Death's Mistress by Chance Karen

Author:Chance, Karen [Chance, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780451412768
Publisher: Onyx
Published: 2010-01-05T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Muttonchops left a moment later to arrange for extra blackout curtains. As soon as the door closed behind him, I got up and put the necklace on the desk. There was no way a dhampir was going to be allowed to address the Senate, which didn’t even recognize me as a person. But Mircea was going in there, and he needed more than a speck of wax.

“Plenty of other people had a reason to kill Elyas,” I said simply.

Mircea clicked on the lamp and bent over the desk to get a good look. Then sharp, dark eyes turned up to me. “Where did you get this?”

“Off Elyas’s neck.”

Marlowe started to squawk something, but Mircea held up a hand. “Tell me,” he said quietly. Louis-Cesare moved to the door, making sure that we had a moment of relative privacy.

“Elyas tried to buy the rune before the auction, but was told he’d have to bid for it like everyone else. When Ming-de won, he was furious—”

“A great many people were,” Marlowe said resentfully. “The auction was obviously rigged.”

“Yeah, only Elyas wasn’t going to take that lying down. He went to the club, killed the fey and took it—”

“Raymond saw him?” Mircea asked sharply.

“No, he smelled him. You can ask him if you want details, but there aren’t many. Basically, the fey showed up, Ray left him alone for a few minutes, he returned and the guy was dead. Elyas’s scent was in the air, and the necklace was missing.”

“How lovely,” Christine said breathily, her face alight. She’d come in so quietly that even the vamps hadn’t heard her. I saw Marlowe start.

She didn’t notice, being too busy gazing raptly at the carrier. The cold electric light sparked a fountain of prisms off the intricate surface, bathing her face with rainbows as she leaned closer, seemingly mesmerized. And before anyone could stop her, she’d picked it up.

“Drop it!” Marlowe barked.

She looked up, eyes wide and startled. And the carrier slipped from her fingers, hitting the desk and sending dancing beams across the dead man as it rolled toward the edge. She stared at it. “Je regrette! I did not mean—”

“You foolish girl!” Marlowe looked like he wanted to shake her. Christine transferred her gaze to him, looking part-mortified, part-confused.

“No harm done,” Mircea told her, and caught the heavy disk with a handkerchief.

“No harm done?” Marlowe demanded. “You’ll never get anything off it now!”

The supernatural community didn’t usually check fingerprints, because there are plenty of things that don’t leave any. But a good clairvoyant might be able to get something off the thing, if not too many people had touched it in the meantime. It was why I’d been careful not to handle it.

“That remains to be seen,” Mircea said mildly.

Christine backed into the wall, looking like she wished she could melt into it. She seemed on the verge of tears again. Louis-Cesare came over and led her to a chair. “Ça ne fait rien.”

Marlowe looked disgusted. “Oh, no. Not important at all.

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