Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(97)

Rainwater was running down his face and spiking his lashes. His shirt was past soaked, and his hair was flattened against his head. For the first time, I noticed that his nose was a little big, and that there was a wash of freckles, so pale as to usually go unobserved, over those high cheekbones. But there was no guile in those blue eyes, just hope, uncertainty and maybe a little bit of fear.

His hands came up to frame my face, and he pushed my dripping bangs out of my eyes. “Dorina, there is something I—”

A shout broke out. Radu had thrown off the first cop’s hold and jumped the one with the CB, who had pulled a gun on him. So of course ’Du took the gun away and clocked him upside the head with it. Only to be tackled by the other semilucid cop. He disappeared behind the open door of the cop car in a flutter of orange silk. Louis-Cesare sighed.

“Wait,” I said, holding on as he tried to move away. “You still haven’t told me why you don’t think you can win against Anthony.”

He looked at me calmly. “Because unless I am very much mistaken, he killed Elyas.”

That surprised me enough that I let go of his shirt, and he strode off to rescue Radu. I started to follow, before realizing that I was wearing a thong, a sagging stocking and a few straps. And that half the neighborhood was staring at me.

And then an ambulance screeched to a halt, and a couple EMTs jumped out and ran up the drive. “We got a report of a car wreck,” one of them told me. “Were there any—”

“Holy shit!” the other one said, staring at me. Or to be more precise, at the severed head under my arm.

I decided the neighbors could bite me, and ran after Louis-Cesare. “Anthony wasn’t at the auction,” I reminded him, as he prized one of the cops off ’Du.

“Yes, but it is possible that Elyas’s death had nothing to do with the rune.”

“How do you figure that?”

“If Anthony loses me, he loses his stranglehold on the Senate. There would be at least five senators challenged almost immediately. Anthony has been able to promote his allies for hundreds of years, without concern for their fighting abilities, because he knew they should never need to utilize them.”

“And now he’s got a Senate full of people who can’t defend their seats.”

He nodded. “Those five would be defeated, no doubt by challengers who would be far less dependent on his goodwill. And possibly more.”

“That’s one of those Halloween things, right?” one of the EMTs asked. They’d followed me down from the house, and now one of them tentatively poked Ray in the cheek.

Ray’s eyes flew open. “Poke me again, and I’ll chew your finger off,” he said nastily. The guy scrambled back with a little scream.

I sighed. I couldn’t do mind control, at least not on the level needed here. They were going to have to get in line.

“But why kill Elyas?” I asked. “If Anthony was going to kill someone, he’d hardly make it a member of his own Senate!”

“Elyas was one of the five.”

“So better to lose one guy who would probably be defeated in a challenge anyway than his champion?” Louis-Cesare nodded.

From a strictly profit-and-loss standpoint, it made sense. If Louis-Cesare was convicted of the murder, Anthony could enslave him and never have to worry about his defection again. But if he just let him leave, Elyas was dead meat anyway as soon as he was challenged.

“But why Elyas?” I still wanted this to be about the rune. Otherwise, my task of finding it had just gotten a lot harder. There was a limited pool of suspects at the apartment, but anyone could have shown up at the club. Not to mention that, if Louis-Cesare was right, he was screwed. How did a person win a court case when the judge had set him up?

“He needed someone with whom I had a grievance, and he knew that Elyas had Christine. No senator would take on such a favor for another consul without first alerting his own. Such a thing could easily cause a rift within his own Senate.”

One of the EMTs was trying to make a call. I reached in the side of the truck, yanked out the CB cord and handed it to him. “Okay, but why tonight?”

“Anthony likely has spies within Elyas’s household, who could have informed him that I was expected.”

“But you were late. If Anthony set things up for your original appointment time, Elyas would have been dead before you arrived.”

“Yes, but he could have waited, concealed somewhere, and acted when he saw me arrive.”

I frowned. “But you said that you were only in the waiting room a couple of minutes at most.”

“About that, yes.”

“So in less than two minutes, Anthony kills Elyas, sets you up and has time to steal the rune he didn’t even know existed?”

Louis-Cesare shot me a frustrated look. “Why are you arguing so strongly against this?”

“Because it’s a worst-case scenario! Why are you so set on it?”

“Because I scented him when I first entered the room.”

“You scented Anthony?”

“Yes. It was vague, merely a trace. But that was most likely due to the window. It was open. The scent would not have lingered long.”

“Why didn’t you mention this?”

“I have no proof, Dorina! And there is nothing your father or Kit can do against a consul. I do not wish them to make an enemy needlessly on my behalf.”