Tag was fumbling with the buttons on Paul’s dress shirt—too formal by comparison to what everyone else seemed to wear in Las Vegas, almost silky under his hands although it was cotton—when someone knocked at the door. “Housekeeping always shows up at the worst times,” Paul muttered before throwing himself into kissing Tag so thoroughly that Tag forgot not only the persistent knock on the door but the day of the week and the reason he was in Las Vegas. He was working up to forgetting his name when the door opened, and a man walked into the room.
At least it looked like a man, as in a male human being, but Tag’s other senses screamed it wasn’t that simple.
“Mr. Aisling, this is…an unexpected pleasure.” Paul sounded completely unruffled, unembarrassed by the interruption or his obvious state of mid-fooling-around dishevelment, and pleased enough to see the man who stood in the doorway holding a pass key. Paul’s scent changed, though, something tight and grim overlaying his natural smell and the hot, heady odor of arousal. Not annoyance, Tag thought, or at least not primarily annoyance. Something more like alarm.
Tag considered saying something rude about people who barged in when they clearly weren’t invited, but something about the unwanted guest made him keep his mouth shut. The guy looked like an expensively dressed, expensively well-groomed human in his late fifties, not so different from a million other businessmen, but it wasn’t true. He reminded Tag of Colonial Williamsburg, all shiny and restored but with an edge of dust and the weight of history under the pretty surface. He wasn’t quite right, but he wasn’t left either. Wasn’t human, wasn’t dual, wasn’t anything Tag recognized by sight or scent. His presence felt strange, as if he was only half there, half in the world at all, and he didn’t smell like much of anything, not even the soap-and-water undertone of a normy who’d just showered.
Under other circumstances, the guy wouldn’t seem dangerous, just puzzling, and Tag loved a good puzzle. Given that something no one could identify was killing hotel guests, though, the unknown was scary. If Tag had been on his own, he’d have been trying his damnedest to slide past the stranger and get the hell out of Dodge.
But he couldn’t do that in front of Paul, who seemed to know the man. Being. Whatever you’d call it. Paul seemed to know who the guy was and accepted him, even if Tag got a feeling there was no love lost.
All this flashed through his head in seconds as he watched Paul’s strained body language and the intruder’s stillness. Some duals could take on the stillness of a predator stalking prey, but this being was more like a statue. He didn’t even look like he was breathing.
“Mr. Donovan,” the being said in a rich, slightly Scots-accented voice, “we are not paying you to enjoy the company of your fellow guests, however handsome they may be. Unless this is our killer and you’ve discovered his power source is hidden in his clothing so getting him naked is part of your clever plan? Or is he another red witch? Your grandmother was quite keen on that sex magic of hers.”
Tag found his voice and the part of him prone to stupid acts of chivalry at the same time. He stepped between Paul and the being, who, he realized now, must be Paul’s part-fae employer. “I’d advise you not to speak about a lady in that tone of voice, sir,” he said, growling as much as he would have if the dude had said some squirrelly about Grandma Vi or Grandma Savannah or Grandma Russann.
The world held its breath, or at least Tag and Paul did. Paul had implied the half-blood fae didn’t have much magic, not enough to handle finding the killer on his own, but it wouldn’t take all that much to put Tag in a world of hurt.
Then the fae began to laugh, a delightful sound like a stream made of the finest bourbon (or Scotch, Tag supposed, given the fae’s accent) burbling through a beautiful, secluded glen you were sharing with someone special. “My very dear mortal, you take offense where none was meant. I would not be so foolish as to say something untoward about any lady and certainly not about Jocelyn Clemens Donovan, who would not let being dead stop her from slapping me. But thank you for proving to me that chivalry, far from dead, is hyperactive in the confines of this room.”
Flushing, Tag realized Paul hadn’t taken any offense at the fae’s needling. “Sorry,” he muttered, the apology coming unnaturally to his lips. His fox yipped at him.
The fae laughed again. “We do not know each other,” the fae said, “although now I feel I know you a bit better.” He turned intent eyes on Tag. His foxside screamed for him to look away, but he met that silvery gaze, unable to resist. A wave of queasiness passed over him. He froze. The fox yipped frantically, trying to flee, but could not.
