“If it was burned beyond recognition. . . .” Beka began. She shook her head. “I do not know enough about such things.”
I said, “This I've learned from lots of television crime shows: male and female skeletons are instantly recognizable to medical guys. Even if everything else is ash. And it takes a really hot fire to incinerate bones. I wonder how hot that fire got, considering that the car landed in snow.”
Phaedra made a scoffing noise, then started driving again. After a while, she spoke in her old drawl. “Then what you're saying is, there's a conspiracy? Among the servants and Dr. Kandras? What would they get out of falsifying Ruli's death?”
“Alec being shot by a firing squad,” Beka said in a flat voice.
“What?” Phaedra slammed on the brakes.
“You didn't know? My grandfather showed me the letters. Typed on one of the old Soviet typewritersâthere are still many leftâand written in Russian, which everyone had to learn until not so long ago. And unsigned. But someone wants Alec convicted of murder and shot.”
After another silence, Phaedra muttered, “I am going to
kill
Tony.”
Beka's chin snapped up. “Why do you say that?”
“Who else would benefit?” Phaedra sighed. “Don't get me wrong. I adore Tony. I was kissing him before
you
ever did, Beka. But you know how wild he is.”
“Wild, yes. But murder?”
Phaedra lifted an elegant hand toward the towering peaks on the other side of the valley, gray and silver and white against the wintry sky. “Tony despised Marzio. I can see him throwing Marzio off a cliff. Especially if he'd found out how much Marzio was bleeding Ruli for money.”
“Do you really think he'd set Alec up like that?” Beka said slowly, eyes still narrowed. “And send anonymous letters?”
Phaedra gripped the wheel with both hands again. “
Merde!
No. The coup, like in summer, yes. No one gets hurt, and no one looks bad, exceptâ” She paused.
“Me,” I said cordially. “And yes, I know you all thought I was a golddigger. But who got you to believe that?”
A pause while we all considered the duchess.
“Tony would despise anonymous letters. However, humiliating Alec would give Tante Sisi exquisite pleasure.” Phaedra downshifted, sending the engine into a roar as the vehicle started up an incline. “I can't see her writing them, but maybe she'd get someone else to. She was
very
angry after summer. And Magda has always taken orders from her first. That's why Ruli and I used to ditch her to go nightclubbing.”
“Someone needs to talk to Magda face to face,” Beka said.
I said, “So . . . about Ruli.” I thought of Ron Huber, whose heart had stopped then restarted. “Is it possible that she's still alive?”
That caused a real firestorm of emotionsârelief, regret, dread, determination, and above all fury. Why would anyone fake her death? Not for any good reason, that was the only thing I was sure of.
“I could see her running away with some boyfriend,” Phaedra said. “If not Marzio, someone else, with money. She and Percy threatened to run away together when we were all just out of school. Hah!” She gave a crack of laughter. “They would have gone, but they hadn't a penny between them. Ruli wouldn't stir a step without access to cash.”
“How could she run off without a car, and if there was another boyfriend besides Marzio, how did no one see him?” I asked. “I think it more likely the duchess locked her up again. Maybe we should check out the Eyrie. Only this time I want a pack of armed Vigilzhi at my back before we go for round two.”
“Let us stop speculating on such scanty evidence,” Beka said. “Even the ghost is not admissible before our judicial system, because it cannot be proved if not all can see it.”
Phaedra made an extravagant shrug, then said, “I'm still angry with Tony. Not because I think he's a murderer, but because he has to know something, yet he's not telling us and worse, playing games with us again. Tchah! He can find his own partner for the tango.”
She shot a triumphant glance Beka's way.
Beka's cheeks reddened. After a long moment she said in that flat teacher voice, “There will be the tango played at the gala? In such a large crowd?”
“I drove Cerisette to her appointment with the conductor to go over the music.” Phaedra made a miffed noise. “Enough! I'll wear my Balenciaga. I can barely waltz in it, so he will have to give up his exhibition. How he loves to show off!” Phaedra's gaze met mine in the rear view mirror. “Have you ever seen the past before?”
