Pure Blood Part 21

I made Sunny cocoa, since I'd finally run out of that hideous jasmine-wheatgra.s.s-whatsit tea that she kept around, and told her the short version of my dilemma, leaving out me wanting to beat Irina about the head with a meat tenderizer until she resembled filet mignon more than a prime choice.

Sunny bit her lip. "Luna, why do you do things like this?"

"I was naked and about to be eaten, Sunny. Not a whole lot of choices."

"Well, couldn't you have offered them money, or negotiable commodities instead of some phantom cure? Gold. I hear gold is very big on the Russian black market."

"First of all," I said, "the Redbacks are Ukrainian. Secondly, you're not helping."

"Well, what do you want from me?" she exclaimed. "I can't magick up a potion to cure daemon poison!"

I had sort of been hoping it would be that easy, but knowing it wouldn't be. "Is there anything anything we can do, Sunny?" we can do, Sunny?"

She thought for a long time and then shook her head. "I'm sorry." She was nice enough not to point out that there was really no "we" in this mess-if I didn't come up with a cure, Sunny would continue as normal, albeit less one impulsive, angry, Internet-shopping-addicted cousin.

I pressed my hands over my eyes. They burned, reminding me I hadn't slept in at least twenty-four hours. "Hex it. That's all, then. I'm screwed."

"Only daemon magick can reverse daemon contamination," said Sunny. "So unless you can summon one up with a quick blood working ..."

We weren't going down that road, no matter how many angry weres were on my a.s.s about this. Besides, I got the feeling Asmodeus didn't exactly come when called. Figured, when I needed the guy he was nowhere in sight. Maybe I could get some sort of special daemon whistle.

"Thanks for your help," I muttered to Sunny, laying my head down on the table. I just wanted to sleep, for about a month, and have the world make sense again.

Sunny stood and patted my back. "Don't worry, Luna. We'll think of something. I'll do research."

"I'll burn a card catalog in offering to the research G.o.ds," I mumbled from my p.r.o.ne position.

After I heard Sunny's convertible drive away, I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Dmitri from memory. I'd deleted him from my caller ID and scrubbed the single e-mail from my laptop's hard drive in that fit of post-cheating rage every woman goes through. Unfortunately, my memory wasn't so easy.

The first time, I didn't even let the phone ring before I slapped it shut. Then I took a deep breath, reminded myself that he had to be told what was going on, and redialed. This time I made it to two rings.

"You're not in seventh grade," I muttered as I dialed and listened to the phone ring before Dmitri answered groggily.

" 'Lo?"

I sat there, trying to think of what to say. Hey, your new f.u.c.ktoy came by and threatened my life, so now I have to cure you. Hi, there, remember that daemon bite you got from Stephen Duncan? h.e.l.lo, Dmitri, this is your insane ex Luna calling to tell you that I have to cure you, or I'm werefood. Hey, your new f.u.c.ktoy came by and threatened my life, so now I have to cure you. Hi, there, remember that daemon bite you got from Stephen Duncan? h.e.l.lo, Dmitri, this is your insane ex Luna calling to tell you that I have to cure you, or I'm werefood.

"Luna, I know that's you. I have caller ID," said Dmitri. Face flaming, I shut my phone. I couldn't do it. Everything we'd shared and I couldn't think of one solitary word to say to Dmitri right then. There was no way to explain what had happened with Irina, or why I had really made the deal.

I didn't care about my life one way or the other- h.e.l.l, I prodded dead people and faced down armed psychotics for a living. Self-preservation was not in the equation.

But I did care about Dmitri. Still. Hex it, I was a pathetic excuse for a grown woman. I got the scotch, and a clean gla.s.s, and proceeded to get royally hammered, something that hadn't happened since my days in uniform. I had hoped the alcohol would paint me in a better light with myself, but I still held the same opinion when I staggered upstairs and pa.s.sed out. In love. In danger of losing my job and my life. Pathetic.

CHAPTER 24.

I woke up to a percussive beat, and after a confused second realized it was my heart beating a tattoo against the inside of my aching skull. The sun was down and after a consultation with my alarm clock I discovered I'd slept an entire day away.

Bang-up way to use precious time I could be using to find a cure for Dmitri or collecting any of the many loose threads of Vincent Blackburn's case.

Hangovers disappear fairly quickly with were healing, and I was walking straight by the time I got showered, dressed, and selected my beat-up black Chippewas, ideal footwear for what I had in mind, which was to drive aimlessly around feeling sorry for myself.

I almost missed the blinking message on my land-line phone, but someone had left a voice mail while I was unconscious. Probably someone hideous, like Matilda Morgan or my psychiatrist.

Figuring nothing could be worse than meeting Joshua, I pressed the code to retrieve my messages.

"Detective Wilder, this is Melissa Gordon with the district attorney's office." She sounded like she'd rather be talking to Charles Manson's voice mail. Not news, considering I'd killed her former boss. "I'm calling to inform you of a court date to testify against Arthur Samuelson, aka Samael, in the matter of his a.s.sault charges. November twenty-fifth at ten a.m., Nocturne City superior court part forty-three." She slammed the phone down and my machine bleeped, telling me I had no more messages.