Paul put one curiously hot hand on Tag’s shoulder. A wall of transparent brick—Tag could think of no better description—went up between the two mortals and the fae. “Enough, Mr. Aisling. Let my friend be, or by the Powers and the blood of my grandmother that runs in my veins, this bargain between us is cancelled.” His words had palpable weight that stroked Tag’s skin gently but made the fae jump as if he were caught in an invisible hail storm. A spell, and not the kind of minor hedge-witch charms he’d run into occasionally. Something much bigger, yet cast as casually as breathing.
For what might have been a second or a century, the atmosphere in the room grew thick, even more fraught with tension. Then both fae and witch dropped their spells, and everything relaxed so abruptly that Tag wanted to sink to the carpet in queasy relief.
“I have your measures now, gentlemen.” Mr. Aisling wasn’t laughing, but he still had that intoxicating chuckle in his voice. “Blood of the fox-folk and a bold heart that ventures before your brain, though I sense great intelligence as well. And Paul Donovan, who seemed so stiff and shy yesterday, and clearly wishing himself back in the dampness and peace of the Oregon coast and his family’s great library, shows himself a worthy descendent of his brave and powerful, if sometimes feckless, grandmother. Do either of you even realize the fox moved to protect young Mr. Donovan from me, and now Mr. Donovan holds him close with arms and shield, protecting and comforting? Yet I would swear you came to Las Vegas alone yesterday, Paul Donovan, and the fox still has his boarding pass in his pocket.”
Paul started to say something, but Mr. Aisling cut him off. “You have been charged with a hard task, Paul Donovan, a task marked with death. Mortal blood runs hot in the face of the grave, and witch and dual blood hotter than most. I speak freely because I think it no coincidence that a young Tennessee fox is here with you when recently I helped arrange the cremation of an old Tennessee fox who should have been safe within the protection of these walls.” Mr. Aisling’s voice rose to a crescendo at that point. Tag could smell him for the first time at that moment, smelled frustration and grief and anger and a trace of acrid fear, though faintly, as if he were no longer in the room, perhaps miles away by now. Then his voice dropped off. “And now there have been more deaths.”
Paul turned even paler than nature made him. “When?”
“Just now. I was going about my business, and I felt them die. That brought me here. I do not know who or how, but I know where. Come with me—both of you.”
Tag thought about asking why Aisling had delayed so long bantering, but figured it wasn’t worth the effort. He didn’t know much about the fae, but from what he’d heard, they rarely made sense to mortals.
Despite the air-conditioning’s icy blast, Paul was sweating by the time he followed Aisling, via back stairs and a service elevator, to a room that, even from the outside, even through the locked door, felt wrong.
Before the door opened, he was trembling. Brought up among ghosts and with a mother who talked to the dead as readily as to the living, he knew there was nothing to fear from someone’s empty shell or the process of dying in itself. Donovans preferred to die at home, among their loved ones, and Paul had stood vigil as several of his relatives, including his beloved Grandma Josie, passed to the Otherworld.
Being shoved violently into the Otherworld was something different. He didn’t mind dead people—but he wasn’t sure
how well he’d handle how these poor creatures got to be dead.
As Mr. Aisling opened the door with a master key, Tag reached out and took his hand. “This part’s gonna suck,” he whispered. Tag’s hand holding his, the simple, surprisingly intimate gesture, eased some of his tension.
Paul made a mental note to laugh at himself once circumstances were conducive to laughing again.
The door swung soundlessly open, revealing yet another damn hotel room, this one larger and more lavish than the one Aisling had insisted on giving Paul. A suite, in fact.
The first room was a sitting room, a deluxe version of the same curious mix of lavish and sterile Paul had noted all over Las Vegas. Everything was good quality, with faux-medieval touches that, while not remotely authentic, were attractive, and pre-Raphaelite Arthurian-themed art on the walls. Still, it seemed dull and soulless, where the same decoration in a room people lived in instead of perched in for a few days at a time would be geekily charming.
