A local habitation

“What is it?” I asked. “Got something else you neglected to tell me? More bodies? Giant spiders in the attic? Because I’m pretty much out of patience, and you didn’t bring me anywhere near enough coffee to excuse hiding a murder.”

Alex stumbled to a halt a few feet in front of us, his hands hanging limply at his sides. They weren’t singing arias now; for the first time since I’d met him, they were motionless. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Three people are dead, Alex. Two of them were already dead when we got here. What exactly wasit like?”

“I . . .” He stopped, shoulders sagging, and sighed. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t supposed to tell you anything. I didn’t know anyone else was going to get hurt.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Who told you not to talk to me?”

“Only one woman here with the authority.” Alex quirked a small, bitter smile. “You want to know what’s going on, you talk to Jan.”

“All right; I will. Take us to her.”

To Alex’s credit, he didn’t argue or try to defend himself further. He just turned, gesturing for us to follow, and led us down the hall.

We’d been searching the buildings of the knowe for almost half an hour, forcing me to admit that Colin’s killer or killers left us nothing to find. There were no footprints or signs of forced entry; all the blood was on Colin himself, and there wasn’t much blood even there. He hadn’t struggled at all. Whatever happened to him, it happened fast. His skin was under the front seat of my car, where no one would tamper with it, but I couldn’t figure out what it meant, if anything. Who kills a Selkie and doesn’t take the skin? I had three victims, a crime scene that told me nothing and offered escapes into two barely co

There wasn’t enough coffee in the world to make this bearable.

Alex led us to a closed door, where he knocked. “Who is it?” called Jan from inside.

“Alex,” he said. “I have Sir Daye and her assistant here. They’d like to speak with you.”

There was a pause—long enough that I began to wonder whether the illustrious Countess O’Leary had decided to go out the window—before the door swung open to reveal Jan, looking utterly weary, standing on the other side. “Okay. They can come in. Alex, if you could . . . ?”

“Got it,” he said, with a sardonic half-salute. “This is a discussion we peons don’t need to be a part of. Quentin, Toby . . .” He hesitated. “I’m sorry. That’s all. I’ll see you soon.” Not waiting for us to reply, he turned and walked rapidly off down the hall.

I watched him go before turning to Jan, not saying a word. She stepped out of the way, letting us pass.

The office was Elliot’s, according to the nameplate on the desk; like all the offices, it was located in what I was coming to recognize as the knowe’s main building. It was as tidy as I would expect a Ba

Jan closed the door behind us, starting to pace almost immediately. She was so clearly her uncle’s niece when she moved that way that it was hard to see how I’d ever been able to miss it. “We found the first body last month,” she said, punctuating the words with a sharp gesture of her hand. “We thought—oak and ash, we thought it was Dreamer’s Glass. We thought it was just some kind of screwed-up scare tactic gone wrong.”

“So why didn’t you call the Queen?” I leaned back against a clear patch on the wall, watching her. “If Riordan had somebody killed, even by accident, she broke Oberon’s first law. You could have brought charges against her.”

“No proof.” Jan raked her hair back, frustration briefly beating back anger. “We don’t even know for sure that it was her. Who’s ever heard of the night- haunts leaving a body behind? What the hell was I supposed to do? Go to the Queen’s Court and be all ‘excuse me, Your Majesty, but Duchess Riordan maybe had one of my people kidnapped, or somehow had her killed in a way that doesn’t make sense, and anyway, I don’t know any of this for sure, but can you make her stop?’ It wasn’t going to work.”

“You could have told someone.”

“I tried.” Jan sighed. “Whether you believe me or not, I’ve been leaving messages for Uncle Sylvester since this started. I wanted his advice. But he never called me back.”

Sylvester thought she’d stopped calling; she thought he’d stopped answering. I didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be anything good. “The night-haunts didn’t come for the first victim?”

“They haven’t come for any of the victims,” said Elliot. “All three of them just . . . stayed, exactly like they were before they died.”

“And we’re sure they died.” Jan kept pacing. “There would be demands by now . . . or something. Or someone would have managed to get loose, if they’d been kidnapped and replaced with some sort of ma

“Kidnap victims don’t always escape on their own,” I said.

“The first victim—Barbara—was a Cait Sidhe Queen of Malvic’s line. The cats have been in mourning ever since.” She fixed me with a steady look. “Don’t you think they’d know if she were still alive?”

I winced. Malvic is one of the Cait Sidhe Firstborn. Most of the Kings and Queens of Cats are his descendants, and he wouldn’t be happy when he heard about this. Neither would Tybalt.

“All right, so we know she’s dead,” I said. “Where did you find her body?”

“In the cafeteria.”

“The cafeteria. The cafeteria where you left us alone?” She nodded. “Right.” They ditched us in a place where somebody died. How sweet. “I assume that means you didn’t close the scene after the body was found?”

“We tried, but . . .” Elliot waved his hands.

“It was upsetting people, and there wasn’t anything to find,” said Jan.

I bit back a groan. Being largely in denial about the existence of death means most purebloods never learn thing one about proper police procedure; when they find evidence of a crime, they’re likely to clean it up just so they won’t have to look at it. They probably destroyed any evidence before the body was even cold, oblivious to the fact that this could be a bad idea.

“Was there anything that stood out about the first victim?” I asked.

Jan laughed bitterly. “How about the part where she was dead? Exactly like Colin. We left her where she was for almost a day to give the night- haunts time, and they never came.”

That wasn’t a good sign. Twice is enough to start looking like a pattern. “How about the second victim?”

“She looked like she was sleeping,” said Elliot. His voice was bleak. “She was just . . . she looked like she was sleeping. But she never woke up.”

“Her name was Yui Hyouden,” Jan said, putting her hand on Elliot’s shoulder and squeezing. He stared down at his feet. “She was a Kitsune. She worked in software testing.”

I looked away from Elliot. “Where was she found?”

“On the lawn outside. She hadn’t come through the reception room; she was still in the mortal world.”

The statement made my skin crawl. Kitsune can be beautiful, but it’s not human beauty. If the night-haunts hadn’t come for Yui’s body . . . “When did you find her?”

“Just after sunrise.”

“Right.” That made it less likely that anyone had seen her, especially since none of the local tabloids had been ru

“She was,” Jan agreed. “That’s when people started leaving. They couldn’t handle the idea that they might be next.”