According to Raphael, that was Alex Doulos’s date of death. It could be a coincidence, but I highly doubted it.
“She also purchased several vampires out of her stable,” Ghastek volunteered.
“How many can she pilot at once?” Raphael asked.
“Three,” Ghastek said. “Up to four on a good day. Her control becomes shaky after that.”
“Why did she leave?” I asked.
“She became disillusioned. We all seek to attain our goals. Some are willing to wait and others, like Lynn, lose their patience.”
“How would you describe her?”
Ghastek sighed. “Precise, ruthless, single-minded. She was neither liked nor disliked. She did her job well and required little attention.”
“What caused her to leave the People, in your opinion?”
“I don’t know. But it was deeply profound. One doesn’t walk away from fifteen years of hard work without a reason.”
I rose. “Thank you very much for your time.”
Ghastek nodded. “Thank you. When I made the agreement with Kate, I never imagined the restitution would be so easy. Let me see you out.” The vampire moved by the door. “A word of caution: if Lynn Morriss has decided to make her new home in the Scratches, I would advise you to stay away from it. Lynn is a formidable opponent.”
“Do the People plan to take any action against her?”
“No,” Ghastek said with a small smile. “There is no need.”
Outside I hopped into our vehicle, the taint of vampiric magic clinging to me like greasy smoke. “I feel soiled.”
“Like walking into a room after a day of work, falling into bed, and realizing the sheets are covered in cold K-Y jelly,” Raphael said.
I just stared at him.
“With a funky smell,” he added.
My Order conditioning failed me. “Ew.”
Raphael grinned.
“I’m not even going to ask if that’s happened to you.” I started the vehicle. “Has that happened to you?”
“Yes.”
Ew. “Where?”
“In the bouda house.”
Ew!
“I was really tired and you’ve seen that place: everything smells like sex . . .”
“I don’t want to know.” I peeled out of the parking lot.
“So where are we going?”
“To Spider Lynn’s house. We’re going to dig through her trash, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll do some breaking and entering.”
Raphael frowned. “Do you know where she lives?”
“Yes. I memorized the addresses of all the Masters of the Dead in the city. I have a lot of time on my hands.”
He squinted at me, looking remarkably like a gentleman pirate from my favorite romance novels. “What else do you store in your head?”
“This and that. I remember the first thing you ever said to me. You know, when you carried me from the cart into the tub so your mother could fix me.”
“I imagine it was something very romantic,” he said. “Something along the lines of ‘I’ve got you’ or ‘I won’t let you die.’”
“I was bleeding in the bathtub, trying to realign my bones, and my hyena glands voided from the pain. You said, ‘Don’t worry, we have an excellent filtration system.’”
The look on his face was priceless.
“That can’t be the first thing.”
“It was.”
We drove in silence. “About the K-Y,” Raphael said.
“I don’t want to know!’
“Once I washed it out of my hair—”
“Raphael, why are you doing this?”
“I want to make you go ‘Ew’ again.”
“Why in the world would you want to do that?”
“It’s an irrepressible male impulse. It just has to be done. As I was saying, once I washed it out—”
“Raphael!”
“No, wait, you’ll like the next part.”
By the time we reached Spider Lynn’s house, my endurance had been tested to its limits.
Her place was a small ranch-style house, set way back from the road and hidden by a six-foot-tall wooden fence. I opened the trash can. A cloud of rancid stink hit me. Filthy but empty.
Raphael examined the fence, took a running start, and sailed over it, flipping in the air like a vault gymnast. I did it the old-fashioned way: I ran, jumped, gripping the edge, and pulled myself up and over. Raphael pulled out a couple of lock picks and inserted them into the lock. The door clicked and we entered a dark, empty garage. I blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the gloom, and then my night vision kicked in. Some people’s garages resembled a yard sale postbombing. Spider Lynn’s was orderly and precise, a collection of tools and cleaning utensils carefully hung on hooks. The floor was freshly swept. If I had a garage, mine would look just like it.
The door leading from the garage to the house was predictably locked and took ten seconds to be sprung by Raphael. Inside was an upscale suburban kitchen with stainless steel appliances and brand-new furniture. Perfectly clean sink. No odor of rot from the garbage disposal.
The scent signatures were old. She hadn’t been in the house for two days, at least.
“Interesting,” Raphael said.
I came to stand by him.
A large dent marred the living room wall just below a painting of some geometric shapes. A stain spread about it. Below, shards of broken glass glinted, weakly catching the daylight from the windows, among shriveled green stems. Someone had thrown a vase against the wall.
“How tall is she?” Raphael asked.
“Two inches taller than me.”
“It might have been her then. I’d hit a lot higher.”
We look at the stain. “She was angry,” I said.
“Very.”
“Not a lover.”
Raphael nodded. “White flowers.”
I inhaled, sorting the pollen aroma: barely noticeable scent of white lilies, light perfume of carnations, sweet fragrance of snapdragons, dryness of baby’s breath . . .
“Sympathy arrangement,” we both said at the same time.
I crouched by the pile of stems and dug through it. My fingers slid against a damp rectangle. I pulled it free: a small card with a logo, a snake coiling around a wineglass. The letters under it said, “Bright Light Hospital, Thaumaturgy College of Atlanta.”
I opened the card and read it out loud. “I am so sorry. Ben Rodney, MD, CMM.” Doctor of Medicine and Certified Medical Mage.