“Is it Scoot?” the woman asked, her brow furrowed with worry.
I gave her a sympathetic look, and nodded. “It is Scoot, I’m afraid. Can I come in?”
The woman looked like she was about to burst into tears. She opened the door to admit me entrance, and then hurriedly closed it behind me. She reattached the safety chain, and threw three deadbolts into place. Talk about security conscious!
She twisted her hands together and didn’t seem to know what to do with me. “Oh God,” she said. “Poor scoot. Can the vet help him? Please say he can!”
“I’m sure he can,” I reassured her, and edged around her to make my way into the lounge. All the better to not be thrown out. I passed a dog basket on my way. There was a plump cushion and several toys in it. Scoot was obviously a well pampered doggie.
The woman followed me in as I took a seat on the sofa in her lounge. “Did the vet say when he can come home? He’ll be missing me. Poor Scoot. I wish I could have gone with him.”
“Actually, I don’t really know about Scoot,” I confessed. “I’m here about Constance Ashbeck. Her bother used to live in this house. Joshua Asbeck?”
The woman’s face had gone extremely pale. She had taken several steps back from me the moment I had said Constance’s name. A hand scrambled on the table beside her until she found an empty decorative vase, which she raised up as if she was going to bludgeon me with it. “Get out!” she cried out in a shrill voice.
I stayed where I was sitting. “Ah, so you do know Constance and Joshua Ashbeck?”
“I don’t know anything,” she said in a shaking voice. “I don’t know anything. I don’t have anything to do with it. You tell them that I don’t know anything!”
“Are you talking about the Ronins?” I asked, beginning to feel sorry for her.
She flinched at the mention of the Ronin name. Clearly she knew all about the vampires, and she was terrified of them. I could tell that without even without the frenzied waves of feeling that she was exuding towards my psychic senses. She would be no good to me in a panicked state like this.
So I changed my tone to a softer one, and said, “It’s okay. I’m not here because of them. I’m here for Leonie. I want to find out who really killed her.”
This did nothing to calm the woman. She stood there trembling with rage and fear, the vase still raised up like a weapon above her head.
“Do you have any tea?” I asked her. “I’m really parched. And I would really appreciate if you could tell me just a few things about Leonie and then I’ll be on my way.” Now she knew what it would take to get me to leave.
“I don’t want to talk about her,” said the woman. “It’s all in the past. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
I could tell that it did matter to her, but she was too afraid to speak of it.
“The sooner we talk, the sooner I’ll be out of your hair,” I said lightly. “I promise. And I promise that nobody else knows that I’ve come here.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Audriett Ronin must suspect I had been planning to come here. But telling this woman that fact would only make her crumple into a sobbing mess. And anyway, Audriett Ronin had been absolutely certain that I would find nothing of interest at this address. So she certainly was not aware of whoever this comically frightened woman was.
My words had only reassured the woman a small amount, but nevertheless she agreed to make some tea. I followed her towards her kitchen, staying several feet behind her so that she wouldn’t feel threatened. I wanted to ask her name, but I thought that if I did do that, she would know that I hadn’t a clue who she was and clam up even more.
As she tinkered away in her kitchen, boiling the water and preparing the teacups, I stayed in the hallway outside. I found myself looking at a few framed photographs placed on a side table. One was a wedding photograph showing an entire wedding party assembled around a young bride and groom. The bride was this woman, and the groom a handsome tall young man with his arm around her, lovingly looking down at her face. Standing next to him was someone I recognized. It was the woman from the vision that I’d had of Leonie Ashbeck back in Ronin’s creepy rose garden. She was unmistakably the Constance Ashbeck, the aunt who had been telling Leonie off in my vision.
Which meant that the woman in the kitchen was Joshua Asbeck’s wife. I was stunned. This woman had to be Leonie Asbeck’s mother! She seemed the right age for it, and she had certainly married Joshua at a young age according to this wedding photo. And yet, there were no photos of Leonie on the side table. Not one.
Instead of making me doubt that this was Leone’s mother, this fact made me even more certain. Because I already knew a mother who had gotten rid of every photo of her child when that child’s memory became too painful to look upon. Beneath the side table was a basket of old mail. I shamelessly rifled through it to find out the woman’s name. It was Darya Palmer.
As she came out of her kitchen carrying a tray of tea cups and biscuits, I said to her, “You’ve reverted to your maiden name?”
She nodded stiffly. “I didn’t want them to find me. Stupid, isn’t it? But I couldn’t afford to move away. I can’t even leave this house, knowing that they’re out there.”
“You mean vampires?”
She flinched at the word vampires.
“But they can’t travel in the sunlight,” I said. “You’re safe from them in the day. And I don’t think the Ronins even know that you live here. They’re really not coming after you.”
