What should she do?
Jump in the closet and hide until they passed? No!
Where are you? Dragos asked. His voice had changed. No longer impatient, he sounded sharp and totally engaged.
Just as Niniane, Jered and Tiago rounded the corner, she slammed the closet door and rushed toward them.
“Hi, sweetie,” Niniane said. Her gaze fell to Pia’s feet, and her eyebrows went up. “Where are your shoes?”
With the dead man in the closet.
“I h-had an accident.” Pia pressed shaking hands against her stomach.
Jered, a tall, blond male Djinn with diamondlike eyes, demanded, “Can you explain why we are all here to talk when some of those humans won’t engage in conversation?”
PIA, Dragos thundered in her head, making her jump.
She snapped at him shakily, Don’t yell at me like that!
Tiago said suddenly, “I smell blood.”
Well, of course he did. He had, if anything, a more refined sense of smell for such things than Pia did.
“Blood?!” Niniane exclaimed.
It was pointless to try to assert control over something so outrageous, but Pia tried anyway. She said, “Yes, well, there is a problem. I mean, I found a p-problem. I don’t suppose I could convince any of you to go back outside and keep everyone busy while Dragos and I deal with it?”
Niniane grabbed her by the arms. “Are you hurt?”
“It’s not her blood,” Tiago said.
Pia had tried to position herself in the middle of the hallway to act as a barrier, but he shouldered past her. So much for her attempt to gain a little time.
Closing her eyes, she listened as the closet door opened.
After a moment, Tiago said, “It’s his blood.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Niniane’s grip fell from Pia’s arms.
She turned to watch as Niniane and Jered swept past her. Tiago took a step to one side, and all three of them stared into the closet.
Dragos rounded the corner, wearing a fierce frown. “Why didn’t you answer me?” he demanded, dropping a hand onto her shoulder. “Where’s the damn fire that won’t wait?”
Wordlessly, she pointed back down the hall to where the other three stood. As Dragos looked behind her, Niniane pointed into the closet. After a moment, both Tiago and Jered pointed too.
Pia said between her teeth, “I am really going to love living in our version of Greenland. I bet it’s peaceful there. The murder rate can’t be anything like D.C.’s.”
Dragos’s hand tightened on her before it fell away. He strode forward to join the others and looked in the closet.
Niniane said to Tiago, “Once upon a time, I would have been so much more shaken than I am right now. I thought we were going to get a break from this kind of shit on this trip.”
“You know, as your chief of security, I have to advise you that we leave right now,” Tiago told her.
“We can’t leave!” Niniane exclaimed. “That would make us look like we have something to hide.”
“I don’t give a damn what it looks like, your argumentativeness.” Tiago crossed his arms. “Someone has been killed. It’s a safety recommendation.”
“Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “Duly noted.”
Dragos’s gaze met Pia’s. His expression looked calm but she knew from his incandescent, molten gaze that he was furious.
Suddenly the distance between them seemed too great. She hurried toward him, and when she reached his side, he put his arm around her.
He asked, Why are your shoes in the closet?
She shivered. We had an extra place setting, and I was looking for somewhere to stow it when I stepped inside and-and found him. I didn’t want to track b-blood everywhere, or contaminate the scene any more than I already had, so I stepped out of them.
He rubbed her back. “Okay. Now, I want you to go into the security room in the basement and stay there. Will you do that for me, please?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“That’s a good idea,” Tiago said to Niniane. “You could go too.”
Dragos glared at her. “Pia. The vice president’s husband was murdered in our house.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “Like I don’t know that already! I am not going downstairs, so put a guard on me if you have to, but I’m staying up here to help.”
Jered snapped, “Enough of this squabbling over who is going to run away. You need to catch the murderer immediately, before all our diplomatic chances are ruined.”
Dragos rounded on the Djinn. “I need to catch the murderer? This has nothing to do with the Wyr.”
