the deadline that they had given the Ronins, the last thing he felt was cool.

  Saskia had settled down since the dinner. She’d even made Jenny help her clean up the major mess they’d made of his apartment. One part of his life was fixing up but the rest was about to go to hell. Unless that phone rang.

  The whole team had gathered at Agency Headquarters, and had been spending the morning prowling around the empty office floor liked caged beasts. Now they were all gathered inside Storm’s office, munching on the donuts that Leo had brought in for them. Leo was looking a bit pale and was quiet after the full moon yesterday. He had not expressed being worried about his job, but Storm knew he was. And so were Remi and Monroe.

  Remi was doing her best to keep their spirits high. “I love Diana’s idea about a private detective agency,” she said. “We’ll be the most kick ass agency in the whole of London. We’ll have a ton of clients. So many in fact that we might even put this Agency out of business!”

  She talked it up, her ideas getting more and more outrageous, until Monroe snorted with laughter.

  Diana was prowling right next to Storm’s desk. She had placed her mobile phone on it, because that was the phone that they had agreed that the Romans would call them on. Every once in a while she reached out to touch it, as if she was hoping to get confirmation that a call was definitely going to come.

  “I think all four of them were in on it together,” said Monroe. “Gaius Ronin was the mastermind, and the rest of them just did his bidding.”

  “But everyone sai
d that Gaius Ronin loved Steffane,” said Remi. “I don’t think it could have been him. And anyway, if they don’t call us, their case can be the first one we take as a private agency. We’ll get our revenge on them by solving the murder whether they like it or not. The first step will be to hunt down that dratted cowboy and make him talk.”

  Leo munched another donut in silence. Storm did his best to stay seated at his desk and not to resort to prowling around like Diana was.