by Anne Bishop
Grimshaw looked grim. I didn’t blame him. We were being reminded that survival not only depended on fellow humans playing nice and sharing the sandbox but also depended on not bringing yourself to the attention of all the large, intelligent predators that prowled just beyond the boundary of the sandbox—and sometimes went hunting inside the sandbox when they had a reason to focus on particular prey.
“You should ask the Xaviers,” I said, breaking the tense silence that followed Ilya’s words. “Detective Swinn, his team, and the dead man had stayed at the boardinghouse. If any of them had one of those tie clips, Ineke might have seen it.” I pointed to the tie clip in the evidence bag. “You could show her that one or even take a photo of it to show around.”
It was the way Grimshaw didn’t look at me that told me someone— or several someones—had already asked Ineke about the tie clip.
“The Xaviers are not the only individuals who could assist in finding out who wears that symbol,” Ilya said, focusing a predator stare on Grimshaw. “We can assist with locating other humans who belong to this group. You can supply a photo.”
Vampire and cop locked eyes.
“Belonging to an organization isn’t proof of guilt or collusion,” Grimshaw said.
“But obtaining a sample of who might belong to a particular group may assist in determining the group’s agenda,” Ilya countered. After a weighty silence, he added, “Our interest is in understanding why Franklin Cartwright came to The Jumble and what he was supposed to achieve. Victoria is the owner of the buildings and caretaker of the land that makes up The Jumble. Someone thinks otherwise and is causing trouble. We will pursue this until we know why. We are willing to work with the police in this matter, or we will work on our own.”
In other words, someone can go to jail if he or she has been naughty or that person can be eaten. Given those choices, I’m pretty sure I would choose jail. Then again, Ilya Sanguinati did look yummy, and dying from orgasms and blood loss might not be a bad way to go.
“Cooperation is always appreciated.” Grimshaw didn’t sound like he appreciated being backed into a corner, but he said the words that should at least delay more people getting killed.
But I was going to pay close attention to the shelves in the general store in case there was a sudden run on the ketchup and hot sauce.
CHAPTER 23
Aggie
Thaisday, Juin 15
Following Ilya Sanguinati’s orders, Aggie gathered her Crowgard kin and flew to the woodland side of Silence Lodge, where they wouldn’t be seen by any humans fishing on the lake. Many of the Crows chose to perch on the branches of nearby trees, but most settled on the ground since it was easier to shift to a human form when you didn’t have to balance on a branch that might not hold that shape.
A dozen Sanguinati followed Miss Vicki’s attorney out of the lodge. Several Crows fluffed and fluttered. Other Crows preened their feathers to show they weren’t concerned by the number of vampires who were also attending this meeting. Normally the Crowgard had no reason to fear the Sanguinati. Being another form of terra indigene, they were not prey. But powerful predators should never be taken lightly.
“We would like your assistance in solving a puzzle,” Ilya Sanguinati said.
Aggie stopped preening. Puzzles were fun, especially the ones that required figuring out how to claim a shiny.
Ilya Sanguinati held out a photograph of the shiny clip thing she had traded for the pretty bracelet. “We need to find out how many humans have a tie clip exactly like this one. Once we know who they are, we’ll be able to find out why they are interested in The Jumble.”
“We think the humans who wear this clip are trying to force Miss Vicki to leave.”
“Not yet.”
All the Crows settled down. “Not yet” wasn’t quite a promise that soon there would be eyeballs for lunch, but it was close.
“You cannot take these shinies,” Ilya Sanguinati said. “They have to stay with the humans who own them.”
Aggie stared at Ilya. No shinies? What kind of puzzle game was that?
“Find something else to bring back that will tell me who the humans are and where they live,” Ilya said. “Something they won’t miss, like mail humans toss in the recycle box as soon as it arrives or an envelope that has been thrown out. We need something with the human’s name and address.”
Ilya smiled, showing his fangs. “Then we’ll be able to identify the human enemies hiding among the rest.”
CHAPTER 24
Grimshaw
Thaisday, Juin 15
Ineke Xavier walked into the boardinghouse’s parlor wearing a one-piece bathing suit and an open robe. “You wanted to see me?”
When Grimshaw didn’t answer, she looked amused. He understood her amusement—and felt grateful that she was amused because he couldn’t stop looking at her thighs. Or more precisely, the two tattoos on her thighs.
On her left thigh was a revolver. The smoke coming out of the barrel rose toward her nether region. On her right thigh was a big-eyed caricature of Ineke with her multicolored hair piled on top of her head and a miniature of the boardinghouse tucked in the hair like an ornament. Around the caricature’s neck was a necklace made of tombstones, and beneath them were the words “I Bury Trouble.”
Gods, Grimshaw thought. I’m renting a room from this woman.
Ineke closed the robe, releasing Grimshaw from his involuntary fixation with the tattoos.
“Will this take long?” Ineke asked. “I’m going to The Jumble to talk to Vicki about our arrangements to offer guests a guided trail ride to the lake. I think she needs some girl time, and I could use a swim while we review the details.”
