Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(10)

As if to remind her, Yummy said, “Maggots, my master.”

“This is the one, then?” She turned black eyes on me and it was like being hit with a paralysis spell. I froze. Like a rabbit in the gaze of a hawk, I didn’t want to move. At all. Ming was Asian and old, even as vampires go. Vampires tended to show less expression as they aged, and the term inscrutable fit them all. With Ming it was inscrutable, unfathomable, and indecipherable times three. Usually. Right now, her tone held a warning of some kind, and I broke into a sweat. Which I knew she could smell. Nervous sweat, even the giggly kind, was a foolish thing in the presence of an apex predator. It spoke of prey, and I knew I had lost face already.

I stepped behind the desk. Sat. Sighed. “I ask forgiveness for all insult, Ming of Glass. None was intended.” I opened the folder. It was supposed to be a sign that the topic of maggots was ended. “I’d like to ask—”

“Do you feel maggots in our presence at this time?” Ming interrupted.

I thought about timing and vampire games. I’d studied some in Spook School. Sometimes letting them swim on the line worked. Or truth. I was better with truth. And wood. I gripped the wood desktop and sank my fingernails into it, shoving past the finished surface into the grain, damaging the fine furniture, but touching bare wood. It was soothing. The tree had been large, old, and beautiful. Teak. Even dead, it was full of power I could use. I drew on the remembered life in the dead tree and I stared her straight in the eyes. Mithrans aren’t used to humans doing that, especially humans who had dealt with them before. Like law enforcement. Vamps mesmerize with their eyes. Instead, Ming blinked. “Not exactly, ma’am,” I said. “Only when I walk where Mithrans have walked for a long time, on wood or on the earth, and with my bare feet, do I feel the presence of their undeath.”

Ming stared back at me. Hard. Nothing happened. “And are your feet bare now?” she asked.

“They are not,” I said, knowing that when this line of questioning was turned from speech to text and entered into the official record, I’d be teased about it. Which Ming surely knew.

“And the maggots?” she pressed, her tone arch.

Ming of Glass was pushing me, testing me the way a cat did a mouse she might eat, except she was bored and the mouse was a game. My voice hardened and I let a little church into my words. “I stepped in a dead possum when I was a child, barefooted, in the woods. It was cold and slick and crawling with maggots. That sensation stayed with me. I insulted Mithrans when I mentioned that at a time when I was rattled, insecure, and unwise. Again, I offer apologies.”

“Accepted. But before we continue, did you feel maggots in the yard where the shooter stood?”

She was asking if the shooter was a blood-sucker. I took in a breath, putting the questions together with the events of tonight. She was asking if there might be a strange vampire in town gunning for her. Or someone in her ranks trying to take her out, outside of vampire protocols. Or trying to stir up trouble for the head vampire in Knoxville. I had heard of vampire wars. That would not be happening. PsyLED was putting together a protocol for dealing with that sort of situation—blood-suckers rampaging in the streets—and rumor suggested that the protocol involved killing vamps on sight. Which I was sure Ming did not know. “There were no Mithrans in the yard. May we proceed?” I asked, keeping my expression wooden and my scent pattern muted.

“Of course,” Ming said, no hint of amusement in her tone now, and her eyes hard as steel.

I released the wood of the desk and handed the paper that was traced with the floor plan of the game room to Tandy and indicated Ming. He carried it to her. I said, “Would you both please show Special Agent Dyson where you were standing at the time of the shooting?”

I set the other sketch, the one with the positions of the people already in place, on the desktop and scanned the list of questions. Tandy handed the sketch back to me, with two fingers marking spots near where the first round had come through. I compared them to the locations given by the other guests. It matched the locations where someone else had placed them both. It also suggested that the shooter had been aiming at them and missed.

“Mithrans have much better eyesight than humans,” I said, “and a much better sense of smell and hearing. Did you see, smell, or hear anyone outside the window prior to the onset of shooting?”

“Nothing,” Ming said. There was something pleased in her tone, as if she liked either the question I asked or the exchange we’d just had. Maybe she was less inscrutable than I thought.

Yummy shook her head. “Me neither. I was watching the people inside the room. We didn’t bring outside security, depending on the team hired by the Holloways. That won’t happen again.”

Ming said, “We will not insult a host with such actions.”

“With all due respect, my mistress, Cai has already said otherwise. You and your primo will have this discussion, not you and me.”

“You are cheeky,” Ming said, but she didn’t sound upset about that. Maybe Ming liked cheeky. I filed that away for future reference.

I said, “And to whom were you speaking at the time of the first shots?”

“The party was a fund-raiser for Senator Abrams Tolliver and also an opportunity to make business deals. I was speaking to Senator Tolliver himself when the first shots were fired, though my body was between him and the window.” Which again insinuated that she was a target.