Which sounded like the truth. Not knowing why, I pushed the door open and stood to the side. A grudging tone in my voice, I said, “Guest rooms are upstairs. Evangelina is in one. If you take a room across the hall, you can have your own bath. Sheets are in the linen closet.”
A faint smile tugged his lips as he stepped over the threshold and pulled his suitcase after with two bass wheel-thumps. “I can’t share your bed?”
Unexpected heat ignited in my belly and began to grow. Beast wrinkled her lips, showing teeth, interested. I gripped my lapels tighter, shoving her away. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I have a boyfriend.”
Beast sent me a mental picture of her claw raking the rump of a mate who displeased her. I knew she meant Rick, for not calling. Big-cats do not mate for life, she thought at me. I drew in a slow breath.
“A boy friend,” Bruiser said, making it two words. His smile widened and his eyes warmed slightly with amusement. “A child in the art of lovemaking.”
I breathed past the warmth and crushed down a laugh that was burbling in my chest, let my eyebrows rise, and managed an unsympathetic, half-bored expression. “Upstairs, Romeo. And if you try to move in to my bed, I’ll toss you to the curb.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be the soul of propriety. But you’ll regret that decision.”
Deliberately misunderstanding him I said, “I agree that you’ll be a pain in the butt. But go on up anyway. You look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet.”
“Thank you, Jane. A nap would be appreciated.”
“Yeah, well, you ruined mine,” I said ungraciously, closing the door behind him. “You do your own laundry, your own sheets, and clean your own bathroom. Food is by our resident three-star chef. Dinner is at seven, usually, breakfast between seven and eight on the days she has time to fix any. Cold cereal whenever you want it on the days she doesn’t. Lunch is whatever you want to fix. I don’t cook for you.”
“Right now, just a bed,” he said, climbing the stairs, the suitcase bumping along after him. He was halfway up the stairs when I went back to my bed, threw myself on top of the sheets and lay there, looking up at the ceiling. For a gal who didn’t have a family and liked her privacy, I had an awful lot of people in my life and depending on me, lately.
I checked my cell again and found a voice mail from Deon wanting to know all the gossip from the party. I called him back and got his voice mail. Communications, twenty-first-century style. I tried to find sleep but it eluded me, energy racing under my skin like ants on the prowl, seeing again the teasing look in Bruiser’s tired eyes. He had been teasing. I was sure of it. Sorta sure of it. But then there was that heat that stirred between us, like electric sparks melded with taffy, heating and stinging, a tugging, pulling sweetness. And Rick still hadn’t called.
When I couldn’t keep my eyes closed, I rose and dressed, braided my hair and pulled out my notes. I came across Girrard DiMercy’s calling card. Not a business card, but a heavy linen, embossed, gilt-edged calling card. I held it to my nose and caught his scent, jasmine and pine. And realized that I had smelled it today already. At vamp HQ. I drew in the scent, remembering it mixed with the bouquets. Gee had been the guy who served me tea. He had been around a few other times too, a glamour hiding him, or making him seem unimportant, socially invisible.
I cursed once and pulled my cell, dialing the number under his name. I was shunted directly to voice mail and greeted by a mechanical voice. When the beep sounded, I said, “You spelled me again, spelled us all, and hung around for the police investigation. Call me, you little creep.” I hung up, checked again for a call from Rick and snapped the cell down with more force than the action warranted. Men ...
Anger scoring the sides of my mind, I dialed Rick’s number. I was shunted directly to voice mail and hung up without leaving a message. He knew my number. He’d call if he wanted to. Madder than I’d been in a long time, I left the house, hopped on Bitsa, tearing out of the Quarter and to the firing range where I blew off a head of steam, shooting my way through three boxes of shells and shredding four man-shaped targets before I quit, one target for each man I was mad at: Bruiser, Leo, Gee, and Rick. I put most of the bullets into the target called Rick, thinking, call me, call me, with every shot.
When I was done I stripped and cleaned my weapons at the counter, a nice pile of discarded brass at my feet, bright on the dark-painted floor; solvents, lubricants, and spent gunpowder stung my nose, my eyes unfocused, hands moving through the necessary procedures by memory and feel. One spent cartridge near my boot rocked slightly, catching my attention. I studied the shiny brass as I cleaned, my mind empty and quiet in the aftermath of preparatory and nonlethal violence. My casings were the only ones, the floor having been thoroughly cleaned since any previous shooters.
If someone wanted to frame me, all he would need was my spent brass, with my fingerprints all over them, and my gun. Gather the brass, steal the gun, shoot a few people, police the brass used to make the kill, and toss down the ones with my prints on them. And in Bruiser’s case, any blood-servant or blood-slave who had been around for fifty years or more could have set the thing up. Bruiser had to know this. And like he’d said, he wasn’t stupid enough to leave his spent brass at a crime scene.
I was packing up my weapons when my cell rang. Once again, hope shot through me like wildfire and died just as quickly. Not Rick. Gee’s number. I didn’t bother to say hello. “Did you kill Safia?”
“No. I did not.”
“Then why were you hanging around the party and the investigation?”