I took in a breath and let it out slowly, hoping my heartbeat didn’t send anything tumbling.
Rossi sat on the couch, his back toward me so that I only saw his dark hair and wide shoulders.
“I need to speak with you,” I said.
“I know.”
I walked over to him, my feet falling as quietly as I could manage, the slightest rattle of glass and shell brushing the air with each step. When I rounded the couch, I could see what Rossi was looking at.
Sven Rossi lay upon a glass table in front of the couch. The glass table beneath him was low to the ground but both long and wide enough to hold him. It seemed to be the only sturdy thing in the room.
Sven was naked, a white satin sheet draped over his hips. The designs drawn in blood across his pale chest seemed too loud in the room, a gory shout against the silence of the artistic carved shells that surrounded us.
“What is on your mind, Delaney?” Old Rossi’s voice was toneless and soft, as if his words were sifting down from a long distance.
I tore my gaze away from Sven’s still form, shoving aside my sorrow. I hadn’t known Sven for long, but I’d liked him. To see him here, dead—totally dead and not just sort of undead—made me realize I’d miss him.
“Do you know how this happened?” I asked.
“Bullet to the head.”
“That doesn’t kill a vampire.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“So how did he die?”
“Ichor techne.”
“Is that a kind of poison?”
For the first time since I’d entered the room, Old Rossi’s eyes flicked up to meet mine. I gasped, then felt stupid for letting him see my reaction.
His eyes were red, deep heart-blood irises swimming in eyes gone black. A vampire hunting might have red eyes. A vampire starving might have black. But a vampire with red and black eyes was either a breath away from hellish, vengeful violence, or insanity.
I had never seen red and black eyes. Never seen the devil so near.
“It is an art.” His voice was barely more than a hiss, a whisper of breath across tongue. “A very old blood art.”
“Art kills vampires?” My heart pumped so fast and strong, I felt like my entire body was shaking. Instinct told me to run, hide, flee, but I knew that would be the fastest way to feel fangs sinking into my throat.
Old Rossi’s gaze fixed on my throat, where I knew my heartbeat fluttered.
I didn’t know if it was the fear, or just a brain glitch, but I couldn’t stop the next words from falling from my mouth. “That would explain your interior decorating choices.”
His gaze snapped up to lock on mine. Then his eyebrow slowly rose.
“Are you insulting my interior decorating tastes?”
“On purpose?”
He waited
“Yes?” I said.
Oh, dear gods. Why had I been honest? I didn’t usually insult people when they were about to kill me. There was no denying that Mr. Devil and Darkness over there was a breath away from killing something. Probably a nervous police chief who was dripping rain on his wooden floor.
He blinked, and a wash of black faded to gray, the red to a ruddy amber. “I have impeccable taste.”
He sounded offended.
He looked offended.
Offended was better than deadly.
“Says the man with a room full of eggs in boxes.”
I resisted the urge to slap my hand over my mouth. His look of offense shifted to surprise.
“They are rare and valuable and beautiful and represent the fragility of life in balance with the universe.”
He was right. They were beautiful. I opened my mouth to tell him I agreed with him, but he was on a roll.
“And furthermore, I went to great time and expense to wring as much ambient light and good vibes as possible out of this room and the entire house. The flow of chi in this place would register as a Category 5 hurricane. I not only have taste, it’s good taste. For the eye and the soul.”
This is where I didn’t ask if vampires had souls. Certain creatures and deities in town would probably have an answer for that, and every one of them would be different.
So instead I said, “You know who else keeps eggs in boxes? Chickens.” I held his gaze and hoped I got a smile out of him.
Old Rossi inhaled a breath and sort of choked on it as he laughed. “Reeds. Un-fucking-flappable.” He finished half-laughing half-coughing, then eased back into the cushions of the couch. “I thought your father was droll.”
It was nice to see him relax out of his pounce and devour stance. Did wonders for my blood pressure.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said, gesturing toward Sven.
Black washed over his eyes, was gone in a blink. “No more so than I.” He waved one long, sturdy-fingered hand toward the loveseat to his left.
I walked around the dead body and took a seat. Not because I relished sitting down with a dead guy spread out in front of me like some macabre table cloth, but because my knees were threatening to buckle.
Adrenalin and seeing my own imminent death did that to a girl.
“Tell me what you see.” He was back to staring at Sven.
I reluctantly studied the body again. “He’s been shot in the head. I don’t see any other visible wounds. No other sign of struggle or bruising.”
“Is that all you see?”
“Other than the weird symbols in blood on his chest, yes.”
Rossi shifted his head. “You see that.”
“Who could miss it?” Red symbols on Sven’s pale skin was like blood on snow.
There was a soft knock on the door.
“Come in, Ben.”
Ben Rossi was one of Ordinary’s firefighters. He was a nice guy, currently dating Jame Wolfe who was also a firefighter and a werewolf. They’d moved in together a couple months back, and had thrown a big housewarming party where they invited all their relatives.
They wisely had invited me and my sisters to help maintain the peace at the party.
Vampires and werewolves did not get along, but here in Ordinary, Old Rossi and Granny Wolfe worked to keep the animosity to as low a level as possible.
The smile on Ben’s handsome face twisted into a grimace. His eyes scanned the room, looking anywhere but at Sven. “You wanted to see me?” His voice sounded strained, thin.
“Step into the room, please.”
Ben did as he was told, but I could tell he didn’t like it. He stopped as far away from the coffee table with the corpse as he could and faced Rossi.
“I’m sorry to ask this of you, Ben, but I need you to tell me what you see on my coffee table.” There was a hint of power in Old Rossi’s words, a weight that exerted pressure on Ben.
Ben’s eyes met mine briefly—a shadow of fear, of revulsion—before he turned to Sven.
Ben blinked hard several times, and squinted as if he was trying to stare into the sun.
“Sven is lying there.” Ben’s words were clipped, breathless. “He is dead.”
“Yes. Good.” The weight of Rossi’s words increased. “Tell me how he was killed.”
Ben was panting. A trickle of sweat glistened at his temple, another at the curve of his throat. He swallowed, blinked hard again, as if trying to bring an impossible thing into focus.
“Silver bullet. One. Through the brain.”
“What else?” Two words that made my ears feel like they needed to pop.