"And where did you go to eat?"
"I didn't." Lilia shrugged. "I was too upset to eat."
"Upset?"
"She was lying to me. She said she didn't know Gid but I'm sure she recognized his image."
"That's hardly conclusive," Montgomery said, using that quiet voice again. If he'd said anything remotely intimate, that voice would have given Lilia shivers.
As it was, she straightened and held his gaze. "In my line of work, few things are ever conclusive. I run on gut, Montgomery. I knew she lied to me and I had to think about what the truth might be. I went to the circus."
He arched a brow. "Why?"
"Because there are fewer rules there, and that works for me." She held his gaze with defiance and he simply watched her, then turned back to his note taking.
"What time did you get back here?"
"About an hour ago. Blake and Mike saw me come in." At his inquiring glance, Lilia gestured to the two men. Blake was watching Montgomery with considerable interest while Mike was more intrigued with his drink. "Gid's old roommates. They were kind of grandfathered into my affections."
Montgomery glanced at Blake, held his gaze in challenge for a moment, then looked back at Lilia. "Doesn't look very grandfatherly to me," he murmured and Lilia couldn't help but smile.
"He's watching you, Montgomery, not me."
Montgomery's eyes narrowed at that morsel of news.
Lilia laughed. "He's single. I could make introductions if you're interested."
"Leave it," Montgomery said with such low heat that Lilia met his gaze once again. The green of his eyes was simmering as he watched her and she felt an answering tingle start low in her gut.
She really needed to get to the pleasure fringe for some orgasmic release.
Would Montgomery offer to be her tour guide?
Then he blinked and was officious all over again. "Let me be blunt, Ms. Desjardins. You have spoken to or contacted two shades since your arrival in New Gotham, both of which have been killed in the same way almost concurrent with your contact with them. You have no alibi and your record shows a certain ... disregard for authority and Republican law."
"I would never kill a shade," Lilia said.
Montgomery's voice was hard. "You're a fellow of the Society of Nuclear Darwinists. You took top marks in the compulsory Dissection and Vivisection classes. For four years, you were the quickest and the best, and unfortunately for you, we're looking for a killer who knows his or her way around a surgical knife."
"Dissection and Vivisection class was a long time ago." Lilia spoke around the lump in her throat.
"I understand that surgery is not that different from being a good shot with a laze. It's an innate talent, from what our coroner says, and one that isn't forgotten."
Lilia swallowed. There was nothing she could say in her own defense.
Not even the truth.
"Do you own a surgical knife, Ms. Desjardins?"
"No. I never have."
"How uncommon."
"That's been said of me before."
His gaze searched hers, seeking weak points in her defensive walls. Lilia was sure there were none, but his stare was still disconcerting. "This is not a homicide investigation," he said quietly. "Yet. However, the deliberate abuse of shades has been noted in the history of most violent killers."
Lilia felt sick at the implication.
"Be sure that you have an alibi for duration of your visit, Ms. Desjardins. I'd advise that you stay away from shades." He turned to leave and Lilia cleared her throat.
"Montgomery." She waited until he glanced back. "Maybe you should watch your ass."
A glint lit his eyes, evidence that he recognized his own words from the night before. "And why would that be?"
"Everyone I talk to in this town ends up dead." Lilia shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe you've made the list."
He took a step back toward her, his voice dropping dangerously. "Are you threatening me, Ms. Desjardins?"
"Just making an observation. Lucky for you, you're not a shade."
Something flicked in his eyes, something that made Lilia wonder what she'd said.
"Enjoy your evening, Lil," he said quietly, then pivoted on his heel and marched out of the hotel.
She watched him go and knew that Gid would have calculated the probability of any subsequent enjoyment of this evening on her part to be very low.
Perhaps nonexistent.
She was innocent but couldn't prove it, which wasn't the most uplifting realization possible. And really, if Montgomery was looking for people who knew their way around a surgical knife, the hotel was booked with three hundred souls who had at least passed all four years of Dissection and Vivisection. Most of them had excelled at it, as those courses separated the proverbial wheat from the chaff at the Institute for Radiation Studies.
