I suppose part of me was waiting for it to get up and come at me again. Like Jessica would get up and come at me if I'd gone through with it, if I'd ignored her wishes (as, truthfully, I'd been tempted to do) and made her a vampire. She wouldn't be Jessica anymore if I did that; she'd be a slobbering, crazy vampire. Fast forward ten years, by then maybe she'd have a little bit of control over the thirst. Then her new life would begin: being more careful about meals. Never aging, but getting old just the same. Pulling further and further away from the mortal Jessica, my friend, the older she got. Getting sly, like Eric and Alonzo.
Alonzo. He had made a vampire without a single thought to the consequences: for Sophie or for himself. He had killed her and gone on his way, and he had to pay. That was it, that was how it was: he fucked up, and he had to pay. What if it had been Jessica, dead in some alley in France how many years ago?
And how could I have gone to her room and asked her to let me do that? I deserved a zombie hiding in my attic. I deserved a hundred zombies.
“Why do you think it was here? How did it get in, and get all the way up here without anybody seeing?” Cathie was chattering nervously and looking at me the way you looked at a recent mental ward escapee. “What do you think it wanted?”
“I don't give a ripe shit,” I said, and stood.
It took a long time to find the door.
Chapter 26
“Can I tag along?” Cathie asked, drifting beside me.
“I don't care.”
“Well, I just thought I'd ask. Are you okay? You're done crying, right?”
“No promises.” I could hear the phone ringing as I went downstairs. I'd heard Tina and Sinclair come back, which was too bad because it meant somewhere in this big house, Tina was sprinting to get the phone before it clicked over to the machine.
“I'm not here!” I yelled. Sinclair was standing at the foot of the stairs, looking up at me, still in his overcoat.
“It might be important,” he teased, well aware of my antiphone leanings. Then he wrinkled his nose. “What is that smell?”
“It's a long damn story, and I'll tell you all about it on the way—”
“On the way where?”
“But will you just hug me right now?”
“Darling, are you all—” He almost staggered as I flung my arms around him. I tried to squash the traitorous thought
(why didn't you save me?)
and concentrate on the good things: Sinclair's arms around me, his good clean scent, the polar opposite of the zombie.
Cathie coughed. To be honest, I'd forgotten she was there. “I'll just, uh, catch up with you later.” She vanished into the stairs.
Sinclair was rubbing my back. “What is it?”
“Alonzo has to be punished.”
He pulled back and stared at me. “Does this have anything to do with Jessica turning you down?”
Now I was the one staring. “How did you know—okay, apparently I'm traveling through time about half as fast as the rest of you, but how did you know she'd say no?”
“Because,” he replied, “she is a billionaire who works, even though she does not have to. I never imagined she would lie back and let you try to fix anything for her, much less something like this.”
“Well, I don't want to do anything to her.”
His perfect brow wrinkled. “ 'Do' anything?”
“It's part of the long story. But if you were dying, wouldn't you—”
“She maintains she is not dying, only ill. Is it for us to argue?”
“No way. I just wish I'd figured that out a little earlier.” I leaned my head against his neck. “I guess I thought maybe since she saw me get better so fast after Delk shot me—”
“No oneshould decide to be turned based onyour experiences, my darling. You are unique.”
“But maybe a vampire I turned would be like me!” God, what was I saying? Had I learned nothing from the Unpleasant Attic Incident?
No, I didn't want to turn Jessica. But I didn't want to watch her die, either. It was too awful, like having to choose your own manner of death: Ah, Miss Taylor, will you be choosing beheading or exsanguination today?
“No one is like you. You may check the Book of the Dead,” he added, “if you require another source.”
“Ugh, pass.” The Book of the Dead was a tough read.
“So she did refuse you.”
“Repeatedly.” And a good thing, too.
He shrugged. “She has faith in modern medicine. It's not entirely misplaced.”
“Yeah.” I straightened his lapel, which was already perfectly straight, and felt his arm steal around my waist. I pushed him away, gently. “You need to get Tina. I've made a decision about Alonzo.”
“I trust you will let me in on it?” he asked lightly, but he was giving me an odd look. “If it is not too much—”
He cut himself off. We both looked as Tina came hustling out of kitchen and almost ran through the hall, actually sliding to a stop in her stocking feet in front of the steps.
“Majesties!”
“Whoa, who died?” It was a joke, but then I remembered the company I was in, the events of the past, uh,year , and my life. “Oh, God. Whodid die?”
“No one. I heard you wanted me and came as fast as I could. And Alonzo called to say he would be here in an hour.”
“Not soon enough,” I replied. “Let's go.”
“Wait, we're meeting him?”
“Yeah. Right now. Get your coats. Come on.”
“What's happening?” Tina asked.
“I was not aware you were meeting with him today,” said Sinclair.
Me neither. Well, if Alonzo was open to a meeting, that was fine with me. “Listen, he killed Sophie and there has to be a consequence. Not a Nostro consequence, but still. So, he has to pay. Literally pay. And I was thinking, he's probably built quite a little holding for himself over the years. Right?”