“Yes. I think I was seeing a past Christmas in someone's diamond at the Christmas Eve Mass. It was my grandmother, Princess Lily, and her sister Rose. I also saw Milo as a young cadet.”
Phaedra puckered her lips in an
ooo
, her eyes wide.
“Was the vision sustained that time?” Beka asked.
“For a few seconds, long enough for me to get a good look at them all. There was another time, when I was a kid, in California. It was in the window of the bus. I saw a girl my own age, outside a kiicha hut. She was on a palisade looking out over the ocean. She wore Acjachemen dress. I could see her hair lifting in the wind. Last summer I was lost in the countryside east of Austria. I saw farm workers in the past, and then the modern farm overlaid it. But not before I got a drink of water.”
Beka looked sharply at me over her shoulder, mittened hand before her mouth.
“What is it?” I said, instantly suspicious.
“Nothing. A surprise to hear. Such things are . . . rare.” Beka was staring through the windshield, so all I could see was the back of her head.
Phaedra glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “I take it you know about Honoré's auras.”
“He gave me permission to tell her,” Beka said. “A couple of days ago.”
Phaedra chewed her under lip, and then met my eyes in the mirror again. “There is definitely a conspiracy, and Tony has to be at the center of it. I will strangle him.”
“Did you remember something?” Beka asked, neutral again.
“Only that I thought something was strange from before December twenty-first,” Phaedra said. “It was so strange that Tony had to go to England over the Solstice, instead of going up to the Eyrie as he has ever since we were teens.”
“I thought that was a traditional family party,” Beka said, still in that flat, careful voice.
Phaedra was too angry to be careful. “Party! A bloody sort of party, as the English say.”
I leaned forward. “Tony was with me in London the night of the twenty-first, that I can definitely tell you.”
“Yes, so I said. Tony went to London because of some legality over his father's estate. Tante Sisi insisted he see to it before the holidays, and she told us that Uncle Robert would take over the tradition at the Eyrie, now that he was Count, and Ruli had agreed to go as well. Once. Because of her new position. That was a surprise, because Ruli had repeatedly said that nothing would get her to the Eyrie, ever, after her summer as a prisoner. She didn't even want to be in Riev over Christmas.”
“She never mentioned going to the Eyrie.” Beka tapped the dashboard. “When Ruli and I went to Madame Celine to order gowns, Ruli said she and Alec were arguing about Christmas and Paris. He wanted her first Christmas as Madam Statthalter to be spent in Riev.”
“She probably lost her nerve and wanted to run.” Phaedra shrugged. “Then Marzio showed up. Cerisette said that the morning of the twentieth, Ruli asked her to host a party to introduce Marzio around, since Ruli couldn't give one at the palace for him.”
“She didn't mention the Eyrie, then?” Beka asked.
“Not according to Cerisette.” Phaedra cursed in Russian, then said, “She wanted an out. That's it. No vampires. No Night of the Thorn treaty.”
“Night of the Thorn?” Beka said.
“Vampires?” That was me.
Phaedra ignored Beka, and glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “Didn't Tony tell you any of this last summer, when you were with him at the Eyrie?”
“No. His exact words were âa tenuous truce.' He also told me he's
seen
vampires. But nothing about any thorns, night or day.”
“Damn their secrets.” Phaedra smacked her hand on the steering wheel. “Here is the truth. Once a year, on the longest night, at least one of the family must meet the vampires up at the Eyrie. And give them blood. In return, the vampires caught on this side of the Nasdrafus are supposed to leave the mountain people alone. Tony's father wouldn't do it, so Tony took over when Robert's father died. Danilov often went with him. Felt obliged. Tony had treated him like a brother after the duchess took us in.”
“I didn't know that,” I said, but as soon as the words were out, I remembered Ruli saying,
I cannot tell you how much I hate the Eyrie
, and:
My brother talks to the undead
. She'd all but told me. If I'd asked the right question, would the rest have come spilling out?
“Is the eclipse part of that, by the way?”
“Oh, yes. That is, according to the old stories, the increase in darkness is said to increase the Shadow Ones' power, or if not that, their ability to move around.”
