Since it was only about one a.m., the guy was exaggerating. But then, he was upset. And he didn’t know how long the Senate bigwigs intended to leave his master exposed.

That sort of thing was a major taboo in the vamp world. Once a vamp’s power leaves him, his protection against the sun goes with it. Any stray beams after that will fry what is left to a crisp in a matter of seconds. The last service a vampire performs for his or her master is ensuring that the body is hidden away so that the sun can never touch it.

Marlowe’s expression said he couldn’t give a shit, but Mircea moved in with soothing, reasonable arguments, his voice taking on the cadence that said power was being exerted, but subtly. Muttonchops’s frown smoothed out, and within moments he was nodding, as if leaving his master’s gory body slumped at the desk was the best idea he’d heard in a while.

Marlowe met my eyes, and I could tell he was thinking the same thing: too bad that kind of thing wouldn’t work on the Senate.

Chapter Twenty

Muttonchops left a moment later to arrange for extra blackout curtains. As soon as the door closed behind him, I got up and put the necklace on the desk. There was no way a dhampir was going to be allowed to address the Senate, which didn’t even recognize me as a person. But Mircea was going in there, and he needed more than a speck of wax.

“Plenty of other people had a reason to kill Elyas,” I said simply.

Mircea clicked on the lamp and bent over the desk to get a good look. Then sharp, dark eyes turned up to me. “Where did you get this?”

“Off Elyas’s neck.”

Marlowe started to squawk something, but Mircea held up a hand. “Tell me,” he said quietly. Louis-Cesare moved to the door, making sure that we had a moment of relative privacy.

“Elyas tried to buy the rune before the auction, but was told he’d have to bid for it like everyone else. When Ming-de won, he was furious—”

“A great many people were,” Marlowe said resentfully. “The auction was obviously rigged.”

“Yeah, only Elyas wasn’t going to take that lying down. He went to the club, killed the fey and took it—”

“Raymond saw him?” Mircea asked sharply.

“No, he smelled him. You can ask him if you want details, but there aren’t many. Basically, the fey showed up, Ray left him alone for a few minutes, he returned and the guy was dead. Elyas’s scent was in the air, and the necklace was missing.”

“How lovely,” Christine said breathily, her face alight. She’d come in so quietly that even the vamps hadn’t heard her. I saw Marlowe start.

She didn’t notice, being too busy gazing raptly at the carrier. The cold electric light sparked a fountain of prisms off the intricate surface, bathing her face with rainbows as she leaned closer, seemingly mesmerized. And before anyone could stop her, she’d picked it up.

“Drop it!” Marlowe barked.

She looked up, eyes wide and startled. And the carrier slipped from her fingers, hitting the desk and sending dancing beams across the dead man as it rolled toward the edge. She stared at it. “Je regrette! I did not mean—”

“You foolish girl!” Marlowe looked like he wanted to shake her. Christine transferred her gaze to him, looking part-mortified, part-confused.

“No harm done,” Mircea told her, and caught the heavy disk with a handkerchief.

“No harm done?” Marlowe demanded. “You’ll never get anything off it now!”

The supernatural community didn’t usually check fingerprints, because there are plenty of things that don’t leave any. But a good clairvoyant might be able to get something off the thing, if not too many people had touched it in the meantime. It was why I’d been careful not to handle it.

“That remains to be seen,” Mircea said mildly.

Christine backed into the wall, looking like she wished she could melt into it. She seemed on the verge of tears again. Louis-Cesare came over and led her to a chair. “Ça ne fait rien.”

Marlowe looked disgusted. “Oh, no. Not important at all. Just one less piece of evidence that might have exonerated you!”

“This held Naudiz?” Mircea asked me, wrapping it securely in the square of linen. “You are sure?”

“Originally. Ray saw it when the fey first arrived, but it was empty when I took it off Elyas’s neck. There’s a space in back where the rune should be, but there’s nothing there now.”

He frowned. “But… did Elyas steal an empty carrier, or did he succeed in stealing the rune and was killed for it tonight?”

“If he’d had the rune, he wouldn’t be dead,” I pointed out.

“Not necessarily. I have seen other runes from the same set. If this one functioned similarly, then it had to be cast in order to function. Wearing it alone, particularly when not touching the skin, might not have been enough.”

