The mixture of scents was confusing—the wolves and cats and vamps all in one hidden place. It seemed everyone knew about the passageway but me.
Now, we stood in front of the newest surprise—Leo’s office’s second hidden entrance. The passage had been found when the cops started taking out rugs and wall hangings splattered with crime-scene blood. It entered the office from behind the fireplace, the passageway eight feet high and twenty inches wide, leading to the next room, which had its own secret entrance—a private elevator. The tiny brass cage had access to hidden passages on every floor of vamp HQ, including the crawl space to the domes above the ballroom where the wolves had waited. The elevator smelled only of dead fish, were-blood, and Rick’s blood. All the blood was old and dry, I guessed lost the night of Safia’s murder. But the fishy smell . . . “I need to see the room the grindylow used,” I said, not letting myself react to the blood smell or what it could mean.
“Okay by me. Little sucker trashed it. And now he’s gone. No one’s seen him in days.”
The room set aside for visiting security was way more than trashed. It was wet, stinking of mold, ripped, and shredded. The grindy had let the tub overflow until the carpet was soaked, had shredded every piece of fabric and drenched the scraps, maybe trying to make himself a grindy den, a wet place like home. Days later, in the damp climate of Louisiana, untouched by anyone due to the visitor’s status, mold had set in.
I knelt and studied the grindy’s claw marks. The edges of the tears were smooth, not ragged, indicating razor sharp claws. I wouldn’t want to fight the little sucker, not even if I had a cannon and way better armor. They were three clawed, like a sloth, the center one longer than the two beside. Just like the wound in Safia’s throat, which was just weird. Why kill her here, not back in Africa?
Because she had been a good little girl until she met Rick?
The grindy’s scent was definitely fishlike, but not any fish Beast had ever encountered. I drew up the bloodhound-memory of smells as I stood over Safia’s body. I remembered fish. I had thought it was her supper. Stupid, to make a determination without evidence.
As far as I could tell, under the fish and mold smell, Rick hadn’t been in the grindylow’s rooms. I pulled the door shut and wandered back to the hidden elevator, hands in my jeans pockets. “Okay, how does this sound?” I said to Wrassler, who filled up the hallway behind me. “Rick infiltrated the Soniat Hotel, undercover, as a busboy or something, during the early, clandestine discussions with Leo and the Vampire Council. Safia met the cop. She was bored. Interested in a pretty boy.”
Wrassler added to my narrative. “Somehow she knows about this passage. The night of the big bash, she arranges to get him inside HQ for some hanky-panky.”
“Hanky-panky.” I quashed my reaction to my words. This was a job. Not my heart breaking. “Okay. He’s in, with her, coming up the passageway. Somehow, Rick is injured,” though not badly, because I hadn’t smelled his blood-scent over Safia’s blood loss. “Tyler goes into the office, where he shouldn’t be, catches them together. Safia is shot by Tyler to frame Leo and Bruiser. Tyler runs. Safia starts to shift. Then the grindy kills the person he was here to protect. Which makes no sense.”
“Unless she’d tried to turn the cop,” Wrassler said.
And the final piece fell into place. Kemnebi had said the grindylows are . . . pets. Most of the time . . . But he’d hesitated when he said pets. As if that description hadn’t been his first choice. Pain gripped my stomach, burning. I said, “It all makes sense, like a woven scarf with all its knots, but only two pieces of string.”
“Girly analogy.”
I stuttered a laugh, surprised, but the laughter cleared my head. “Bite me. String one: Tyler wants revenge on Bruiser and Leo for something—I don’t know what, so don’t ask. He came over in the 1960s to work a frame, maybe something longstanding with the Marchands or the Rochefort clan in France, since he was working security for them. But for whatever reason, he had to abandon his plan. He’s been waiting for a chance to finish it for years. Tyler comes back with the wedding party, starts his plan all over again, shoots Safia to set up Bruiser and Leo as murderers. Tyler runs, changes clothes, reappears in the ballroom in the middle of the fight. We never notice he’s gone.
“String two,” I said, “is all about the grindy. Kemnebi said grindylows ‘are pets. Most of the time. Guardians, occasionally. Less often, the enforcers of were-law.’ But what if they are the enforcers of were-law first, and pets second? And if Safia had bitten someone . . .” Like Rick. I stared hard at the carpet beneath my booted feet. “Say that . . . Safia tried to turn Rick. The grindy followed her to Leo’s office, where she was bringing him in the night of the party. Grindy interrupted a struggle between Tyler, Safia, and Rick. Tyler shoots Safia and runs, Safia tries to change after being shot. And the grindy kills her for breaking were-law. Grindy grabs Rick, who’s bleeding, maybe bitten. Or maybe he has to hurt Rick to subdue him. The grindy takes him through the secret passageway, into the elevator. Stashes him until . . . What? He gets away? The werewolves find him?”
“Still has holes, but if the female weres knew each another, that might cinch up loose ends.”
I must have looked confused because Wrassler said, “If the girls were gossiping behind Kemnebi’s back or something, if they were sharing Rick, in the carnal sense, then there’s the link between the girls that includes Rick.”
I remembered the site at Beast’s hunting grounds, the limb where the black cat had watched the wolves feeding.
“They knew each other,” he said. “And, okay, maybe they were conspiring to bring the wolves into the worldwide were-fold. But maybe they were having sleepovers and eating s’mores. And the wolf-bitch stole Rick from her best cat-gal-pal.”