Dark Heir

Which, in Eli’s lingo, meant a search and rescue with dead vamp bodies left behind as he pulled me from the resultant carnage. I pulled out the small ear- and mouthpiece and looked it over. It showed a missed call. I tossed it to Eli. “When I’m with Leo, I try not to answer the cell,” I said. “It would be like a soldier answering his cell when he’s visiting in the Oval Office.”

Eli nodded, not appeased but accepting, and tossed the headset back. “Remember to charge it. Batteries are low.” His hands went back to feeling along the inside of the suitcase. “Adrianna and her blood-servants were planning a quick getaway,” he said. “Packed, papers ready”—he tossed a packet to the bed and four passports slid out—“four first-class airline tickets to France.”

“Which is where the European vamp council meets,” I said. I watched him, studying the room. It was awfully neat for anything Adrianna touched. “Why four airline tickets? And whose is the fourth passport?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Eli said, flipping the suitcase over, checking the zippered pouches. “Joseph Santana.” He glanced up and back to the work, now searching the bed.

“They planned to take him out of here,” I said, only a little surprised. “How’d they get a passport for a vamp who’s been missing for decades?”

“I have Alex working on that, but I’d be surprised if the Kid gets anywhere. Joseph’s papers originated in France, with an entrance stamp for last month. It’s real and legitimate.”

“Last month?”

“Yes. Adrianna’s visit to Leo had to originate with the European vamps.”

I blinked, watching Eli’s hands as he continued the search into the drawers and the closet. “Yeah. That makes sense.”

“Been thinking about our need to track all visitors while they’re in HQ,” he said. “Armbands are still our best bet, with locator chips we can ping as needed, and that send out an alarm if cut off. Maybe headsets too, but both could be removed. I’ve had Alex looking into feasibility and cost estimates.”

“Getting European suckheads to wear tracking bracelets will be tricky.”

“They’ll think it’s insulting,” he agreed.

“Okay. Add that to the list of things to ‘Figure out Before Suckheads Arrive.’ FOBSA.”

“No one’s touched this room since we saw Adrianna last,” Eli said, concentrating on the task at hand. “She packed light. A corset, silk jammies, a silk dress, and lots of lacy underthings.” He held up a demi-bra that was wired, constructed to provide lots of lift, and was mostly see-through lace. It had to itch. I made a face that said yuck. Eli gave me his business grin, a twitch that went nowhere, and lifted a thong with one finger of the other hand. Double itch.

“Makeup case, shampoo, lotion and perfume stuff, and jewelry case.”

“Jewelry case. Lemme see.” I held out a hand and he tossed me a padded, cloth-covered box, which I caught and unzipped, to reveal a lot of gold. Real gold. Ancient stuff that Adrianna had hung on to for centuries. There was a gold cuff bracelet shaped like a snake climbing her upper arm, and an etched gold torque. The torque was shaped like a half-moon, to rest on her collarbones. She had been wearing the bracelet and necklace the night she and her two pet scions had tried to kill me. Kinda hard to forget something like that.

I ran my fingers over the Celtic symbols on the torque, and magic tingled on my skin. “Why not wear her good jewelry when she went to see the Son of Darkness? The dress she was wearing was fancy, so why not the gold jewelry?”

“Would it interfere with a magical working?” Eli asked, stuffing the lacy nothings back in the luggage.

“She was wearing them the night she was staked by Derek’s men, and that was a mega-spell. So I don’t think so. She was wearing them when the painting was done, and by the clothing, that was a long time before Santana went missing,” I said.

Holding the jewelry case to my nose, I sniffed. The scent of magic on the gold was weak. If the scent had come from a spell or working placed on or in the pieces themselves, then it had been used up long ago. If the gold had simply been in the presence of magic for a long time and had picked up the trace scents, then it might have been there recently. But the scent of magic was definitely there. “I can’t tell if it was ever used in a magical working or not. I’ll have to ask Molly if gold is ever a part of active workings.”

“Gold transmits electricity. Electricity is energy. Magic is energy. Therefore, gold should transmit magic.”

“Yeah.” I zipped up the jewelry box. “Too much of this is all about the past, and the past is written by the victor, if it was written at all.” I frowned as something tickled the back of my mind. “I don’t know. Something feels all wonky about this whole thing.”

“Ya think?” Eli ran his hands over and under the pillows and across the linens, doing a vamp-bed pat-down. Satisfied there was nothing there, he lifted the mattresses, checking under each one before bending to one knee and peeking under the bed. I went to the closet and found three pairs of shoes, two pairs of which were five-inch stilettoes: one pair in black ostrich skin and one pair of high-glam, high-gloss ruby sparkles, like what Dorothy might have worn if she danced on a brass pole for a living. I held up the ruby pair for Eli to see, putting that pole-dancer image together with the lacy undies, and it wasn’t so farfetched. I chuckled at the image and put the shoes back in the closet with the third pair—dainty sandals of gold leather. Odd that she hadn’t packed them.

“What?” Eli asked.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking the image away. “Ask security where Adrianna is. Leo wouldn’t tell me, but they might not know that he told me no.”

Eli tapped his mic and asked the question. And smiled slowly at the answer. “Copy that,” he said. “Meet the Enforcer and me at the door to the secure room.” He tapped off the mic.

“Tell Alex to turn off the cameras on the way there,” I said. “Leo had the security program up on the screen in his office.”

“I do like the way you think, Jane Yellowrock.”

CHAPTER 14

She Blew Blood Bubbles

The jewelry case under my arm, I followed my partner up to sub-three floor and into one of the newly cataloged and mapped inner passageways. We went up half a floor and were met by Juwan. “Legs,” he said, as he swiped his palm over the reader. I nodded and the door whisked open, a modern sound that I associated with polished steel and rubber seals; the air contained in the chamber was let out in a pressurized, icy whoosh. It smelled of Adrianna and blood. A lot of blood.