I ignored Oliver and walked across the room, careful to sidestep him and his atrocious bed. I crouched next to Leanne.
Close up her eyes were bloodshot and unfocused. “Forgive me my grievances. Cleanse me of my sins. I am ready to die.”
“Leanne, what is going on?” I asked.
She blinked a few times, focusing on me. Her eyes welled up and a tear spilled over. “I can’t talk about it—I won’t.” And I thought I was stubborn.
“That’s alright,” I said. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to. Can you at least tell me what that was that you were saying?”
She pinched her eyes shut and another tear slid down her cheek. “Just a prayer.”
That was all she would say about the subject.
As I lay in bed an hour later, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of prayer involved death. It was only as my eyes began to droop and I started to nod off that the answer came to me.
Last Rites.
Chapter 12
I rubbed my eyes and stretched at my desk, staring at the gray skies outside my room. I hadn’t slept much last night after Leanne’s nightmare. The prayer she’d said had worried me that she’d die at any moment. She hadn’t—yet.
The only silver lining was that no incubus haunted my dreams. Maybe Andre had managed to sufficiently scare them off.
I finished typing up an email to my mother, sent it off, and closed my laptop.
Behind me I heard the sound of shuffling. I swiveled in my seat to face Leanne. She knelt on a blue velvet blanket she’d spread over our floor, laying out tarot cards in the shape of a Celtic cross.
“Still not going to tell me what happened last night?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“Or why you’ve been furiously dealing out cards for the last three hours?”
“Nope.”
I leaned back in my chair. “Well, have you seen anything good?”
“Nope.”
I sighed, opening another packaged cookie—one of the many I’d swiped from Andre’s place—and ate it. I’d say I was still feeling faint, hence the need for a cookie, but mostly I was just eating them to indulge my sweet tooth.
The door to our room flew open and Oliver came storming in. “Ugh my cousin’s coming in a week!” he said, plopping down on his mattress melodramatically.
“Why is that so bad?” I asked. Having never had family of my own, I’d kill for even a cousin. Just someone who felt somewhat permanent in my life.
My stomach fluttered happily at the thought that Andre could be that somewhat permanent presence. And then cynical Gabrielle pointed out that he wasn’t family, wasn’t necessarily permanent, and that I didn’t need anyone to be content. I really disliked cynical Gabrielle.
“She’s a fairy. Need I say more?”
“Nope,” Leanne said, still thoroughly absorbed in her tarot cards. “Is she traveling by ley line?”
Oliver examined his nails, which he’d painted lilac. “I assume so.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about. She’s probably going to show up three years from now in Bulgaria.”
Oliver rolled his eyes. “Fairies don’t make those sorts of mistakes Leanne.”
“What’s a ley line?” I asked, opening up another package, this one a cupcake that looked like it could still be edible—or just as inedible—a hundred years from now.
Oliver heard the crinkle of plastic and his head snapped up. I pulled another sealed cookie out from my backpack and tossed it to him.
“It’s an energy road,” Leanne said. She started to say more, then bit off her words.
I glanced from her to Oliver, who was happily tearing open the cookie wrapper. “What’s an energy road?” I asked him since Leanne seemed hesitant to talk at all today.
“It’s a road that some supernatural creatures travel on,” he said around bites of cookie. “Fairies like to travel along them.”
“Huh.” I crinkled up my wrapper and tossed it into the nearby wastebasket. The explanation hadn’t really clarified anything for me, but I chalked up my confusion to knowing too little about this world. Just when I thought I hand a handle on things.
***
I wound my way down a spiral staircase that led from the castle’s student café, The Witch’s Brew, where I’d grabbed dinner—if you could call a croissant and coffee dinner—to the castle’s main floor.
In my pocket, my phone buzzed.
“Hello?” I answered, placing the phone up to my ear.
“Gabrielle.” Andre’s voice brought a smile to my face.
“Hey—”
“There’s been another murder.”
My mood instantly shifted. “Another one? Same killer?”
I pulled my coat tight around myself as I pushed through the castle’s front doors. Outside, the dark sky had dimmed to night.
“Yes and yes, though I haven’t been to the scene yet. I’m on my way to pick you up right now.”
“Where are you planning on taking us?” I asked.
“The crime scene.”
***
Andre’s car pulled off the road behind a series of police cars. There was nothing exceptional about this area; it was just a series of rolling hills, probably someone’s pasture. Why the third murder took place here was not clear to me.
“Andre, I really don’t think bringing me here with you was such a good idea,” I said, remembering how the Politia seemed to call me in only after the victims were interred at the morgue.
“You wanted to be partners in this investigation, right?” Andre said.
I bit my inner cheek and nodded. He had me there, and he knew it. Still, the thought of running into Maggie or another inspector had me squirming, not that I’d let Andre or anyone else know that.
“C’mon.” He got out of the car and came over to my side to help me out.
