Blood Spirits

  Cerisette’s head twitched, almost a flinch. She was definitely stressed to the max. “Yes.”

  Phaedra walked away and lifted her hand in a gesture. A row of black-suited musicians stood up on the stage and pealed out a trumpet fanfare, the stirring chords echoing in triplets.

  Everyone turned, and there was Alec, walking in alone. Phaedra and Cerisette headed toward him with intent as Danilov said to me, “Phaedra thought you might want company.”

  “I did. I do,” I said. “Thanks. Unless you’re in on their plot.”

  “Plot?” Danilov’s blond brows lifted.

  “Cerisette said her dad wants me at the high table. This can only be bad.”

  Danilov looked elegant and amused as the fanfares died away and the orchestra struck up a waltz. Out in the middle of the room, Cerisette and Alec were waltzing expertly, her fringes rippling gracefully, rubies winking in the brilliant candlelight from those iron chandeliers.

  Robert and his wife had also begun waltzing. “Is Alec doing his part as Statthalter or as Ysvorod?” I asked.

  “Both.” Danilov lifted a hand.

  “So is Cerisette now the ranking single girl, or is he dancing with her because her dad is host?”

  “Interesting, how you phrase that. Cerisette’s status has been a subject of much debate among those who care about such things. It is not so clear that she is the highest ranking unmarried woman.”

  “Oh. You mean me. I keep forgetting.” As the corner of his mouth twitched in irony, I said, “You have to remember I didn’t grow up knowing any of this stuff. It still doesn’t seem to connect to me. Besides, how could I rank above a count’s daughter if my mother’s birth was illegitimate? Is it because Gran was a princess?”

  “Yes. And so the debate. No one pays the least attention to your mother’s marriage. She, and you, are Dsarets in the public eye.”

  “By that reasoning, so should Ruli and Tony be Dsarets, as their grandmother was Gran’s twin.” When Danilov shrugged, I said, “Oh I get it. Marriage only counts when it comes with a title.”

  “You could say,” he responded. “But you know it’s not so simple.”

  “I know. Alec told me that once Rose married Armandros, nobody regarded her as a Dsaret anymore. As if all her DNA had magically shifted to his family. Then she died young, and Tante Sisi, of course, was born a von Mecklundburg.”

  Danilov looked away at the mention of Rose’s name, and I thought, Okay, this subject has been thoroughly thrashed. So I looked around, too.

  We’d been strolling along the perimeter of the vast room. I glanced up at the enormous, vivid paintings of various martial scenes from mythology. Solomonic pilasters added at intervals around the walls divided the paintings, and these pilasters were decorated with stylized Dobreni motifs: amaranth first, then lilies, laurel leaves, roses, and rowan berries and leaves. Once I’d thought these mere decorations, but when are decorations “mere”? We choose things that have meaning to us. I wondered if those lilies and roses and cobalt blue amaranth flowers were loaded with Vrajhus charms.

  My gaze dropped to the rows of chairs along the walls—chairs in several styles from over a century and a half. The crystal on my necklace threw glittering refractions outward, and there, on a hazy summer day long ago, teenage boys rode, prancing horses in circles, their slashsleeved doublets stippled with dust, some waving basket-hilted swords inexpertly as they practiced hand to hand combat on horseback. . . .

  I stumbled, blinked. The vision was gone.

  Danilov lifted a lazy hand. Diamonds glittered in the cuff of his shirt sleeve. I shut my eyes to avoid another dizzying flashback. “We had to raid all our houses,” he drawled. “You’ll see half the families’ plate under the refreshments. Want to dance, after they do their obligatory circle?”

  Alec and Cerisette looked fabulous dancing together. As they passed by the people pressed along the perimeter, I saw her gaze flicker past us at the refreshments tables, at the waiters circulating with trays to collect empty cups and glasses, and checking the late arrivals still streaming in.

  They passed out of sight, and her parents waltzed into view. Now that I did not have to dance with Robert, I could admire how so big a man could move so lightly on his feet. Last summer I’d been too busy trying to avoid his wandering hands and the accompanying cloud of alcohol fumes.

