Not that he hadn’t managed to compensate before, at least somewhat, but Faerie had proven no safer. Some of Caedmon’s own courtiers seemed to think that a full Light Fey king sounded better than a part-human, part–Dark Fey mutt. It was probably what had Claire looking like she was about to explode.
“There must be some way to verify—” I began.
“Heidar’s trying.” Her hands twisted in her apron, and for all her power, she was suddenly just another anxious mother, desperate to ensure her child’s safety. “That’s why he went back. He’s doing a reconnaissance into the Svarestri lands—”
“What?”
She nodded, frantically. “I begged him not to, but he said he used to do it for fun as a boy. That he knew some old trails, had some contacts. That he might be able to alleviate my fears…”
And instead he’d doubled them. Now Claire was left worrying about her son and her fiancé. No wonder she’d been going out of her mind.
And I really wasn’t helping, was I?
“What can I do?” I asked simply.
“You can let me return the favor you did me,” she said severely. “When I came here in the middle of the night with a baby on my hip and half of Faerie after me! The smart thing would have been to throw me out—”
“It’s your house.”
“—and leave me to handle my own problems, but you didn’t. You refused to let me run off and possibly get myself and my child killed. You did what friends do when other friends are acting stupid and panicked and you told me so. Like I’m telling you.”
“That was a completely different situation, and you know it. Your enemies were outside—”
“You’re not an enemy, Dory!”
“I’m not an enemy now.”
Claire didn’t like that. “Last night, the only person in danger was you! Louis-Cesare—”
“Isn’t here all the time.” And might not be again. “Your eyes,” he’d said, looking a little freaked-out. And yeah, I guessed so. I’d only glimpsed myself in full-on dhampir mode once before, in that fight a month ago, and it hadn’t been pretty. Hadn’t, in fact, looked particularly human—snarling face, gleaming fangs, and glowing, demonic eyes…
Shit.
“He doesn’t need to be!” Claire said forcefully. “I was going to say that if he hadn’t been able to take care of it, we have a garden full of fey. And the elite of the royal guard at that!”
“Who might not have been enough.”
“Oh, please!” She looked me up and down critically, and didn’t seem impressed. “If they can’t handle one lone dhampir, I’ll kick their asses. And then I will.”
“You will what?”
“Handle you.”
“You’ll handle me.”
“You think I can’t?” she asked, her chin lifting.
“I think you won’t.”
“Then you don’t know me that well.”
I rolled my eyes. “I know you plenty. You’re a vegan. Cutting up meat for the fey’s meals almost makes you sick. You have all those marigolds because you don’t even like hurting bugs!”
“Faerie changes a person.”
“Not that much. And my other half is a ruthless—”
“So am I. I’ve had to learn to be. And if it will make you feel any better, if you go crazy, and for some unfathomable reason decide to attack Aiden or Stinky—and for the love of God give that child a better name—”
“I told you, Duergars have to earn—”
“—then I’ll kill you myself.”
I stopped. Because Claire had sounded like she meant it. She looked like it, too, with those usually soft green eyes hard and steady on mine.
“You will?”
“Yes. I will.”
“You’d hesitate.”
“No. Not with a child’s life at stake. Not with Aiden’s life. I’ll kill anyone who touches him.”
And that last was so cold, so implacable, that it actually sent a chill up my spine. In that moment I honestly believed my gentle roommate to be capable of murder. Even mine.
“Good,” I told her.
She nodded, letting out a breath. “Good,” she agreed, wiping her hands on her apron. “Now get down there and get rid of those damned vamps!”
Chapter Twenty
I found the vamps in the formal dining room we never used, which was usually musty and full of dust, but now smelled like a truck full of lemons had crashed into the side of the house. There were five of them. And I’d been wrong. They didn’t look like they’d just stepped out of a high-end restaurant, unless the high-end restaurant was in the nineteenth century.
There were three men and two women, all with smooth, dark hair, perfectly shined shoes, and proper black maid or butler attire. They looked like Mattel had put out a country house collector’s set: servant’s edition. Only somebody had gotten sloppy with the faces, because the perfect servants were looking a little weirded out.
Maybe because they were all bunched around the troll twins.
Or, no, it was really more of a line than a bunch. The vamp by the gleaming sideboard, who had covered his snappy outfit with a long white chef’s apron, passed a dish to the one next to him. Who passed it on to the next and so on, until it reached the boys. Who consumed it like they always did—in one gulp. And then politely waited for more.
The vamps were apparently not used to seeing a Bundt cake be wolfed down like a doughnut—hence the big eyes. Which got even bigger when one of them glanced up and saw me. And then they were all looking, heads coming up like puppets on a string as the news flashed silently between them.
And then one of them smiled.
Which was when things got a little surreal.
Not that they were difficult. Oh, no. I womaned up and went in to explain the situation, and they quickly agreed to “take their leave” as soon as they finished stuffing the twins. But they said it with smiles all around. Big, genuine smiles that made dark eyes light up and dimples pop.
It made my teeth hurt.