“Says you,” she said angrily. But even her anger was restrained and full of fear.
I was astonished. Had she really been living here locked up in this house ever since Leonie had died? I didn’t have to ask it to know the answer. She really had, with only her dog for company. And now it appeared the dog was sick, and the poor woman would shortly be alone. This was not what I had expected to find here.
I took a seat on the sofa and picked up my cup of tea to take a sip. She followed my example. She never said a word, clearly resentful at my presence in her house.
“I’m sorry about your loss,” I said. “Leonie, and your husband Joshua. He died in a car crash, didn’t he?”
“Car crash!” she said bitterly. “He died because they killed him. Joshua loved Connie. He never told me what she was. Never! Or I would never—” She cut herself off abruptly.
“Never what? Married him?”
She shrugged angrily. “I never knew that she was a blood slave for the vampire. I knew about otherkind, of course. But they never seemed real to me. I certainly didn’t know that my husband’s twin was consorting with vampires. And by the time I found out, it was too late. Joshua was already dead.”
Every word out of her mouth was tinged with bitterness. I couldn’t understand how it was possible that she had allowed Leonie, her only child, to go and live with vampires since she was so clearly terrified of them.
“I thought you were dead,” I told her. “They told me that Leonie had gone to live at the Ronin nest after her father had died, so naturally I assumed that her mother was already dead and she had nowhere else to go. And yet here you are, very much alive. I can’t understand why you let Leonie go and live in that place.”
“I had no choice,” she said harshly. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It is none of your business,” she snapped. “Why should I speak to you? I already spoke to the police all those years ago. Who are you?”
“I’m just an interested party who is determined to find the real killer.”
She seemed a little confused. I realized that she had thought I was here on official business, and probably from the police. She glanced towards her phone, as if considering calling the police right now.
“Your teenage daughter was in a vampire nest,” I goaded. “It was an unthinkable thing for a mother to do, but you did it. Why? Did you hate Leonie? She was fifteen when her father died. Was she a difficult teenager? Did you want to punish her?”
&
nbsp; That certainly took Darya’s attention away from her phone. “Of course not!” she cried out. “I loved Leonie. And yes, she was difficult. But I loved her. I would never have allowed her to go there, but I had no choice.”
My eyes narrowed. “Did the Ronins want Leonie?” I asked.
Her eyes widened. “What? No! Leonie got sick. So sick! I couldn’t care for her. And then Constance turned up, saying that her boyfriend was rich, and they could take care of Leonie. And I couldn’t say no. How was I supposed to know that Constance planned to take her to a vampire nest? I had no idea.”
“When did you find out that Constance lived with vampires?”
“Afterwards. After Leonie got better she called me and told me. It amused her. She knew it horrified me.”
“Was Leonie spiteful?”
“Sometimes. She was angry.”
“Because you’d sent her to a vampire’s nest?”
Darya shook her head insistently. “No. Leonie knew I’d had to do it. She had been sick. They’d made her better.”
“What sort of sick?”
“The doctors struggled to diagnose her. We had to rely on the national health service, and they didn’t care. They didn’t care how hard it was for me to get her to her appointments. She had XP — xeroderma pigmentosum — and she would get horribly burned each time I took her out for her hospital appointments. Everything about Leonie had been hard ever since she was born. So picky with her food. She couldn’t even go outside to play! We did so much to give her a normal life. I gave up my job to home-school her. And she was going to die. It was all going to be for nothing! Joshua was dead and now my girl was going to die too. None of the medicine the doctors gave her worked, and she was getting weaker and weaker. And Constance said that they would get her private healthcare. The best doctors. How could I say no to that? It was all too much for me. Joshua was dead. I didn’t know how to cope without him. I shouldn’t have given her up but I did. And now I have to live with that!”
Tears were pouring down her cheeks. She buried her face in her hands and sobbed. I let her cry it out. I didn’t go to sit beside her to pat her shoulder or anything, because I knew that I would probably scare the life out of her if I did that. This woman was no longer used to having people around her. She’d lost her husband and her daughter and then she’d cut herself off from the rest of the world. Her pain was radiating out at me and it was so intense and full of her own self-hatred. She had let Leonie down and she knew it. It was difficult for me to sit here and feel it, as if my psychic radar was taking a bashing.
It was a relief when she finally stopped crying. She took a long shuddering breath, and then reached for a tissue to mop up her face.
“I don’t understand what you want,” she said. “That monster Steffane Ronin murdered her.”
“Did Leonie talk to you about Steffane?”
“No. She never mentioned him. She only ever called me when… When she was angry or upset about something. But she never mentioned him. Maybe she was afraid of worrying me. I don’t know.”
“If she wasn’t angry or upset about Steffane, why was she angry?”
“She wasn’t getting along with Constance,” said Darya shortly.