Grimshaw wanted to shake his head to clear it, or at least splash some cold water on his face, but that would tell her too much about his reaction. Was there something mesmerizing about those tattoos, something hypnotic? Or was it just that he’d been caught unprepared?
He needed to close this case and get out of Sproing.
He held out the photo of the tie clip. “Have you seen this?”
“Have I seen a tie clip? I imagine every man has one, so I’ve seen plenty of them over the years. I think I even have a couple of them in the secondary jewelry box.”
He hoped she had bought them for herself and he didn’t have to look for bodies in the compost bin. “I’m looking for tie clips exactly like this one.”
“I’ve covered this ground before.” But she took the photo and studied the image. “Unless someone’s behavior gives me a reason to look, I don’t rummage through my guests’ possessions. That doesn’t mean I don’t pay attention to anything that’s left out in plain sight. Being tidy men, I can’t say if you or Officer Osgood have a tie clip like this. Franklin Cartwright had rented one of the en suite rooms, but he didn’t leave out so much as a tube of toothpaste, and despite planning to be here for a few days, he didn’t remove anything from his luggage but a couple of shirts and a second pair of trousers that he hung in the closet. And his luggage was always locked when he left his room.”
“How could you tell?”
“The luggage was secured with leather straps and padlocks.” Ineke handed back the photo. “I don’t mind guests having secrets or wearing the perfume of mystery. We all have secrets, and everyone should have a little mystery in their lives. But those padlocks and his talk about Vicki squatting at The Jumble when we’d all watched her pump money and sweat into the place didn’t sit right. If Cartwrig
ht hadn’t been killed, I was going to tell him to find another place to stay.”
“There isn’t another place to stay in Sproing.”
She gave him a predatory smile. “Exactly.” She waved a hand at the photo. “Detectives Reynolds and Baker had a tie clip like that. So did Detective Swinn.”
“What about the bank manager?”
Ineke narrowed her eyes. “I never had a reason to pay attention, so I can’t say for sure.”
“Thanks for your help.” Grimshaw started to turn away, then stopped.
Ineke picked up a large straw basket that held a rolled beach towel, a bottle of water, and a small purse. “Something else?”
He hesitated, then decided to ask the question. “What do you think will happen if Vicki DeVine leaves The Jumble?”
“I think that will depend on why she leaves.”
* * *
• • •
“Do I look like I wear a tie?”
Grimshaw looked up at Gershwin Jones, the owner of Grace Notes, Sproing’s store for all things musical. Looking up at someone was a novel experience he didn’t enjoy.
“No, you don’t,” Grimshaw replied. “But I’m asking business owners if they’ve seen a tie clip like this.”
Gershwin Jones was a large, well-proportioned man. A first-generation Thaisian whose parents had emigrated from the Eastern Storm Islands, he had brown skin and dark eyes. He wore his dark hair in dreadlocks that fell below his shoulder blades, and the knee-length caftan he wore over sand-colored trousers looked like a rainbow that had overdosed on caffeine.
“All the business owners or a select few?”
Like Julian Farrow, Gershwin Jones was a newcomer, someone who had moved to Sproing last fall after so many people in small, isolated places like this one had died or bolted to towns that were human controlled—or at least provided more of an illusion that there was a boundary between them and the terra indigene.
Grimshaw might not sense things like Julian did, but a cop had his own kind of intuition. “A select few—the people who moved into the area within the past year. Lots of people have been looking for new opportunities, looking for a different place to settle down. You’ve got Simple Life folk running the livery, and I understand that a few Intuits have become residents of Sproing.” And I think you’re one of them, he added silently.
Jones went over to the bins of sheet music and began straightening the already tidy bins. “Julian says you’re a friend of his, says you’re open-minded about the gifts that come to a person at birth.”
Which just confirmed his thought that Jones was an Intuit. “I try to be open-minded about things that don’t hurt another person or break the law.”
Jones just kept tidying the bins. Finally he stopped but didn’t look at Grimshaw. “I have a feeling the men who wear that tie clip wouldn’t be doing business with someone like me. They don’t feel the rhythm of a place or the people who live there. They don’t have a feel for anything but profit. You hear what I’m saying? Those detectives causing trouble for Miss Vicki. They didn’t come in, but Officer Osgood has come in to look at the sheet music, look at the instruments I have for sale. He feels the rhythm.”
Well, asking people about the tie clips had been a long shot.
A faraway look came into Jones’s eyes. Then he focused on Grimshaw. “You got a connection to any of the special girls?”
For a moment, Grimshaw’s body clenched. Special girls. Blood prophets. The cassandra sangue. Girls who could see the future when their skin was cut.
“No, I don’t have a connection to any of those girls,” he said. Not directly, anyway.
Some of the girls still lived in the compounds where they had been raised and trained. Others had left that “benevolent ownership” and tried to survive in the chaotic everyday world. Many hadn’t survived, and the ones who had were hidden away.
If you wanted to hide vulnerable girls, you’d ask someone who had an intuitive sense about a place to find communities where those girls would be safe. And Grimshaw didn’t know anyone who was better at sensing a place than Julian Farrow.