Every one of them was capable of having committed these two murders—they were murders to Lilia—but Lilia, who had shamelessly cheated in those courses with the assistance of a certain graduate student, was the suspect of choice.
She knew that she would eventually appreciate the irony of that.
The only person who knew the truth was that graduate student, who was rather inconveniently dead and thus unable to offer testimony on Lilia's behalf. There was no point in telling Montgomery the truth, as it would just sound like a handy lie that couldn't be corroborated.
On the other hand, it was obvious that someone who didn't know the truth was trying to set Lilia up. She looked across the lobby and knew she could limit the potential candidates to everyone in the Society except herself.
That wasn't very helpful.
Even less helpful was the fact that Lilia couldn't figure out why anyone would have it in for her. She knew she could be annoying on a small scale, but it was hard to think of herself of being worthy of the effort of being framed for murder.
Then again, maybe she was underestimating her ability to tick people off.
It had happened before.
Lilia would have made her escape, but Rhys ibn Ali hailed her with a raised glass. "Lilia!"
"Lilia!" his cronies echoed, his chorus line.
"Our own rebel angel," Rhys said and they fell all over themselves laughing at his brilliant wit.
Lilia wasn't a big fan of Rhys. He was good-looking and confident, the kind of guy who believed that no rules applied to him. He was the Society's premier shade hunter, but only because they turned a blind eye to many of his less-ethical practices. They seemed to have a deal: they'd make him a star if he didn't talk too much about technique. It was a precarious balance because Rhys adored himself so much that he not only wanted to share intimate details of his brilliance with everyone, but failed to see that he had ever done anything wrong.
"I'm just heading up to my room, Rhys. It's been a long day and all that." It was the best she could do in terms of a polite brush-off. This was Rhys, after all. She tried to step past him, without success.
"You have to have one little drink first," he insisted. "I haven't had a chance to talk to you yet."
Lilia regarded him with suspicion. "Since when do you want to talk to me?"
"Since I had such a nice chat with Gid last summer." His smile didn't reach his eyes.
What did Rhys know? "Oh? I didn't realize you'd seen him."
Someone got Lilia a glass of wine—she didn't see who, and later that would drive her crazy—and she was so interested in Rhys' comment that she just threw half of it back.
Being drunk made it easier to be in his company.
"Oh, yeah." He glanced over his posse and they got the hint, each of them suddenly disinterested in the conversation. "It must have been just a couple of days before he died." He leaned closer, as snakelike as Lilia had ever seen him. "So, how long had Gid been indulging?"
Gid had been the cleanest piece of business ever born, but Lilia played along. "Hey, don't go talking it up, not right before the awards ceremony," she whispered. "The Socie
ty will be all over you."
Rhys eased closer and lowered his voice. "True enough. But what was he taking? He was really messed up. It's no wonder he died like he did. You fill your body with junk, it's only a matter of time before you forget to protect yourself."
"Did ever you see him take any drugs?"
"No. Gid wasn't stupid. If I'd seen, I could have gotten him kicked out of the Society. But his talk was enough to condemn him. When he said that I had to help him, I was sure he'd gone nuts."
"Really." Lilia refrained from observing that Gid would have to have gone insane to have asked Rhys for anything.
"Then I thought he was offering me an angel-shade." Rhys chuckled to himself. "That was why I listened as much as I did."
Lilia's glass was empty again. Clearly there was a problem with the humidity levels in the lobby bar, as all alcoholic beverages evaporated before they could be consumed.
A kid brought Lilia another, right on cue. He stared at her breasts, blushed, then fled.
Lilia drank.
Rhys meanwhile was in his element. If he thought Lilia would be devastated by his story, he could think again. Gid had never taken drugs in his life. Rhys was lying.
The trick was to figure out why.
And maybe to find the germ of truth in his story.