“As usual Andre, I can do this myself.” And as usual, it took three tries to extricate myself from the car. Why couldn’t he own a normal car like everyone else?
Andre stood to the side of the car, arms folded, eyes glittering. I could’ve sworn the corner of his mouth twitched.
“You better not be stifling a laugh,” I said.
“Why you reject my help is beyond me,” he said, falling into step next to me.
“I don’t need help getting out of a car, thank you very much.”
“On the contrary . . .” His voice trailed off when I gave him a look that would make a lesser man’s balls shrivel off.
He laughed and caught my hand and intertwined it with his own, tugging me close to him. “I love it when you’re like this,” he whispered in my ear. My heart stuttered at his words, and I had to remind it that he didn’t say he loved me.
He pulled away and gave me a smug smile, just to let me know that he could tell what he did to me.
As we got closer to the scene of the crime, I dropped his hand. The Politia didn’t know Andre and I were soulmates—they didn’t even necessarily know that there was anything going on between us—and I’d prefer to keep it that way. I didn’t trust the Politia with that knowledge.
A cluster of men and women in uniforms buzzed around a central area lit up by spotlights someone had gone to the trouble of setting up.
The smell of decay hit me and I tasted bile at the back of my throat. I knew I should’ve eaten like a normal person today. This was the universe cursing me for my bad food choices.
“It’s going to be okay,” Andre said, his voice low enough for only me to hear.
I glanced at him, shocked that he knew how I felt. He subtly tapped his nose.
Oh, duh.
“I’ll be with you the whole time,” he said.
Tha
t should’ve rankled me—I wanted it to—but lately my righteous indignation had taken a vacation.
We caught the attention of a couple of uniformed officers. They took in our civilian clothes and their eyes narrowed suspiciously.
One in particular broke away from the group. “Can I help you sir?” he asked Andre, ignoring me completely.
“We were called in to give an expert analysis on the victim’s wounds.”
The officer raised his eyebrows at that. Only now did he turn his attention to me. It wasn’t welcome attention either. His expression became more and more skeptical as he took in my wine-colored pants, boots, wool scarf, pea coat, and finally my face.
“I’m going to have to ask you both to leave,” he said.
Andre took my hand and pushed past him.
“Hey!” he said. “You cannot enter the crime scene!” the officer shouted. Andre turned to glare at the man. I so would not want to be on the receiving end of that. There was something about Andre that made you want to run in the opposite direction.
As if reading my mind, the man took a step back. He also placed a hand on his baton. That was definitely not going to do much but piss off the king of vampires. And as much as I enjoyed that particular hobby, anyone else might not survive it.
Chief Constable Morgan pushed through the crowd of officers, probably to see what was causing the commotion. He locked eyes with Andre before glancing at the officer. “Rich, stand down,” he said. “And for heaven’s sake, take your hand off that baton. That’s the expert we called in.” The chief constable walked over to meet us.
Rich looked chagrined. “Those are your experts?”
The chief constable’s eyes traveled to mine and he frowned. “She isn’t. You can escort her off the premises.” The lines along his face deepened with his displeasure. “She and I will have a long talk about this in a few hours when we do call her in.”
I knew it. I was so getting in trouble for being here.
“I insisted she come along,” Andre said, placing a hand on my shoulder, “seeing as how she’s now helping me investigate these murders.”
“Oh really?” The chief constable’s eyes moved to the hand that now rested on my shoulder, and then they narrowed on me. I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased by this—he’d asked me to return to the coven after all—or whether I’d overstepped my duties. It was probably the latter, and that gave me immense satisfaction.
“Well,” Chief Constable Morgan said, “we don’t allow minors to enter crime scenes without first taking a class on crime scene procedure.”
Andre smiled at him; it wasn’t at all pleasant. “She isn’t a minor by the rules of our own community. And if you’re okay with her being a field agent, then she is more than capable of behaving herself at the scene of the crime.”
A blotch of red appeared on either side of the chief constable’s face. I guess the chief constable wasn’t used to having his own logic thrown in his face.
“Very well,” he said. “But be brief—and don’t touch anything.” The chief constable gave me a hard look before turning around and leading us to through the clusters of officers.
Andre squeezed my shoulder, his way of comforting me. I appreciated the gesture. The chief constable could be a frightening man, and I’d have to deal with him alone later.
We moved around the other individuals who were involved with the crime scene. My nostrils flared as the smell of decomposing flesh intensified.
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Now that Andre had convinced the chief constable that I should be here, tossing my cookies (literally) would be a huge faux pas.
“Put these around your necks while you’re here.” Chief Constable Morgan handed both Andre and me lanyards with temporary badges clipped to them.
I strung the badge over my neck as he continued to talk. “Our victim here was a junior at Peel Academy and a Druid priestess-in-training,” Chief Constable Morgan said as we came up to the body. “We aren’t sure why she was out here in the middle of nowhere, but we think she may have been blessing the dead. There are some ancient Viking burials nearby.”