“Thanks for your help,” Grimshaw said. He hurried out of Grace Notes and went straight to Lettuce Reed.
“You alone?” he asked Julian as soon as he walked into the store.
“For the moment,” Julian replied. “Had a run on romantic suspense novels an hour ago. Probably not the type of story that is of interest to you.”
Grimshaw waved off the comment. “I need help answering a question. I need a special kind of help.” Too cryptic? No. Julian knew exactly what, or who, he was talking about—and said nothing. Expecting that to be Julian’s response, he added, “I know a man who knows a man who might know a blood prophet.”
Julian looked away. “What are we playing? Six degrees of separation or connect the dots?”
“Maybe both. What do detectives working in Putney, a bank manager in Sproing, and a businessman living in Hubb NE have in common?”
“You tell me.”
“They all have the same tie clip, which could be coincidence or could be a connection.”
Julian said nothing.
Grimshaw decided to push. “You helped hide some of those girls, didn’t you? Before you opened the store here.”
“We’re not talking about it. Ever,” Julian said fiercely.
No, Julian wouldn’t talk. Blood prophets were worth a fortune because of their ability to see the future, and a man who admitted that he knew where to find even one of them would be wearing a target on his back.
But there was one blood prophet who might be within reach.
“Captain Hargreaves knows a patrol captain in Lakeside. He might be able to reach out.” He didn’t want to ask Hargreaves to call in another favor on his behalf, but he also didn’t want this trouble at The Jumble to be the incident that started the next Great Predation.
“Do you really need this?”
“Gershwin Jones seems to think I do. He’s the one who asked if I knew any of the special girls.”
A crackling silence. Finally Julian sighed. “Some Intuits have a private information exchange. There’s been talk that some of the special girls are exploring ways to reveal prophecy without their skin being cut.” He smiled grimly. “I know a man who knows a Wolf who knows a girl who might be able to answer a question by reading cards.”
“If you could reach out,” Grimshaw said. “I trust Captain Hargreaves, but Swinn’s involvement raises the question of who else might be connected to this mess.”
“Work out exactly what you want to ask, and I’ll send the question. Might help if I can e-mail the photo of the tie clip too.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back.”
Grimshaw crossed the street and went inside the police station. Osgood was there, reading one of the books he’d purchased at Lettuce Reed.
“Why don’t you do a foot patrol?” Grimshaw said. He pulled out his wallet and handed Osgood a couple of bills. “Pick up some lunch for the two of us while you’re out and about.”
“Yes, sir.” Osgood hesitated. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take some alone time to consider a question.”
CHAPTER 25
Vicki
Firesday, Juin 16
We were trapped in a building. Lots of pipes overhead and exposed steel support beams. Something was in there with us, hunting us. We’d found Dominique Xavier lying in a pool of her own blood, her blank eyes staring at us as we turned and ran, searching for a way out, desperate to escape the monster.
Ineke, Paige, and I fled in the same direction. As I swung around a corner, I heard Paige scream. I turned back, but Ineke shouted, “Run, Vicki, run! Get help!”
Then came a sound that didn’t—couldn’t—come from one of us.
I ran through a maze of rooms—gray me
tal walls, metal ceiling, wood floor. My heart pounded; my lungs struggled to breathe. Had to get out; had to find help.
The next room had baskets of bright-colored toys filling a row of metal tables—little bits of plastic no bigger than a thumb in the shape of animals. In a world reduced to metallic gray, the colors were startling, unnerving, life- affirming. I picked up a basket—and heard a sound behind me.
I don’t know what it was. It was human-shaped but nothing human. The head rising from a soiled white shirt and thin-striped brown suit looked like papier-mâché draped with dirty strips of gauze that settled around its shoulders. Instead of eyes, a pair of black goggles were somehow attached to the gauze—not tight, not like there were straps holding them on to provide some shape to the white lump. It was as if the goggles were its eyes. Several tie clips decorated the lapels of the suit.
I flung the plastic toys out of the basket, scattering them over the floor like wash water. The gauze-headed thing stumbled over the plastic bits, just a moment of unbalance. I dropped the empty basket, grabbed another that was full of the colored toys, and ran, pursued by the terrible thing that was dressed like a businessman but was deadly and monstrous.
I heard a ding, saw the freight elevator’s doors open. If I could get to the elevator, I could get to the ground floor, get out, get help. Paige was hurt—no one screamed that way if they weren’t hurt—and I didn’t know what had happened to Ineke.
I looked back—and it was there, right there, coming toward me. Did I have time to get in the elevator and press the button? Would the elevator doors close before that thing reached them—and me?
I threw the basket at it, but the basket turned into a pillow that bounced off its chest. I leaped into the elevator, slapped at the panel, and pushed the B button. Wrong button! There were bad things in the basement. There were always bad things in the basement. I pushed the button for the ground floor. The gauze-headed thing reached in as the elevator doors began to close. Reached in to grab me, to drag me back into something unspeakable. I flung myself to the side of the compartment, desperate to avoid that touch and . . .