A while later we went back to the murders. As much as I didn’t want to refocus on the poor individuals who had died gruesome deaths, too much was riding on these murders to put it off.
I shimmied open Andre’s desk drawers until I found a stack of blank paper. I pulled out a sheet to brainstorm on.
I still held the quill in my hand. “Do you use this thing?” I asked him.
Andre responded by pushing towards me a glass bottle that rested on his desk. Black ink darkened the inside of it.
Clumsily I opened the bottle and dipped the quill in, pretending I knew what I was doing. I shouldn’t have bothered; I saw the corner of Andre’s mouth curve up.
“So, we have three victims, two who were students, and one who was an adult.”
I went to write the information down on the paper when a huge globe of ink rolled off, obscuring the first letters I’d written. “Okay, this quill thingy is more difficult than I originally thought.” After a couple more tries I managed to write the information down.
“All victims were bitten on the neck and drained of blood. They were then positioned into religious symbols,” I said as I wrote the information down. “Hey, wait—” I pressed the quill too hard to the paper and the metal bent. In half.
“Err . . . whoops.”
“You’re like a bull in a china shop.” Andre sighed. “Here, I’ll take it,” he said, reaching out for the pen. I handed it over.
He fingered the metal of the quill, turning it over to see the extent of the damage. “It’s a goner,” he eventually said, tossing it into the nearby trash. “That was originally Benjamin Franklin’s too.”
My eyes bugged out. “What? Why would you ever let me use it? Why would you use it? And why did you toss it into the trash?”
He shrugged. “Don’t give it another second of your time. Now, what were you saying?”
I blinked a few times. It’s not that often that someone so thoroughly surprises me. “What?”
“What were you saying?” Andre repeated. “It sounded like you were in the middle of making a point.”
“Uh, oh, I was thinking that the swastika was not a religious symbol, so this guy might not be a religious fanatic after all.” My eyes kept returning to the trashcan.
Andre rubbed his jaw, looking so sexy that I was having trouble focusing. “The swastika is a religious symbol.”
Well damn it all. “So I just broke Benjamin Franklin’s quill for no reason?”
Andre’s mouth twitched. “I think Paris broke his quill before you did.”
I put my head in my hand. “That was a dirty joke, wasn’t it?” Sheesh, men. You’d think by the time they’re 700 years old they’d be over dirty jokes.
“The symbols could mean that the killer is a religious fanatic,” Andre said. “And if that’s so, then the killer is probably associating his murders around the upcoming holiday. Samhain.”
At the mention of Samhain, I thought back to the Hall of Perception. “Could it be the devil?” I asked, remembering his parting words that night. Immediately I discounted the idea; I mean, as far as I knew, the devil didn’t feast on blood the same way vampires did.
Andre gave me a funny look. “The devil is incorporeal for the most part. He often simply doesn’t have the power to physically murder people. But more importantly, to him the body is nothing more a vessel; it can live or die. What he wants is the soul.”
His eyes narrowed. “Why would you even think this is the work of the devil?”
I chewed on a nail, trying to make myself look as innocent as possible. “No reason. The thought just entered my mind is all.”
He studied me. “I don’t think so.”
“Excuse me?”
He looked so put upon that I almost felt bad for him. Almost. “I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself, but I can hear and smell a lie from a mile away.”
“Wait, you can smell a lie?” I asked. “You never told me that.”
“Stop deflecting the conversation Gabrielle. What aren’t you telling me?”
I tried Leanne’s tactic. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Andre stood up, looking menacing. “That’s not a good enough answer.”
Well, so much for that tactic. At least, that’s what I thought to myself. To him I said, “If I don’t want to tell you, then you should respect my wishes.”
“Not when it has to do with the devil.”
Using my index finger, I drew doodles onto the armrest of the office chair I sat in. “When I saw him last night before you met up with me, he told me that he was coming for me on Samhain.”
***
The tick of the grandfather clock was the only thing that broke the silence.
“He’s coming for you on Samhain,” Andre repeated.
I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes.”