Had the transcript that had been sent to the Toland police mentioned finding the jewels inside the bear?
A strange thought bubbled up.
Was Scaffoldon wondering if the terra indigene were staring at him with such focused attention because of what he was saying or because they were thinking about dinner?
Scaffoldon ran out of questions about the same time the novelty of being the center of so much adult attention wore off for Lizzy. In another minute, she would start pestering or pouting, sure that whatever Sarah and Robert were doing at A Little Bite was much more exciting than talking to police officers.
Scaffoldon couldn’t read Lizzy’s signals, but apparently Vlad could.
“I think that covers everything, don’t you?” Vlad asked, looking at Stavros.
“Everything,” Stavros agreed with a chilling smile directed right at Scaffoldon.
“Mr. Denby,” Vlad said. “If you and Nathan could escort the Lizzy to A Little Bite, she can join the other children for a snack.”
Pete looked at Monty and Burke before putting his notepad and pen back in his briefcase. “Sure.”
Man, Wolf, and child left the conference room.
Burke slapped his hands on the table. “Now that that’s settled . . .”
“Nothing is settled,” Scaffoldon snapped. “The child needs to be returned to Toland and her family. She’s a witness.”
“To what, exactly?” Stavros asked. “As she just told you, she didn’t see who hurt her mother, and she’s already answered all of your questions. At least, she answered the questions you chose to ask.”
“Meaning what?”
“I, too, have a few questions. Not for the child, but for you.”
Scaffoldon went so pale, Monty wondered if the man would faint.
“I don’t have to say anything to you,” Scaffoldon said.
“Which says everything I needed to hear.” Stavros stared at Scaffoldon. “There is no reason for you to return to Lakeside. There is no reason for you, or anyone you work with, to speak with the child again. If you stay focused on her, the Sanguinati are going to become focused on you. And your associates.”
Oh gods, Monty thought, noticing the color draining from Burke’s face while Scaffoldon’s face filled with dark fury. Is Stavros threatening to have the Sanguinati square off against the Toland police force?
Getting to his feet, Scaffoldon looked at Burke and didn’t try to hide his animosity. “You’re backing the wrong side.”
“No, I’m not,” Burke replied.
“I’ll escort Captain Scaffoldon to his car and see him out of the Courtyard,” Elliot said, opening the conference room door in a silent command.
Giving all of them one last look, Scaffoldon walked out.
“Mr. Wolfgard.” Burke fished his car keys out of his pocket. “Captain Scaffoldon needs the box of evidence that is stored in the trunk of my car. Since he won’t be returning to Lakeside, we wouldn’t want him to leave without it.”
Elliot took the keys and walked out, and that left two vampires and two cops in the room.
Vlad looked at Burke and smiled. Burke, regaining some color in his face, returned the smile.
Monty breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Then he looked at Stavros. “Would the Sanguinati really attack the Toland police force?”
Stavros looked surprised. “Why would we? They have not provided sufficient provocation for such a decision.”
“You said you would focus on Scaffoldon and his associates.”
“I wasn’t referring to the police. Not all the police,” Stavros amended.
Burke nodded. “Humans First and Last movement.”
Stavros turned to Vlad. “Why did you and Captain Burke find that human’s departure amusing?”
Vlad smiled, showing a hint of fang. “Because he’s scurrying back to Toland with a battered toy bear he was sent to retrieve.”
“Why?”
“Because that bear has a bag of jewels hidden inside it,” Monty said, reminded of the most likely reason that Elayne was dead and Lizzy had been in danger.
“Ah.” Stavros gave Vlad a curious look. “Is that why Grandfather Erebus waved away any discussion of jewels yesterday? Because he was allowing the gems to be returned to Toland, despite . . .” He stopped, then studied Vlad and Burke.
“Where would a young girl get a bag of gemstones?” Burke said. “It’s more likely that she was pretending to be a jewel thief or some other such thing that she’d seen in a movie and had stashed a bag of colored glass inside her partner in crime.”
Stavros looked delighted. “Colored glass?”
“Such pretty colors,” Vlad murmured. “Blues and greens and ruby red.”
Stavros laughed, long and loud.
Monty felt queasy. “When the HFL find out . . .”
“The Wolves tore off an arm and a leg, but the bear’s torso was untouched,” Burke said. “Scaffoldon didn’t say one word, didn’t ask one question about jewels. He has no reason to think we found them. That being the case, he certainly wasn’t going to tell me about them.”
“Especially since there have been many reports of jewelry being stolen from the Toland elite,” Stavros said. “And news reports have droned on about a couple of jewelry stores also being robbed. Humans were trying to blame the Crowgard, which is ridiculous. If an earring or a ring is dropped on the sidewalk that borders the Courtyard, a Crow won’t resist claiming it. But they don’t go into human houses and steal—and they don’t remove the gems from a piece of jewelry and discard the setting.”
“The police have no leads?” Burke asked blandly.
“The police investigating the thefts all wear little HFL pins on their lapels. So do the humans who were robbed. So do the owners of the jewelry stores that reported the theft of loose gems.”
“Elayne might have been caught up in the glamour of being with Nicholas Scratch and rubbing elbows with society people who wouldn’t have acknowledged her otherwise, but she would not have stooped to stealing jewels, and she certainly wouldn’t have put Lizzy at risk by hiding them in Boo Bear,” Monty said hotly.
Vlad leaned forward and said gently, “She found the secret, and she tried to run. They had to stop her.”