The chief constable stopped and we spread out from behind him. “Here she is. Lillian Dubois, victim number three.”
As soon as I glimpsed the victim, I had to put a palm to my mouth to physically keep my food down. Like the others her neck was torn open. Only the decomposition of this body seemed further along than the others.
Echoing my thoughts, Andre said, “This death is not recent.”
“No, we think she may have died sometime last night. The area is so isolated that no one came across her until early this evening when the farmer who owns this land was herding his animals back to his barn.”
I felt a tap on the shoulder and a man in his twenties handed Andre and me a pair of latex gloves.
“Thanks.” I tugged the gloves over my clammy hands, small tremors running through my fingers. I doubted I’d ever get used to death, despite the fact that I was becoming one of the undead.
Andre crouched down, and I had to give him serious credit for not grimacing at the smell or sight of the victim. His eyes moved the length of the body.
“Well?” Chief Constable Morgan asked. “Do you still maintain that the killer could be something other than a vampire?” The question seemed a whole lot like a dare, like he wanted Andre to rise to his bait.
Andre appeared to be unfazed by his tone. I needed to learn how to do that.
“I do.” Andre rubbed his chin, still studying the body. How the gesture managed to look sexy in spite of fact that he wore a latex glove was beyond me. “There’s something about these victims that just isn’t quite right.”
I snuck a peek at the victim to try to see what Andre meant, and I immediately regretted it. Not only was her body bloated and discolored, she’d been positioned the most grotesquely of all the victims.
Arms and legs were bent at the joints to form right angles. I no longer knew if the killer we were looking for was a religious fanatic, because the body recreated a symbol, alright. But that symbol was a swastika.
***
I stood up and moved away from the victim, desperate to put some distance between the body and me. The chief constable flashed Andre a superior look as I passed him. At this point, I didn’t give a damn. The only thing I cared about was keeping dinner down.
I pushed through the crowd of people swarming the area. Among them I noticed Maggie chatting with Caleb’s father, Byron. Her eyes widened and his thinned as I strode by them.
The further away I moved from the crime scene, the better I felt. I kept walking even after I passed the halogen lights, until the smell of death was only a faint scent on the wind.
I hugged myself and sat down on the bright green grass. I gazed at the night sky above. I wondered what god would craft such a cruel life for us humans. For me, for Andre, for Lillian and the other victims.
This isn’t God’s doing, a small voice at the back of my mind whispered.
I felt that invisible cord that connected me to Andre build on itself, so I wasn’t surprised when a few minutes later Andre sat down next to me.
He didn’t say anything; neither of us did. He removed his latex gloves and took my hand, his thumb drawing circles along my skin.
Eventually, I looked over at Andre. He stared up at the night sky as well. The storm had passed and the stars shone brightly from above. “They’re very beautiful tonight,” he said. “You can’t always see them from this island.” His tone of voice made me think that the Isle of Man was not a place he considered home.
“Do you live here on a regular basis?” I asked.
His gaze fell until it rested on me. “Now I do.” His meaning was clear. He was here because I was.
I squeezed his hand. I hadn’t tho
ught that he might want to be somewhere else, but the thought that he remained here to be near me made my chest tighten.
Even though he scared me, even though forever was a dizzying amount of time, even though we might both be damned, I loved him.
“So Bishopcourt . . . ?”
“It is one of many mansions that both function as my home and my place of work.”
“Where do you consider home to be?”
He gave me a long look before he lifted our clasped hands and pressed a kiss to the back of mine. “I already answered that question.”
I swallowed. I guess home really is where the heart is.
“What I mean is, if you weren’t here, where would you be?”
He pondered my question. “Ideally? Probably the village in Romania where I grew up. However, it’s rare that I get to visit.”
I couldn’t meet his eyes when I next spoke. “Maybe you could take me there sometime,” I said. When he didn’t respond right away, I peeked up at him.
His eyes had widened and his body stilled. “You’d actually want to go?”
I used my free hand to pluck at a nearby blade of grass. “Sure.”
He reached over and pulled me to him so that my back was pressed to his chest. I didn’t even want to focus on all the glorious things this did to my body, but I’m sure they didn’t escape Andre’s notice.
“I don’t have words to tell you exactly what that would mean to me,” he said, his breath tickling my ear.
He wrapped his arms around me, and for the first time that day—shoot, maybe even that entire week—I felt as though things were going to be okay. Maybe I wasn’t so angry at the universe. After all, it had brought me Andre.
Chapter 13
“Is the truce still intact?” We were back at Bishopcourt in Andre’s study.
He rubbed his face. The action reminded me that the vampire in front of me was old. I mean, we’re talking older than the founding of America—heck, older than Columbus’s discovery of America.