“You may inform your policewoman, who is the daughter of witches—do not think that I have forgotten that, my Jane—,” he added as an aside, “that I will meet with the senators, representatives, the governor, and the mayor, here, in time for the late-night news.” He pressed a button on his desk. “Adelaide, please see to it that the elected officials, state, local, and those arriving from Washington, are invited here for drinks and a private discussion, to be followed by a press announcement in the ballroom. Standard security precautions will apply to the press.”
“I’ll arrange it all, Mr. Pellissier,” Del said. Her voice sounded dull and toneless. Competent, yes, but dull and toneless.
“Thank you,” Leo said, ending the connection.
I swiveled my body so I was sitting on the edge of the chaise and facing Leo. “Adelaide Mooney is a skilled and capable lawyer. In her last position to the blood-master of Clan Shaddock, she assisted with all manner of things political, legal, and”—I rolled my hand in the air—“vital stuff. Shaddock’s assistant did the secretarial things.”
“What are you trying to say, my Jane? That I mistreat my primo?”
“No. That you should use her for the important stuff and let your secundo do the invitation-level stuff. You’re wasting an asset, and that isn’t like you.” I propped my elbows on my knees and placed my fingertips together in front of my chin. I had a lot of subjects to cover and not much time, but this seemed important. “I’m betting that you’re sleeping with her, drinking from her, and making her feel worthless all at the same time. Stop being stupid, Leo. Send her flowers, one of those handwritten notes you do so well, and start treating her like she deserves.”
“She deserves for me to be in love with her,” Leo said, stopping me. “Sadly, I am not.” And weirdly, he did sound sad, as if his life would be much easier if he was in love with Del.
“So give her better jobs and stop sleeping with her. Let her develop a relationship with someone else, which won’t happen if all the other vamps know you’re poking her.”
Leo murmured, “Poking her?” his words now laden with laughter. It was only now that I realized how stiff and tight his voice had been. The stress of dealing with the escape of Santana had to be wearing on him.
“Yeah. Tell me more about the night Santana went missing.”
Leo went still again, but this time it was the stillness of a rabbit caught out in the open. He hadn’t expected me to ask about that, or at least not then.
“Tell me about the arcenciel and the broken crystal prison and the dead body at Acton House. You sent me there, so you had to know what we’d find.”
Leo took a breath, filling his lungs, his eyes far away as if he gazed into the past. He said, “To tell you about the night the Son of Darkness did not rise is to tell you about only the end.” Leo’s tone and words slid into that mesmerizing vamp cadence, the tonal qualities like silk velvet, stroking the listener’s very soul. “It would be like telling you only about the finale of a film, without telling you about the first three acts, without telling you of the conflicts that arose and were resolved, or the dialogue, or the musical score.” His eyes were dark, the irises nearly as black as the pupils, his lashes long and full, Frenchy black. His jaw was firm and his olive skin smooth, if far too pale and perfect for a human. Leo Pellissier was beautiful, as most vamps were, and he wasn’t above using that beauty to get what he wanted, but there was no tug of compulsion now, no sense of deceit or of spin. Instead there was bewilderment and more than a hint of worry. “But we have no time to share all that happened, to allow you to see, and understand, and know for certain the nuances that made his visitation and his disappearance so devastating.”
“Disappearance,” I said evenly.
Leo shrugged a languid shoulder, rolling, but it looked staged, planned, something to make me think he was relaxed when he really wasn’t. “Disappearance is what we called it for so long, to protect us. It feels right to call it thus, even now, with the truth revealed. The might and weight of years.”
“Okay. I get that. So just start with the twenty-four hours before the sunset when he was discovered to be . . . not himself.”
“It feels strange to speak it aloud,” he mused, “this secret I have kept so long and so well.” He shook his head as if shaking away his bemusement and settled his body into the desk chair, the motion so human and yet so graceful. “I remember few details about the week prior. It was Mardi Gras, and there were feasting and dancing and balls aplenty. There were parties at each of the clan homes. One in particular in Mearkanis Clan Home. There were two women there that Santana liked, both human blood-slaves, sisters, twins. They were tiny and Asian, their blood a rare vintage even for him. He was besotted and wanted to add the Ming sisters to his stable.”
I took note of the word stable (as if the women had been horses) and the location, filing both away.
“He offered their master a goodly price for them both, with a promise of immortality, but was refused. The humans became a bone of contention between Santana and Mearkanis Clan blood-master Mishael Chrysostomos. He turned the women and made them his scions to keep them out of Santana’s clutches, and both later rose to great power among the Mithrans, one as blood-master to Clan Mearkanis. Had Blood-Master Ming herself not disappeared, we might not be facing such calamities now.”
“Wait,” I interrupted, not able to help myself, and putting two and two together with my known history of the clans. “The former Blood-Master Ming, of Clan Mearkanis, started out as a blood-slave? And . . . her name was Ming? Like the blood-master of Clan Glass in Knoxville?”
“Yes. It is rare that one addicted to Mithran blood will rise to such leadership positions, but both Ming sisters were strong. Though Clan Mearkanis is no more, the name Ming still rings with power. Ming is remembered.” He said the last word as if it had meaning in a ceremonial sense. “If Ming’s heir did not deface them, there are paintings of Ming and one of Joseph Santana in the rooms she once claimed as her own.”
I wanted to ask all about the Mings, but I needed to hear the story of Santana, and it seemed like Leo was being a little more forthcoming than usual.
Leo leaned over and pressed a button on his desk, ringing for tea to be brought up. When he was done he rearranged his features into a more pedantic cast, and I knew that the storytelling was ended and the business of recalling the past, with its myriad slants and biases, had begun.