by Amber Benson
“Like you said, I’ve had him under observation most of the last twenty-four hours, so there was no way he could’ve committed the murder of Constance Partridge without my knowledge.”
Freezay nodded, and having gotten exactly the information he wanted from Kali, he ended her testimony with a wave.
“So we know that Donald Ali intended to frame Horace by setting the murder scene to resemble an Aztec ritual killing,” Freezay continued. “Our copycat attempted to continue the ruse with Constance’s murder by slitting her jugular and then, as she bled to death, inflicting a series of shallower cuts to the rest of her body—once again simulating an Aztec ritual killing.”
The crowd in the drawing room was silent, but their rapt attention was unwavering. Only Donald Ali (who was unconscious) and Fabian Lazarev (who was still lost in an interior monologue of pain and guilt) were oblivious to the slowly ratcheting tension inside the room.
“Or at least, that’s what I thought at first. But I was mistaken—there was no copycat and no intention of making the second murder look like the first. It was only a coincidence that Constance’s torture killing resembled Donald Ali’s handiwork.”
Silence. Every breath taken was measured, every heartbeat like the tick of a steadily accelerating metronome.
“Let’s look more closely at Constance Partridge’s murder,” Freezay said, pacing in front of the fireplace, fingers laced behind his back. “Why was she killed?”
“The book,” I said.
“Yes, follow the book and you will know the killer,” Freezay murmured.
“Follow the book, you say?” Uriah Drood intoned. “Whatever do you mean?”
Freezay stalked over to the large man, intimidating him so badly that he cowered against the edge of the sideboard.
“You’ve already admitted to me that you engineered the theft of the book—”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Drood said, holding up his hands in acquiescence.
“Liar!” I said, wanting to join in the fight, but Freezay held up his hands for me to stay out.
“Oh, yes, you were instrumental in the death of two women, Constance Partridge and Zinia Monroe,” Freezay spat at him, anger lacing his every word. “All so you could get your hands on the book and use it to blackmail Calliope into giving you Naapi’s job after he steps down.”
“So what!” Uriah Drood screamed at him. “I encouraged Constance to steal the damn book! Who cares?”
I wanted to shout at him that I cared, but I didn’t dare. Freezay was on the warpath and he’d already told me to stay out of it. Runt, who was sitting next to me, whined and I gathered that she felt as frustrated by Drood’s behavior as I did.
“You know that she never meant to give you the book, don’t you?” Freezay asked, oozing a calmness that was in direct proportion to Drood’s hysteria.
“You’re crazy,” he whimpered. “I had nothing to do with this!”
Freezay reached out and grabbed Drood by the lapels of his jacket, reeling him in like a floundering fish.
“The two of you fought after Coy’s body was found, didn’t you?” Freezay whispered, his face inches from Drood’s. “You argued and she refused to give you the book, so you killed her.”
Drood was horrified, his jowls quivering as he shook his head wildly.
“I didn’t kill her!” he squealed. “I didn’t!”
From the croissant experience, Freezay had learned how well Drood responded to physical intimidation and he used that to his advantage now, agitating the man like a washing machine set on “heavy duty.”
“You wanted that book, so you did the only thing you could think to do in the situation. You murdered two helpless women for it—”
“That’s not true. I didn’t kill anyone—”
“Enough!” Oggie said, standing up. “You are hurting the man.”
Freezay released Drood, the large man stumbling backward into the sideboard as he turned his attention on Oggie.
“Why do you care what I do to him? Who is he to you?”
Oggie raised his hands.
“You are out of control, Detective,” he said. “You have no right to exert physical violence on this man.”
Freezay laughed, the sound low and humorless.
“Are you sure there isn’t another reason why you wanted me to stop badgering Mr. Drood? One that hits closer to home than just plain old human kindness?” Freezay asked, boring holes into Oggie’s face with his eyes, the green irises flashing as they zeroed in for the kill.
“You are mistaken,” Oggie said, sitting back down as if that ended the confrontation.
“I don’t think so,” Freezay replied. “I think you were afraid of what Mr. Drood might say if I pushed him too hard.”
Oggie shook his head, amused. Beside him, Alameda Jones was pale, her hand clutching tightly at Oggie’s upper arm.
“You speak as though I know of what you’re talking, Detective. But I am at a loss. Please explain.”
“Yeah, I’d like to know what this is all about, too,” Erlik agreed, eyeing Freezay and Oggie both.
“You said that Uriah Drood was blackmailing you about your affair with Alameda. That you were on your way to meet him when the attempted shooting of Zinia Monroe occurred,” Freezay said. “But that’s not the whole truth.”
“That is the only truth,” Oggie said, unyielding in his resolve.
“You know that the book you have is worthless,” Freezay said thoughtfully. “A forgery that can do nothing to grease your way once the Board of Death gets a hold of you.”
“We shall see what happens when this night is over,” Oggie replied cryptically, eyes narrowed.