“Right,” Tina replied, and Sinclair nodded.
“Okay. So: he gives all his property and money to Sophie. And has to start over.”
Sinclair blinked.
“Oh, Majesty,” Tina began dolefully. “That is—we're talking millions. Possibly billions. And he would have nothing?”
“He'd have more than Sophie did. A cousin, friends to help him. A way to get back on his feet. Or maybe he never will. That's not my problem. He has to pay for what he did. And that's how it is.”
Sinclair was looking at me like he'd never seen me before. Tina's eyes were practically bulging in surprise.
“I will support you, Elizabeth, if you feel this strongly about it.”
And Tina said, “Your will is our will, Majesty.”
And that was that.
Chapter 27
We pulled up to the hotel, Sinclair (reluctantly) handed his Mercedes keys to the valet, and walked into the hotel. It was one of those hotels that look like a nice big brownstone on the outside, a place where families lived. It cost, Tina had told me, twelve hundred dollars. A night. I assumed the beds were made of gold and the staff tucked you in every night with hot cocoa and kisses.
“A zombie,” Tina murmured. She looked like she was having trouble processing everything that was happening at once. I hoped she enjoyed being a member of the “I'm freaking out” club. “I had no idea they even existed.”
“We will take care of that—”
“Too late,” I said.
“—after we take care of this. Perhaps I should tell him,” Sinclair was saying as we trooped to the elevator. “Be the heavy, as it were.”
“I'm not afraid to tell Alonzo that we're punishing him,” I retorted. Shit, after the Unfortunate Attic Incident, I wasn't afraid of anything.
“Small bites, Majesty,” Tina murmured.
The elevator came—ding! The doors slid open. Before I could let Tina in on my new “not afraid of nothin' ” mind-set, Sinclair muttered the rare epithet.
Tina looked. I looked. We all looked. And after t
he night I'd had, I really wasn't all that surprised.
“He's pretty dead,” I observed.
Chapter 28
Alonzo was in two pieces in the elevator. There was also a bloodless hole in the middle of his forehead. Sadly, he wasn't the first dead vampire I'd seen. I was mostly numb—no idea how I felt about Alonzo being dead, how he got that way, or what to do next. Not even taking the elevator up to the fifteenth floor(WITH THE DEAD VAMPIRE INSIDE) moved me. Well, moved me much.
Did I feel bad about a killer getting killed?
“Thorough job,” Tina said, squatting beside Alonzo's head.
“Yep,” I confirmed. So the killer had shot him to, I dunno, distract him, and then cut off his head while Alonzo was still trying to grow back his brain. Obviously, someone had known what he (or she) was dealing with. There was very little blood, which I'd expect, but the other five European vampires were scared shitless, which I didn't expect.
At least it was very late—not much staff to deal with. And we'd jumped in the elevator and taken it up before anyone in the lobby had seen.
Carolina and the others were sort of milling about in the hallway, if shifting back and forth and occasionally murmuring to each other could be called milling. I guess that was milling. What was milling? They weren't back there polishing grain, after all. They sure were taking the news like cool customers.
Wrenching my brain back to current events, I forced myself to look at Alonzo's body. The elevator door had been propped open, so unfortunately it was easy to take in.
The body was dressed up, he had his shoes and socks on. His head was about two feet away. One eye was wide with surprise; the other one was rolled up, looking at the ceiling. Well, he wasn't really looking at the ceiling. It just looked like he was looking at the ceiling. In fact, it looked like one big dead vampire in the elevator.
Alonzo had been killed in the private elevator, which was solely for the use of the guests on the suite floor. Tina had checked; the vampires were the only ones staying in the hotel suites.
Had they heard anything? If they had, they hadn't volunteered anything yet.
Anyway, the elevator had been brought back up to the fifteenth floor, where we all were, but there wasn't any police tape or anything because the vamps wanted to keep this one in-house. I had no idea how they could keep something like this from the cops (it wasn't a vampire hotel, after all) but I kept my mouth shut. Police involvement could only cause complications. Especially if Alonzo was correctly identified: hmm, a hundred-year-old dead guy who doesn't look a day over twenty-five! Now there's a stumper! Say, all you others, would you mind coming in for questioning? For about five-to-ten with time off for good behavior?
“What happened?” I asked.
There was a long silence while the Europeans looked at each other, and I was beginning to repeat my question, louder, when Carolina said, “Well, ah, Majesty, Alonzo called you and he left. And then he died.”
Sothat's why they were so twitchy. Funny; I'd imagine ancient vampires didn't much care about imminent death, but I'd found the older they were, the more they thought they were entitled to live. It was amazing, when you sat down and thought about it.
“You guys, relax. I didn't do it. None of us did it.” I looked at Sinclair and Tina, who I just remembered had mysteriously disappeared earlier tonight before Alonzo's death.
“None of us did it,” Sinclair echoed. Right! Besides, he and Tina were always mysteriously disappearing. If Tina hadn't been gay, I would have had to keep a much closer eye on—
“The monarchy had nothing to do with this,” Tina reiterated. I was glad she seemed to know all about it. “We assumed he had been killed in a dispute with one of you.”