The Djinn gave him an incredulous look. “You must be joking. The human male’s throat was slashed just as a Wyr might do. And as you said, it happened in your house. This is your responsibility. You’re involved whether you like it or not. And others will blame you—again, whether you like it or not. Hell, I don’t even know who did it, and I blame you.”
A hot burst of anger fired through Pia’s veins. She snapped, “That’s completely unfair! None of our people would do such a thing!”
The Djinn glanced at her. “Fairness has nothing to do with it. Appearances are everything.” He turned back to Dragos. “You need to either find the murderer quickly, or you need to hide it. If you want someone to get rid of the body, I can do it.”
“Bullshit,” muttered Niniane. “He’s the vice president’s husband, Jered. You can’t just whisk away the body!”
“This is a stupid conversation,” Tiago said.
Jered rounded on him. “I see that you haven’t come up with anything useful.”
“That’s enough,” Dragos hissed. As they all fell silent, he said to the others, “Leave. Go back to the others and mingle.” As they hesitated, he said between his teeth, “You’re wasting valuable time.”
Niniane touched Pia’s hand and said in her head, I don’t care how much Dragos snarls or tries to order everybody around. If you need me, call and I’ll come.
Thank you. Pia grasped her fingers briefly.
Even still, Niniane lingered until Tiago pulled her away. He told her, “Let’s go. And you do not leave my side for anything, faerie. I mean you do not step two feet away from me.”
“Oh, pffft,” Niniane exclaimed, as she walked away with him.
“I think you’re making a mistake not getting rid of the body,” Jered said. With that parting shot, he strode after the other couple.
“For being such a bright people, sometimes the Djinn are remarkably clueless,” Dragos muttered. He turned his attention to her. “Bayne’s on his way. How long do we have until dinner is supposed to be served?”
Calculating rapidly, she said, “Soon. Maybe in five or six minutes. Gennita checked in with me just a little while ago, and I told her fifteen minutes. That was when I went to take the extra place setting off the table, and-and-and—”
Words seemed to stick in her throat as her brain seized up again.
Giving her a sharp, questioning glance, Dragos put one bracing hand on her back again, right over the tense knot between her shoulder blades. Grateful for his silent touch, she managed to stop stuttering.
Bayne rounded the corner and strode toward them, his big body a fluid, fast machine. He didn’t waste time asking questions when he reached them. Instead, he swept the scene quickly with those hard, hazel eyes, taking everything in, and then he turned to Dragos.
Pia was used to seeing Bayne smiling in a laid-back stance, usually with hands tucked into his jeans pockets. It always jarred her when the sentinels flipped some internal switch in their heads and went into warrior mode.
Dragos said to him, “Guard Pia. Go where she goes, no matter what.”
“You got it,” said Bayne.
Before Pia could mention that Eva was a perfectly adequate guard, thank you very much, Dragos added, “And Bayne? If necessary, you fly her out of D.C., and you don’t stop flying until you both get back to the Tower.”
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So that was why Dragos wanted Bayne guarding her, not Eva. Eva was a highly trained, effective warrior, but her Wyr form was canine. Not only could Bayne fly, but he also had the strength to carry Pia in flight.
“Understood.” Bayne turned that hard gaze to Pia, and his expression softened somewhat as he looked down the length of her body at her bare, smudged feet.
Furiously, Pia wanted to snap at both men for thinking they could decide her fate without her input, but she managed to catch herself up before she said anything she might regret later.
She wasn’t thinking as rationally as she could be, and she knew Dragos wasn’t either. He had seen a dead body and clicked into hyperprotective mode, and nothing was going to ratchet him down again until he felt like he had gained some measure of control over the situation.
There was that concept again – control over the situation. She glanced at dead Mr. Colton again and nearly burst into hysterical laughter. Like her going into hysterics was going to help anybody. She managed to swallow that impulse down too.
Dragos turned an incandescent gold gaze onto her. He said, “Stall dinner for as long as you can. Go.”
