“You don’t have to know,” Ilya soothed. “I’ll make sure of it.”
Ilya?>
<Natasha. Is everything all right?>
She hesitated. <I contacted the home shadows of the fosterlings. The shadows that were listed on Lara’s and Karol’s papers confirmed that those youngsters belong to them and were sent to us.>
Ilya felt chilled. <The other two?>
Natasha sighed. <Everything looked legitimate, but the shadows listed on Kira’s and Viktor’s papers had never heard of them. The leaders of those shadows wondered if those two ran away, either separately and they just happened to pick Silence Lodge as a place to hide away, or they had planned to come here in order to be together. Either way, they have lied to us.>
<The Five killed a human this evening,> Ilya said. <This is not a good time to confront those two unless you think they are a danger to others.> A danger to Victoria?
Natasha hesitated again. <We only know they are here under false pretenses. We do not know why, so we can’t know if they pose a threat.>
<Contact the other shadows in the Finger Lakes region. See if they are missing any youngsters that match Kira’s and Viktor’s description,> Ilya said.
<All right,> she replied.
He felt a weight in her silence. <Something else?>
<Vlad called with a message from Tolya Sanguinati. About Nicolai.>
Ilya sighed. Nicolai had been terribly wounded in the battle to keep the town of Bennett out of the hands of evil humans. <I had heard that Nicolai is being relocated to Lakeside. The shadow in that Courtyard is larger and Grandfather Erebus lives there. And there is room there for privacy.>
<Yes, that was the plan,> Natasha said. <But Nicolai slipped away from the Sanguinati who were escorting him and has disappeared.>
CHAPTER 47
Vicki
Watersday, Novembros 3
The EMTs and Doc Wallace looked so pale and scared when they arrived, I figured beer wasn’t going to be numbing enough and was tempted to raid Grimshaw and Julian’s private stash of whiskeys and offer a bottle or two to the men. Then I remembered that someone would need steady hands to stitch up David Shuman, so I kept my thoughts to myself and my hands off the whiskey.
When Conan was asked why he’d swatted Shuman, his only response was to growl at everyone.
Not even Grimshaw asked him for clarification.
I went to the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, not sure who might want to drink it. I put the kettle on to heat up water and set my selection of teas on the kitchen table along with the mugs my guests used at breakfast.
Julian came into the kitchen, placed a bottle of whiskey on the table, smiled at me, and left.
I knew people often added alcohol to coffee to make it a blended drink. I wondered how mint tea would taste with a dollop—or five—of whiskey.
I was willing to play guinea pig and find out.
Intellectually, I recognized that people knowingly took a risk by staying at The Jumble. I recognized that people could get hurt—could get killed—if they misbehaved, because the terra indigene put up with only so much nonsense from humans before ending the nonsense, usually in ways that required the police to notify next of kin.
Recognizing those things didn’t alleviate the guilt I felt because Conan had swatted a guest and a person who wasn’t even staying at The Jumble had been killed because he’d been where he shouldn’t have been, doing what he shouldn’t have done.
I liked three of my current guests and sincerely hoped they weren’t the cause of any of this trouble. The other four people I would have happily kicked to the curb if I had any curbs and if there had been any place for them to go. Until Grimshaw and Ilya figured out who was responsible for killing whom, we were all stuck with one another.
A quick knock on the doorframe before Kira, Viktor, and Karol slipped into the kitchen.
Kira hurried over to the stove and turned off the kettle, which had been boiling away and whistling its head off, unnoticed by me because I’d been lost in thoughts of gore and guilt.
“Can we help?” Viktor asked.
I tried to smile. “I wish I knew.”
Not the answer these teens wanted, but it was the best I could do.
CHAPTER 48
Aggie
Watersday, Novembros 3
Aggie fetched the bucket and set it beside the chair so that the Wallace doctor wouldn’t drop bloody bits on Miss Vicki’s carpet. Eddie slipped into the room with a clean basin and the kettle from the kitchen. Steam rose out of the kettle’s spout. He set the kettle on a mat Miss Vicki said was used for hot dishes, handed the basin to one of the EMTs, and slipped out again.
Aggie watched Jenna McKay pour hot water and some drinking water from a pitcher into the basin to wash her hands. She patted her hands dry with some toilet paper, then stood near the wall, watching the EMT humans assist the Wallace doctor while he put stitches into the Shuman guest.
Before all the medical humans arrived, the Shuman guest had bled a lot, and she’d wondered if he was going to die—and how she could snatch any of the best bits with so many humans in the room. Then Chief Grimshaw stepped into the room, and Aggie knew she’d missed her chance, because the Shuman guest hadn’t died, and now it looked like he wasn’t going to.
The medical humans put proper bandages over the wounds and helped the Shuman guest go up to his room, the Wallace doctor telling Grimshaw he would remain overnight to keep an eye on the patient and check vital signs.
She could have told the Wallace doctor that the terra indigene could check for these vital signs. Breathing, a human was still alive. Not breathing, the human was a snack.
Maybe there were more things to check? Maybe one of the young Sanguinati could shift into smoke form and slip into the room to see what the Wallace doctor considered vital and report back to the rest of them?
Once the medical humans left the room, Chief Grimshaw set the bucket with the bloody T-shirt and wads of toilet paper outside the room. Then he closed the door and stared at the remaining humans—just stared until someone knocked on the door and the other guests returned to the room.
“Peter Lynchfield died tonight,” Chief Grimshaw said, “and none of you are leaving this room until I know which one of you called him, because that person is morally responsible for his death.”
Aggie sucked in a breath and settled in a spot where she would have the best view to watch all the humans and try to spot clues, just like a civilian helper in the cop and crime shows.
CHAPTER 49
Grimshaw
Watersday, Novembros 3
I want to see your mobile phones,” Grimshaw said. “I want to see the log of your recent calls. And may the gods help you if you deleted that log to hide your part in this.”
“Even if we made the call, what are you going to do?” Ben Malacki demanded. “Arrest us?”
“I can’t arrest you for being an ass and leaking information about a private meeting. But I can say with certainty that if I don’t get the information from you now, the next individuals who come to interrogate you will not be the Sanguinati and will not be as understanding of human failings and foibles. Most likely, all of you will die violently and in terror, just as Peter Lynchfield died, and there won’t be a thing I can do to help you.”
“We’re supposed to be safe here!” Malacki shouted.