The only things out of place were a pair of perilously high, hot-pink heels and a tiny matching purse, tossed carelessly onto the coffee table next to three empty glasses that held the remnants of champagne. Two were adorned with lipstick, a brilliant rose that matched the shoes and bag and a color that his sister Portia, who liked it herself, called Harlot Scarlet.
The room was so still, so utterly ordinary, that Paul hoped briefly that Aisling had been mistaken, that no one was dead here, that the inhabitants of the room had decided to go for a swim or gamble or grab a late dinner.
But Tag’s face screwed up as if he smelled something vile, and he squeezed Paul’s hand more tightly, and Paul knew he was kidding himself.
The second room of the suite was dominated by an ordinary king-size bed.
And the bed was dominated by two corpses.
Chapter Five
“At least,” Tag said, in a definite joking-is-better-than-screaming tone, “they died happy.” The slender, stacked blonde was sprawled on top of her rather flabby lover. From Paul’s angle, it was easy to see their bodies were still joined.
Tag released Paul’s hand and headed for the other room. “Where are you going?” Paul asked, trying not to sound as if the loss of Tag by his side was a kind of catastrophe almost equal to the deaths.
“I’m going to sniff those glasses for poison. You’d be amazed how many things humans think are odorless aren’t.”
“Don’t touch anything!” Aisling and Paul exclaimed simultaneously.
“Not,” Aisling added drily, “that the normy police are likely to find anything useful here, but they must be summoned, and I’d hate for them to find something useless that causes trouble for the two of you.”
While Tag was cautiously sniffing, Paul said a quick prayer: Lord, Lady, give me strength. Give me skill. There were so many Donovans who’d be better at this job than he was, Donovans who could talk to ghosts, Donovans with powerful healing magic who could detect how this unfortunate couple died, Donovans with strong telemetry who could touch the bed frame or the ankle bracelet on the dead woman and get a good sense of what had happened.
What Paul was, was a red witch and a true dreamer. His dreams had told him he was the one who would solve this mystery, and, in the process, find a way to deal with the vague restlessness he’d been feeling for the past year or so. His mother said Grandma Josie had also let her know he was the one who should go.
It would be nice if either the dreams or the ghost had given a clue as to how, or if his family hadn’t been so blithely eager to send him on his own instead of with backup.
Cautiously, he dropped his shields—and was surprised to discover a sense of peace surrounding him. The victims had died quickly and painlessly in a moment of pleasure, leaving no residual fear or anger behind, just a vague surprise. More than that, though, he didn’t feel the psychic chatter that pulsed at him in the lobby and on the city streets, even less so than he did in his own carefully warded room.
“Wards?” he asked. He sensed them as soon as he asked. They encompassed not just the room but most of the building, and yet they were a magic so unfamiliar and so subtle he hadn’t noticed them before. Alien but not unpleasantly so, and they’d been able to work seamlessly with the wards he’d put on his own room as soon as he’d arrived.
Aisling let out a sigh that conveyed the weight of his centuries and something else—grief, Paul thought, or despair. “We are warded here, Mr. Donovan, warded by my fae kin, in a way that should affect all mortals yet be obvious to none, even those like you who are attuned to magic. I cannot ward the casino area and the lobby, for too many people of all species go in and out, but the guest floors are all warded. And yet my guests are dying. I give them protection and yet they are dying!” Mr. Aisling’s ancient mask of control dropped, letting his distress show. Paul suspected it was as much for the breach of his hospitality as for the deaths themselves.
“The wards in this room have not been breached.” Could this be something other than what they thought, perhaps a suicide pact? Take poison and go out with a bang? He’d read a Japanese novel that ended that way. He hadn’t liked the book, but it was certainly memorable.
“The wards have not been breached, not in any of the deaths. Whoever did this was invited in.”
Paul stifled a few choice foul words in several languages. It was always wise to be hyperpolite with the fae, unless you were Taggart Ross, who apparently could get away with being cocky due to sheer force of personality. “The victims were from different places, one not even from this country, and didn’t seem to know each other. I hate to say it, but the killer must be disguised as hotel staff if they’re all letting him or her in.”
