“Is it true?” he asked, his voice low and intent.
“Jennifer Cater and her companions are dead,” Christian Baruch said, not without compassion.
The small man howled, literally howled, and the hair on my arms stood up. He sank to his knees, his body swaying back and forth in a transport of grief.
“I take it you are one of her party?” the queen said.
“Yes, yes!”
“Then now I am your queen. I offer you a place at my side.”
The howling stopped as if it had been lopped off by a pair of scissors.
“But you had our king killed,” the vampire said.
“I was the spouse of your king, and as such, I’m entitled to inherit his state in the event of his death,” Sophie-Anne said, her dark eyes looking almost benevolent, almost luminous. “And he is undoubtedly dead.”
“That’s what the fine print said,” Mr. Cataliades murmured in my ear, and I barely suppressed a yelp of astonishment. I’d always thought that what people said about big men moving lightly was total bullshit. Big people move bigly. But Mr. Cataliades walked as lightly as a butterfly, and I had no idea he was nearby until he spoke to me.
“In the queen’s wedding contract?” I managed to say.
“Yes,” he said. “And Peter’s attorney went over it very thoroughly indeed. The same applied in the event of Sophie-Anne’s death, too.”
“I guess there were a lot of clauses hanging on that?”
“Oh, just a few. The death had to be witnessed.”
“Oh, gosh. That’s me.”
“Yes, indeed it is. The queen wants you in her sight and under her thumb for a very good reason.”
“And other conditions?”
“There could be no second-in-command alive to take the state over. In other words, a great catastrophe had to occur.”
“And now it has.”
“Yes, it seems that it has.” Mr. Cataliades appeared quite pleased about that.
My mind was tumbling around like one of those wire bins they draw bingo numbers from at the fair.
“My name is Henrik Feith,” the small vamp said. “And there are only five vampires left in Arkansas. I am the only one here in Rhodes, and I am only alive because I went down to complain about the towels in the bathroom.”
I had to slap a hand over my own mouth to keep from laughing, which would have been, shall we say, inappropriate. Andre’s gaze remained fixed on the man kneeling before us, but somehow his hand wandered over and gave me a pinch. After that it was easy to not laugh. In fact, it was hard not to shriek.
“What was wrong with the towels?” Baruch said, completely sidetracked by this slur on his hotel.
“Jennifer alone used up three,” Henrik began explaining, but this fascinating byway was cut short when Sophie-Anne said, “Enough. Henrik, you come with us to my suite. Mr. Baruch, we look forward to receiving updates from you on this situation. Mr. Donati, are you intending to call the Rhodes police?”
It was polite of her to address Donati as though he actually had a say in what was done. Donati said, “No, ma’am, this seems like a vampire matter to me. There’s no body to examine now, there’s no film since there’s no security camera in the suite, and if you’ll look up . . .” We all did, of course, to the corner of the hallway. “You’ll notice that someone has very accurately thrown a piece of gum over the lens of the security camera. Or perhaps, if it was a vampire, he jumped up and planted the gum on the lens. Of course I’m going to review the tapes, but as fast as vampires can jump, it may well be impossible to determine who the individual is. At the moment, there aren’t any vampires on the homicide squad in the Rhodes police force, so I’m not sure there’s anyone we can call. Most human cops won’t investigate vampire crime, unless they have a vampire partner to get their backs.”
“I can’t think of anything more we can do here,” Sophie-Anne said, exactly as if she could not care less. “If you don’t need us any longer, we’ll go to the opening ceremony.” She had looked at her watch a few times during this conversation. “Master Henrik, if you are up to it, come with us. If you’re not up to it, which of course we would understand, Sigebert will take you up to my suite and you may remain there.”
“I would like to go somewhere quiet,” Henrik Feith said. He looked like a beaten puppy.
Sophie-Anne nodded to Sigebert, who didn’t look happy about getting his marching orders. But he had to obey her, of course, so off he went with the little vampire who was one-fifth of all that was left of the Arkansas undead.
