I stood, flatfooted, meeting Soul’s gorgeous and slightly amused eyes. At her side, Rick looked as surprised as I felt.
“Ummm. Don’t you think there might be someone better than me to talk to a vampire?”
“No,” Soul said. “You are precisely the right person to address the issue of paranormal beings who’ve committed first-degree murder and/or hate crimes with the highest-ranked vampire in Knoxville. And it will be an opportunity to rebuild bridges that you set fire to when you referred to all Mithrans as smelling ‘maggoty,’ I believe?”
I blushed hotly, and the last of the chill flushed out of my body. “Ohhh. You think she knows—”
“I am quite certain that she knows. Your reaction to Mithrans has made all the rounds. Go make nice with the head of Clan Glass. Rebuild some bridges. She’s waiting on you upstairs in the office we are using as an interrogation room. Go on,” she added when I stood there. “Take Tandy with you.”
I left the room, which had suddenly grown too close and lost all oxygen. Tandy was outside the door, his reddish brown eyebrows lifted. Like Occam, I hadn’t seen him all night.
“You heard?” I asked. “That you’re supposed to go with me to question the vampires?”
“No. But I felt. What happened?”
Tandy was the unit’s empath, which meant he could tell what other people were feeling—humans and paranormals both. The gift had been forced on him by Mother Nature when he was hit by lightning three times, and the reddish Lichtenberg lines that crossed his pale skin like the veins in leaves were a lasting legacy. I told him what had happened and about my punishment as we climbed the stairs to the second floor. He didn’t laugh, which was nice. He handed me a folder containing several printed papers, including the questions that had been asked of all the party guests and two floor plans of the crime scene room, one with Xs for where everyone had been standing. A dozen more. There was no time to memorize any of them. I shoved them back into the manila folder.
My thoughts were rattled and I pulled what I could remember about proper protocol with a powerful vampire to the forefront of my memories. I needed excellent manners, a calm attitude, and the ability to play conversational chess, thinking ahead a dozen moves or so. And if Ming had ordered the shooting? There was nothing I could do.
Vamps were policed by their up-line boss, which in Knoxville meant Ming of Glass. And Ming could be judged and punished only by the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, her up-line master. Or any vampire who managed to challenge her to a blood duel. Or any non-law-enforcement human who got close enough to stake her and managed to survive. The position of vampires as regarded by law enforcement was hazy.
“Nell,” Tandy said. “You’ll be fine. Just remember: be polite, and never, ever meet her eyes.”
“That’s good advice,” I whispered and cleared my throat when the words came out like busted gravel. We passed through the bedroom and into a sitting room, where Tandy opened the door on the far side. The small room beyond was set up as an office, decorated with heavy draperies, heavier rugs over wood floors, dark wood wainscoting, a leather sofa, two leather armchairs, and a desk the size of Minnesota. Well, not really, but it was huge, oversized for the small office.
Ming and Yummy were sitting in the armchairs, Ming upright as a board, Yummy stretched out, with a leg over the chair arm. The blond vampire looked relaxed, but her position shielded Ming from the doorway and allowed Yummy to roll down to the floor in the event of an attack. The position would fall below any gunshots and give her plenty of room to strike and take out an opponent. As a vampire, she had the speed to cross the distance and take out a human shooter in an eyeblink. And bullets wouldn’t hurt her anyway unless they were silver. Ming was positioned to roll under the massive desk, into relative safety.
Tandy paused near the desk and the recording device centered on it. I stopped to the side of Ming, carefully not between Yummy and her charge. Tandy said, “It’s standard operating procedure for us to record this conversation. Do you have objections, Ming of Glass?”
Ming waved a hand, the motion languid. “I have no objection.”
Tandy pushed a button and stated the day and time, the address, and the location in the house. He said, “Special Agents Thom Andrew Dyson and Nell Nicholson Ingram, with Ming of Glass and one member of her security. Would you state your name, miss?” he asked.
“No,” Yummy said.
Tandy went red. I wanted to giggle, and all the fear drained out of me. The vamps were playing games with PsyLED. I decided it was not the right time to engage or I’d be playing the game they wanted to play, not one of my own. There are things a girl learns listening to the squabbles of an extended family. Timing is one of them. “Ming of Glass,” I said. “I’m honored to speak with you. I’m Special Agent Nell Ingram of PsyLED.”
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.
“Would you walk me through the sequence of events from just before the first shot until the police came?” I asked.
“I was speaking to the senator. I heard a shot. I moved. My security did not deem me as moving fast enough nor far enough away from the violence. She lifted me and moved me faster.” Again there was a wry tone in Ming’s voice. In ordinary circumstances, ones without emotional components, Ming’s voice gave away more than her expressions. “She deposited me in the butler’s pantry. On the floor.” Ming turned her gaze to Yummy.
Yummy looked back at her and, without emotion, said, “You are welcome, my mistress.”