"Unless you decide to kill me," I struggled to my feet. "How many Liaisons have you killed, Norian Keef?" He looked hurt at my question.
"Not one, breah-mul," he snapped. "And the others never saw me as you have seen me."
"Norian, put some clothes on." His erection was distracting, to say the least. I wondered where Lendill was and if he knew.
"Lendill doesn't know—he's gone out to do some snooping. I couldn't help myself, little queen—I wanted to rest my head between your breasts. Just for a moment." Norian rose and stalked off toward his own cubicle, as if he were the injured party. He'd called me breah-mul, too—in a few languages, it meant my breath. What was I supposed to do? Tell him it was okay to scare the bejeezus out of me and that one or the other of us could have ended up dead as a result? I slapped a hand over my face and we didn't talk to each other for the rest of the morning.
Lendill came back after a while with breakfast for Norian and me. We were both dressed by that time and ate little breakfast rolls stuffed with meat in an uncomfortable silence. I won't give your secret away, I sent in grumpy mindspeech to Norian. The only indication he gave that he'd heard me was a brief widening of his eyes. He caught my arm later when we walked out to the streets, leaving Lendill behind at headquarters, working on the computer. "Why didn't I know you could send mindspeech to anyone?" He hissed at me, shoving me against a wall in an alley.
"Maybe you didn't ask," I jerked my arm out of his grasp.
"Tell me you didn't scent something different about me," he had my arm in his grasp again. "Your scenting ability is legendary. Or is that a lie?"
"Not a lie," I muttered angrily. "But I've never scented one of your kind before. All races have a different scent. Trust me; if I run across another of your kind, I'll know it. And if I happen to run across your parents or any of your relatives, I'll know that, too." That caused Norian to drop his hand and stare at me.
"You can tell who my parents are, just by smelling them?" His voice sounded hopeful and I had no idea why.
"Of course," I said. "Didn't all your records that you went to so much trouble to find say that?"
"No." His voice was clipped. He turned his head and cursed. "They must have thought that information was too sensitive to record."
"Yeah—those vampires, they're such a secretive bunch." I couldn't keep the sarcasm from my voice.
"We'll discuss this later—we've got places to go, first." Those places turned out to be homes and apartments where the people we'd found the night before lived. Some of them had family or lovers, and they were all there, waiting for us when we arrived.
"He didn't tell me he had any new acquaintances," the first wife sobbed as she answered questions. "He worked as a clerk for the city. He scheduled the maintenance crews and made sure the equipment was delivered onsite. Why would anyone want to kill him?" Norian managed to look sympathetic and shook his head, although he could have given a partial reason. We just couldn't tip our hand. Lendill was already checking on bank deposits and transfers—Darthin didn't use any kind of cash—it was credit chip only.
"Did he seem worried about anything? Uncomfortable maybe?"
"No, why would that make any difference?" I could tell by the woman's answer that Darthin wasn't used to murder.
"In case someone was threatening him," I replied tiredly. She blinked at me a few times, and then the light came on.
"Why would anyone threaten my Parett? He wasn't important and his job was boring."
"He would be extremely useful if somebody wanted to plant bombs in the sewers," I muttered, before placing compulsion for her not to remember my questions or that she'd seen me to begin with. Norian and I walked out.
"They're not used to anything like this, so they don't even have suspicions," Norian observed when we walked away from the apartment. It made me think of the animals found on the Galapagos Islands, when the archipelago was first explored. The animals hadn’t known to be afraid of humans. Now, something was killing Darthinians indiscriminately and they didn't have a clue.
Thankfully, the next house was empty—a widowed maintenance worker had lived there. There weren't any scents inside the house that were fresh, indicating the man hadn't been taken from there. The next one was the home of the female worker, and her husband and two young children answered the door. The children—two little girls—were gripping their father's pants legs and peering around him, looking frightened. He had to put them in their room to play before coming out to talk to us. "She's really dead, isn't she?" The man looked haggard.
"I'm afraid so," Norian answered. "I'm sorry to be here asking questions so quickly, but if we are to catch the ones responsible, we need information now."