  What had his wife thought about those wandering hands last summer? She had to have seen. I’d never spared her a thought, other than trying to avoid her obvious hostility. Nearly as skinny as Cerisette, too much sun had aged her so it was impossible to guess her true age. The tight lines in her face, the thin, compressed lips, however expertly made up, also aged her, in spite of the exquisite gown—a thirties’ Mainbocher, with layers of alternating black and white ruffles, and two long white streamers hanging from her bony shoulders to her spiked heels.

  As soon as she and Robert finished their round, she glided back to the high table—set off to one side of the stage, out of the path of the steady stream of servants tending the refreshments—and lit up a cigarette in a holder.

  Robert, still on the dance floor, lifted his hands in invitation, and people began to join him. He turned to an elderly baroness, bowed, and held out an arm.

  “Shall we?” Danilov asked me.

  “I am always up for a dance,” I said.

  Danilov was as good on the ballroom floor as he was in the fencing salle. Two or three steps, and we found one another’s rhythm and whirled around, in and out of the slower couples, until so many people began dancing that we were forced to slow.

  “Okay,” I said, once we were safely in the center of the floor, strangers all around us. “Why does Robert von Mecklundburg want me to sit at that table? Is there a poisoned dish waiting especially for me, ‘Ooopsie! She must have choked on a canapé, oh well!’”

  “Poison!” Danilov repeated sinisterly, causing a sedate couple dancing nearby to give us wondering looks. Then both pairs of eyes widened, and looked away.

  “I can’t get used to that,” I said as Danilov expertly guided us past a stiff pair of teenagers counting their steps. “At home I’m nobody. Here, my face is . . . notorious?” I paused a second. “Well,” I said, “certainly known. Though it’s not really my face that’s known, it’s Ruli’s. Is that why they want to lure me over there, to get rid of me once and for all?” I was joking, but I wasn’t.

  Danilov’s well-shaped upper lip curled. “Do you really think they are that stupid?”

  “I don’t know what constitutes stupid, but somebody tried to poison Honoré in their house, so why not me at their table? They hate me much worse than they do him, right?”

  “Merde!” Danilov’s smile vanished. “I don’t know who did that, or why, but I would be very surprised if it was anyone in the family.”

  “Because?”

  “They have been working so very hard to match Cerisette with Honoré.”

  “I thought Cerisette was after Alec,” I said.

  Danilov twirled me under his arm, sidestepping neatly out of the way of an oblivious pair. “For her? Higher the rank the better. And it would have been sweeter to shut out Ruli. But the family? They are more practical.”

  “I thought Cerisette and Ruli were friends.”

  “Sometimes a truce, sometimes allies.” Danilov shrugged and handed me into another twirl. “Hated each other from childhood, those two.”

  “Frenemies, then. Allies against whom?”

  Danilov was a handsome guy, and he danced like a dream, but he gave off a cold, detached vibe. “That? Ah, too fatiguing to explain. But you can see, it was always irresistible to bunk into the hills whenever we could.”

  “Bringing me to Tony,” I said. “Are you going to tell me he’s not plotting?”

  Danilov’s expression hardened. “When he returns, we’ll converse.”

  “Where did he really go, do you know?”

  There went the curled lip again as we spun away from the orchestra’s side
of the room and straight down the middle, which had briefly opened up. “To Paris, I believe.”

  “To hire a cook? The same day that his family accuses Alec of murder, and me of conspiracy? Yeah, right.”

  Danilov gave me a rueful smile and another of those airy shrugs. “Aunt Sisi was assured by Magda that you and Alec were telephoning between London and the palace all autumn long.”

  “But I wasn’t in London!”

  “No one knows that.”

  “Milo does. He is not known for being a liar. Oh! Tony knows,” I snapped. “He visited several times. He met my mother. And he would have heard her say that I was teaching German and French in Oklahoma. If he’d really wanted to get in touch to see if I was there, I’m sure Mom would have given him my email. I might even have answered it.” Then I remembered. “Have you talked to that Doctor Kandras about identifying Ruli’s body in the wreckage?”