“Did you ever go to visit her? Did you see her relationship with the others who lived in the house?”
Darya looked angry at this. “It was a vampire’s nest. How was I supposed to visit her?”
“Did she come and visit you?”
“She couldn’t come out of because of her XP.”
“Not even at night?”
“She didn’t want to . She was upset with me.”
“About what specifically?” I felt that this was important. Darya had said that Leonie understood that she’d had to go and live in a vampire’s nest because of her illness. “Did she want to come home and live with you?”
“No. She got the best of everything there. They spoiled her. They were so rich. And they were still paying for her medical treatment. I think she liked living there. I think she liked tormenting me with the fact that I had sent her to a vampire’s nest. We were barely speaking when that monster killed her.”
I had hoped that Leonie’s mother might be able to tell me which of the other vampires may have had a motive for wanting Leonie dead, but it looked like Darya knew very little about her daughter’s life in that household. I suspected Darya had been happy that way because she didn't have to think about the fact that Leonie was in a vampire’s nest. This woman seemed to get through life by burying her head in the sand. I sighed. It looked like the only person who is a going to be able to tell me about the truth about what happened in that vampire’s nest was Constance Ashbeck.
“Did Leone ever speak about Rodrigge Ronin or his girlfriend Marielle?”
“A little. She didn't like them. She thought Rodrigge was pathetic. I think she hated Marielle. Maybe she was scared of her. It was her own fault. Leonie had goaded her. She once said she’d flirted with Rodrigge to make Marielle mad. It wasn’t like her. That place changed her.”
I questioned Darya further, but she was unable to tell me anything specific about why Leonie had not liked Rodrigge and Marielle.
“Did Constance ever call you with concerns about Leonie? Did she tell you anything about Leonie’s life?”
“No,” Darya hissed angrily. “That woman knew that I never liked her. Why would I want to speak with a vampire’s blood slave? What sort of woman allows herself to be used like that? It’s disgusting.”
“Do you know where I can find Constance now?”
Daria gave a wild shout of laughter. “God knows where she ran off too. That woman is the reason why Leonie is dead. I wish it had been her. I hope she’s burning in hell.”
Chapter 19
DIANA
I went home feeling as crap as my current mood allowed me to feel. Ever since Theo had worked his magic, my sunshiny light-heartedness had prevented me from ever feeling really low. It was shielding me from feeling the true depth of what I ought to be feeling, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing even though the mood prevented me from dwelling on worrying about it.
By the time I got back to my one bedroom apartment, by which I mean one bedroom which had everything I needed in it bar a toilet, I had decided that I should be grateful for the mood. Without it I would have felt pretty friendless and low right now. Downright lonely, probably. Not far off Darya Palmer’s mood for the past six years. Or maybe longer, since it had been nine years since her husband died and daughter Leonie had left home. What must it have felt like to lose her entire family in one swoop? Perhaps she’d hoped that Leonie would come back one day. Instead Leone had died a horrible death.
It was a good thing I hadn’t told Darya that I had been acting on behalf of Steffane in an attempt to free him. I imagined that would have been one torment too far for Darya. The idea is that Steffane Ronin might be free one day would probably drive her over the edge. It was a mercy for her not to know. And I was sure that Steffane Ronin must not give a damn about Leonie’s mother. Surely after he was free, he had no reason to waste his time going after her? I certainly hoped not.
Something about my interview with Darya Palmer was nagging at me. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Everything that she had told me had had the ring of truth to it, and yet something was off. Maybe she was cuckoo. Maybe living alone all those years had sent her off the rails. After all, she had thought that the vampires had conspired to kill her husband when the poor man had only died in a car crash. This meant that her perception of reality was off, and everything she told me could be totally useless.
AngelBeastie had not been waiting for me outside of my building, which meant she was probably still at Grimshaw’s. Sometimes she spent the night there, keeping little Mozz company. I was glad that at least my cat had friends, although the apartment felt empty without her and I wished that she had chosen me tonight instead.
I made myself a lonesome dinner of cheese on toast and ate it while
tormenting myself with the fact that Constance Ashbeck seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet. My google searching as I ate revealed no fresh insight into her whereabouts. She could have gone to Otherworld as far as I knew, and far out of my reach. If Storm had decided to help me, maybe we could have tracked down using Agency resources. But alone, there was no way for me to find out. I was at a dead end.
I finished my toast and paced up and down my one room, unable to stay still. I couldn’t be at a dead end. I wouldn’t allow myself to be at a dead end. And yet I was.
Constance Ashbeck was the only person left for me to speak to. I had a feeling that she knew a great many things of interest. Constance Ashbeck was the key to solving this case. Why else would the woman have disappeared, if she didn’t know something?
Was she scared? Was she afraid that one of the Ronins would come after her? And if so, which one?
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