Arthur Samuelson. I knew his real name was something geeky. The only person I knew who had concrete ties to Vincent, who may have seen him the night he was killed. Then I hit on the fact that Samael was facing trial for a.s.saulting a police officer. He was a s.e.x club worker. Even in Nocturne City, it was highly unlikely he'd made bail.

I grabbed my gun and badge and ran to the Fairlane, stopping to a.s.sess the damage from ramming the O'Hallorans' gate. One headlight dangled out of its socket. The chrome b.u.mper, added by me when I'd been promoted out of uniform, was smashed beyond repair. A remarkably symmetrical V creased the hood. All in all, it looked like the type of vehicle a carjacker would back away from in terror.

G.o.ds-d.a.m.ned O'Hallorans. I'd be sending them a bill. The Fairlane looked like c.r.a.p, but it started with a louder-than-usual grumble, the gears. .h.i.tching as I s.h.i.+fted on the beach road. I just prayed it would get me to the Las Rojas county jail.

It was well past normal visiting hours, but at the brandishment of my badge, a disgruntled guard buzzed me in. The county jail was staffed by the Las Rojas Sheriff's Office, not the department of corrections, and I didn't blame them for being surly. The jail sat well outside downtown, on a desolate strip of shale next to the Vortiger River. It had been a brewery owned by the Vortiger family, Germans who followed our founding father Jeremiah Chopin west from St. Louis in the early days of expansion.

The river named after the Vortigers had survived. Their brewery had not, and the city had seized it and decided the logical course would be to turn it into a jail. Maybe they thought the lager-tinged fumes would keep the prisoners calm.

"Who are you here to see, Detective?" said the deputy inside the cage that controlled the ancient iron gates barring the bowels of the jail. Being inside the building always reminded me vaguely of Alcatraz, or Sing-Sing-an old-style sense of punishment, not rehabilitation.

"Arthur Samuelson," I said. She raised a thick black eyebrow. Her face was squashed, like a bright-eyed bulldog's.

"Sir Samael," she intoned sarcastically. "He'll be thrilled. Gun and any metallic objects stay outside the bars."

I put everything that could be used as a shank in the plastic basket she furnished me and accepted the claim chit. A sickly buzzer sounded far off, and the gate creaked open.

"Make sure you wash your hands after," said the deputy, going back to her magazine.

I walked down the brick-lined hall to the steel door of the interrogation room. The jail was arranged in a cellular construction, with civilian hallways on one side, interrogation and meeting rooms in the center, and the main cell block on the other side.

Inside, I took a seat and waited seven minutes, by the ancient wall clock, for Samael to be brought in.

He was thinner than I remembered now that he was wearing a loose s.h.i.+rt, his hair free of gel and hanging in his eyes. His posture sagged as the guard chained his shackles to the ring in the floor, but his eyes were the same twin high beams I remembered.

"How's your head?" he asked me after the deputy had shut the door.

"How's jail?" I met him smirk for smirk. In normal light, and the silence of the interrogation room, he wasn't even close to some of the nightmarish things that showed up behind my eyes after dark. It also helped that he wasn't giving me a concussion and throwing me in a cage.

"Fine," he said smoothly. "People are easy to control when they're already locked up."

"You like control," I stated, and he didn't take it as a question, just smiled like I'd asked if he wanted a candy bar.

"I think you figured that out already, pretty girl," he said. The hypnotic cadence just seemed overblown, matched with his puke-green county jumpsuit.

"Homicide," I said. Samael blinked.

"Beg pardon?"

"I'm a homicide detective," I said. "Call me anything except 'Detective' or 'ma'am' again and I'll put your smug face through this table."

Samael tilted his head back, gauging me. "Not like I have much of a choice, eh?"

"None at all," I agreed. "Tell me about Vincent Blackburn."

"Confused. Lots of teen angst. Lousy lay," he said. His lips twitched. Despite my threats and his shackles, he still had control and he knew it. b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Being were never helps in these situations. You can't beat the c.r.a.p out of someone without lawsuits flying. Enhanced senses wouldn't tell me anything except that Samael really needed a shower.

"We finished? There's this reality program on at seven that I'm really into."

Oh, it was so almost worth the legal entanglements to just hit him. Well, they hadn't given me the detective s.h.i.+eld to help me accessorize. And after a former life as a c.o.c.ktail waitress and a runaway teenager, I at least knew how to read people.

"How about this," I suggested to Samael in a cheery tone. "You cooperate with me, or I'll have you transferred out of this nice, normal jail full of people ripe for domination to Cedar Hill Psychiatric, where they'll pump you full of Haldol and strap you to your bed." I allowed a slow smile to spread across my face, showing Samael that I was relis.h.i.+ng the fantasy. "They might even fit you with a catheter so you never never have to move." have to move."