“Why would one of us kill Alonzo?” Carolina asked. “Why would I kill him?”
“To get in our good graces?” Sinclair suggested.
“Family doesn't always get along,” Tina added.
“And for the same reasons humans kill,” I said. “For money? To get property? For love? Hate? Jealousy? Revenge?”
Carolina was shaking her head; they were all shaking their heads. “No, no. Alonzo was—any differences we had were worked out decades ago. You were the only cause—that is to say, we had different opinions on what to do.”
“Because of the situation with Dr. Trudeau,” Sinclair said.
“That was her name? The brunette from your parlor?”
I looked away and counted to five before talking again. “What happened?” I asked, wondering if vampires had a CSI-type team they could send out for to, I dunno, vacuum for fingerprints or whatever.
“We had risen, of course, and were preparing to go out and get something to eat. David—” Carolina, the group's unofficial spokesvampire, nodded to a tall, quiet (but then, they were all quiet) gray-haired vampire who looked like a used car salesman in a good suit. “David was having someone come up; the rest of us were going out in a while. Alonzo was going to wait to dine, though, he wanted to leave right away. He was excited. He said you wanted him to come over. He—he was excited,” she said again. “He was looking forward to seeing you again.”
I turned to Tina. “For the record, not that I think you'd be so obvious and sloppy, but did you call Alonzo, pretending to be me, to lure him out away from his buddies, ambush him in the elevator on his way down, shoot him in the head, then cut his head off?”
“No, Majesty. I had to go to Best Buy and get a new DVD player for the game room.”
“I can verify her story. I went with her.” Sinclair sniffed down at Tina. “You are a gem in all things but one: you will insist on buying American.”
“Can we focus, please? So after a while, Alonzo went skipping out the door, all happy to come to my house, and then a while later we came up with—blech—his headless body.”
“Yes, there he was,” used car salesman said. David! His name was David.
“And none of us did it,” I clarified, “and none of you guys did it.”
“If one of us had a grudge,” Carolina pointed out, “we would hardly wait all this time, until we were here under your watchful eye, and kill him in a strange country in a strange hotel room. This draws your attention to us at a time when we have little interest in being noticed.”
“Good point,” I admitted. That “no attention” thing made sense, too. Getting noticed was a great way to get singled out and, well, just check the elevator for why it was bad to get noticed.
“We will take care of this,” Sinclair told them. “We have a small team coming to tend the body. Do you wish to take him back to France?”
“Why?” Carolina asked. “He is dead. What difference does it make where his body is?”
Nice epigraph:You're dead now, and who cares? Not even your cousin .
“If you did not kill him,” she continued, “then his properties are on the table, so to speak. Speaking for myself, I am most anxious to return and look into disbursement issues.”
The three of us looked at each other. These guys didn't know that I had planned to give all Alonzo's stuff to Sophie. But now that he was dead, there was no reason to avenge the good doctor.
“You're not sad he's dead because you want his stuff?”
“His being dead solves a rather large problem for you, too, Majesty.”
Larger than you think, honey . I pushed the thought of Sophie—an obvious suspect—aside for now. “Yeah, but—come on, the guy's dead. A friend of yours—family member—for decades? Perhaps a century? Don't you owe him something? Don't we all? I barely knew him and I sort of liked him, when I wasn't thinking about—” Shooting him, I'd started to say, but probably that wasn't the best way to go. “Look, there's got to be something. I mean, I'm glad you guys aren't in a killing psycho rage because of this, but the poor guy got iced in a hotel elevator, for God's sake.”
“What is it you want us to do?” Carolina asked. Her expression made it clear she could not think of a single idea that appealed to her.
“You're praying? We can't pray,” David said.
“Not to mention, I don't think Alonzo is with… Him,” Tina added.
“Shut up, you guys. I'm sure you won't burst into flames if I do all the talking. I see heads are up. They should be bowed. Bowwwww.” All the heads dropped like they were on a string, except for one. Sinclair's. He was looking at me and struggling valiantly not to laugh. I glared at him, but he wouldn't bow his head. Typical. I'd let the Big Man handle him another day.
I bowed mine and looked at my clasped fingers. “Heavenly Father, you may have noticed our friend, Alonzo, has run into a spot of misfortune. We're not sure where he is, but regardless, please bless him and look after him, forever and ever, and please let him be happy where he is and not scared or lonely. And, um, thanks again for all the help you've been giving me on the whole fasting-for-my-birthday thing. Amen.”
“Okay,” Tina said. “Now that the… the royal prayer is out of the way, perhaps we can get back to the business at hand.”
“Which is what? We talked to these guys, other guys are coming to take Alonzo's body—we're not cops, we're not forensic scientists, and we're not journalists. We're—”
A phone began to ring. I glared around at them. “You guys! Shut that off. Hotel room phone, cell phone, whatever it is, kill it, just don't get me started on phones. Will you—”
After a few seconds of looking around, everyone looked straight down. The phone continued to ring.
It was coming from Alonzo's body.
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