  “We learned yesterday that he returned to his home village for the holiday.” He tipped his beautifully sculpted chin slightly, and as we whirled, I saw Honoré acknowledge him. Honoré was sitting with the Ridotski family. A cane leaned against his chair.

  So, he wasn’t sitting with the von Mecklundburg party at the high table. In-teresting. I turned back to Danilov. “You really think Tony went to Paris? I don’t believe for a nanosecond that he spent all that money for a private plane in order to hire a cook. I bet anything he’s out there somewhere interviewing Reithermann Junior.”

  Danilov’s lips twitched. “What a catastrophe that was.”

  And yet you were in on at least part of the plot. “Because Tony didn’t win?”

  Danilov matched my tone. “Because Dieter Reithermann was hired to reorganize the Vigilzhi along modern lines and, incidentally, gain their allegiance. But Dmitros Trasyemova threw him out of the city after an hour’s conversation. We all wished we could have been present,” he added. “It must have been memorable.”

  “No, it would have been boring. Reithermann couldn’t open his mouth without tripping over every X-rated word in the dictionary. So Tony used him anyway. It figures.”

  “But he had to. The man had been paid. Quite an extortionate sum. And after the Devil’s Mountain people were trained, Tony was sure he would win in spite of Reithermann’s try for leadership. Tony usually wins.”

  I was going to argue but an all-too-vivid recollection of Reithermann’s violent end made me say, “I guess he did. But I’m here to tell you that it was a very close call.”

  The dance ended, and couples began to part, to reform, and some to walk off the floor. I grabbed his wrist. “Oh, no, you don’t. I am finally getting some answers, so we’ll have to dance again. And if local custom condemns me for being fast, well, it’s not like I have a reputation to lose.”

  “I think ‘fast’ went out of mode fifty years ago.” His lazy smile mocked me. “There is little more I can tell you, but eh? You dance well. Many do not.”

  “There is plenty you can tell me. Like the reason why Robert and his gang want me at the high table. The way I see it, it has to be extra nasty because they sent that sleigh to pick me up.”

  That actually made him laugh, or utter a short huff that was probably as close as he ever came to such a wild display of emotion. “Nothing more sinister than a desperate need for money. You can see this place is unfinished.” The new dance was a fox trot. As we parted to step outward, his hands arced to include the room. “Until last summer, they were all but certain the Council would vote the income from the Dsaret holdings toward this opera house, among other projects. Then . . . you showed up, with the news that Princess Lily is very much alive.”

  “That’s right, Tony said they didn’t have much money.” Someone jostled me, and I nearly tripped. “Right before he tried to kidnap me.”

  Danilov shrugged slightly. “The rest of us were convinced that the so-called Dsaret Treasure was an old war rumor, but Tony was so sure that your grandmother ran off with the king’s treasure—either that or his grandfather, Count Armandros, got his hands on it when he ran off with her—”

  “No doubt because that’s what he would have done?”

  “—that we went along with his plan to get you alone and find out where it was.”

  “I can assure you, my grandmother didn’t have any treasure. Or she wouldn’t have had to teach piano for years and years. Ow!” A sharp elbow hit me right in the ribs.

  A flushed older man wearing a baldric with genuine medals apologized before he and his partner were swallowed in the crowd.

  I jerked back—and a broad back thumped mine, nearly knocking me into Danilov, who winced and hopped as a teenage girl exclaimed, “I beg pardon, I beg pardon,” and was whisked away by her partner.

  I looked around. The floor was so crowded there was scarcely an inch between one couple and the next. “We’re not dancing,” I said, “we’re bobbing and weaving. Let’s get something to drink, and you can tell me more about vampires.”

  He gave me a startled, wary glance. “You want to find them?”

  “There are two things I want to know: how to avoid them, and if I do meet one, how to defend myself. ‘Shadow ones’ or ‘wild folk’ may be poetic, but it doesn’t tell me anything, unless they really look like walking shadows.”

  The crowd of dancers was scarcely moving, and I was glad of my lightweight gown, for the air was nearly stifling. Danilov’s forehead was damp. It was a relief to get out of the press and reach the tables.

