“I went out to the party. Had a whiskey—Cadogan has the good stuff—and walked around, talked to people. I ate and drank and listened to the music, talked to my Pack mates about the Sox, this problem Cole is having with one of his cams.”
“Cams?”
“On his ride. Engine cam.”
“Ah. Got it. Keep going.”
“We thought about asking if we could take a dip in the pool, after the party died down. I figured Sullivan would be game. I wanted to check the water, so I kneeled down, put my fingers in. It was warm, but not too warm. And then”—he winced, rubbed his temple again. “And then I saw something. Or heard something? I don’t . . . I don’t remember.”
“Something caught your attention?”
“Yeah. But I don’t know what. And then I smelled blood, and I looked around—” He stopped, brow furrowed, and pressed a clenched fist against his forehead. And, like he’d been holding in pain, exhaled loudly.
I moved closer to the glass. “Do you need me to get someone, Riley? For the pain?”
“No. I can handle it.” But he walked to the bed, sat down, and cradled his head in his hands.
His size made it even harder to see him hurting. He was strong, so pain that brought him down would have probably been unbearable to me.
“The next thing I knew,” he said without looking up, “you were standing in front of me, and the woman behind you was screaming. Then the cops showed up.” He looked up again, misery and anger warring in his eyes. “And here we fucking are.”
“Have you ever had gaps in your memory like that?”
“No. When my brain was working again, I recognized the man on the bricks. The delegate from Spain. The one who raged about shifters and vampires working together, then nearly ran into me and tried to blame me for it.”
“Did you know him before the event? Had you talked to him before?”
He lifted his head and his eyes seemed clearer, as if the pain had vanished because we’d switched topics. Could magic have done this? Affected his memory, and made it painful to access?
“Neither. His name, photo were probably in the security dossier.” He tried for a grin. “But I don’t pay much attention to vampires who live a continent away.”
Since I hadn’t given much thought to shifters while I’d been in Paris, I couldn’t fault him for that.
“Would anyone want to hurt you?” I asked.
“I’m a shifter,” he said, as if that explained it completely. “I’ve got enemies like everyone else.” His eyes darkened. “But my enemies would come after me. They wouldn’t kill someone else.”
“Who are those enemies?” I asked.
He rose, walked back to the glass. “You know I did time—before the Pack.”
“Yeah.” Lulu had explained it. Riley was born in a small town in Oklahoma, but left when he was sixteen, looking for excitement. He ended up in Memphis in an independent band of shifters—the Rogues of the shifter world—who didn’t recognize the authority of any Apex outside their own family. Unfortunately, it had been less a family than a gang, and he’d done time for assault and larceny before he tried to pull a con on the wrong shifter. Gabriel hadn’t fallen for it, and he’d apparently seen past the grift. He pulled Riley into the Pack, and Riley had been on the straight and narrow—or as straight and narrow as shifters’ paths got—since then.
“Some of the family weren’t happy about my decision.”
“They aren’t in Chicago, though, are they? Weren’t they in Memphis?”
“Yeah, and I don’t see them traveling all the way out here to make trouble for me. They were pissed, but I wouldn’t say they were invested, if that makes sense.”
I nodded. “It does.”
“Lis, I don’t have any idea why someone would have killed that vampire, or made it look like I did it. I can’t remember what happened, and I’m in this goddamned cell for no reason except, as far as I can figure, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I know, Riley. And I’m sorry. We’re all working to figure out what happened.”
He nodded, but misery swam in his eyes.
“If you think of anything, let me know. Or talk to Connor or Gabriel. Just—tell someone.”
“I will.”
I nodded and turned, guilt following me like a shadow.
“Elisa.”
I glanced back at him. He’d moved closer to the glass, flattened a hand against it.
“Animals shouldn’t be caged.”
The magic and pain and budding fury that swirled in his eyes had me shivering.
* * *
• • •
The grounds of Cadogan House were darker than they had been the night before. The party gear was gone and the sky was overcast, the air warm and damp and still, like misery itself had been trapped in the humidity, ready to suffocate. A swag of black taffeta and crepe hung from the front gate and the front door, a memorial to the immortal killed within.
It was quiet inside, too, and the air was still thick with the smell of yesterday’s flowers.
I found my parents in my father’s office. They stood together, watching the screen my mother held out.
“Good evening,” my father said, glancing back when I stepped into the doorway.
“Hi,” I said, moving to them. “How are you doing?”
“We are . . . concerned,” he settled on. “We had a moment of silence at dusk in honor of Tomas, but that still feels insufficient.”
I reached out, took his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” he said. “I was no fan of Tomas. He was pompous and a little paranoid. But that doesn’t excuse murder.”
“Is there any news about the investigation?” I asked, wishing for some smoking gun that would prove Riley innocent—and that I hadn’t entirely misjudged his character.
My mother glanced at my father, then at me. I didn’t take that as a good sign. “We’ve got bad news and odd news,” she said.
“Give me the bad news first.”
“Riley’s fingerprints were the only prints on the knife. And they were in the right place.” She held up a fist like she was gripping an invisible knife, ready to strike.
“The perpetrator could have wiped off the other prints.” And would have done just that if this was the setup it looked like. But the absence of other prints still tied the knot in my stomach a little tighter.
“And the odd news?”
“The blip in the surveillance video,” my mother said, “was magical.”
“I don’t understand what those words mean together.”
“I told you,” my father said with a smile for her. “I didn’t get it, either, the first time.”
“Kelley says the missing video wasn’t caused by a technological problem,” my mother said. “It was magical in origin.”
I frowned. “Someone spelled the camera?”
“She doesn’t know, and there’s nothing before or after the blip that shows who made the magic.”
“A shifter couldn’t work a spell,” I said. “And even if they could, it’s not a very shifter thing to do. To kill someone at a party, in public, and then blank out the footage?”
“It’s pretty passive-aggressive,” my mother agreed. “Shifters tend to take more ownership of their behavior.”
“What about the fence where the killer came over? Have they found anything there?”
“Nothing,” my mother said.
“The Ombudsman continues to investigate,” my father said, and I could hear the irritation and the warning in his voice—that I wasn’t supposed to get involved.
I wasn’t going to argue with him, especially since my best argument involved telling him his daughter wasn’t a real member of his House.
“I’m going to see Lulu,” I said. “I don’t know if she’ll want to talk about this or not, but I figure I could make the offer.”
“Of course you should,” my mother said. “Do you want to take her something from the kitchen?”
It was just the kind of thing my mother would ask. “No, but thanks. You’ll let me know if you find out anything else?”
“We will,” she said. “And give our best to Lulu.”