Ashe.
According to the information scribbled on the graffitied desk I sat in front of, Detective Nuyen liked ball. Just one, apparently. That had been written in black ink along the edge, and then carved all through it were the letters A-S-K over and over.
Nah. I was in enough trouble without asking, but I traced the message again and again, avoiding looking up from it. Every time I did, the walls pressed in and threatened to crush me into nothing but blood and bone and just as Fucked as I was now.
I’d never had the pleasure of seeing the inside of a human jail before, but I imagined it was a lot like this vampire-proof one. Peeling paint along the walls, tile floors that were so uneven they’d make you face-plant every two steps if you weren’t careful, and reeking of desperation and someone’s spoiled leftovers in the corner trash. I imagined the only differences were the pure silver doors and heavy window coverings that blocked out all light.
Well, almost all light.
I rubbed the red singe mark on my arm that had only just stopped sizzling a few hours ago. A smug officer had led me right through the thin shaft of light slanting through on the way to this room and didn’t appear to give two fucks about my little sun allergy.
The door to the interview room burst open, and in walked a tall, husky vampire with hardly any eyebrows and even less hair on his head. He wore a blue suit, tie, and matching gloves with which to latch the silver door. His yellow eyes flashed when he turned them on me, tilted upward and cat-like.
Detective Nuyen, I guessed, and no, he didn’t like ball. Sometimes you can just tell, no asking required.
“Ashe Jensen,” he barked and slapped down a tan file folder on the table in front of me.
I wished I could be literally anyone else. My stomach shifted at how badly I wished that, and at how empty it had become. I was used to looking and acting like I belonged anywhere, faking it until I made it, but here? I had to get out.
“No. Sorry,” I said. “Try next door?”
Not even a crack as he settled himself in the metal chair across from me. It was worth a shot.
“Your attorney, Mr. Phillips, is on his way,” he said.
I didn’t have an attorney, not one I could afford anyway, so one had been provided for me. I imagined the worst.
A knock sounded on the door, then an officer let in a madman in a brown suit, his white hair flying in all directions behind him. He clutched his briefcase to his chest like it contained the last fresh blood supply in the world, and judging from the way his yellow eyes bugged, I would bet he hadn’t blinked in years. And his fly was undone.
Yep. Worst. I was so screwed.
“Have you said anything?” he demanded.
“Not—”
“Don’t!”
I didn’t.
He poured himself into the chair next to mine, dropping his briefcase to the floor. What sounded like glass bottles rattled from the inside. Either it really was the last fresh blood supply in the world, or my lawyer had brought his own bar.
“Now then,” Detective Nuyen said. “Let’s talk about what happened last night.”
“These are outrageous charges.” Mr. Phillips fished out a notebook and pen from inside his jacket, then leaned toward me with a lowered voice. “Did you do it?”
“No.”
“That makes my job a hell of a lot easier.” He readied himself to take notes on what I was about to say.
The problem was I didn’t know where to begin, or how much the police already knew. One of them had mentioned a search warrant of my apartment, but there was nothing there that linked me to Devin. The fact that I’d been sitting here for hours stewing in my own guilt even though I hadn’t done anything obviously wasn’t a good sign, but I hadn’t done anything wrong. If I could spin my story to where I hadn’t even thought about doing something wrong, then maybe there was some small chance I could walk out of here. Someday. Eventually.
Detective Nuyen looked at me closely, the fluorescents above his bald head filling the natural dips of his skull. “Where were you between the hours of nine o’clock and midnight last night?”
“Don’t answer that,” Mr. Phillips ordered.
Not answering made me look guilty, and I wasn’t. Not really. I shifted in my chair and shuffled my silver-chained feet, my chest feeling too tight like I’d forgotten to draw a breath for the last thirty years. The police had found my bloodied tux in the plastic bag at my sister’s apartment and had likely seen my face on the security cameras at the hotel, so there was no sense in lying about that part. I just had to spin it right.
“I was at a party with about fifty other people,” I said. “At Hotel Enigma’s penthouse.”
“Who were you invited by?” Detective Nuyen asked.
Mr. Phillips clicked his pen as fast as I fidgeted my feet. “You don’t have to answer.”
