Dragos Goes to Washington (Elder Races #8.5)(32)

She didn’t try to talk over everybody else. Instead, she said telepathically, Gennita, we need to stall dinner for at least another half hour. Longer, if possible.

The chef spun to face her, eyes widening in dismay. We can’t stall dinner! The soufflés are almost done cooking!

Normally she would be much more gentle with Gennita’s wounded feelings, but now she didn’t have the emotional or physical time. She told the other woman grimly, We have much bigger problems right now than the soufflés. Get another round of hors d’oeuvres outside as fast as you can.

But they’re all gone! Gennita quivered visibly.

Pia threw up her hands. Send out the salads then! Send out anything, along with more alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.

Gennita rounded on her staff and started snapping out orders.

As Pia turned to Bayne, Eva slipped into the kitchen, caught sight of her and walked over. “When are you going to announce it’s time to go into dinner?”

“I’m not,” she said grimly. “Run upstairs and get me a pair of shoes.”

Eva stared at her bare feet. “What happened to the ones you were wearing?”

“Later,” she told Eva.

“But you only have one pair with you that matches that outfit. Which ones do you want?”

“I don’t care!” she cried. “Shoes, get me shoes. Dark ones, that nobody will notice.”

At that, Eva seemed to catch up with the fact that something had gone badly awry, because her expression changed until she looked much as Bayne did, bladelike and focused. She took off running.

“I need alcohol too,” Pia told Bayne. She meant it desperately.

He took her at her word, strode over to the counter where the liquor bottles sat, swiped up a bottle of cognac and handed it to her.

She took a long pull, coughed and handed it back to him. He drank from the bottle as well.

Gennita rushed up to her, wide eyes teary. “What should I do with the soufflés?”

Pia’s gaze went unfocused. She stared into space a moment. Then she said, “Burn them.”

The chef’s expression quivered. “They’re made with Balik Fillet Tsar Nikolaj smoked salmon. It costs $360 a pound. We can’t just burn them.”

“Yes, we can.” Pushing past the other woman, she rushed over to the ovens and turned them to their highest settings.

Gennita followed behind her. “What are you doing?!”

Pia said between her teeth, “There are too many guests with sensitive noses. We need the smell of something burning to fill the air. And I need to be able to tell the truth when I go out there and say we’ve had a slight accident in the kitchen, and dinner’s going to be a little later than we thought.”

“That would never happen in real life,” Gennita muttered. “Not in my kitchen.”

“Nobody outside the Wyr knows that,” Pia said. “At least I don’t think.”

Bayne dropped the cognac, and the bottle shattered on the floor. Everybody stopped what they were doing to stare at him.

He said, “Oops. Accident.”

Eva loped back into the kitchen, carrying high heeled black pumps. Pia snatched at them and slipped them on her feet. She told Eva, “Find Dragos. Do whatever he needs.”

“But . . .” The other woman paused. Normally Eva guarded Pia, no matter what. Clearly confused, she looked from Pia to Bayne.

“We’re switching roles tonight,” Bayne told her. “Go.”

Eva shot out of the kitchen again.

Pia strode to the liquor counter, grabbed another bottle at random and took a healthy swig from it. The two hits of alcohol seemed to make the buzzing in her ears fade away, until she felt dizzy, with her head stuffed with cotton wool.

The first faint hint of an acrid smell filled the kitchen.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Okay.”

She waited another minute until the acrid smell grew stronger, and then, followed by Bayne, she strode outside with a big apologetic smile to face her powerful, intelligent, and not-altogether-friendly guests.

*     *     *

Dragos didn’t know how Pia would stall things, and he didn’t care. He just knew she would handle it.

Dismissing the issue from his mind, he concentrated on the problem at hand.

Problem equaling corpse, of course.

Bracing one hand on the doorway, he leaned into the closet without stepping inside, and inspected Colton. It was easier to do, now that he was by himself and not distracted by the others.

The dragon surfaced in his mind again, not at all perturbed by the unexpected dead body. He noted details.

He took note of faint whiffs of old scents, along with the scent of aged wood, and set them aside. The only new scents in the closet were Pia and, of course, Colton’s copious blood, along with a faint, underlying hint of chemical stink.

Colton was wearing KO Odorless Odor Eliminator again, as was his wife. Dragos had taken note of it as soon as the Coltons had stepped into his house. He had also noted every other smiling guest who wore it.

All of them were his enemies. They knew it.

He knew it.

And one of them had murdered a man in his house.

Still leaning into the closet, he reached for the pen in his breast pocket. With the tip, he probed at the wounds on Colton’s neck. There were five wounds, four on one side, and one on the other. As Jered so obnoxiously pointed out, on the surface at least, it did look like a Wyr kill.