He rubbed his face, suddenly tired. “She should have left the jewels. Dropped them in a closet, scattered them over the floor so someone would waste time finding them.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. She still had the secret. So did the Lizzy.”
“Unlike the Toland police, we don’t think anything has been stolen.” Stavros pitched his voice to be low and soothing. “We think these were arranged . . . donations . . . for the HFL movement.”
“With the added benefit of pointing a finger at the Crows and feeding the animosity growing between humans and terra indigene,” Burke said.
“Exactly.”
Sickroom voices, Monty thought. Do they think I can’t, or won’t, handle the truth, whatever it may be?
“Someone should question Leo Borden,” he said. He couldn’t picture Leo being able to pull off a jewel heist, but he could see the man as a courier—and he could easily imagine Leo thinking that Boo Bear would be a good hiding place for a fortune in gemstones. After all, who would look for them in a child’s toy, especially a child living under the same roof as Nicholas Scratch?
She doesn’t have anything else Scaffoldon or Scratch would want, so Lizzy is safe now, Monty thought. The father wanted to believe it. The cop knew it wasn’t true, could feel it wasn’t true.
“What will happen when the HFL discovers the gems Scaffoldon brought back are fakes?” he asked.
“I believe you humans call it a domino effect,” Stavros replied as Elliot slipped back into the room. “Which brings me to the reason I came to Lakeside. I will, of course, talk to Simon directly, but Grandfather Erebus decided select humans as well as the terra indigene should be prepared.”
“Gods above and below,” Burke muttered. “Prepared for what?”
“According to humans, Toland is Thaisia’s center of commerce,” Stavros said. “Many ships dock there, and a great flow of goods comes into the city from other parts of the world. Just as great a flow of goods goes out.”
“Do terra indigene ships also dock there?”
“No. We have other harbors for our little ships, harbors we share with the Intuits.”
A sharpness in the words made Monty wonder if there had been trouble in the past: fights, sabotage, other kinds of incidents that had encouraged the Others to keep their distance.
“Our ships don’t dock in the Toland port, but we still pay close attention to what comes into Thaisia . . . and what goes out.”
Monty wondered if the weight suddenly clinging to his bones was a feeling of dread.
“What is going out?” Burke finally asked.
“The Crowgard can probably tell you more than the Sanguinati since they like to poke around in everything, and my kin tend to visit the area around the docks at night,” Stavros said. “I can tell you that ships coming in from Brittania aren’t receiving all the cargo they expected to load, but they’re still being charged for the full amount. Any captain who protests is threatened with being struck off the trade list.”
“What happens to the cargo that isn’t loaded?” Monty asked.
“We noticed that ships bound for the Cel-Romano Alliance of Nations are now loaded late at night when there are fewer observers. We suspect the cargo that is held back from Brittanian merchant ships finds its way into the holds of Cel-Romano ships.”
“Another form of piracy,” Burke muttered. “With your permission, I’d like to have a quiet word with a cousin of mine. He’s a police officer in Brittania, and he keeps me informed of rumors coming out of Cel-Romano.”
“Would he also be willing to use his influence to provide discreet assistance?” Stavros asked.
Burke stared at the vampire for several heartbeats. “I think that would depend on what he was asked to do.”
“Very soon, a storm in the Atlantik will blow a Cel-Romano ship off course. It will run aground off the coast of Wild Brittania and everything will be lost.”
“Including the crew?”
“Oh, especially the crew, since it was the Sharkgard who passed the message along to the Sanguinati with the understanding that that bounty will be shared.” Stavros smiled, showing his fangs. “However, the ship will run aground in such a way that the cargo, and the ship itself, will not be damaged and can be claimed as salvage, divided equally between the humans who assist and the terra indigene. With one exception, which is where your cousin, the Brittania police officer, would come in. As that particular ship was loaded the other night, the Sanguinati who were watching heard some of the boxes crying—boxes with air holes.”
Monty braced his hands on the table. “You think they’re shipping humans to Cel-Romano?”
“We think they’re shipping cassandra sangue. Cargo worth thrice its weight in gold,” Stavros said. “Especially to leaders of the Humans First and Last movement.” He looked at Vlad, his eyes full of unnerving sympathy. “Those girls . . . Most are not like your Meg. At least, not the ones who are already addicted to cutting. They don’t want the challenge of having a life. Many have found another way to be sheltered.”
“Prostitution?” Burke asked, his voice stripped of emotion.
“Of a sort. A few prime establishments have sprung up in Toland. Or rather, the same establishments are now calling themselves by a different name. The blood prophets are now paid for each cut. They are pampered, indulged, and want for nothing—as long as they can pay for the care they receive.”
“But they’re still being used,” Monty protested.
“A girl provides the service she was hired, and paid, to provide,” Stavros said. “No coercion, no talk of ownership, benevolent or otherwise. The transition was done so smoothly, and so quickly, we suspect the men who run the establishments had warning that this might happen, even if they didn’t know what would start the chain of events.” He paused. “The girls in those establishments . . . Being there is their choice, and since they are on land that is currently under human control, we will not interfere with them. But the girls who were packaged like cargo . . . Humans have no say when they enter Ocean’s domain.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Burke said, “When that ship goes aground, what is my cousin supposed to do with the girls?”
“That is something the humans in Brittania must decide,” Stavros said. “But the message I was asked to convey is this: Ocean will not be pleased with Brittania’s humans if those girls end up in Cel-Romano.”