Broadly smiling vamps weren’t exactly common in my experience, unless they had a knife ready to slide between my ribs. So I thought I could be forgiven for flinching slightly every time one of them moved. Which, to give them credit, they caught on to pretty fast. But while most vamps would have had a little fun at my expense, like moving to different parts of the room so that I’d have trouble keeping them all in sight, these just seemed perplexed. And chagrined. Like they thought maybe they were doing something wrong.
So they tried to fix it by slowing down—way down. And by making very deliberate motions and only when they had to, which creeped me out even more, because vamps don’t move like that. And so it went until they almost weren’t moving at all, until it was like talking to a group of determinedly smiling statues.
“I, uh.” I licked my lips. “I have to go,” I told them, a little desperately. And then fled to find some lunch before I passed out.
I didn’t know why I was so hungry, considering I’d eaten enough last night for a dozen longshoremen, or one fey. But I was. Unfortunately, the kitchen wasn’t looking too promising.
In fact, it was just as well that the vamps had been keeping Claire out, because she was going to go ballistic when she saw this. Empty cabinets hung open everywhere, the sink was piled with dirty dishes, and more of the same were stacked high on every available surface. Except for the end of the table. It was covered by a dwindling pile of food, mostly desserts, ready for sacrifice to the two bottomless pits out there.
My metabolism doesn’t run so well on sugar, so I passed them up in favor of a trip to the fridge. Which was usually stuffed full, considering the number of mouths we had to feed. But today it looked more like the bad old days, when Claire had been gone and I’d been living the life of the carefree—and hungry—bachelorette.
I’d once considered myself lucky if I had a can of tuna fish and a couple of those little mayo packets in the house, but Claire had spoiled me. My stomach rumbled in di
smay at the almost empty shelves. But a look in the freezer yielded a bit more bounty, and old scavenger instincts took over.
In fact, I was so busy assembling lunch or supper or lupper or whatever it was called at four p.m. that I barely noticed the chef guy coming into the kitchen. Until I turned around from the toaster to grab something from the depleted fridge and almost ran into him. He was a little shorter than the maître d’ and a little pudgier, with a double chin and a happy belly under all that painfully starched linen. Which must have been just for show, because despite the state of the kitchen, there wasn’t a speck on him. But something had upset him; the guy appeared to be on the verge of tears.
“Zere is no more bread,” he confessed tragically, like someone admitting witchcraft to the Inquisition.
“That’s okay.” My waffles dinged. I took them out, threw on some cold cuts and a couple pickle slices I’d fished out of a mostly empty jar and smushed it into a sandwich. And looked up to find the vamp struck dumb in horror.
“You…you cannot eat zat,” he whispered, obviously appalled.
I looked at it. “You’re right.” But there wasn’t any butter, so I grabbed the mayo and slathered up one of the still-hot waffles. It melted nicely into all the cracks, but my creation still needed something. I got an inspiration and stuck my head back in the fridge, opened a drawer and—
Success. I turned back to my sandwich, only to find that it wasn’t there anymore. Maybe because it had been hijacked.
“Give me that!” I told the vamp, who was holding it firmly against his chest, a determined look on his face.
“What ees zat?” he demanded, eyeing my prize.
“Cheese.” I held it up.
“Zat ees not cheese.”
“How do you know?”
“Eet is orange.”
“A lot of cheese is orange.”
“Non! No cheese ees that color. Cheese comes from zee milk. Zee milk, eet ees white. When ’ave you seen milk that looks like zat?”
I held up the square of little slices and pointed at the bold-faced label. “Processed American Cheese.”
He snatched the package, without letting go of his hostage. And eyed it warily. “Eet says ‘cheese food.’” He looked up, obviously perplexed. “What ees thees? Zee cheese, it does not eat.”
“I think the idea is that you eat it.”
“Non!” It was emphatic. “My master, ’ee would nevair forgive—”
I made a grab for the cheese, but the guy was faster than he looked. He dodged around the table. I dodged after him.
“Give me that!”
“You cannot eat zees swill!”
“Watch me!”
“Non, non, eet ees moldy!”
“Nice try,” I snarled. That stuff didn’t grow mold. I think mold was afraid of it.
I made a feint and then another one, and finally snatched my sandwich back. It was a little smushed, but it was okay. I took a defiant bite.
“Please.” He resorted to big brown puppy dog eyes. “I beg of you.”
I swallowed, but it wasn’t easy. I remembered my foraging skills as being better than this. “Well, I have to eat something,” I pointed out. “Where did all the food go?”
“Zee fey,” he whispered, looking over his shoulder. “Zey are…zey are not human.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
“Non, you do not understand. We feed zee ones out in zee garden, yes? And zey eat.” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, zey eat! But finally, zey stop.”
“And then you got cocky and decided to fill up the twins,” I guessed.
He nodded. “But zere ees something wrong wiz zem. Zey eat and eat, and zey do not stop.”
“I could have told you that.”
“Mais c’est ne pas possible! Where do zey put it all?”
“Hollow leg?” I offered, sniffing my sandwich. There was definitely something rank in there. Maybe the olive loaf…
The chef was looking at me cunningly. “Eef you do not eat zat,” he wheedled, “I weel make you somesing better.”
