“Very funny. I’m being supportive.” Scowling, he drank half the bottle. “None of us want Elena’s first business venture to go down in flames. And anyway,” he said a little defensively, “this is a bottle of their premium line.”
“Right.” Delighted at the idea of all these tough Tower vamps throwing their weight behind a fledgling blood café, she rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his jaw. His devastating smile was her reward . . . and if it lit the candle of guilt inside her, she snuffed it out just as quickly.
Full throttle. That was the promise they’d made to each other, and it was a promise she would keep. To live for today, for him, and not always in anticipation of the awful mental degeneration that awaited in her future.
They walked into tech central seconds later. The Guild techs were already patched in, the two teams having been working together to create the list of locations. Illium and Dmitri were both at a big glass table in the center and waved them over. “I’ve spoken to the Guild Director,” Dmitri said when they reached the table. “She’s putting together teams that will assist ours in clearing the possible locations.”
“We have ten so far.” Illium pointed out the Xs on the map on the table. “Six of them are peripheral—either because the scent would’ve faded long ago or because of their distance from the city. Places like boarded-up movie theaters and old factories.”
“If you’re right about the perpetrator being arrogant and smug,” Janvier said to Ashwini, “and I think you are, then he would want a place he could control. His castle.”
“Something appropriate to his wealth and image of himself.” Ashwini couldn’t see him being satisfied with a musty old theater or a factory unless he’d upgraded it inside. “Any sign the six were renovated anytime in the past five years?” she asked, knowing they had to cast a wide net—there was no knowing how long the bastard had been doing this. Even five years could be too small a window, but they had to start somewhere.
Illium told the computer experts to see what they could dig up on that point, then moved on to the four remaining properties.
“This one here,” he said, pointing to an X in Harlem, his wings held tightly to his back in an astonishing fall of color, “was a restaurant that shut up shop three months ago.”
“Their gimmick,” Dmitri continued, “was to give all the patrons a free miniature jar of handmade peanut butter.”
Ashwini remembered the place—she’d gone once with Demarco. The food had been terrible. Even peanut butter couldn’t save it. “Three months is too short a window unless the abuse began elsewhere.”
“What about these two?” Janvier pressed his fingers to twin Xs not far from the port where Raphael had blasted and sunk a ship full of Lijuan’s infectious reborn.
“Warehouses with the same owner.” Illium’s golden eyes gleamed. “Giorgio.”
Ashwini’s skin prickled, but she knew they couldn’t rush to judgment. Too many of the older immortals enjoyed pleasure that was perverse to anyone who possessed an ounce of humanity. But the hairs were rising on the back of her neck, the image of Giorgio’s “perfect” brainwashed harem front and center. The man was a master manipulator.
Good enough to string along vulnerable women who wanted to believe in hope.
“The warehouses are in active use,” Dmitri added, “but the computer searches picked up an interesting fact—they’re consistently only being used to half their capacity.”
Ashwini folded her arms. “So one could be empty?”
“Or one is in full use, the second only utilized enough to provide cover for other movements in and out,” Janvier pointed out. “The extra space could’ve been made into a grotesque ‘playroom.’”
It made an ugly kind of sense. Why risk hiding the women in a residential area when the warehouse and port district had enough ongoing noise to provide cover for any screams in the daytime? As for the night—aside from the odd security guard, the area would be deserted. Giorgio could have redone the interior or a part of it to his standards before moving his captives in.
A perfect prison within relatively short reach of his Vampire Quarter residence.
“Does he import nuts or items that would have the scent?” Janvier asked, the tension across his shoulders telling her his instincts were shouting exactly the same things as her own.
“Yes.” Dmitri brought up a manifest on a tablet, handed it over. “He’s not the only one who imports such goods, but the other shipments are all stored in warehouses shared between multiple companies.”
“And this last?” Putting the manifest down on the table, Janvier tapped the final X.
“A midsized factory that packaged peanuts. Shut down a year ago and left boarded up by the owners.” He brought up images of the four properties on a part of the glass table that Ashwini belatedly realized wasn’t a simple table at all. “The factory also has enough space that your killer could’ve set up a private room inside—and Khalil was one of the financiers behind the venture.”
Janvier hissed at the sadistic vampire’s name, but shook his head. “We check the factory out, but I say it’s Giorgio. Khalil is vicious, evil at times, but he’s never been this sly.”
Yes, she thought, that was the right word. There was a cruel slyness about it all, a sense that the monster had been laughing at his victims; such meanness fit Giorgio with his shiny new house, false bonhomie, and herd of devoted cattle. And there was something else, something she’d seen and forgotten, something important.