Beka's lips were compressed in that way I'd seen whenever Tony was mentioned, and I wondered how much of this was new to her.
“Tony lets vampires chow down on him?” I was so grossed out.
“He won't let them touch him,” Phaedra said. “He cuts a vein open with this very old hunting knife, the handle made of rosewood. Called Thorn. Fills this small golden bowl carved over with flower patterns, called the Rose. Equally old. Probably both charmed. The bowl felt that way, the one time I touched it. Everyone adds blood to it, then it's handed off to the Shadow Ones. It's an old ritual. I did it once. Thought it would be a thrill.”
“A thrill? To cut your arm open?” I hugged my arms against me. “That's way too kinky for me.”
Phaedra flashed an ironic grin into the rear view mirror. “They say there's a sexual kick, when they glamour you. Your blood is supposed to taste better if you are in love or in fear.”
“Adrenaline or pheromones. Maybe they can taste the difference. Ick.”
Phaedra said, “There was no glamour for me. No kick. Tony was angry, and I was puking scared. Anyway, it's a family secret.” Phaedra gave a sarcastic laugh. “Kim, you are supposed to be part of the family, yes? While you're up at the Eyrie looking for Ruli, why don't you go introduce yourself to them?”
“While I'm all for expanding my social networking, that does not include vampires,” I stated. “And Tony didn't tell me any of that.”
“If Tony's hiding Ruli again . . .” Phaedra began.
I thought of Tony sitting there in that council chamber and accusing Alec of murder.
And Alec saying
I second it
, because he believed he had been driving that car while drunk. Fury burned through me.
Phaedra smacked the wheel. “
Percy
will strangle Tony! He's hardly stepped from his room. He won't even touch his paints. They have been arguing so much, he and Robert, over how the opera house is not finished, I never want to go to Mecklundburg House again.”
“Percy is a
painter?
”
“He says he's not.” Beka glanced back at me. “He claims only that he is merely a restorer of the old work.”
Phaedra grimaced. “Mixes his paints the old ways. Grinds them. The stink! I stopped him talking about it when he mentioned earwax for touching up waters and skies.”
Beka said, “He's extraordinarily good. But he does prefer the old masters to more contemporary art styles. Is he still restoring the interior of the opera house?”
“He stopped for a time, right after the news about Ruli, but Uncle Robert was wild, saying it won't be ready in time for the ball. Danilov says, maybe Uncle Robert should offer to pay him.” Phaedra's drawl was back; the subject of vampires and Tony had ended.
“Kim, did you know that Percy's great grandmother was the royal portrait painter? They called her the Baroness of the Brushes. Most famous painter of the century. Her last portrait was of the twin princesses. But the Gestapo killed her not long after because she was mixed up with the Salfmattas somehow. Beka knows all those secrets.” The irony was definitely back.
“I wish I knew all those secrets.” Beka's tone was neutral, peacemaking after Phaedra's sarcasm. “Great-Aunt Sarolta was only a girl then. She heard rumors that the baroness put charms in her paintings, but if that was true I don't know what they were.”
As if Beka's admission of ignorance improved Phaedra's mood, the talk shifted to famous paintings and painters among the Dobreni, and secrets captured in paint, and where famous portraits were hidden during the years of occupation until we spotted Riev between mountain peaks and started descending toward the upper reaches of the city.
When Phaedra parked at the Vigilzhi command station, she said in challenge, “So who tells Alec?”
“No one,” Beka stated, and when Phaedra zapped a laser glare her way, Beka said, “Look. Have you considered why Alec is not under arrest? Not even guarded?”
“I know what you'll say.” Phaedra scowled. “If he thought it just, he'd follow the Regulus road, and everyone knows it. He made that clear before the Council.”
Regulus?
I was about to ask, then I remembered the story about the Roman general who was imprisoned by the Carthaginians, given parole by them to negotiate a peace with Rome, went to Rome and argued against peace for the good of Rome, then went back to Carthage to honor his parole, knowing he was going to be executed. Maybe Phaedra wasn't much of a reader, but she was far from ignorant.