“If he was fighting for his life, I think he’d have cast it!”

“But was he?” Mircea nodded at the body. “He did not die in a fighting pose and there are no wounds on the body other than the ones that killed him. It appears that he was caught off guard.”

Marlowe nodded. “If he knew his attacker or did not expect to be assaulted when surrounded by his family—”

“They never do,” I muttered.

“—he might well have chosen not to use the stone. It is a talisman with a set amount of power at its disposal. Exhausting it for no purpose would be foolish.”

“Unlike wearing it around his neck while somebody killed him,” I said sarcastically. Louis-Cesare had said that Elyas liked to take risks. It looked like he’d taken one too many.

“Whether the rune was stolen last night or tonight, it gives us something to offer the Senate,” Mircea said. “Anyone at that auction is a suspect—”

“And at least one who wasn’t,” I added reluctantly. I didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to tell them about subrand without landing Claire in the middle of this. But they had to know. The ice-cold prince of the fey was probably the prime suspect.

Mircea had been putting the carrier in his suit pocket, but he paused at my tone. “Dorina?”

I got a reprieve because Muttonchops took that moment to return with the list of party guests, and everyone crowded around the desk. “Was anyone on this list at the auction?” I asked Ray.

“It doesn’t have to have been someone who was invited,” Marlowe pointed out.

Muttonchops shook his head. “On the contrary. We had someone on the door. No one who was not on that list would have been allowed in. Other than Louis-Cesare, of course, who was expected.”

“What level?” Marlowe asked.

“What?”

“What level of master was acting as doorkeeper?”

“We do not typically use a master for such a menial task,” he was told.

“Menial? Is that how you consider your frontline defenses?”

The small amount of cheek showing between Muttonchops’s mustache and sideburns reddened. “This is a home, not a fortress!”

Marlowe looked pointedly at the dead man. “So I see.”

“It could have been anyone at the auction,” Mircea said calmly. “None of them would have had difficulty fogging the mind of even a low-level master.”

“That goes for a lot of other people,” I pointed out.

He shook his head. “I do not think any of the participants would have been eager to discuss the auction. Some of their families doubtless knew, but they were under their direct control. It would have been foolish to tell anyone else and increase the competition.”

And the chance that the fey will hear about it and hack your head off, I thought silently.

“Any one of them could have determined to do as Elyas did,” Mircea mused, “and have gone to the nightclub in search of the fey, either to make a bargain with him or to kill him.”

“Only when they arrived, they found that someone had beaten them to it,” I said. “And they either smelled Elyas on the air or actually saw him leaving. But why not attack him last night? Why wait?”

“Perhaps because the idea of killing a Senate member was more daunting than merely disposing of a fey guard,” Louis-Cesare said.

Marlowe shot him a cynical look. “Or perhaps because he had been invited here tonight and thought the party would be a good cover. If the culprit was on the guest list, he didn’t have to fog any minds to get in!”

Ray still hadn’t said anything, so I poked him. “Who was at the auction?”

He licked his lips, looking between Mircea and Marlowe. “I—I won’t have to testify, will I?”

“Yes,” Mircea told him, holding up the list so he could see it.

“But… but… in front of the Senate?” Ray’s voice dropped to a whisper. He looked terrified.

“I can tell them only hearsay. You were there,” Mircea pointed out.

“Yes, but…”

“And testifying might help your case.”

“My case?”

“The smuggling case against you.”

Ray looked like he’d almost forgotten that trivial detail.

“He also has master problems,” I put in.

Mircea’s lips twisted. “We will see what can be done. Assuming his memory improves.”

“Ming-de, Elyas, Radu, Geminus, and Peter Lutkin,” Ray said quickly.

“Cosmopolitan group,” I commented. “Ming-de from the Chinese court, Elyas from the European Senate, Radu bidding for Mircea, and Geminus—”

“Also North American Senate,” Mircea said, somewhat grimly.

“Oh, yeah. The prick.” He was one of the older senators, rivaling the consul in age, but not in power—or in anything else except ego. He also believed he was God’s gift to women and didn’t know how to take no for an answer. He’d grabbed my ass within thirty seconds of meeting me, and had not taken the resulting knife through the wrist well.