“Barghest,” he clarified, giving the filet mignon one last contemptuous poke.
“Barghest,” I repeated, as he smiled into my eyes and I was suddenly glad I'd taken my cardigan off. What with all the cooking, it had gotten really warm in the kitchen.
“So what do you eat?” I asked.
“Well, I hunt. There's great hunting around our area. And there are a few people I'll buy meat from around Rockabill. But otherwise, I'll just not eat meat. With two exceptions I can't resist.”
“What are the exceptions?”
“Haggis and White Castle.”
“What is haggis?”
“It's the Scottish national dish. The pluck of a sheep—meaning the heart, liver, and lungs—all diced up with oatmeal and spices and then baked in the sheep's stomach.”
I thought about that. I had but one question.
“How the hell can you eat White Castle?”
He chuckled. “Sliders are little pellets of greasy love, Jane. Don't knock 'em.”
I shuddered just as the door to the apartment swung open.
“Honey,” Ryu called. “I'm home!”
Anyan and I turned toward the door. Ryu stood, arms outstretched, holding the largest bouquet of flowers I'd ever seen. He was staring at Anyan. The vampire didn't look at all happy.
I put on my cardigan.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Dinner was very, very awkward, although the lentils were delicious. When we'd finished eating and had cleared away the plates, we returned to Ryu's dining table to get down to business.
“What exactly are you doing here, Anyan?”
“I was sent. After everything that happened with Jimmu, I decided I'd been out of the game too long. So for the past few months I've been working for the Alfar, sniffing out leads, keeping an eye on the powers that be,” Anyan said, not looking at me. I knew how much he'd valued his secret life in Rockabill, and I regretted that he'd lost his hard-won independence. “Something's cropped up at the Compound, and I was sent to assist you. And by Morrigan herself.”
Ryu and I exchanged glances. “You're not the only one who's been sent as ‘assistance,’” Ryu replied.
“Alfar named Phaedra is here,” I interrupted. “Sent by Jarl.”
Anyan's eyes met mine, and he nodded. He knew I was touching on our little secret. Ryu didn't entirely understand the implications of Jarl's involvement, as he didn't know about Jarl's attack on me at the Compound. Ryu knew that Jarl was bad news, but not quite how bad. He didn't know Jarl definitely blamed me for the loss of his foster son, or that he'd tried to kill me, and that, due to his failure, there were two witnesses to his attack. I had the feeling Anyan and I were going to have to tell Ryu the truth very soon, and I wasn't looking forward to that conversation. Those two had enough alpha-male issues as it was, without Ryu thinking I was keeping secrets. Secrets I shared with the other top dog, no less.
“I know. That's partially why I'm here. But who did Phaedra bring?” Anyan asked Ryu.
“Kaya and Kaori. Fugwat. And Graeme.”
Anyan's frown transformed him back to Sam the Eagle. “Graeme?”
Ryu only nodded as Anyan stared at him.
“I know,” my lover said quietly. “I'll keep her away from him.”
I shivered, knowing that they were talking about Graeme's unhealthy interest in my breakability. Uncomfortable, I muscled through the moment with my usual delicacy.
“And it gets worse. There's the possibility of more murders, in the Borderlands, that may or may not have been done by Conleth,” I informed Anyan.
“Of course they were done by Conleth,” Ryu said, rolling his eyes. I shrugged. I wasn't going to argue with Ryu about this issue but, like Silver, I wasn't convinced it was Con who committed the other crimes. He'd been so clumsy with that knife, for one thing. And I could have sworn he was genuinely horrified when he saw it sticking through my hand. He was somebody who blasted at people, who roasted them from afar or who set their house on fire while they slept. Conleth didn't walk up topeople and carve them up, or at least he hadn't until last night.
And there'd been no pleasure in his eyes when his knife had sunk deep.
“Actually,” Anyan said, shifting his long legs, “those ‘other' murders are the reason I'm here.” The big man stretched, sitting a bit sideways in his chair so he could extend his long legs. “One of Nyx's pals is a baobhan sith, a famous surgeon in both the human and supernatural worlds. His lover was a human, another doctor, from Chicago, who spent half her time in Boston. Name was Brenda Donovan.”