“Or be a true shape-shifter, not a dual but something that can assume a false appearance well enough to deceive not just ordinary humans, but Mr. Ross’s uncle’s heightened senses. There are such beings. Some of them are my kin, but I cannot imagine they would do me the discourtesy of hunting in my city, let alone my establishment, without permission.”
Paul noted sharply that Mr. Aisling didn’t say his shape-shifting kin wouldn’t harm humans, just that they were unlikely to do so around him. Even the seelie fae, which Mr. Aisling was, weren’t exactly cuddly and harmless. They weren’t evil, but virtually immortal alien beings didn’t always remember that mortals broke easily or care that they did.
Mr. Aisling’s remote, impartial face softened, touched with an emotion that Paul wouldn’t venture to name. It might have been shame or anger or something else altogether. “I hope it is not other fae doing this mischief, Paul Donovan, and yet I hope it is. I can manage my own kin, and I can call upon those who can manage the fae who are not my kin. Other beings who can wear numerous shapes are outside my power, and some of them are creatures I would hate to see Jocelyn’s grandchild tangle with.” His voice softened as if he had been fond of Josie.
Probably he had been. Even beings that tried to kill Josie Donovan were.
Before Paul had time to ask questions or even work up a good panic, Tag returned to the bedroom. “All I could smell was champagne. Good champagne. Dom, I think. The second woman must have taken the bottle with her. At least I assume it was a woman, though I guess it could be a guy who likes red lipstick and Hypnotic Poison perfume.” He apparently took in their stares, shrugged and said, “What? Some people’s gender is less straightforward than others, and others just like to play dress- up.”
Paul couldn’t help smiling, despite the gravity of the situation. Trust a dual to remember that male and female weren’t the only options, just the obvious ones.
“True,” Mr. Aisling said, “but in this time and place, a person who wears lipstick is probably female.” He spoke the words like someone who remembered other times and places with different conventions.
“I don’t want to rule out any options. There’s no clear scent trace of the person, just the perfume. One man and one woman were staying in this room. The other was just visiting, unless the woman had on red lipstick a
nd perfume, took a shower, got ready to go out, putting on different lipstick but no perfume, had another drink, and then got distracted by a quickie. Nice thing to do on vacation, except they ended up dead.” Paul noticed that Tag’s Southern accent grew less pronounced, rather than more, while he explained his theories, as if the process of translating his foxside’s observations into words changed something in his brain.
Aisling nodded solemnly.
“Could you tell anything more by a closer look at the bodies? We shouldn’t touch them, of course, but with the Donovan magic and the young fox’s nose…”
Paul thought of trying to explain—as he’d tried to do to his own family, who knew his abilities as well as he did—that while he had a larger than usual range of Donovan gifts, he wasn’t a keeper of memory. He could talk to the family ghosts and perceive other ghosts sometimes, thanks to the telepathy, but he didn’t have the magic that would draw out a terrified, traumatized spirit, learn its secrets and set it at ease.
But the weight of expectations in Mr. Aisling’s solemn face and Tag’s pale but determinedly optimistic one kept him from throwing in the towel.
He drew a step closer to the bodies, and the waves of wrongness crashed over him. Cold and distant as the vacuum of space and just as airless. He would suffocate in it. His lungs would burst, and he’d drown in his own blood. His brain would freeze.
At the same time, invisible hands stroked his cock, stroked places inside his body and soul so he was suffocating on hideous lust as well as lack of air.
Paul fell to his knees, coughing. The room turned gray. Paul felt himself slipping away. There was nothing but cold and distant and the awful, impersonal throbbing in his cock.
Then wiry, hot arms were around him, and warm breath tickled his ear, chiseling away the ice. “Easy there,” a deep, smoky Southern voice whispered, and far away as Paul was, he knew that voice, knew it and knew he could trust it and follow it home. “I’m here,” the voice said. “Hold on to me, Paul. Don’t let it take you, whatever it is.”
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