A Local Habitation
Page 25

“Nothing?” Peter whispered. The Daoine Sidhe don’t brag, because we don’t need to. My mother was so strong she could taste the death of plants. She could never stomach maple syrup; she said it tasted like trees screaming. The blood should have told me something, even if it wasn’t anything I could use. For it to tell me nothing at all was impossible.
“Nothing.” I stood, resisting the urge to wipe my hands on my jeans again. It wouldn’t get them clean, or take the taste of blood out of my mouth. “The blood’s empty.”
“But why didn’t the night-haunts come?”
“I don’t know.” The obvious next question was “so what good are you? ” and I didn’t know what my answer would be.
He didn’t get a chance to ask. Jan rushed into the room, clipboard clutched against her chest, with a tiny white-haired woman following a few steps behind.
“Elliot!” Jan cried, voice shrill and angry. “Elliot, what happened?”
He turned toward her, expression grim. “They got Colin, Jannie,” he said. “I’m so sorry. They got Colin.”
She stopped, raising a hand to her mouth. She was either one of the best actresses I’ve ever seen, or she hadn’t done it. “Colin?” she said, anger fading, replaced by sudden, bleak despair. “Oh, no. That can’t be right, Elliot, it can’t; I refuse. Look again. You have to be wrong.”
“I’m sorry, Jannie,” he said, and opened his arms. She threw herself into them, shuddering, and they clung to each other. My presence was forgotten; I had no place in the landscape of their grief. Even Alex and Peter looked away.
The white-haired woman stepped around them and stopped in front of the corpse, studying it for a long moment before she said, “He’s dead.”
“Yes,” I said flatly. Sylvester said he was worried about his niece not checking in. He never said anything about people getting killed.
“How?”
“I don’t know,” I said, studying her. Most people are upset when their friends die; this woman looked interested, and not all that surprised. That was unusual. She was roughly five feet tall, with a blaze of white hair cut in spikes that did nothing to hide the squared-off tips of her ears. Her figure matched her height—slight, lissome, and easily overlooked. Judging from her scowl, that happened pretty often; it wasn’t the sort of expression you master in an instant, even when your friends are dying. Lines cut through her face like scars through granite. They weren’t wrinkles; she wasn’t old enough for that. They were just lines, indelibly ground into the shape of her.
“Damn,” she said, raking her hands back through her hair. “I liked him.”
I glanced to Jan and Elliot, and frowned as I saw that she was sobbing on his shoulder. What a great thing to see in a leader: hysterics. I shook my head, looking back to the white-haired woman, and asked, “Who are you?”
“What?” She looked up at me, her scowl deepening until the lines on her face became caverns. “I’m Gordan. Who the hell are you?”
“October Daye.” I don’t normally flex my titles, but this time I added, “Knight of Shadowed Hills. I’m here by order of Sylvester Torquill, the Duke—”
“Duke of Shadowed Hills, yeah, we know the drill,” she said, interrupting. “We’re not totally uncivilized out here in the boonies, you know. Have you got any credentials on you?”
“What?”
“Can you prove it?”
“I’ve already shown my credentials to your Countess, but given that you’ve got a corpse here—an impossible corpse—do I really need to prove it? I’m Daoine Sidhe, I’m a licensed PI, and I don’t exactly see you getting any better offers.”
“So you’re here to fix all our problems? Well, that’s just peachy, princess. What the fuck took you so long?”
“What do you mean?”
She gestured to the body. “This started last month—Colin’s the third death we’ve had. What took you so long? Were you waiting for an engraved invitation? ‘RSVP for murder?’ ”
I stared for a moment before I got my mouth working again. “The third?”
“Yeah.”
“I . . . see. Excuse me for a moment, please.” I turned toward Jan, eyes narrowing. She had straightened and was wiping her face with one hand, teary-eyed and sniffling. And I didn’t care. “Ms. O’Leary? May I have a word with you?”
She looked up, golden eyes wide. “Huh?”
I’ll normally forgive a certain degree of shock after a major trauma, especially when I’m dealing with purebloods; most of them see so few deaths that they don’t know how to cope. Considering what Gordan had said, however, I wasn’t inclined to be charitable. “A word, Ms. O’Leary. I need to have one with you.”
“W . . . why?” She glanced at Elliot, and he looked away. I think he knew what I was going to say. “This isn’t the best time. I . . .”
“Why didn’t you tell me that people were dying?” I demanded. Bluntness isn’t usually an asset among the fae, but it’s served me well over the years.
Jan gaped for a moment before she recovered, snapping, “You can’t just stroll in here and expect me to dump all our problems on you! What kind of a Countess do you take me for?”
I hauled my temper to heel, forcing myself to take a deep breath as Quentin walked up to stand behind me. “Did you call your uncle last night?”
She nodded. “I tried. No one answered.”
“Well, he answered for me. He’s worried. Now answer me this: do you want these killings to stop?”
Jan stared at me. “How can you even ask me that?”
“I am one changeling with a half-trained page to back me up,” I said, levelly. “Whether I’m telling you the truth or not, there’s not going to be that much damage I can do. But what I also am is a trained investigator sworn to your uncle’s Court. Let me do my job. If you think I’m lying to you at any point, you can deal with me.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“When your car breaks down, do you fix it yourself, or do you send for a mechanic?”
The change of topics was apparently a little too fast for her. She stared at me for a moment, befuddled, before she said, “I send for a mechanic.”