Rainwater was running down his face and spiking his lashes. His shirt was past soaked, and his hair was flattened against his head. For the first time, I noticed that his nose was a little big, and that there was a wash of freckles, so pale as to usually go unobserved, over those high cheekbones. But there was no guile in those blue eyes, just hope, uncertainty and maybe a little bit of fear.
His hands came up to frame my face, and he pushed my dripping bangs out of my eyes. “Dorina, there is something I—”
A shout broke out. Radu had thrown off the first cop’s hold and jumped the one with the CB, who had pulled a gun on him. So of course ’Du took the gun away and clocked him upside the head with it. Only to be tackled by the other semilucid cop. He disappeared behind the open door of the cop car in a flutter of orange silk. Louis-Cesare sighed.
“Wait,” I said, holding on as he tried to move away. “You still haven’t told me why you don’t think you can win against Anthony.”
He looked at me calmly. “Because unless I am very much mistaken, he killed Elyas.”
That surprised me enough that I let go of his shirt, and he strode off to rescue Radu. I started to follow, before realizing that I was wearing a thong, a sagging stocking and a few straps. And that half the neighborhood was staring at me.
And then an ambulance screeched to a halt, and a couple EMTs jumped out and ran up the drive. “We got a report of a car wreck,” one of them told me. “Were there any—”
“Holy shit!” the other one said, staring at me. Or to be more precise, at the severed head under my arm.
I decided the neighbors could bite me, and ran after Louis-Cesare. “Anthony wasn’t at the auction,” I reminded him, as he prized one of the cops off ’Du.
“Yes, but it is possible that Elyas’s death had nothing to do with the rune.”
“How do you figure that?”
“If Anthony loses me, he loses his stranglehold on the Senate. There would be at least five senators challenged almost immediately. Anthony has been able to promote his allies for hundreds of years, without concern for their fighting abilities, because he knew they should never need to utilize them.”
“And now he’s got a Senate full of people who can’t defend their seats.”
He nodded. “Those five would be defeated, no doubt by challengers who would be far less dependent on his goodwill. And possibly more.”
“That’s one of those Halloween things, right?” one of the EMTs asked. They’d followed me down from the house, and now one of them tentatively poked Ray in the cheek.
Ray’s eyes flew open. “Poke me again, and I’ll chew your finger off,” he said nastily. The guy scrambled back with a little scream.
I sighed. I couldn’t do mind control, at least not on the level needed here. They were going to have to get in line.
“But why kill Elyas?” I asked. “If Anthony was going to kill someone, he’d hardly make it a member of his own Senate!”
“Elyas was one of the five.”
“So better to lose one guy who would probably be defeated in a challenge anyway than his champion?” Louis-Cesare nodded.
From a strictly profit-and-loss standpoint, it made sense. If Louis-Cesare was convicted of the murder, Anthony could enslave him and never have to worry about his defection again. But if he just let him leave, Elyas was dead meat anyway as soon as he was challenged.
“But why Elyas?” I still wanted this to be about the rune. Otherwise, my task of finding it had just gotten a lot harder. There was a limited pool of suspects at the apartment, but anyone could have shown up at the club. Not to mention that, if Louis-Cesare was right, he was screwed. How did a person win a court case when the judge had set him up?
“He needed someone with whom I had a grievance, and he knew that Elyas had Christine. No senator would take on such a favor for another consul without first alerting his own. Such a thing could easily cause a rift within his own Senate.”
One of the EMTs was trying to make a call. I reached in the side of the truck, yanked out the CB cord and handed it to him. “Okay, but why tonight?”
“Anthony likely has spies within Elyas’s household, who could have informed him that I was expected.”
“But you were late. If Anthony set things up for your original appointment time, Elyas would have been dead before you arrived.”
“Yes, but he could have waited, concealed somewhere, and acted when he saw me arrive.”
I frowned. “But you said that you were only in the waiting room a couple of minutes at most.”
“About that, yes.”