I had so much to think about that my brain went into a stall. Just when I believed nothing more could happen, the elevator dinged and the doors swept open to allow Bill to leap out. He didn’t arrive as dramatically as Henrik, but he made a definite entrance. He stopped dead and assessed the situation. Seeing we were all standing there calmly, he gathered his composure around him and said, “I hear there has been trouble?” He addressed this to the air in between us, so anyone could answer him.
I was tired of trying to think of him as Nameless. Hell, it was Bill. I might hate every molecule in his body, but he was undeniably there. I wondered if the Weres really managed to keep the abjured off their radar, and how they dealt with it. I wasn’t managing very well.
“There is trouble,” the queen said. “Though I don’t understand what your presence will achieve.”
I’d never seen Bill looking abashed, but he did now. “I apologize, my queen,” he said. “If you need me for something, I’ll have returned to my booth in the convention hall.”
In icy silence, the elevator doors slid shut, blocking out my first lover’s face and form. It was possible that Bill was trying to show he cared about me by showing up with such haste when he was supposed to be doing business for the queen elsewhere. If this demonstration was supposed to soften my heart, it failed.
“Is there anything I can be doing to help you in your investigation?” Andre asked Donati, though his words were really aimed at Christian Baruch. “Since the queen is the legal heir of Arkansas, we stand ready to assist.”
“I would expect nothing less of such a beautiful queen, one also well-known for her business acumen and tenacity.” Baruch bowed to the queen.
Even Andre blinked at the convoluted compliment, and the queen gave Baruch a narrow-eyed look. I kept my gaze fixed on the potted plant, and I kept my face absolutely blank. I was in danger of snickering. This was brownnosing on a scale I’d never encountered.
There really didn’t seem to be any more to say, and in subdued silence I got on the elevator with the vampires and Mr. Cataliades, who had remained most remarkably quiet.
Once the doors shut, he said, “My queen, you must marry again immediately.”
Let me tell you, Sophie-Anne and Andre had quite a reaction to this bombshell; their eyes widened for all of a second.
“Marry anyone: Kentucky, Florida, I would add even Mississippi, if he were not negotiating with Indiana. But you need an alliance, someone lethal to back you up. Otherwise jackals like this Baruch will circle around, yipping for your attention.”
“Mississippi’s out of the running, thankfully. I don’t think I could stand all the men. Once in a while, of course, but not day in, day out, scores of them,” Sophie-Anne said.
It was the most natural and unguarded thing I’d ever heard her say. She almost sounded human. Andre reached out and punched the button to stop the elevator between floors. “I wouldn’t advise Kentucky,” he said. “Anyone who needs Britlingens is in enough trouble of his own.”
“Alabama is lovely,” Sophie-Anne said. “But she enjoys some things in bed that I object to.”
I was tired of being in the elevator and also of being regarded as part of the scenery. “May I ask a question?” I said.
After a moment’s silence, Sophie-Anne nodded.
“How come you get to keep your children with you, and you’ve gone to bed with them, and most vampires aren’t able to do that? Isn’t it supposed to be a short-term relationship, sire and child?”
“Most vampire children don’t stay with their makers after a certain time,” Sophie-Anne agreed. “And there are very few cases of children staying with their maker as long as Andre and Sigebert have been with me. That closeness is my gift, my talent. Every vampire has a gift: some can fly, some have special skills with the sword. I can keep my children with me. We can talk to each other, as you and Barry can. We can love each other physically.”
“If all that’s so, why don’t you just name Andre the King of Arkansas and marry him?”
There was a long, total silence. Sophie-Anne’s lips parted a couple of times as if she was about to explain to me why that was impossible, but both times she pressed them shut again. Andre stared at me with such intensity that I expected to see two spots on my face begin smoking. Mr. Cataliades just looked shocked, as if a monkey had begun to speak to him in iambic pentameter.
“Yes,” said Sophie-Anne finally. “Why don’t I do that? Have as king and spouse my dearest friend and lover.” In the blink of an eye, she looked positively radiant. “Andre, the only drawback is that you will have to spend some time apart from me when you return to Arkansas to take care of the state’s affairs. My oldest child, are you willing?”
Andre’s face was transformed with love. “For you, anything,” he said.
We had us a Kodak moment going. I actually felt a little choked up.