"He talked about angel-shades?" Lilia said, prompting him.
"An angel, just one. He insisted it wasn't a shade." Rhys laughed at the stupidity of this notion. "I mean, a real angel of the 'messenger from God' variety. Gid said that I had to help him avert disaster, as the angel had asked him to do. It was wacky stuff."
What had Gid found out?
Had he really talked to an angel?
And what had the angel told him?
"What kind of disaster?"
"I dunno. Come on, Lilia, it was nutty stuff." He drained his drink, nodding to himself. "Although it all makes a kind of sense since you'd turfed Gid out. Everybody knew he was crazy in love with you. He must have just lost it." He spared Lilia a glance. "Why'd you break up?"
Lilia decided that demure was a better social option than ripping out Rhys' throat in front of witnesses. "It's not your business."
"Ernestine's hot to kick you out of the Society. Why?"
"You know Ernestine better than me," Lilia said mildly. "I've never seen her naked, after all."
Rhys pointed finger at Lilia. "That's ancient history ..."
"Is it? Maybe she's still hot for you. Maybe that's what's going on."
Rhys, predictably, found this logic appealing. "Hey. Maybe."
Lilia worked it. "Don't you think it's funny that Ernestine's playing hard with me over the angel-shades? Who would be your only real competition in the field? And what would be the capture of the century, and who made it?"
Rhys' dark eyes took on a hostile glint. "That should have been my capture and you know it."
"No, I don't."
"I saw them first."
"Then why didn't you capture them?"
He took a long slow sip of his drink. His manner was definitely resentful, which was interesting. Lilia remembered her sense that Armaros and Baraqiel had let her capture them and wondered if they had not let Rhys capture them.
"Don't be so cocky, Lilia. The Society's going to play hardball with you over this."
"Not that you've encouraged them or anything."
"Me? What could I do?"
"You say you saw the angels first. If that's true, you could testify that they aren't surgically altered and save my butt."
Rhys' smile broadened. "Why would I do that, Lilia? What exactly would be in it for me?"
Lilia drained her drink and set the glass aside. "You know, Rhys, I can't figure out why people say such terrible things about you. You're just the heart and soul of compassion, a champion among men." She pinched his cheek, a little too hard, and he winced. "You truly are a soulless bastard," she whispered. "Maybe Ernestine was too good for you."
Lilia pivoted then, intending to make her exit, but found one of Gid's former classmates blocking the way to the stairs. He was tall and thin, a whisper of reddish hair drawn across the top of his head.
"Hi," he said, shoving his hand at Lilia in his nervousness. "You probably don't remember me. I'm Cecil O'Donnell and this is Rob McMurtry. We just wanted to say we were sorry to hear about Gid."
"Thanks." The pair looked so anxious to be acknowledged that Lilia couldn't have done anything else. "You sent donations, didn't you? I remember your names." They nodded and shuffled their feet a little, uncertain where to take the conversation from here. "You were in some of Gid's classes, weren't you?"
"Covert Tracking," Cecil confirmed. "Gid and I were lab partners."
"Basic Reports and Maintenance of Database Integrity," said Rob, then nudged Cecil. "That was one tough course."
Lilia nodded, having nothing to add to that.
A woman pushed between them to speak to Lilia as well. "Sorry about Gideon. He was a good guy." She gave a gruff nod, touching Lilia's shoulder briefly as if they were allies in some war that Lilia knew nothing about. "Tonya Erikson."
"Thanks, Tonya."
"Hey, here's someone you should meet. Here's our latest hotshot researcher," Cecil said, gesturing to a small dark-haired kid. "Nicholas di Giovanni."
It was the same kid who had brought Lilia her last drink. "Just call me Nick," he said, speaking directly to Lilia's breasts.
It seemed unlikely that they would call him anything anytime soon, but he appeared to be willing to wait it out and give them their chance.
Lilia wasn't. She made her excuses and went back to her unit.