“There was another reason that Horace and Kali were so late in getting here. They had another errand to run for me,” Freezay said, pirouetting on his heel and turning to Horace.
“The box, please.”
twenty-seven
“No!” Alameda screamed as she rose from her place on the couch, her face a twisted mask of fear and rage as she threw herself across the room, slamming into Horace and sending them both sprawling to the ground.
Instantly Freezay and Daniel were in between them, Freezay lifting Alameda off Horace and roughly depositing her into an empty chair. He dropped both hands down onto the chair’s arms, squeezing them with his fingers as he used the width of his own body to block her from escaping the seat.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked, leaning forward so he could really get into her personal space.
“Nothing!” she cried, flinching.
“I don’t think that was nothing,” Morrigan said as she gazed at Freezay with a newfound respect.
“Shut up!” Alameda yelled, glaring at the other woman.
But the damage had already been done.
“This was all for nothing, Oggie,” Freezay said, turning back to look at Alameda’s lover, who sat stock-still on the couch, mouth set in a tight line. “The book isn’t real.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Alameda called to Oggie as she reached out with a catlike claw and dragged her nails across the side of Freezay’s cheek, drawing a ribbon of blood.
Freezay stood up, bringing a hand to his bloodied face, and Alameda took the opportunity to bolt from the chair. Grabbing a glass bottle from the sideboard—the antique whiskey Donald Ali had opened the night before—she made a run for the window, intending to smash out the glass and escape. But before she could manage to swing her arm, a flash of feathery brown shot through the air. Talons out for blood, Anjea’s owl made a beeline for Alameda’s head. Screaming as the creature dove into her neck, she raised her hands to her head, trying to extricate herself from the owlet’s razor-sharp talons. Panicking, she dropped the bottle and it hit the floor, exploding upon impact, the sound it made like a rifle shot as the bottle splintered into jagged pieces across the floor.
Howling like a banshee, she continued her frantic effort to disengage the owlet from her neck, but as she
left the edge of the carpet and hit the slippery tile—the spilled alcohol and glass acting like lubricated marbles—her feet skittered out from under her and her body caromed into the wall, where it bounced once, the velocity of the action reversing her forward trajectory. Arms pinwheeling wildly, she lost her footing and plummeted backward, her head slamming into the tiled floor with a sickening crack.
All motion ceased and she lay still, eyes wide open, but staring at nothing as a wash of arterial blood snaked out from underneath the halo of her hair, the gash at her throat turning the whiskey and broken glass scarlety amber. Both Oggie and Naapi ran to her—and there was a moment of uncertainty as they tried to decide who had the most right to be there—but then Alameda took a shuddering breath, her eyes blinking twice in rapid succession, and they both dropped down beside her, each taking a quivering hand.
“Alameda,” Naapi whispered, squeezing her hand, but she was gone. The shuddering breath had been her last.
In my brain I heard Freezay say, “It only takes two minutes to exsanguinate.”
It had taken even less than that.
it had all started with Uriah Drood. The sniveling worm had been blackmailing Alameda for months, threatening to tell Naapi about her affair with Oggie unless she fed him insider information on Naapi’s retirement plans. Of course, after Naapi’s announcement at the Death Dinner, the jig was up, and since Alameda now possessed nothing that Drood wanted, he decided it might behoove him to let Naapi know about the affair.
He started dropping hints, whispering tiny bits of information in Naapi’s ear, but then Constance had double-crossed him with the book and he’d seen red, his mind settling on how best to get what Constance owed him. He decided he would make Alameda do his dirty work, force her to retrieve the book—all in exchange for protecting a secret he had no intention of keeping.
A deal struck, she and Oggie had lured Constance into the library under the guise they could intercede on Frank’s behalf with the Board of Death. They’d heard about her effort to free him, thought their input might be helpful—but when they’d asked about the book, she’d gotten cagey and said she didn’t have it anymore. That one revelation had sealed her fate: Oggie had pulled out a knife he’d liberated from the kitchen, and while he held her down, Alameda had tortured her, making the shallower, (unintentionally) right-handed wounds. Once she’d revealed the book’s whereabouts, Oggie (who was left-handed) had sliced open her jugular, the two of them watching as Constance’s lifeblood drained out onto the floor.
Unbeknownst to Alameda, Uriah Drood had already spilled the beans. So while Oggie had followed me to the Assyrian Gardens and lain in wait for Zinia with an antique rifle he’d stolen from the library, Alameda had been confronted about her affair by a devastated Naapi.
It was here, at this point in the plot, that Oggie had had his greatest run of luck. Unbeknownst to him, the rifle he had stolen from the library was filled with blanks, so the shots he fired were literally useless—except they had startled Zinia, causing her to drop the metal box, thus setting the mechanism of her death into motion. As I watched her die, Oggie had stealthily swooped in and stolen the metal box and book, thinking he’d go unnoticed in the ensuing chaos. He never counted on Daniel seeing him as he fled the scene.
