Killer's Gambit (Psychic For Hire 3)

“Did Leone ever speak about Rodrigge Ronin or his girlfriend Marielle?”

“A little. She didn't like them. She thought Rodrigge was pathetic. I think she hated Marielle. Maybe she was scared of her. It was her own fault. Leonie had goaded her. She once said she’d flirted with Rodrigge to make Marielle mad. It wasn’t like her. That place changed her.”

I questioned Darya further, but she was unable to tell me anything specific about why Leonie had not liked Rodrigge and Marielle.

“Did Constance ever call you with concerns about Leonie? Did she tell you anything about Leonie’s life?”

“No,” Darya hissed angrily. “That woman knew that I never liked her. Why would I want to speak with a vampire’s blood slave? What sort of woman allows herself to be used like that? It’s disgusting.”

“Do you know where I can find Constance now?”

Daria gave a wild shout of laughter. “God knows where she ran off too. That woman is the reason why Leonie is dead. I wish it had been her. I hope she’s burning in hell.”

Chapter 19

DIANA

I went home feeling as crap as my current mood allowed me to feel. Ever since Theo had worked his magic, my sunshiny light-heartedness had prevented me from ever feeling really low. It was shielding me from feeling the true depth of what I ought to be feeling, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t a good thing even though the mood prevented me from dwelling on worrying about it.

By the time I got back to my one bedroom apartment, by which I mean one bedroom which had everything I needed in it bar a toilet, I had decided that I should be grateful for the mood. Without it I would have felt pretty friendless and low right now. Downright lonely, probably. Not far off Darya Palmer’s mood for the past six years. Or maybe longer, since it had been nine years since her husband died and daughter Leonie had left home. What must it have felt like to lose her entire family in one swoop? Perhaps she’d hoped that Leonie would come back one day. Instead Leone had died a horrible death.

It was a good thing I hadn’t told Darya that I had been acting on behalf of Steffane in an attempt to free him. I imagined that would have been one torment too far for Darya. The idea is that Steffane Ronin might be free one day would probably drive her over the edge. It was a mercy for her not to know. And I was sure that Steffane Ronin must not give a damn about Leonie’s mother. Surely after he was free, he had no reason to waste his time going after her? I certainly hoped not.

Something about my interview with Darya Palmer was nagging at me. I couldn’t figure out what it was. Everything that she had told me had had the ring of truth to it, and yet something was off. Maybe she was cuckoo. Maybe living alone all those years had sent her off the rails. After all, she had thought that the vampires had conspired to kill her husband when the poor man had only died in a car crash. This meant that her perception of reality was off, and everything she told me could be totally useless.

AngelBeastie had not been waiting for me outside of my building, which meant she was probably still at Grimshaw’s. Sometimes she spent the night there, keeping little Mozz company. I was glad that at least my cat had friends, although the apartment felt empty without her and I wished that she had chosen me tonight instead.

I made myself a lonesome dinner of cheese on toast and ate it while

tormenting myself with the fact that Constance Ashbeck seemed to have disappeared off the face of the planet. My google searching as I ate revealed no fresh insight into her whereabouts. She could have gone to Otherworld as far as I knew, and far out of my reach. If Storm had decided to help me, maybe we could have tracked down using Agency resources. But alone, there was no way for me to find out. I was at a dead end.

I finished my toast and paced up and down my one room, unable to stay still. I couldn’t be at a dead end. I wouldn’t allow myself to be at a dead end. And yet I was.

Constance Ashbeck was the only person left for me to speak to. I had a feeling that she knew a great many things of interest. Constance Ashbeck was the key to solving this case. Why else would the woman have disappeared, if she didn’t know something?

Was she scared? Was she afraid that one of the Ronins would come after her? And if so, which one?

My phone buzzed with a message, making my heart leap. I snatched it up, hoping it might be Storm. It wasn’t. It was only Finch telling me that he had visited the Petrichor club and spent hours interviewing the customers, but no one remembered ever seeing Zezi. It was just more bad news.

I briefly thought about dialing Finch, needing someone to talk to, but I doubted he would want to talk to me about my efforts to free a vampire from jail. Not when he was so busy trying to track down his long lost love. And he did love her. I had no doubt about that. It made me feel kind of lonely, knowing that I had never been the subject of that much wanting and desire. Nobody loved me. Certainly not Storm.

Nobody in my life cared about my current quandary. I had no one. Storm and Remi and Monroe and Leo would have cared if their hands hadn’t been tied. I should have found some way of persuading them this case was looking worth looking into instead of walking out. They had been hunting DCK for years. They cared. There were the ones I wanted to talk to right now. Given the way I had walked out on them, I doubted any of them would want to speak to me ever again.

I stopped my restless prowling only when I caught a glimpse of myself in my mirror. I looked like an insane person. And maybe I was. Driven insane by this desire to catch the Devil Claw and to kill him. My navelstone had mercifully stopped vibrating. My navelstone that might not even be a navelstone.

I lifted up my T-shirt until I could see it. I had always hated looking at it, as if confronting it meant that I had to confront the idea of what I really was. The stone was a black shiny rock, like a large gemstone, stuck slap bang in the center of my navel. It was fused to my flesh. Grimacing, I used a finger to explore the edges of it. Yep, still fused to my flesh.

And yet, for a short while yesterday it had not been. I was pretty sure of that. Because the sword that had so briefly and magically appeared in my hand had had a black stone at the very end of it in. A black glittering stone that had looked exactly like my navelstone. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but I had known it afterwards when I had come home and examined the stone in the mirror.

But I’m sure there isn’t a goddamn sword buried inside me. That sword had been long enough to have gone right through me and come out the other side. So where the hell had it come from? Was it a sword or a navelstone? Had the navelstone been still there in my belly while the sword had been in my hand?

I gripped the edges of the stone with my fingernails and tugged it. A sharp and deep pain made me grimace. I persevered, and yanked at the thing, my face contorted with agony. Several minutes later I accepted the fact that it was not going to work; the thing was not going to come out. So why the hell had it come out of its own accord? If it had come out of its own accord. If I hadn’t imagined the damn thing.

I couldn’t have imagined it. Finch had seen the sword. As had Rodrigge and Marielle Ronin.

So what did the sword mean? Did it mean that I was the killer that I thought I was? Such a natural born killer that I came with my own goddamn sword?

I worked late into the night searching on the internet, digging up any piece of information I could find about Darya Palmer, and Constance, Joshua and Leonie Asbeck, hoping that some part of their lives that might lead me to where Constance was now. My search was futile. I went to bed feeling even more frustrated than I had been when I’d begun. Frustrated and fine, because naturally my mood wasn’t going to allow me to feel anything but okay.