Lilia was exhausted. She turned on the vid and it seemed that all six thousand channels were featuring someone, or something, having sex. Lilia was acutely aware of her own yearning to do the horizontal waltz and lack of a partner.
If Montgomery turned up again in renegade guise, she might surprise him.
Why was he living a double life anyway?
Which was the real Montgomery? Lilia was afraid it was the officious cop. She put the vid on autosurf to change channels every three seconds. She liked using one testosterone fantasy to set up another. It was better than sitting in silence, at least.
The channels swirled. She felt dizzy and disoriented and unfocused, which maybe was what she got for having a lot of sparkling wine on an empty stomach.
Lilia kicked off her boots and freed herself from her corset. She fell naked across the bed, not caring for once where the surveillance monitors were. She was sore and tired and a bit drunk. Her belly snarled and it had cause for complaint, given how little she'd eaten during the day.
Her body wanted to sleep, but her thoughts were spinning like the images on the vid. There was nothing in the room except the requisite Bible. For lack of a better option, Lilia pulled it out of the drawer.
The faux leather binding was embossed with the name of the charity that had donated the Bible—the Gideons.
There was something funny about that, given that Gid had been the most vehement atheist Lilia had ever known. Most Nuclear Darwinists were atheists and agnostics— Lilia had always thought it would be hard to make peace with the Institute's research plans if there was any chance of being judged for participating. She turned to the little information blurb about the Gideons, assuming they had been named after their founder.
But no. The name came from two chapters in the Bible, Judges 6 and 7, which told of the faith shown by one Gideon before God. Lilia booted up the Bible—which seemed to still be fully charged—and fumbled through the index, cursing the fact that the Bible's verses weren't in alphabetical order. Finally, she got chapter 6 displayed on the screen, but verse 22 nearly made her drop the Bible.
"And Gideon said, 'Help me, Lord God, for I have seen an angel of the Lord face to face.'"
Lilia shut down the Bible abruptly. Rhys had said that Gid had seen an angel too. What if there were more angels? What if Gid had told other people? What if the
Society hadn't been too tickled that he had decided to agree with Lilia?
What if the enigmatic Council of Three had decided to do something about Gid's potential insubordination?
Lilia was making stuff up and she knew it—it didn't help matters that her theory sounded good. Maybe that said more for the sparkling wine than anything else. She was really dragging now and knew she needed to get some sleep, spinning thoughts or not.
Maybe everything would make sense in the morning.
Maybe not.
She checked her palm for the time of sunrise and set her alarm so she wouldn't sleep past her rendezvous with Micheline. She crawled into bed, naked except for Gid's locket, and pulled the covers up to her chin. She fingered the locket as the changing light from the vid washed over the room and tried to find the key that would make everything make sense.
Like the philosopher's stone. Wasn't that supposed to have fallen from heaven, in Lucifer's brow?
Gid would have known what to do. Gid had always been practical and logical, while Lilia got sideswiped by passion.
Ever her mother's daughter.
Ever the one following her heart.
In lieu of Gid—because even the New Gotham hotel, with its many amenities, didn't have the afterlife on direct dial—Lilia called her mom.
Lilia' s mom picked up immediately. "Lilia! Where have you been?"
There was nothing like being chided to make a person feel loved. "You know where I am." Lilia nestled deeper into the covers. The vid-screen painted the room in one color after another, one set of entangled limbs after another. Lilia ignored the periodic appearance of fur and turned off the sound. "Just thought I'd call and check in."
"And it's about time." Her mother glared at the feed just for effect. Lilia grinned back and her mother shook her head, almost loosing a torrent of thick red hair. She had tied it back with her usual haste and it was, as always, threatening to break free.
She was in the kitchen and undoubtedly cooking. No one much cooked anymore; it seemed so arcane and magical that it always fascinated Lilia. She felt a stab of homesickness.
"I thought you would call yesterday, after you got in."
"I was too busy with the conference," Lilia started to fabricate but didn't get much further.
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