“So in less than two minutes, Anthony kills Elyas, sets you up and has time to steal the rune he didn’t even know existed?”
Louis-Cesare shot me a frustrated look. “Why are you arguing so strongly against this?”
“Because it’s a worst-case scenario! Why are you so set on it?”
“Because I scented him when I first entered the room.”
“You scented Anthony?”
“Yes. It was vague, merely a trace. But that was most likely due to the window. It was open. The scent would not have lingered long.”
“Why didn’t you mention this?”
“I have no proof, Dorina! And there is nothing your father or Kit can do against a consul. I do not wish them to make an enemy needlessly on my behalf.”
“But . . . if it can’t be proven, how do you—”
“I did not say it cannot be proven, merely that they cannot do so. There is a chance—” His head jerked up.
“What now?”
“The Senate’s men. Where is Christine?”
“In the house, I guess.”
He licked his lips. “Dorina, it will be much easier to elude them if I do not have her with me. I know it is much to ask—”
“She can stay here,” I said, wondering about my sanity. “I’ll explain to Claire, assuming I ever find her again. But that’s not—”
“Promise me you will look after her, that you will not leave her alone. There is only another hour or so until sunrise, and she will sleep all day. I will arrange for her security by tomorrow night.”
“Why does she need—”
“Promise me.”
“Yes, fine. But you haven’t said what you plan to—” I blinked and realized I was talking to air. Louis-Cesare was gone.
Two large black vans screeched around the corner and skidded to a halt at the curb. They hadn’t even stopped moving when something like twenty guards piled out. I watched them with a strange sort of detachment. The night had reached the point where it would be difficult to get any worse.
Then a familiar curly head emerged from the front of the lead van.
Okay. It was worse.
“It’s that woman,” ’Du informed me. “She’s been back less than a day, and look at us. We’ll probably all be dead by tomorrow.”
“You’re already dead.”
“There’s no reason to be facetious, Dory,” he snapped, as a grim-faced Marlowe stopped in front of me.
“I knew it,” he hissed.
“Knew what?” I asked wearily.
“Knew you would be involved in this. Where is he?”
“By now?” I shrugged.
“Sir, should we—” one of the vamps began, then quickly shut up.
The rotating lights painted Marlowe’s hair with color and glinted in his narrowed brown eyes. “You’re hiding him.”
I waved the hand not holding Ray. “Yeah. Because this is where you come when you want to be inconspicuous.”
“You deny that he was here?”
“You can scent him. You know damned well he was here.”
“Yes, instead of standing trial to save his life!”
“He seems to think a trial isn’t going to get him anywhere.”
“And this is?”
“If he finds the killer.”
“In twenty-four hours,” Marlowe told me harshly, “Louis-Cesare will be declared a fugitive, and th
e Senate will rule against him. Flight is as good as an admission of guilt. If you want to help him, you will tell me where he is.”
“He’s a first- level master. He’s wherever the hell he wants to be.”
Marlowe glanced up at the huge guard looming behind him. “Search the house.”
He looked at me, like he was waiting for a reaction. I just stood there and dripped at him. For once, there were no big dark secrets to find. The only ones I’d had, I’d already chucked at the fey.
“He’ll trash it, just to be vindictive,” Radu said darkly, as Marlowe gave up and stomped off.
I shrugged and started after him. “Too late.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Marlowe glanced at me suspiciously as we passed through the front door, but I wasn’t interested in checking up on him. I assumed that he’d bug the place, and that I would remove them as soon as he left. I just wanted something dry to wear.
I headed for the stairs before I remembered—we no longer had any. So I swerved into the living room for a blanket instead. I found one that didn’t smell too much like troll, wrapped it sarong-style around me and started back for the hall. And stopped.
My eyes had focused on a tiny movement near the door. I bent down and found myself looking at a lone warrior, all of two inches high. It was one of Olga’s chess pieces.