She nodded. “Got it.”
With Bayne on her heels, she ran barefoot to the kitchen, which was awhirl with activity. The kitchen staff was busy preparing the second course to follow the salmon soufflé, delicate grilled endive salads with light shavings of aged parmesan cheese and paper-thin Parma ham arranged in a fan on top.
She didn’t try to talk over everybody else. Instead, she said telepathically, Gennita, we need to stall dinner for at least another half hour. Longer, if possible.
The chef spun to face her, eyes widening in dismay. We can’t stall dinner! The soufflés are almost done cooking!
Normally she would be much more gentle with Gennita’s wounded feelings, but now she didn’t have the emotional or physical time. She told the other woman grimly, We have much bigger problems right now than the soufflés. Get another round of hors d’oeuvres outside as fast as you can.
But they’re all gone! Gennita quivered visibly.
Pia threw up her hands. Send out the salads then! Send out anything, along with more alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
Gennita rounded on her staff and started snapping out orders.
As Pia turned to Bayne, Eva slipped into the kitchen, caught sight of her and walked over. “When are you going to announce it’s time to go into dinner?”
“I’m not,” she said grimly. “Run upstairs and get me a pair of shoes.”
Eva stared at her bare feet. “What happened to the ones you were wearing?”
“Later,” she told Eva.
“But you only have one pair with you that matches that outfit. Which ones do you want?”
“I don’t care!” she cried. “Shoes, get me shoes. Dark ones, that nobody will notice.”
At that, Eva seemed to catch up with the fact that something had gone badly awry, because her expression changed until she looked much as Bayne did, bladelike and focused. She took off running.
“I need alcohol too,” Pia told Bayne. She meant it desperately.
He took her at her word, strode over to the counter where the liquor bottles sat, swiped up a bottle of cognac and handed it to her.
She took a long pull, coughed and handed it back to him. He drank from the bottle as well.
Gennita rushed up to her, wide eyes teary. “What should I do with the soufflés?”
Pia’s gaze went unfocused. She stared into space a moment. Then she said, “Burn them.”
The chef’s expression quivered. “They’re made with Balik Fillet Tsar Nikolaj smoked salmon. It costs $360 a pound. We can’t just burn them.”
“Yes, we can.” Pushing past the other woman, she rushed over to the ovens and turned them to their highest settings.
Gennita followed behind her. “What are you doing?!”
Pia said between her teeth, “There are too many guests with sensitive noses. We need the smell of something burning to fill the air. And I need to be able to tell the truth when I go out there and say we’ve had a slight accident in the kitchen, and dinner’s going to be a little later than we thought.”
“That would never happen in real life,” Gennita muttered. “Not in my kitchen.”
“Nobody outside the Wyr knows that,” Pia said. “At least I don’t think.”
Bayne dropped the cognac, and the bottle shattered on the floor. Everybody stopped what they were doing to stare at him.
He said, “Oops. Accident.”
Eva loped back into the kitchen, carrying high heeled black pumps. Pia snatched at them and slipped them on her feet. She told Eva, “Find Dragos. Do whatever he needs.”
“But . . .” The other woman paused. Normally Eva guarded Pia, no matter what. Clearly confused, she looked from Pia to Bayne.
“We’re switching roles tonight,” Bayne told her. “Go.”
Eva shot out of the kitchen again.
Pia strode to the liquor counter, grabbed another bottle at random and took a healthy swig from it. The two hits of alcohol seemed to make the buzzing in her ears fade away, until she felt dizzy, with her head stuffed with cotton wool.
The first faint hint of an acrid smell filled the kitchen.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”
She waited another minute until the acrid smell grew stronger, and then, followed by Bayne, she strode outside with a big apologetic smile to face her powerful, intelligent, and not-altogether-friendly guests.
* * *
Dragos didn’t know how Pia would stall things, and he didn’t care. He just knew she would handle it.