To his credit, Samael never altered his expression, but I saw a fat bead of sweat work its way from his hairline down his temple.

"Oh, shoot." I snapped my fingers. "I forgot. You're not into bondage."

"What do you want?" Samael muttered. He was rigid, like Indiana Jones in that scene with all the snakes.

"Excuse me?" I said, cupping my ear.

"What do you want!" he shouted, hitting the table. I crossed my ankles primly, one over the other.

"I want you to tell me the truth, Arthur? Arthur?

He flinched. "You want me to spill the big secret, that Vincent got some mysterious phone call or letter written in blood or some noir detective s.h.i.+t? Well, it didn't happen that way. Vincent was a dumb kid and he messed with the wrong people and he got himself dead. End of story. Roll credits."

"If you were any vaguer you'd be a copy of Ulysses," Ulysses," I told him. "What people? What did Vincent do?" I told him. "What people? What did Vincent do?"

Samael laughed. "What didn't that kid do? He worked in a s.e.x club. A lot of rich people came in. They all liked Vincent. You fill in the boring bits."

"Where did he keep his stash of photos?"

Samael blinked at me, and I smiled serenely. He'd counted on having the blackmail angle to bargain with. "Oh, and if you could tell me which rich pervert objected to the idea and killed him, so much the better."

"h.e.l.ls, I don't know," said Samael after a few seconds of recovering his placid, creepy front. "I make enough cash squeezing people who want want to be in pain." to be in pain."

"I can't tell you how refres.h.i.+ng it is to meet an honest, hardworking independent businessman," I said.

"Come see me when I get out, Detective," he said with a wink as the deputy led him back to the cellblock.

"Only if you come with a biohazard suit," I said.

Never mind that my encounter with Samael had left me feeling like I needed to take about ten showers; he'd confirmed that Vincent had waved his dirty pictures under the wrong nose and given me direction, something that had been sorely lacking in the case. If I could make it through one night without having to kick down a door or jump out of a helicopter, I'd be a happy woman.

I checked my watch. It was after six, and the evidence depot closed at five. I'd have to wait until morning to check Vincent's personal effects. If he had a stash of compromising media on Nocturne City's version of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, he'd keep the items themselves or the locations close at hand. Blackmailers were squirelly and paranoid like that. he'd keep the items themselves or the locations close at hand. Blackmailers were squirelly and paranoid like that.

Too bad Vincent hadn't been just a touch more paranoid. He might still be alive.

After a well-publicized scandal involving gun-toting thugs employed as evidence clerks at the behest of Alistair Duncan, the Nocturne City evidence depot, contained inside the courthouse complex, had undergone a major overhaul and was now staffed by perky postgrads who wore pseudo-official uniforms and tags inscribed with names like cammie cammie and and alisse. alisse.

"Alyse?" I said when she came trotting over to the service window.

"It's p.r.o.nounced like 'Alice,'" she corrected me. "And how are you today?"

"Fine," I said cautiously, wondering if the city's new plan was to kill their detectives with goodwill.

"What can we do for you, ma'am?"

"Well, don't you need to see some ID?" I asked. She beamed.

"Sure, if you have some. I'm joking! I just need to take a quick peek at your badge."

I presented it and the case number of the Blackburn murder, and she handed me the logbook to sign the stuff out the same way you'd pa.s.s the scones at a tea party. I expected to be sat down and offered a cup any second.

"Don't you think it's too creepy how they keep a dead person's clothes?" Alisse asked as she brought me the large brown paper evidence bag holding Vincent's personal effects. "I think we should donate them to the rummage sale. I'm joking!" she added when my eyebrows went up.

"And I'm leaving," I said, beating a hasty retreat to the Fairlane. It had a flat tire.

I sat on the curb and went through the bag while I waited for my road service. I'm not such a girly-girl that I can't change a tire, but after a childhood with a mechanic father, I reserve the right to make someone else do it, just like preacher's kids get to drink and get arrested.

Vincent's clothes were expensive, but they were worn to that gray-blue color that black clothing gets after too many spin cycles, and they smelled like stale vomit and old blood. Thank the G.o.ds I was outside.

Dr. Kronen had sealed all of Vincent's piercings in a neat bag, and only one piece of jewelry jangled free in the bottom. I pulled out a plain ball-chain necklace that threaded a small gla.s.s vial, a popular accessory with addicts. The inside of the vial hit me with a whiff of heroin-big shock. Vincent had attached a number of small charms to the chain as well. A seven-pointed star, the blood witch's imperfect circle. A photo locket with a picture of Valerie inside. A small steel key that I mistook for a charm at first, and then realized was stamped with a symbol for the First Bank of Nocturne. Vincent Blackburn had rented a safe-deposit box from a bank owned by the O'Hallorans. Irony is a beautiful thing.

CHAPTER 25.

The First Bank of Nocturne was doing good business during the lunch hour. Housed in one of the old Greek Revival piles on Main Street, it was the only branch of the First Bank, and considering the number of corporate types who financed Cedar Hill palaces through the place, the only one it needed.