When Storm shook his head to deny it, she looked like she was about to cry. She clutched a small silver cross dangling from a chain around her throat, and said, “Oh.” It was a pitiable sound.
“You still miss him, don’t you?” I said.
“No,” she said. “He was evil. He was a vampire. I don’t miss him. How could I? I went astray. But I’ve found my f-faith again.” She stuttered on the word faith as if it had been difficult to say. She was twisting her cross around and around on her chain, to the point that I thought the delicate chain would snap.
“You do miss him,” I said. “Admit it. Isn’t it against your faith to lie?”
She shot me an accusing look, as if I was some sort of monster. “I don’t want to miss him,” she said. “I don’t. I won’t.” She was shaking her said head as if saying it would make it true, but tears were running down her cheeks and soaking into the dressing that covered her injury.
“You do,” I accused. “You miss the taste of his blood, and the way it made you feel. You’re a junkie. You still want it, even six years later. You still want it even though Leonie is dead.”
Constance gasped at my cruelty.
“Diana,” said Storm in a warning tone.
I shot him a brief look of irritation. I almost knew how Constance Ashbeck felt, to want a man who didn’t want you back.
“How is she supposed to tell us the truth if she won’t even admit the truth of how she feels to herself?” I said, doing my best not to snap at him.
I turned back to face her. This woman had been Gaius Ronin’s sheep for nearly two decades. She was still his sheep. It disgusted me, but I also felt a wave of pity. This woman had given up everything for Gaius, including the most important part of herself. All these years later and the lies were so ingrained in her that she would not admit them. Because she still hoped that Gaius Ronin wanted her. She had hidden herself hundreds of miles away from him, but she was still hoping he would come to claim her in some big romantic gesture. Her hero. She was a shell without him. In her heart of hearts she was waiting for the vampire to come and take her home.
“Leonie was your daughter, wasn’t she?” I said abruptly.
I saw from the corner of my eye that Storm was shocked, but I kept my attention on Constance who was blinking rapidly, and stuttering as she tried to deny it. Then she bowed her head, and whispered, “Yes.”
“And then you met Gaius,” I said harshly. “So you sent her to your twin brother so that you could have fun with your vampire lover.”
“Joshua and Darya wanted a baby,” she said defensively, refusing to meet my eyes. “They were glad to have her. I knew they’d give her a good life. She was safe there.”
“So they raised your baby, and you went off to live in vampire nest.”
“You can’t judge me. You don’t know what it was like. Leonie was mistake. And then I met Gaius and I fell in love. I had to be with him. And she had to stay away from the nest. I couldn’t have her there. It was better for everyone.”
“So why did you take her to live with you all those years later?”
“I couldn’t let her die!” she said sharply. “She was sick, and Gaius said we could look after her. He was so kind to me. It’s how I knew he really loved me. He didn’t mind, he said. It wasn’t going to be forever. Leonie was supposed to go away to university, but the stupid girl was so headstrong. She wouldn’t listen.”
Suddenly she shut up, as if she had said more than she had intended to say.
“Wouldn’t listen about what?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” she insisted shaking her head. She looked at Storm again. “Why are you here? After all this time? I don’t understand.”
“Because new evidence has come to light,” he said, “That suggests perhaps Steffane Ronin was innocent.”
“No!” she cried out loudly. “It was him! He did it. He killed my baby!”
“Why were you angry with Leonie?” I demanded, pushing her for an answer. “You argued with her in the weeks before she died. What did you argue about?”
“Gaius paid for everything for her!” she spat out. “He would have given her everything she wanted so that she could go away and live her own life, but she was so ungrateful. She said she had plans of her own and she wouldn’t… She was just headstrong. She was undecided. She was a teenager. That’s what they’re like.”
My eyes narrowed. “Were you jealous of Leonie? Jealous of your daughter? Were you worried that Gaius had an eye out for a younger woman? For Leonie?”
“No!” she hissed. “Gaius loved me! Me. He would never have done that to me. You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“But Gaius never enthralled to you,” I taunted her. “If you had been that important to him he would have enthralled you, he would have been preparing to turn you into a vampire. But he never did that or he never would have let you go. He would have come to claim you after the police took you away.”
“He was going to do it,” she said. “He promised. He would have. In time. He loved me. You don’t understand what it was like. I know that he loved me.”
“Maybe he loved Leonie too,” I said. “He loved Audriett and you at the same time, so maybe he loved many women.”
“That is not true! I would have known it. Leonie had her faults. Leonie was overreaching. She let the fame and the wealth of the Ronins go to her head. She wanted more than she was allowed to have. But Gaius would never have done that to me. Never.” Her voice rang with conviction. I couldn’t tell if it was merely because she wanted so badly for it to be true or because it actually was true.
“And anyway, Leonie loved Steffane,” I said casually. “So she couldn’t have loved Gaius.”