I shrugged. “A friend of a friend.”
“Had you met Devin Tallerson, the owner of the penthouse, before?” the detective asked.
At hearing his name, fury from that night six years ago blasted through me once again, squeezing my fists into tight balls. He had broken Jessica’s nose so it sat crooked on her face before her vampire healing had kicked in. How could anyone do that, especially to my sister? Despite her being older and tougher, my sister was still a breakable, little thing.
Mr. Phillips shook his head at me, a warning.
“Yes,” I grinded out. “I knew him.”
“Were you aware that Devin practiced mithridatism?”
Mr. Phillips rocked back into his chair, his jaw lying in his lap. The pen flew from his fingers and dropped at my chained feet.
My skin prickled as I glanced between the two of them. Mithridatism? I shook my head. “I don’t even know what that is.”
Detective Nuyen’s yellow eyes fixed on me, reading every movement as I bent to retrieve Mr. Phillips’s pen. “Over the years, Devin poisoned himself daily in small, non-lethal doses of silver and holy water to protect himself, to become immune to their effects.”
His words shocked over me like a deep, arctic wave. No. No, I hadn’t known that. How would I? If I had known, I wouldn’t have planned on killing him with the vial of pure liquid silver I’d dumped into his glass of blood in his bedroom. He’d never had a chance to drink it.
“Who would do something like that?” I asked.
Detective Nuyen leaned forward. “Someone who thought others were out to get him.”
There had been others, and not just me. You couldn’t shoot yourself through the heart in small, non-lethal doses to become immune to it, and that was how I’d found him. What was left of him anyway since he’d been a pile of goo. I’d found the silver shell casing. So who else had wanted him dead? And why?
“The experts say that mithridatism can change people the longer it’s utilized, make them even more paranoid and increasingly violent over the years.” The detective brought out a picture from the tan file folder and placed it in front of me. “His paranoia may be what caused him to change his appearance, too.”
I glanced down at the picture of a man, a man who looked nothing like Devin. Different hair, different eyes, different eye shape. Who the hell was this?
“That picture was taken close to ten years ago when Devin Tallerson was hiding out and went by a different name,” the detective said. “Did you ever hear of any episodes where Devin became violent or paranoid?”
So much blood all over my sister’s face. It mixed with her tears and dribbled down on her fuzzy slippers she wore around her apartment, once white like snowballs, and then crimson.
I shook my head, unable to push out a sound around that memory.
“You own a cleaning service called Invite Us In Cleaners and clean up crime scenes on occasion. Is that correct?” Detective Nuyen asked.
My lawyer looked at me, the doubt in his wide eyes scratching at the inside of my skull. “Don’t say a word.”
But it was too late for that, wasn’t it? The detective already knew. I closed my eyes briefly because I knew exactly how this must look. Murder someone and then use my expertise to clean up thoroughly so no one could tell I’d had anything to do with it. But I hadn’t had time to clean up. I’d been too busy getting staked in the lung after I discovered Devin already dead.
The detective ruffled the corner of the folder, a smug smile flashing across his predatory features as if he were cleaning the bird meat from his teeth with one of its bones. “That was quite a bloodstain on your tux we found. What happened there?”
Beyond being stuck at the wrong end of a stake—wielded by a phantom as far as I was concerned—I understood absolutely nothing about that part of my fucked-up night.
My lawyer shook his head and sighed.
Detective Nuyen opened the tan file folder between us and handed Mr. Phillips a paper. “This is the warrant used to search your client’s apartment.” He pushed several photos from the file toward me. “Is this your apartment?”
Stained carpet, piles of wadded-up clothes thrown in the corners, stacks of mail teetering on my coffee table. Yes, it was my apartment, but… My eyes widened as I stared closer at one of the photos.
“What’s that coming out of the bottom of the coffee table?” I asked. It looked like the corner of a holey blanket. Big holes in a pattern shaped like diamonds.
No, not a blanket at all. A silver net I’d never seen before.
A knock sounded at the door, and the detective rose to answer it. “You tell me, Ashe. It’s your apartment, isn’t it?”
“Don’t say a word more,” my lawyer muttered.