Dismissing the issue from his mind, he concentrated on the problem at hand.
Problem equaling corpse, of course.
Bracing one hand on the doorway, he leaned into the closet without stepping inside, and inspected Colton. It was easier to do, now that he was by himself and not distracted by the others.
The dragon surfaced in his mind again, not at all perturbed by the unexpected dead body. He noted details.
He took note of faint whiffs of old scents, along with the scent of aged wood, and set them aside. The only new scents in the closet were Pia and, of course, Colton’s copious blood, along with a faint, underlying hint of chemical stink.
Colton was wearing KO Odorless Odor Eliminator again, as was his wife. Dragos had taken note of it as soon as the Coltons had stepped into his house. He had also noted every other smiling guest who wore it.
All of them were his enemies. They knew it.
He knew it.
And one of them had murdered a man in his house.
Still leaning into the closet, he reached for the pen in his breast pocket. With the tip, he probed at the wounds on Colton’s neck. There were five wounds, four on one side, and one on the other. As Jered so obnoxiously pointed out, on the surface at least, it did look like a Wyr kill.
Dragos was very familiar with the general pattern. The style of the wounds was reminiscent of a Wyr ripping out someone’s throat with his talons. He had done it himself a number of times over the centuries, but if there was one thing he would stake his life on in that moment, it was that no Wyr present would ever betray him in his own house. Everyone on this trip was handpicked, either by Bayne or by himself. Only the highest-qualified Wyr, and the most loyal, had been chosen.
So, not only did someone who was wearing KO Odorless Odor Eliminator kill Colton, but they had somehow made it look like a Wyr had committed the murder. They had planned this very carefully. Bayne had installed the tiny security cameras in every room, but not in the hallways, and certainly not in any of the closets. The killer had murdered Colton in one of the blind spots.
Eyes narrowed, he probed deeper at one of the wounds. The flesh at the two edges of the cut fell apart cleanly. The wounds were almost surgical in their neatness. The blades had been very sharp.
Even still, the blood would have spurted until Colton’s heart
stopped. How had the murderer kept from getting blood on him—or her?
He looked more closely at the area around the body, at the closet floor and underneath the desk. There, he discovered a cheap pocket rain poncho stuffed behind the chair. He didn’t bother to pull it out. If he did, he knew he would find it splattered with blood.
A footstep sounded nearby in the hall.
Sir, Eva said in his head. I’m supposed to help you with whatever you need.
Eva was smart to telepathize before trying to approach behind his back. He pulled back from the corpse and straightened to turn to her.
Two things, he said. First, get security to search the house from top to bottom, and move fast. We’re looking for a weapon, some kind of glove with razor blades attached to the tips of the fingers and thumbs. When it’s found, let me know. I want photos taken. Nobody should move it or touch it with their bare hands.
Standing on the balls of her feet, Eva looked sober and sharp, and ready to run as soon as he finished giving orders.
Second thing, he told her. Get a list of people who disappeared from the security cameras nearest this location, from the time the guests arrived to—he checked his watch—about five minutes ago, when Pia walked down this hall. Tell them to move very fast. I want a list of possible suspects in the next fifteen minutes.
Yes, sir. She bolted.
In the distance, his sharp hearing picked up Pia’s voice outside, followed by what sounded like good-natured laughter. Almost at the same time, he noticed an acrid scent, like burning food, and he smiled to himself. She had dealt with the problem splendidly.
If he wasn’t missed beforehand, Colton would definitely be missed when dinner was announced. Dragos needed to come up with a plan of action, because every moment right now was critical.
Coming to a decision, he closed the door, straightened his cuffs and strode down the hall. Pia, please quietly ask the president to meet me in the library.
Okay. Her mental voice sounded tense. Our time just got shorter. Vice President Colton has started looking for her husband.
It was bound to happen sooner or later, he told her. By the way, what kind of fresh meat do we have in the kitchen?
Don’t tell me you’re hungry.