When Javier still failed to materialize, Linus searched for him through the rolling racks of shirts, suits, and tuxes that kept him afloat between bespoke jobs. He located the tailor seated at his sewing machine, Linus’s tux pants under the needle, and crimson blossoming across the back of his white dress shirt.
The smell was stronger here, richer, and the whirl of voices that screamed in the background of his mind reached a piercing crescendo before he leashed them again.
Pulling out his phone, he dialed Gilly. “Javier Escobar is dead. I found him at his shop.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish that were the case, but no.” He didn’t touch the body, but he circled around front to discover Javier had died, as expected, from a stake to the heart. “Do you want me to wait for you or lock up and leave it?”
“Lock and leave.” She huffed across the receiver. “The risk is too high this time of day. We can’t have a human stumbling across him. Those are headlines we don’t want, not so soon after the Siege.”
The authority in her tone and her willingness to get her hands dirty made more sense to him now that he knew she was a former marshal. She was used to dancing the jig of interdepartmental cooperation, the complicated steps too complex for most cleaners, who preferred their own company and labs to people.
“All right.” He was happy to oblige. “Call me with the results.”
“Sure thing.” She sounded amused. Callbacks weren’t a service the cleaners offered. “I’ll do that.”
Once he got off the phone, he took careful pictures of the scene and performed a thorough search of the shop for clues. Nothing worth tampering with evidence jumped out at him. He would have to wait for the cleaners to do their job before he did his and discovered who had murdered Javier.
After locking up behind him, he called Morrison since his visit had been cut short. This time, when a glint tagged his periphery, he feigned casual interest in a street artist selling flowers made from weaving palm fronds and strolled in its direction. He made it two or three feet before a slender man several yards away jumped up and ran.
Linus gave chase, plowing through pedestrians and ruining his suit when he leapt onto a greenspace and landed in a crouch. The man was too far ahead, and there were too many humans between them. Linus couldn’t catch him, not in full sun, but the hunt sang in his blood, and he refused to surrender the chase.
A truck screeched to a stop, almost taking out the man, who jumped into the bed and flattened himself.
The magic in Linus coiled, and he reached for Cletus only to have the wraith slip through his fingers. Had it been dark, he could have sent Cletus to tail them or at least bring him the license plate number, but it was broad daylight, and humans were staring at him.
Lifting his phone, he finished dialing Morrison and requested a pickup before the police got called. That was one confrontation he hoped to avoid, considering there were photos of a recently dead man on his phone. He could get himself off the hook, but it would take time, and it made him a person of interest when he preferred to be as unremarkable as possible as long as Detective Russo called the SPD home.
Morrison didn’t require long to arrive, and Linus let himself in without pausing to appreciate the man’s harangue of distaste at being thwarted from performing his duties yet again.
To add insult to injury, he didn’t wait for the question but provided the answer. “Take us home.”
“Yes, sir.”
Javier’s death, and the article of clothing he last worked on, were symbolic. He felt responsibility for that loss keenly. The fact someone had been following him, during the day no less, sat wrong as well.
The informant must have been using a camera with a telescoping lens. That would explain the glint. Chances were that he was human. Vampires seldom trafficked with other species, a holdover from their necromantic origins, for their daytime needs. Still, he would text Lethe an update and ask her to send a packmate to the area to sniff for clues. The number of people active near the shops would make it difficult for them to parse scents, but it was worth a try.
Done with that, he touched base with Neely, braced for the fallout. “I seem to have a bit of a problem.”
“Oh, lawd.”
“Javier is dead.”
“Please tell me he was hit by a car on his way to deliver your new tux. No, after he delivered your new tux.”
“He was murdered at his sewing machine.”
A moment passed before Neely recovered his usual panache. “You need me to find you a new tailor.”
“Yes.”
“I can do that.” He repeated I can do it, I can do it, I can do it under his breath a few times. “I have your most recent measurements in my database. I’ll pull that information and start making calls.”
“Thank you.”
“This is why I get paid the big bucks.”
“Yes.” Linus cracked a smile for the only person able to guilt, bribe, or threaten Grier into formalwear. “It is.”
He ended the call as Morrison parked in front of the gate at Woolworth House. Not to be thwarted, the driver rushed around to open Linus’s door before he beat him to it. With the expected nod, Linus headed up to his old room, patting Woolly on the wall as he climbed the stairs, and muted his phone before tossing it on the bed. He was done with the outside world for a few hours. After he showered off the day, he returned to the room he shared with Grier to find Oscar curled against her hip. Careful not to jostle them, he resigned himself to a leg hanging off the bed until dusk. Reclined against his pillows, he picked up his book, thumbing to where he left off before he began reading.
Nine
Dusk brought more bad news, and my heart broke with it. Poor Javier. He barely tasted immortality before his life was extinguished. I wished we had never dragged him into this mess. If not for us, he wouldn’t have been a target. But it was easier giving work to vampires and other supernatural creatures who kept to our nocturnal schedule and grasped our societal rules, and he was the best. It was the reason why he had accepted the offer from Clan Castro to have a necromancer cut his young life short in order to embrace vampirism.
Vampires tend to grow vainer with age, and his clientele was eager to secure his services for the next few centuries. They would be furious over his loss, and they wouldn’t thank us for getting him killed. As high as tensions rode between necromancers and vampires, it would only take a spark to ignite another round of bitter feuding I didn’t have time for because I was getting married in two days.
Pushing out a ragged exhale, I focused on the final menu tasting, even though I had lost my appetite.
Too bad it was too late to reschedule, but Vonda, the caterer, was already set up when I got downstairs.
“The first appetizer.” Vonda snapped her fingers, and two women wearing chef coats hustled out with dainty plates they set in front of us. “We paired fresh lemon and extra virgin olive oil with shrimp, octopus, mussels, and calamari for this hearty seafood salad.”
On my second shrimp, I glanced at Lethe, who swirled her finger around the oil left on her plate.
As in, it was all that was left on her plate.
Dang.
“The first main course,” Vonda croaked, shocked anew by Lethe’s appetite when she ought to be used to the bottomless pit that was my MOH. “Three double cuts…” Her eyes rounded when Lethe relieved me of my plate to finish the seafood salad, and she cleared her throat. “Ah, rack of lamb—”