  The ice sculptures were beginning to soften slightly at the edges. A young girl dressed in white and black carefully poured us some punch. We each took a cup, then Danilov said under his breath, “Ah, Gilles! That stupid film! Smile and look at the dancers, unless you want him pestering you for an interview later, on what it was we found so engrossing in our conversation.”

  My face tightened into the bland smile I always wore on stage. I scanned the crowd then lifted my head to take in the iron chandeliers, the more martial gods of Olympus looking down from the clouds in the main dome, and, below that, the gallery running all the way around, that I’d missed before. It was filled with observers, except for one of the round royal boxes at either side, which furnished a splendid view of the stage. One of them was cordoned off, and Gilles and his film crew were there, looking vastly out of place in their punk rock attire as they operated their film equipment.

  Danilov lifted his cup to someone in the crowd as he said under his breath, “Vampires. You will not see the older ones. The longer they survive, the more powerful they get. They can bend the weak light of night around them—moonlight, starlight, artificial light. At most you might perceive a deeper shadow. Or a sharp chill.”

  “Cold? I thought the cold was the presence of a ghost.”

  Danilov moved along the table, sipping at the punch, which was a fruit and citrus concoction with the bite of zhoumnyar mixed in. I resolved to make this cup last all night; zhoumnyar was potent stuff.

  “Both.” Danilov brushed something from an elegant shoulder. “My experience with ghosts is confined to the Bloody Duke up at the Eyrie. We used to stand on the landing outside the Weapons Room, which is where he always walks out. Usually after midnight. When he walked through me I felt a chill. But the cold of a vampire in proximity reaches your bones, and sends out a current that stirs the hairs on your arms. If they pass you while you are asleep, they give you nightmares.”

  “I thought it was ghosts who handed off the nightmares,” I said.

  “Ghosts don’t have any influence on the living, waking or sleeping, not that I’ve ever heard.” He shot me a fast, narrow look. “If you’ve been getting vampire nightmares at that inn of yours, then they are on the watch. I’d get out.”

  “It’s got protections all over it. Those work, don’t they?”

  “Yes, but you have to leave sometimes, right?”

  “Why would they be staking me out? Whoa, is that a pun or what?”

  “Good question.” He drank off the punch, then grimaced
slightly as he put it down. “Another question is, why are they in the city at all? But there are others who can answer that. Not I. To your question about the efficacy of protections, my understanding is that, as long as they have not recently fed, the younger they are, the easier to defeat. They must be caused to bleed faster than they can repair themselves. Pistols only work at high caliber—you blow them apart—but these weapons can be untrustworthy. Vampires use Vrajhus to interfere with the firing mechanism, if they have the time and the strength to do whatever it is they do. But they cannot interfere with steel.”

  I’d heard about a mysterious force that could keep guns from firing, but this was the first time anyone had related it to vampiric powers. Though he wasn’t saying that this ability was exclusive to vampires. “How about the wooden stake thing?”

  “If you stab a vampire in the heart with rowan, hawthorn, or especially yew, it poisons them into immobility. At which time whatever it is in them that keeps them alive, and enables them to heal from small wounds, causes the stake to send out roots. It’s not an easy sight—”

  “Okay. Stop right there. I’ve got the picture.”

  “What picture would that be?”

  I whipped around as we were joined by Niklos, Tony’s handsome second in command. He had on a kind of Zorro mask but I recognized him instantly.

  His gaze shifted past me to Danilov and lingered long enough for me to register it as a Look. I didn’t have to turn around to see that the Look was two way. I blushed when the cluebat hit me that Niklos was running a rescue from the grabby foreigner—me.

  I wanted to yell, “It’s not like that!” but a woman about my age, wearing an ice-white damask ball gown complete with bustle, slipped her hand (in armpit-length gloves) through Danilov’s and cooed, “You promised me a waltz.” And off they went, leaving me alone with a bunch of beautifully dressed people I didn’t know. I was not about to dance with the guy who’d shot me, and the way he watched Danilov and Bustle Princess whirl their way into the crowd, he wasn’t in any tearing hurry to dance with me, either.