Andre pressed the button again and down we went.
Though I am not immune to romance—far from it—in my opinion, the queen needed to focus on finding out who’d killed Jennifer Cater and the remaining Arkansas vampires. She needed to be grilling Towel Guy, the surviving vampire—Henrik Whatever. She didn’t need to be trailing around meeting and greeting. But Sophie-Anne didn’t ask me what I thought, and I’d volunteered enough of my ideas for the day.
The lobby was thronged. Plunged into such a crowd, my brain would normally be going into overload unless I was very careful indeed. But when the majority of the beings with brains were vampires, I got a lobby full of nothing, just a few flutters from the human flunky brains. Watching all the movement and not hearing much was strange, like watching birds’ wings beating and yet not hearing the movement. I was definitely working now, so I sharpened up and scanned the individuals who had circulating blood and beating hearts.
One male witch, one female. One lover/blood donor—in other words, a fangbanger, but a high-class one. When I tracked him down visually, I saw a very handsome young man wearing everything designer down to his tighty whities, and proud of it. Standing beside the King of Texas was Barry the Bellboy: he was doing his job as I was doing mine. I tracked a few hotel employees going about their business. People aren’t always thinking about interesting stuff like, “Tonight I’m in on a plot to assassinate the hotel manager,” or something like that, even if they
are.
They’re thinking stuff like, “The room on eleven needs soap, the room on eight has a heater that won’t work, the room service cart on four needs to be moved . . .”
Then I happened upon a whore. Now,
she
was interesting. Most of the whores I knew were of the amateur variety, but this woman was a thorough professional. I was curious enough to make eye contact. She was fairly attractive in the face department, but would never have been a candidate for Miss America or even homecoming queen—definitely not the girl next door, unless you lived in a red-light district. Her platinum hair was in a tousled, bedtime hairdo, and she had rather narrow brown eyes, an allover tan, enhanced breasts, big earrings, stiletto heels, bright lipstick, a dress that was mostly red spangles—you couldn’t say she didn’t advertise. She was accompanying a man who’d been made vamp when he was in his forties. She held on to his arm as if she couldn’t walk without help, and I wondered if the stiletto heels were responsible for that, or if she held on because he liked it.
I was so interested in her—she was projecting her sexuality so strongly, she was so very much a prostitute—that I slipped through the crowd to track her more closely. Absorbed in my goal, I didn’t think about her noticing me, but she seemed to feel my eyes on her and she looked over her shoulder to watch me approach. The man she was with was talking to another vampire, and she didn’t have to kowtow to him just for the moment, so she had time to eye me with sharp suspicion. I stood a few feet away to listen to her, out of sheer ill-bred curiosity.
Freaky girl, not one of us, does she want him? She can have him; I can’t stand that thing he does with his tongue, and after he does me he’ll want me to do him and that other guy—geez, do I have some spare batteries? Maybe she could go away and stop staring?
“Sure, sorry,” I said, ashamed of myself, and plunged back into the crowd. Next I went over the servers hired by the hotel, who were busy circulating through the crowd with trays of glasses filled with blood and a few actual drinks for the humans scattered around. The servers were all preoccupied with dodging the milling crowd, not spilling, sore backs and tender feet, things like that. Barry and I exchanged nods, and I caught a trailing thought that had Quinn’s name embedded, so I followed that trail until I found it led to an employee of E(E)E. I knew this because she was wearing the company T-shirt. This gal was a young woman with a very short haircut and very long legs. She was talking to one of the servers, and it was definitely a one-sided conversation. In a crowd that was noticeably dressed up, this woman’s jeans and sneakers stood out.
“—and a case of iced soft drinks,” she was saying. “A tray of sandwiches, and some chips. Okay? In the ballroom, within an hour.” She swung around abruptly and came face-to-face with me. She scanned me up and down and was little impressed.
“You dating one of the vamps, blondie?” she asked. Her voice was harsh to my ears, a northeastern clipped accent.
“No, I’m dating Quinn,” I said. “Blondie, yourself.” Though at least I was naturally blond. Well,
assisted
natural. This gal’s hair looked like straw . . . if straw had dark roots.