It was a small mistake, but it had cost him dearly—and everything after that had been about playing catch-up.
Most of this, Freezay had learned from Oggie while interviewing him in the dining room. He’d filled Runt, Jarvis, and me in on the details later, but he’d thought he could get the most from Oggie by talking to him alone first.
“But why kill them?” Freezay had asked, wanting to know why they’d used deadly force to steal the book.
“The immortality,” Oggie said. “With Naapi resigning and rescinding his immortality, she would be mortal again.”
“You could’ve made her your own consort, given her continued immortality through you,” Freezay offered, but Oggie had merely shaken his head.
“I already have a wife in Africa who shares my immortality,” he said sadly. “This was all I could offer Alameda. A chance to possess a book that might broker her continued existence.”
This had seemed to appease Freezay and they’d gone on to other topics, but I’d found myself fascinated by the admission.
For as long as I’d dealt with immortality—my whole life, I guess—it had been the bane of my existence. The attainment of it had caused people I loved to die and it had almost destroyed Death, Inc., from the inside out. And now, once again, it was responsible for the death of three (two of them relatively innocent) people. I understood why mortals wanted to live forever—the loss of self was a daunting thing—but was it worth the sacrifices that people like Alameda had to make in order to possess it?
I just didn’t know.
I did find it ironic that Alameda had died on the one day of the year when her immortality was not assured—when soon she would’ve had a whole lifetime of mortal days to choose from. Maybe, if she’d waited and played her cards right, she could’ve even met another immortal and begun the cycle all over again. Instead, she’d died on the floor of the Haunted Hearts Castle, a piece of broken glass from an elderly whiskey bottle slicing her carotid artery wide open.
It seemed a fitting death after what she and Oggie had done to Constance—but if I could’ve rewritten history, I’d have stopped all the death and destruction that happened that night. Even Coy’s untimely end seemed like a senseless act. Sure, the Aztec Goddess may have been a bloodthirsty avenger, but her murder, at the hands of a cowardly old man, was just pathetic.
* * *
as i sat in the dining room, the one place in the house untouched by tragedy, contemplating the events of the past twenty-four hours, Freezay came in, looking exhausted.
“They’re ready to be taken away as soon as magic returns,” Freezay said, putting a hand on my shoulder and giving it a squeeze.
He was referring to Oggie and Donald Ali, the two men who had helped to perpetrate the tragic events of the past twenty-four hours. They weren’t the only ones I held responsible, but there was nothing to charge Uriah Drood with since he hadn’t physically committed a crime—no, he’d just set two murders into motion with his greed and selfishness.
The fact that he was going to walk free made me ill, but there was nothing I could do about it except keep an eye on him in the future. He was a wily little reptile, but I wouldn’t let him get away with anything else if I could help it.
“Hey, you got your hat back,” I said, noticing that Freezay was carrying his bowler hat in his hand as he walked around to the other side of the table and took the seat opposite me.
“Anjea’s owlet found it,” he said happily, tamping it down on top of his head so that it rode low over his blond brows. “I don’t know what kind of nonmagic magic the woman possesses, but it transcends the stuff we use.”
I didn’t think he was wrong on that front. There was something transcendent about Anjea, something unlike anything else I’d experienced in the Supernatural world.
“Anyway,” he said, patting the hat. “It’s nice to have it back.”
“So, the book?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. “How did you know it was a forgery?”
“How did I know it was a forgery?” Freezay repeated, his eyes lively. “Well, I technically didn’t because technically it’s not a forgery.”
I nearly choked.
“What?!”
Freezay nodded then shrugged helplessly.
“There was no forgery. It was just a little scheme that Jarvis, Daniel, and I cooked up to unsettle our murderers.”
I stared at him, at once angry that I wasn’t in on the secret and impressed by the ingeniousness of the ploy.
“So the metal box Horace had…”
“There was no metal box,” Frezay said. “Think back and you’ll realize you never saw anything in Horace’s hands.”
I did exactly what he suggested, surpris
ed by the outcome. He was right. I had never seen Horace with anything in his hands.
“Damn,” I said, shaking my head. “There really was no metal box.”
“Well, there was a metal box,” Freezay said, correcting me. “One with a book and a knife in it—the one used to torture and kill Constance, as a matter of fact—but it was back in Oggie’s bedroom, hidden under the mattress. Daniel and Erlik found it a few minutes ago when they were going through Oggie’s things.”
“So it was only a bluff,” I marveled, amazed that Alameda had fallen for it.
“A very powerful bluff,” Freezay added. “And now the book is in Jarvis’s possession and will be returned to Death, Inc., as soon as it’s physically possible. Because it was in no person’s hands at the stroke of midnight, it can be returned to you, Death, without a hitch. Amazing how that magic stuff works, huh?”