Blood Games (Chicagoland Vampires 10)

I snapped awake, sat up, reached out for the phone that threatened to vibrate its way across the nightstand. My grandfather’s name flashed on the screen, which made my heart jump uncomfortably.

“Hello?”

“I’m sorry for the rude awakening,” he said.

“It’s okay. I’m awake. Is everything all right?”

“With us, yes. With Mitzy Burrows, no. We’ve found her body.”

“Damn it,” I muttered, then apologized for cursing, which would have earned me a stern look. “Where?”

“The south garden at the Art Institute.” That was downtown, in the middle of Chicago’s business sector and the area known as the Loop.

“All right. I’ll meet you there. Forty minutes or so, depending on traffic.”

“We’ll see you,” my grandfather said, and the line went dead.

“Could I have one night without calamity?” I asked, putting the phone back on the nightstand and pulling a pillow over my face.

The bed shifted, and Ethan lifted the pillow away. “Not for a Sentinel sworn to uphold justice.”

“I don’t think I swore to that. Although I did swear to protect the House against all creatures living or dead. What’s up with that?”

Ethan rose, pushed his hair back. “Ghosts, poltergeists, your greater and lesser banshees.”

“Those things don’t exist.”

His look was flat. “You know better, Sentinel. Another tarot death?”

“Mitzy Burrows.”

Ethan grimaced. “Wasn’t she your prime suspect?”

“She was. And if the killer’s still using the tarot, she’d be the Four of Wands or Four of Cups. She’s at the Art Institute—with my grandfather.”

“I’ll go with you.”

I glanced up at him. “Don’t you want to stay here, wait to hear about the vote?”

He stretched his arms over his head, bent slightly at the waist as if loosening up for another run. “The message will come to me. If it’s bad news, I’d just as soon hear about it outside the House. I need to go. I need a distraction, and I haven’t been much help in this investigation so far.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I’m driving.”

* * *

Ethan drove.

Apparently, a man who’d been through two nights of rigorous psychological and physical testing deserved a night behind the wheel of his Ferrari.

I could hardly argue with that, mostly because it would have made me look bad. So I sucked it up.

Ethan gave Luc our itinerary, and I sent Jonah a message advising him of the murder, promising to stay in touch. He wished Ethan luck and asked me to give him an update if the GP got in touch. I guessed that request was equally motivated by personal curiosity, House curiosity, and RG curiosity. If Ethan won, there seemed little doubt the RG would have more questions, especially about my loyalty.

The Art Institute of Chicago took up a prime spot on Michigan Avenue. We parked a few blocks away, then locked the car and set out for the park on foot.

The building was one of the city’s most famous landmarks, the classical architecture marked by columns and two giant stone lions that guarded the door. When I was younger, I’d stare at the lions, totally transfixed, wishing they’d come to life like twin Aslans.

I’d also spent plenty of time inside the building, staring at paintings and sculpture, obsessing over the museum’s collection of miniature rooms, and imagining myself a tiny denizen.

None of the tales I’d spun featured vampires, sparkling or otherwise. But there might have been pirates.

We walked past the lions, heads nobly pointed toward the sky. Ethan reached up and rubbed a hand along one’s leg, as if for good luck—or to ward off bad juju.

The sculpture garden was on the north side of the building, and half the park was boxed by lumber and clear plastic. That something had happened was obvious. Cops were parked on the street, their lights flashing. My grandfather stood on the sidewalk with Catcher, who nodded as we approached.

“Construction?” I wondered, gesturing toward what looked like temporary cover.

“Closed for a couple of weeks while they replace the concrete. They don’t want people initialing it in the meantime.” He gestured with his cane to a make-do door in the construction wrapping, and we walked inside.

Once again, temporary lights had been set up inside the barrier. The light bouncing off the plastic gave the garden an ethereal glow.

Cops and forensic folks were sprinkled around the park, looking for evidence, measuring, taking photographs. Detective Jacobs, looking drawn, and Detective Stowe talked to a construction worker who held his hard hat with white-knuckled fingers. His face looked equally bloodless. Perhaps he’d discovered the body.

We followed my grandfather to the park’s water feature, a long rectangular pool of water topped by a circular fountain. An enormous pedestal emerged from it, topped by five bronze figures. The lowest figure reached out, her eyes closed, toward the body that lay at her feet.

That body wasn’t sculpture, but very human.

Mitzy Burrows was propped beside the fountain, legs curled beneath her, one arm in her lap, the hand holding a golden cup marked by a blue cross. She wore a white dress; her feet were bare but, like the rest of her body, swollen with decay.

Her other arm lay across the edge of the fountain, and her head rested on it, as if she gazed longingly into the water. Both of her wrists had been cut, and blood stained the concrete around her and the water that pooled in the fountain. The scent of death was lifted by the breeze, and I used every bit of control to block it out.

“This isn’t the Four of Cups.” I looked at my grandfather. “I’ve seen that card, and this isn’t it. So this death doesn’t match the pattern. Two of Swords. Three of Pentacles. Four of Cups.”

“It’s not the Four of Cups,” my grandfather agreed. “But she wasn’t killed today. She was killed a week ago.”

I looked back at the body, the single cup. She may have been our best lead, but she’d never been our killer. “She was killed first, and she started it all. The Ace of Cups?”

Catcher swiped at his phone, scanned, then passed it over. The card he’d pulled up was remarkably identical—a woman in a white toga-style gown beside a circular fountain, cup in hand, fingers trailing in the water.

“How did no one find her?” Ethan asked.

“Dumb luck,” my grandfather said. “The concrete’s been curing, and the workers haven’t been on the site in a few days. No one saw her until tonight.” He gestured toward Detective Jacobs and the others. “The construction manager got word vandals were cutting through the plastic, so he came out to have a look.”