“And when Alexa started working here, she saw you at one,” I finished.
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, she did.”
“And she threatened to tell your wife about your dress-up fetish?”
Again he shot me a look like I was denser than a fruit cake. “No. She threatened to tell my wife that I slept with Becca after the party.”
Mental forehead smack.
“So these are hook-up parties?” Dana asked.
Blaise nodded. “Nothing happens here, but if you want the fantasy to continue after hours, the girls are usually wiling to accommodate.” He paused. “And I couldn’t have Phoebe knowing that. She’s a very sensitive woman. It would have killed her.”
“So Alexa saw you here, watched you leave with her friend, then used that information to blackmail you,” I said.
Blaise nodded. “Stupid whore thought I would actually pay her. Do you know how much money I’ve given her over the last three years?”
I shook my head. Not that I cared. But I realized that the longer we kept him talking the longer he wasn’t shooting at us. I knew from many hours of CSI watching, that the bad guys never confessed unless they planned to get rid of the witnesses. The fact that he was spilling all didn’t bode well for our future.
But it could buy us some time.
“Thousands,” Blaise spit out, answering his own question. “Every month she came to us with her hand out, expecting me to empty my bank account. And then she had the nerve to ask for more to keep her mouth shut? Ha!” he laughed, though there was zero trace of humor in it. “No way.” He paused, his demeanor changing. “My poor wife,” he said, his voice low. “She is such a generous creature, and that Alexa just ran right over her. Exploited their relationship for everything she could. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let Alexa ruin us that way. I had to protect my wife.”
“So you killed Alexa,” I said, trying to keep him talking. I heard Marco moan at my feet, coming to. He shifted, and I noticed that Blaise hadn’t had time to disarm him of his vampire hunting kit yet. Which might have come in handy if Blaise were a real vampire. As it was, gun trumped barbeque skewer any day.
Blaise nodded. “It was too easy, really. I followed her to Crush, then slipped a little something into her drink and waited. As soon as I saw her start to stumble, I jumped in, ‘helping’ her to the ladies’ room,” he said, doing an air quote with his free hand.
“Then you staged it to look like a vampire had killed her?” Dana asked, her eyes going to Marco and his bag. She noticed the same thing I did. She looked back up at me, and raised one eyebrow in a silent question.
Sadly, I couldn’t think of any way to disarm a killer with Evian. I slowly shook my head in answer.
“I knew the vampire bite would keep the authorities guessing,” Blaise continued, oblivious to our silent exchange. “There are enough shady things going on here, enough people with secrets, that the police could be chasing their tails for weeks trying to figure out which one of Sebastian’s guests did it.”
“And that’s all you needed,” I said, a light bulb going off as I remembered our last conversation with him. “Just some time. You were stalling until after the funeral, when you were going away with your wife.” I paused. “You’re not coming back are you?”
Blaise grinned, his face a spooky jack-o-lantern imitation in the pale flashlight beam. “No. I believe an extended vacation in the Bahamas is just what my wife and I need to reconnect.”
“But what about Becca?” Dana asked. “Why kill her?”
“Because she had the nerve to pick up where Alexa left off,” he spat out. “She said she knew I’d killed Alexa. That she’d seen me take her into the restroom at Crush, and she would tell the authorities if I didn’t pay her off.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
He grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “I told her to meet me at the next party. That I’d have her cash for her then. She did, I got her a drink, and then I told her I wasn’t paying up. That she could go to the police if she wanted, but she had no proof, and I’d just tell them that she did it.”
“But you knew she wasn’t going to the police,” I pointed out. “Because you spiked her drink.”
He grinned. “I did. Two hours and she’d be showing her mortality.”
“And you’d get away with everything.”
“Right.” He paused. “As long as no one else came nosing after the truth before I had a chance to get out of town.”
I gulped. “Like us?”
“Exactly.” He took a step toward us, his eyes narrowing. “Goldstein called me after you left his office yesterday. Asking all kinds of probing questions. I can’t have people asking questions, Maddie,” he said, pointing the gun at me. “Least of all, you.”
Instinctively, I pushed back against the wall, but there was no place left for me to go.
And he knew it.
I looked down at Marco, who was awake now, his eyes blinking furiously, his mouth drawn into an “O” of surprise. If waking up in the dark had been disorienting, I could only imagine what waking up to a gun being pointed at you was like.
“So now you’re going to kill us?” Dana squeaked out, making herself as small as I was attempting to do.
Blaise nodded, slowly. “I’m sorry. Really I am. I’m not a bad guy. But I can’t have all of this coming out. My wife can’t be hurt anymore. If she knew all of this, it would devastate her. You understand, right?”
What I understood was this guy was seriously unhinged.
I watched as he took one more step forward and aimed the gun at me. I froze, feeling time stand still as I watched him wrap his fingers around the trigger.
What happened next was a blur of motion.
I acted on pure instinct, doing what every urban girl has been trained to do in the event of an attack. I grabbed my purse, closed my eyes, and flung it at the bad guy, screaming as loudly as I could.
I heard the gun go off, the smell of burnt powder filling the room.
Then I heard Dana scream, “No!”, and I opened my eyes to see her lunging at Blaise. He pointed the gun her way, but Dana had the element of surprise, tackling him from the side, wrapping both arms and legs around his middle in a wild piggyback motion.
Marco sprang into action, jumping up from the ground. “Demon from hell!” he shouted, reaching into his bag and throwing a vial of Evian at Blaise’s face.
While it clearly didn’t melt him with its holiness, it did stun him long enough for me to lunge forward on the floor, grabbing Blaise around the ankles and dropping him to the ground as Dana continued to wrestle him for the gun.
Another shot went off, pinging against the cement ceiling before it bounced down the corridor, causing us all to duck.
“Die, vampire scum!” Marco shouted, dipping into his bag and rushing at Blaise for another attack, this time stabbing him with a wooden skewer.
Though with Dana wrestling him on the ground, it was a little hard to aim directly at the heart.
“Ow, damn it,” Blaise shouted, taking an over-sized toothpick to the arm.
I grabbed Marco’s bag, digging for anything useful, and coming out with the spray can of tanner. I stood up, trying to take aim at Blaise as he struggled with Dana to maintain control of the gun. Dana’s hours at the gym had given her muscles that were the envy of every other woman on the red carpet. But Blaise had her by a good hundred pounds, and it was clear she was losing.
“Die, you undead freak,” Marco yelled, throwing another skewer, spear-style.
“Hey, watch it!” Dana shouted, taking a kabob spike to the thigh.
“Sorry,” he said.
But it was just enough distraction to give Blaise the upper hand, wriggling from Dana’s grasp and jumping to his feet.
“Don’t move!” he shouted, panting as he straight-armed the gun at Dana.