That in itself wasn’t unusual; they ended up scattered about everywhere. But they didn’t usually carry small torches that they waved around wildly. And, once it had gotten my attention, the tiny thing started off across the forest of clothes and bedding.
It finally paused at the top of the stairs going down to the basement. It looked up at me, the minuscule faceplate gleaming in the torchlight. When I stayed where I was, it started waving again impatiently, and pointing down into the blackness.
For a minute, I just stood there, swaying a little on my feet and wondering how paranoid a person had to be before she decided the toys were out to get her. But in the end, I shrugged my shoulders and just went with it. I picked the little thing up and carried it down the stairs.
At the bottom, another small warrior was doing something near the rusted hulk of Pip’s still. There was no light in the basement, and the tiny torch cast wavering shadows on the walls that confused me further. But when I got closer, it became obvious that he was pushing around small sticks and bits of moss, arranging them in some sort of pattern.
The first small warrior started poking me in the side of the hand with his sword, so I put him down. He made his way across the peeling paint of the floor and touched his torch to the end of the nearest pile of kindling. Fire ran across the old concrete, forming jagged letters for a brief instant before the tiny fuel was exhausted: OPEN.
I stared at them and then at the wavering imprint they’d left on my retinas. The message was clear enough: it had been left in front of the wall where Pip’s conduit to Faerie manifested. But if Claire was on the other side, she could open it for herself. And if she wasn’t . . .
Butsubrand would never leave a message like that. And the only time he’d been in the cellar, he’d been too busy trying to kill me to rig something up. At least, I fervently hoped so.
I reached out, wondering if I was about to make a huge mistake, and pressed the small talisman that powered the link between the ley- line sink and the portal. I jumped back, but not fast enough. A swirl of light and color appeared on the wall, flooding the ugly old basement with a rich golden light. And something huge tumbled out of nowhere and smacked me to the ground.
My skull hit the floor hard enough to have me seeing stars. But it was difficult to concentrate on that while the life was getting squeezed out of me. The massive weight shifted slightly, and while I was still crushed, I could breathe.
And that was worse.
My lungs had room to fully inflate, but they were cowering in my chest in fear. I’d once been buried under a pile of decomposing corpses, with jellylike flesh and gangrenous limbs, and it hadn’t reeked like that. I retched, but my stomach had nothing left to bring up. Lucky I never got that sandwich, I thought, as someone started slapping troll flesh.
“Get off her! Move, Ysmi! Dorina, are you all right?”
I didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure I could talk, and anyway, I was afraid to open my mouth and let in more of that hideous stench. But I looked up.
A thick, cracked, yellow toenail stared me in the face. It was attached to a foot with knobs and warts and skin as hard as a rock, all held together by some sort of greenish yellowish fungus and a lot of dirt. My last conscious thought was to decide that, all things considered, having a troll foot in my face was the worst thing that had happened to me all day.
I awoke an indeterminate amount of time later to find myself in my own bed with rain lashing the window and a note fluttering on the door. A glance down showed that someone, probably Claire, had stuffed me into a T-shirt and wrapped my wrist. But judging by my general filthiness, she’d stopped short of an actual bath.
I drew one in the tub for myself with a lot of bubbles, a rare luxury, and got in, taking the note in with me. It was a two-pager. Claire hadn’t been able to leave me one for so long, she was making up for lost time.
Who is this Marlowe guy anyway? He’s an ass. Threw him out. Threatened to have Ysmi sit on him if he returned.
I grinned. I’d really needed the sleep, but damn . . . I was sorry to have missed that.
How did no vampires turn into a houseful of them? You have weird friends. That Christine freaks me out. Put her in the large closet in the first-floor guest room because there are no windows. Okay?
I was sure Christine appreciated being bedded down in the closet. On the other hand, the only other rooms without a view were the pantry, which we no longer had, and part of the basement, which was full of trolls. On the whole, I thought she’d gotten the better deal.
Why are there two severed heads rolling around the house? Cats tried to eat one. Mostly prevented.