“Out of what?”
“Out of…” he looked around in desperation. And spied a half-empty carton of eggs. “Out of les oeufs. I weel make an omelet!”
“An omelet?”
“Yes, yes! Such an omelet I weel make for you!” He waved the hand with the despised cheese in it. “As has nevair been seen. It shall be an omelet of the gods!”
“Will you use that?”
He looked at the small package in his hand. His face crumpled.
“Just kidding,” I told him. “How can I turn down a divine omelet?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier vamp in my life.
And then I turned around and saw his opposite, peering suspiciously through the glass panes in the kitchen door. I sighed. I briefly considered turning the hose on him, like we used to do for the neighbor’s dog, who kept digging up Claire’s herb garden. But I doubted it would work in this case.
I opened the door instead and stuck my head out. “What?”
“Let me in!” Marlowe said, trying to push past me. And getting the shit zapped out of him by the wards. “Fuck!”
“Language,” I admonished. “There are children in the house.”
“Then come outside,” he said evilly.
I considered that. “You know, I’m kind of comfortable where I am.”
He looked past me. “What is Verrell doing here?”
“Who?”
“Louis-Cesare’s chef!”
“Oh.” I looked over my shoulder at the vamp, who was humming happily to himself and whisking the hell out of some eggs. I turned back to Marlowe. “Making me an omelet.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t like my sandwich.”
“He didn’t—” Marlowe stopped and looked skyward, forgetting that it was still daylight out. Which I guess must have burned his retinas, because he cursed viciously.
“If you keep that up,” I told him, “I’m going to have to ask you to—”
“Who is this?” he demanded, shoving a photo in my face.
I didn’t answer, because it was all of a millimeter away from my eyeball. But I stepped back a pace and checked it out, because it seemed the easiest way to get rid of him. It showed a guy who looked like a cross between the maître d’ and the chef, only not as pleasant-looking. He had a little black mustache that was vainly trying to add character to a round pudding face, bushy black brows and small, suspicious eyes that he’d focused with loathing on whoever had taken the photo.
“No idea,” I told Marlowe.
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be from a photo. Why?”
“Because you were on his yacht two days ago.”
I thought about that for a second. And then I let him in. Because his temper was short enough when his brains weren’t frying, and I doubted I’d get any info otherwise.
“The one at the bottom of the sea?” I asked, as he pushed past me.
“It’s not on the sea bottom any longer,” he said, batting at slightly steaming curls. “It must have been sucked in by that damned portal.”
“Then how do you know it belonged to this guy?” I asked.
Marlowe tucked the photo back under his jacket, which was steaming slightly, too. That was weird for someone at his level, unless he still hadn’t gotten any sleep. Which would also explain the mood.
“It had something better,” he told me shortly. “Or did you make up the raven over the doorjamb?”
It took me a second to remember the ugly statue cheapening an otherwise tasteful room. “No, it was there.”
“Then unless there are two black yachts with raven mascots, it was the Corvus.”
“That’s Latin for ‘raven,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Marlowe said, looking vaguely surprised that I’d know that. “More to the point, it was the name bestowed by Roman soldiers on the planks they used to board the ships they were attacking. It had a ‘
beak’ on one end to grab hold and bite into the other ship’s deck.”
“So that guy was Roman?” He hadn’t looked it.
“No, but the person who sold it to him was. The yacht used to belong to Geminus, before he sized up a few years ago. He sold his old one to his good friend Slava—who I want you to ID. If you saw him at that pier, it could be the break we need.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You don’t know what you saw!” Marlowe said testily. “Mircea pulled you out at the worst possible time and is refusing to put you back in.”
“And you expect me to convince him otherwise?” I asked skeptically. Because I wasn’t having a lot of luck with that sort of thing lately.
“No. I expect you to come with me to Slava’s tonight, and see if anything jogs your memory. A scent, a gesture, a—”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight! Unless you have a prior engagement?” The sarcasm dripped. I ignored it, because the omelet of the gods had just been slid under my nose.
I sat down and took a bite. My eyes widened. “It is good, no?” Verrell asked, looking smug.
“How do you do this with just eggs?” I asked, stuffing my face.
“Oh, there are other things, too,” he said loftily. “Olive oil, some chives, a bit of pepper—just a touch, you understand—”
Marlowe’s hand came down on the table and Verrell jumped. “What is the problem with tonight?” he demanded.
I swallowed egg. “Nothing. If I hadn’t been fired.”
“You aren’t working for us. You are merely identifying a suspect.”
“So, you’ve cleared it with Mircea, then?”
He looked shifty.
Yeah, I’d thought so.
“You have a reputation for a certain…lack of concern…for your father’s wishes,” Marlowe pointed out.
This was true. It was also true that I had a vested interest in this smuggling mess. But I didn’t think it would help my bank account much to admit it.
“Say I was to find myself free,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”
“Just wear a dress. Something sexy.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “I don’t have any dresses, sexy or otherwise.”
“You don’t—why not?”