“Exactly,” Constance said, nodded along to my words. But then she realized what she had done and she shook her head sharply. “No. She was scared of Steffane. He was stalking her.”
“Liar,” I said. “Where did the money come from, Constance? Did they pay you to say that?”
“How dare you!” she shrieked. “How dare you say that I would take money? He killed her. He did it. It was him!”
“I believe that you believe that,” I said to her. “But you took the money anyway, didn’t you Constance? You believed it was him so you lied in court and you took the money. Who paid you? There’s no point lying to us any more, Constance. We know the truth.”
Her eyes flicked rapidly from me to Storm several times. She swallowed hard. She started crying again. “I had to lie,” she whispered. “I had to do it. They paid me to do it, but I would never have done it if it hadn’t been him. I knew it was him that killed her!”
“So you admit that you were lying,” I pushed, needing to know exactly what she had lied about. “It was true that Steffane and Leonie loved each other?”
“Love?” she said bitterly. “It was lust. It would have blown over. Maybe it had already blown over, because why else would he have killed her? He never loved her. He is not capable of love.”
“Who paid you to lie, Constance?” said Storm in a steely voice.
She looked at him pleadingly. “I had to do it,” she said. “I don’t know why they wanted me to do it, but I knew they would kill me if I said no. And I had to take the money. Gaius didn’t come for me. I had nowhere else to go. I was scared. I had to take the money. It was so much. And Leonie was already dead. She was gone. Gone!”
“Who?” insisted Storm.
But Constance wouldn’t answer. She just shook her head. She was too scared to tell us the truth. “It didn’t matter. Steffane killed her. It had to be him. Why does it matter?”
“Was it Gaius?” I said. “Did he pay you to make sure that Steffane got locked up?” She would have done it unquestioningly for Gaius; that much was obvious.
“Gaius would have never done that to Steffane!” she said sharply. “You would have never said that if you knew how much Gaius loved Steffane. He would have never let Steffane go to prison! I should never have testified aga
inst Steffane. I knew Gaius wouldn’t like it, but Gaius was sick and I was so scared!”
“What do you mean that Gaius was sick?” said Storm.
“He caught the Vaerus X after the murder happened. He was too sick to come to court or do anything to help Steffane. I would never had done it if Gaius had come for me. I called him a hundred times but he never came. I thought he didn’t want me but it was because he was sick. I would never have lied if I had known. I ruined it. He hates me. He must hate me.”
I was too impatient for answers to indulge her self pity. “Then was it Rodrigge who bribed you?” I asked. “Rodrigge was jealous of Steffane. Did he frame Steffane?”
“That wimp?” she spat in disgust. “He was spiteful and covetous. He always wanted what his brother had. He was so jealous of how much Gaius loved Steffane. He even tried to steal Leonie away from Steffane.” She laughed scathingly. “But Leonie wouldn’t have him. She laughed at him. But it couldn’t have been Rodrigge. It was impossible for it to have been anyone but Steffane.”
“What happened the night of the murder?” I asked. “Tell us what you remember.”
She laughed hysterically, and then she burst into tears. Loud noisy sobs that racked her body, as if she had been driven to the edge by her memories.
She gasped out her words between her sobs. “It was my last night with Gaius. When all the guests had left, I begged him to make love to me. I thought if I could just give him a baby he’d love me like he loved Audriett. She gave him two babies. Two! I begged him to try one last time with me. I had taken an ampule of fertility potion that I’d spent months trying to get. I was so determined to make it happen that I didn’t care what was happening with Leonie. I didn’t even look for her at the end of the night. I didn’t check if she’d gotten safely to her room.”
“Did you see her with Steffane?”
“She’d made me so angry that night, and I just didn’t care any more. But my fertility potion went to waste because Gaius was… He wasn’t like himself. I thought he was trashed, that Steffane might have spiked Gaius’s blood-toast for fun to try to ruin Rodrigge’s big night. I was so mad at Steffane about that. But now I realize that the Vaerus X must have already infected Gaius that night. He had been so tired. He went to sleep in my arms. How could I have known what would happen? How could I have known that would the last night I ever held him?”
I was disgusted that she was lamenting the loss of her vampire master over the loss of her daughter. I was sick of her refusal to tell us the truth. “Did you ever give a crap about Leonie?” I said. “Some mother you were. Even now you’re too busy thinking of the vampires who killed her to do what is right for her.”
“I do care about Leonie,” she said in a shrill voice.
“Then tell us who paid you off!” I snapped. “Which of the Ronins was it?”
“I don’t know,” she snarled. “It some man who came to me with the deal. I only knew his name. Nothing else.”
She told us a name which neither Storm nor I recognized, And then she gave us his description. And I knew exactly who she was talking about. Because there couldn’t possibly be enough room in London for two cowboys who drove a pink Cadillac.
Chapter 23
DIANA
The cowboy had vanished.