I wondered what “mostly” entailed. Decided I didn’t want to know.
Headless guy is in hallway broom closet with head that I think is his. Hosed body off in backyard; it was filthy. Head cussed a lot. But not as much as Radu when he found out you didn’t include a new car in your deal with this Cheung person. He said to call him.
Oops. I knew we’d forgotten something. I made a mental note to avoid ’Du for the near future. Maybe for the distant future, too. I wondered if there was any way to claim a Lamborghini on my expense account with Mircea. Probably not.
FYI, Olga cut a new portal. Well, not new. It’s a new destination on the old one. Two colors now: green goes to Faerie, blue goes to beauty shop. But she’d started it only today and we had no way back unless opened from this end. Sorry. Next time we’ll send somebody small through first.
Knock on my door when you get up.
That last line sounded ominous, but it wasn’t like I could avoid Claire, too. I sloshed my way out of the bath and checked out my bruise collection. I hadn’t added as many as I’d expected, all things considered. I threw on a T-shirt and a pair of soft gray sweatpants and padded down to Claire’s room, trying to dry my hair with one hand.
I couldn’t have been out long, because it was still dark outside. Claire was up, or at least there was a strip of light under her door. I knocked and she opened up, her long red hair done up in fabric rollers. It looked like she’d put her time at the beauty shop to good use.
“We didn’t know you were home, or we’d have waited for you,” she told me earnestly before I could say anything. “But when we heard the commotion from the wards—”
“You mean they actually did something?” I’d begun to wonder.
“For about a minute. Until the damn Svarestri deactivated them!”
She moved aside and I came in. She’d moved a twin bed in here, and Aiden and Stinky were bedded down in snoring heaps. Or, at least, Stinky was snoring, sprawled out at the head of the bed like a drunken sailor, hairy limbs ak
imbo. Aiden was curled up at his side like a cherub. A thumb-sucking one, I was glad to note. Stinky had never done that. If he couldn’t eat it, he wasn’t interested.
“The Svarestri had to have altered the wards from the inside,” I said, sitting on her bed. Wards could be overwhelmed from outside, but they could be taken down only when someone had access to their source of power. “How did they manage to reverse the portals?”
Claire sat on the vanity chair, propped her foot up on the quilt and continued what she’d been doing, which was to paint her toenails. “I’ve been thinking about that. Manlíkans are usually used for scouts into Dark Fey lands and as training dummies on the practice field. Not as warriors. I don’t think subrand intended to use them to fight us, but rather to find him a way into the house. I should have wondered what the rest of those things were up to while a handful kept us busy.”
“Wouldn’t it have been simpler to have them take down the wards?”
She shook her head. “Wards ignore Manlíkans. As far as they’re concerned, they don’t exist. But a portal is a different kind of magic, and the Svarestri somehow knew there was one in the pantry—”
“subrand saw it the last time he was here,” I said, recalling how Louis-Cesare and I had once escaped him using that very portal.
“I had wondered; they aren’t that easy to detect unless you’re right on top of one. Anyway, they managed to reverse it, but by that time they were exhausted from the storm and the struggle with us—”
“So they waited to break in until tonight, when we were asleep,” I finished for her. It made sense.
“Yes. Attacking women and children in their beds—that’s whatsubrand calls honor!”
Personally, I thought it was whatsubrand called smart. I didn’t like his tactics, but from a purely military standpoint, it had been a flawless plan. And if Cheung hadn’t shown up, it might well have worked.
I said as much, only to have Claire frown savagely. “Caedmon should have killed him when he had the chance!”
I blinked. It was pretty much where my thoughts had been going, but it was a little disconcerting to hear it from her. The woman I knew had planted marigolds in the garden to keep the bugs off the plants because she didn’t like swatting them. She wouldn’t talk to me for a week once after seeing me beat a rat to death with a broom handle. She’d been a tofu-eating, fur-hating, plastic-shoe-wearing pacifist, but it looked like things had changed.