Ryu and I blinked in surprise. “That's Silver's contact with the corporation that funded his lab,” I told Anyan, and then I explained to him who Silver was.
“Well, Silver's not the only one she told about her concerns. Right before Donovan died, she called her boyfriend, told him she was sending him a package. There was a list of names and an audiotape with her story. Said she was afraid someone was after her. If she disappeared, he should go to the police with the list. She thought he was human, obviously. When she vanished, he knew she was dead. He sat on the information for a week or two, but when he finally laid hands on the autopsy, he discovered she was killed so viciously that he went to Nyx. Nyx eventually went to Morrigan. Morrigan made the connection to Conleth and came to me.”
We chewed on that information for a bit.
“But didn't she know that Jarl had already sent someone to investigate Conleth?” I asked.
“Of course she did,” Anyan replied. “I was there when he volunteered his team. He made a big deal about how he knew a half-human would rise one day to become a problem, and he'd prepared Phaedra to take them out.”
“But Morrigan sent her own people in, too. She didn't trust him? Am I sensing a rift?”
Anyan nodded and Ryu smiled grimly at me. “Orin may be in Jarl's pocket, but Morrigan is in Nyx's. Nyx and Jarl, believe it or not, hate each other.”
“Really?” I asked, genuinely surprised. Nyx was one of the more obnoxious creatures I'd had the displeasure of meeting and I would have pegged her and Jarl as made for each other.
Ryu shrugged. “I know, it's weird. But they've always loathed one another. I think that Nyx recognizes that Jarl will only ever see her as a lesser being, since she's not Alfar. And now Nyx has the ear of the queen.”
“So Morrigan doesn't trust Jarl?” I asked. This was the second time, including the investigation four months ago when I met Ryu, that Morrigan had sent out her own people to investigate.
“Who knows what Morrigan thinks or doesn't think. She's Alfar,” Anyan growled. Ryu arched an eyebrow and smiled at that, making me smile. I liked it when we all got along.
“So what exactly do the Alfar know about this investigation?” Ryu asked.
It was Anyan's turn to shrug. “I've no idea,” he said. “They know what you've reported about the murders here in Boston, and what the deceased doctor said about the deaths of others in Chicago.”
“And what do you know about those murders?” Ryu asked.
“Very little. Donovan didn't have any concrete information, and she wrote down only a few names. She just knew that some of her colleagues had died and others were missing. I found obituaries for all of the people on her list, so she wasn't crazy. But that was as far as I'd gotten before Conleth attacked us in Rockabill. I was home to check on Jane and then I was going to start investigating Donovan's claims.”
Ryu and Anyan stared at each other for a bit until Ryu got up to get the files Silver had given us. He passed Anyan the file with the “other” murders.
“Where'd you get these?” Anyan grunted as he flipped through the contents.
“Silver had them. I don't know how he compiled everything, but he's obviously got a lot of connections. And he's a smart old buzzard.”
“This one—that's Brenda Donovan,” Anyan said, pointing at one of the photos. “The baobhan sith's lover.” He continued flipping until he got to the autopsy. He studied it carefully.
“Do you have the autopsies from the Boston murders?” Anyan asked.
Ryu nodded and then dug them out for the barghest. Anyan flipped through them quickly. There wasn't a lot on them to read, after all. Everyone had been burned up from afar. End of story.
“So we have two groups of murders. We know Conleth is doing one, but the jury's out on the other. I don't understand why he'd alternate between MOs like this. Plus, I chased him. He's fast, and that rocket trick he does is good for a quick getaway. Not least because we have to spend hours glamouring any human witnesses. But he can't sustain it for very long, and it weakens the hell out of him. I don't know if he could get to Chicago and back this quickly. Some of these murders in Chicago overlap with murders in Boston by just a few days.” While he talked, Anyan had made an impromptu time line with some of the police reports. We all three, sporting similar looks of frustration, sat staring at the papers in Anyan's hands.