The officer outside handed the detective another folder, this one white.
As he strode back to the table, I looked at him straight-on so he could see I was telling him the truth. “That’s not mine. Someone put that there. I don’t own any nets.”
Without sitting, he opened the new folder, his gaze pinned to me. “So you do know what it is.”
He had to be shitting me, or trying to trick me into some kind of confession. Just not the crime I’d been accused of.
I threw my hands up and sat back in the chair. “I know what it is because I just looked at the goddamn picture you showed me.”
“Do you know whose blood is on it?” he asked and waved the white folder in his hands. “I have the report right here.”
“Blood? No.” What the hell were we even talking about now? We’d gone from poisoning to bloody nets, and I had no clue why. “Look, I didn’t kill anyone. There were a bunch of people at that party, and Devin was already a pile of goo in his bedroom when I found him. There weren’t any silver net marks on him, so I don’t know why you’re showing me a net that’s not mine.”
My lawyer cleared his throat. “Mr. Jensen, I strongly urge you to—”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said.
“Were you aware the net has blood all over it?” the detective asked.
So this was what it was like talking to a wall. More like bashing my head against it for shits and giggles and probably some jail time. More than some. Shit.
“How could I be aware of the blood if I’ve never seen the net before?” I asked.
Detective Nuyen lifted an eyebrow as he glanced down at the folder. “Did you know much about Devin’s past other than what I’ve told you?”
I knew enough to want him dead and to never feel sorry about it, especially if it was by my own hand but even if it wasn’t. “No.”
He flipped to the second page in the folder. “About twenty-five years ago, he schmoozed with the upper levels of the Southern Clan society. Upper, upper levels. He was part of the Southern Clan queen’s harem, the last of them alive.”
The same queen who’d vanished and then later turned up murdered. Bronwen was her name, a real beauty, at least she had been when I happened to catch her on VTV, and ruler over the Southern Clan. After she died, her sister took over, and everything went to shit. So was Bronwen’s murder what had triggered Devin to poison himself to become immune to its effects? Because he was afraid someone was going to murder him, too, like the rest of her harem?
I shrugged, completely clueless as to why I was suffering through a history lesson that had little to do with me when there was a strange silver net in my apartment. “I didn’t know that. Good for him, I guess.”
The detective flipped to the third page. “But it didn’t end so good for him, did it?”
That depended on who you asked, I supposed. For Jessica, it was damn good because she’d never have to see the fucker ever again.
A burst of heat shot across my inner wrist, on the other side of where the sun had hit me through the window earlier. What the hell? On top of everything else, was the sun slowly baking through my bones?
A long silence fell over the room, thick and uncomfortable. The only sound was Mr. Phillips’s clicking pen, slowing like a dying heartbeat, as he frowned down at the notes he’d taken. Detective Nuyen stood there unmoving while staring at the third page in the white folder.
Finally, he looked up at me and laid the folder on the table with great care. “It’s also not looking good for you, Ashe. Not at all.”
The solemn note in his voice charged a rush of unease up my spine. “Yeah. I can see that.”
“Can you? Because that silver net in your apartment…” He studied me as he began to pace like I might be able to finish his sentence for him.
I tracked his movements, trying to decipher where he was going with this. No fucking clue.
My inner wrist sizzled again, sharp and painful, but I had other things to worry about besides my baking bones.
“The silver net had trace amounts of blood on it.” His size devoured the room while he paced, seeming to pull in the walls around me. “So I’ll ask again. Do you know whose blood?”
I shook my head. “You’d have to ask whoever planted it there.”
“It’s Bronwen’s, Ashe.” Detective Nuyen stopped and stared me down, the implication in his words like the snick of a lock. “Former Queen Bronwen’s blood is on that net in your apartment. Which means I’ll be charging you for her murder as well.”
Mr. Phillips began talking a mile a minute, but I couldn’t hear anything. I had too many questions, too many impossibilities running through my head, so I just sat there, completely stunned.
Charged for murdering clan royalty and a member of her harem. Two royal murders I didn’t commit. That crime carried the harshest punishment—death. Swift if I were lucky. Prolonged torture if the current queen had anything to do with it.
I needed to get the fuck out of here.