"I understand," the man nodded tiredly. Norian went through his list of questions and the answers were much the same as before, except that the man did say his wife had lunch with someone the day before she was killed. "She didn't pack a lunch the next morning, because she said she didn't eat the one she'd taken the day before. I asked her why, and she said she had lunch with a friend, but never did say who it was and I knew all her friends at work." Norian asked for the list of friends, thanked the man and we left. I didn't know how he was going to tell his daughters that their mother wasn't going to come home.
Lendill received the list of names Norian collected before we arrived at the next house. We didn't get any useful information the rest of the day.
"All the people on that list work for the city, except one," Lendill said when Norian and I dragged back to headquarters later. "I contacted all of them and they say they didn't have lunch with the dead woman. This one here says she saw a strange man walking away when she returned from lunch, though."
"Where did she see him?" Norian asked.
"Outside the Vintel Street maintenance building," Lendill replied.
"Let's go," Norian gripped my arm and pulled me toward the door.
* * *
A confusion of scents greeted us as we made our way to the Vintel Street maintenance building's front entrance. I couldn't get anything from it since I had no reference point. "Is this where all the employees go in and out, or is there another door?" I asked. Norian and I walked the perimeter and found three more exits in the low, rectangular building. The one at the back made me draw in a breath, though. Honestly, I didn't know why I hadn't thought of it before.
"A vampire was here," I whispered. Norian stared at me in shock.
"How long ago?" he snapped.
"The scent isn't fresh, maybe two or three days," I muttered. "Was she a night worker? The woman who was killed? A vampire could have lured her away to get information, then placed compulsion after, so she'd think she had lunch with a friend. It would be easy."
"Two-thirds are, since the evenings are so long, here," Norian grumbled. "Do you think this is why Black Mist favors the worlds with lengthy nights?"
"And there may be a deeper meaning to the name Black Mist," I nodded. "If any of them are misters, then that's how they find it so easy to kill—they can get in anywhere by turning to mist."
"Do you think they're all vampires?"
"No, honey," I replied absently, trying to piece this together. "I don't think there are many who might have escaped Kifirin's attention. He was out looking for vampires, after all. And these, if they're working with a wizard or warlock, could be hiding that way, behind a shield of some kind." I didn't add that the wizard or warlock had to be mighty powerful, to block my Looking skills. I was frightened enough about it. No sense scaring the scales off Norian Keef, especially since I had very little information to offer.
"Can you track this one? This vampire?" Norian asked. I did track him for a while, until he got onto public transportation; that's where the scent became confused with other passengers' scents and I couldn't get past that. Everyone in the city used public transportation and there were six million living in Darthough.
"Here's my question," I flung out a hand as we walked back inside headquarters. "Were they planning to stay in the city when they blew it up, or were they going to get the hell out of Dodge before they pressed the button? If that's the case, what do you think they'll do after they press the button and nothing happens?"
"All right," Norian held up a hand, "explain what hell and Dodge are. The rest are valid questions."
"They're all valid questions," I elbowed him in the ribs. I did have to explain both hell and Dodge before it was over, though.
"Yes, there was a place called Dodge City," I fell over on my bed in exhausted resignation. I was tired and hungry and hadn't gone to energy in several days. That wasn't a good thing.
"Breah-mul, I wish I had your talent for getting people around by unconventional means, but I do not. You'll have to lean on me while we walk to a restaurant," Norian murmured next to my ear.
I thought that leaning on Norian might give Lendill ideas, so I didn't. We walked seven blocks to a restaurant and I got something similar to roast chicken in a gravy sauce. The food was good and Lendill ate what I couldn't finish. I was nearly too tired to change into my PJs and brush my teeth when we got back, but I managed. I left my body behind the minute the light was out and stayed energy for almost four hours before returning. I wasn't the least surprised to find Norian's lion snake draped over and around my torso the following morning.
* * *
"Look, I'm not sure what the others would think if they found you in my bed like this," I muttered, stroking his large, triangular head carefully. Norian opened a slitted eye and stared pitifully at me, as if he were afraid I'd chase him off or something. In the Reth Alliance, there are three varieties of snakes that can blink their eyes. Lion snakes are one of those varieties. Norian continued to blink at me, and I didn't know whether he was trying to wake up or convince me to let him lie there a few minutes longer. "Don't turn those sad, snake eyes on me," I lifted the part of him that was weighing me down and set it aside. "Come on," I patted his gray and black patterned scales, "don't we have work to do?"