It was 8:00 pm in the evening by the time Storm and I finished combing over Constance Ashbeck’s house again in hopes of finding some evidence that would lead to DCK. She had said that she had come home with some groceries and found him waiting for her inside. She hadn’t actually seen him. She had gone straight to her kitchen to put away her shopping, and he had hit her over the head. She had woken to find her face and her arm and her stomach slashed up, And the massive clawed pawprint mark of DCK on her kitchen wall, printed there in her own blood. Terrified, she had called the police.
The state of her apartment corroborated her statement. The Devil Claw mark was on her kitchen wall and there was blood all over her kitchen floor. The killer had used her own knives to cut her up with. But he hadn’t savaged her in his usual signature style. He had made every effort to leave her alive. In fact, the only reason why we believed it had been DCK for sure was that his mark was authentic. It was the right size and shape and the claw marks were gouged deeply into the wall, as if some sort of monstrous sized beast had dipped its paw in her blood and then slashed the wall.
But as usual, DCK had left behind not a single piece of evidence to link back to who he really was. There was no other sign that he had been there. While Storm had combed through the crime scene and all of the other rooms, I had wondered around observing and touching things, hoping that something might spark a psychic vision. My hopes had been futile. I had found nothing.
All I saw was the signs of a lonely existence, a bit like mine, but in much more lavish surroundings. Constance had been as alone in the world as Darya Palmer, or worse, because at least Darya had her dog Scoot. Constance Ashbeck had nothing. The only hint of her past in her house was a small framed portrait of Gaius Ronin, tucked face down inside her bedside drawer. The portrait gave me no visions.
Giving up, Storm and I returned together to the hotel that we were staying in that night in Edinburgh. Storm drove us there in his hire car, and our fifteen minute drive took place entirely in silence. I tried to think of things to say to him, but nothing sounded right. He seemed to be perfectly content with the silence, not attempting to say a word. I couldn’t tell if it was because he had other things on his mind or because he had simply decided that he no longer had anything to say to me. In the past our silences had never felt this uncomfortable.
I wanted to ask him what was going on with him. The psychic music coming from him had intensified since yesterday, and I knew that it wasn’t really anything to do with this case; it was whatever was going on in his personal life. I was worried. It felt like something was coming to a head, something that might change Storm’s life forever. And I didn’t like that idea.
What was it, and was it going to take him away from us? I felt like I wanted to do something about it, but I didn’t even know what the problem was. I knew that if I tried to probe, Storm would not take it well. He would tell me it was none of my business. He would clam up even more.
I was relieved when we arrived at the hotel, and made our way together to Storm’s bedroom. As Storm slid his key card into the slot of the door handle, I quickly knocked loudly on the door. Storm gave me a querying look. I merely raised my eyebrows at him.
Remi and Monroe were in his room still trying to track down the whereabouts of my cowboy in a pink Cadillac, and I was fully aware that they might have drifted on to doing other things in a bedroom. They might appreciate a warning of our arrival. It was amusing that their attraction to each other had seemed to pass Storm by.
But I’d had nothing to worry about. Remi was sitting cross-legged on Storm’s bed with her laptop computer balanced on her thighs, and Monroe was sitting on one of the small armchairs, his head bowed over his own screen as he tapped away rapidly at his keyboard. The hotel did not have any meeting rooms, so we had been forced to use Storm’s room as a makeshift office.
Remi looked up at us eagerly as we entered. “Anything?” she asked hopefully.
She was looking at me, and not at Storm. She was fully aware that it had been highly unlikely that Storm would find any new evidence at the crime scene, given that everyone had already gone over it with a fine toothed comb earlier in the morning. She knew DCK had not left any evidence behind. It was me that she hoped might have some fresh psychic insights. Remi had always had far too much faith in my abilities. I shook my head, and she looked disappointed.
“You?” I asked her.
It was Monroe who answered. “We found out that your cowboy got papers for passage through an Otherworld portal earlier on in the week. As far as we can tell, he’s gone there.”
I looked hopefully at Storm. “What will it take to get him back? Are you allowed to ask to extradite people?” I had no idea
how it worked.
Remi and Monroe were looking miserable. Storm shook his head. “We would have to track him down ourselves over there, and there is no way we are going to be able to do that in the time that we have.”
“But we could try!” I said hopefully, insisting on remaining positive. “If you guys are allowed to travel into Otherworld, isn’t it worth heading over there right now? Is there a portal in Edinburgh?”
“It’s not so simple,” said Storm. “And the boss is back on Monday. He’s going to have to file our suspension paperwork when he returns. He made it very clear that we needed to close the case by then or it would be out of his hands.”
With a heavy sigh, Storm sat down on his bed. He didn’t look hopeless because he was not one to give up easily. He looked like his brain was ticking over, trying to think of a way out of this and failing to find one.
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