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  When he was finished, the boy was losing his last meal in the corner, an arm wrapped around his ribs. Throwing up with broken ribs sucked: he knew all about that. Linnford’s woman was secured. Stella had a hand over her mouth as if to prevent herself from imitating Devonte. When she pulled her eyes away from the vampire’s severed head and looked at him, he saw horror.

  He felt the blood dripping from his jaws—and couldn’t face her any longer. Couldn’t stay while horror turned to fear of him. He didn’t look at his daughter again as he ran away for the first time in his long life.

  When he could, he changed back to human at the home of the local werewolf pack. They let him shower, and gave him a pair of sweats—the universal answer to the common problem of changing back to human and not having clothes to put back on.

  He called his oldest son to make sure that Stella had called him and that he had handled the cleanup. She had remembered, and Clive was proceeding with his usual thoroughness.

  Linnford was about to have a terrible car wreck. The vampire’s body, both parts of it, were scheduled for immediate incineration. The biggest problem was what to do with Linnford’s wife. For the moment she seemed to be too traumatized to talk. Maybe the vampire’s death had broken her—or maybe she’d come around. Either way, she’d need help, discreet help from people who knew how to tell the difference between the victim of a vampire and a minion and would treat her accordingly.

  David made a few calls, and got the number of a very private sanitarium run by a small, very secret government agency. The price wasn’t bad—all he had to do was rescue some missionary who was related to a high-level politician. The fool had managed to get kidnapped with his wife and two young children. David’s team would still get paid, and he’d probably have taken the assignment anyway.

  By the time he called Clive back, his sons had located a few missing hospital personnel and the cop who’d been guarding the door. David heard the relief in Clive’s voice: Jorge was apparently a friend. None of the recovered people seemed to be hurt, though they had no idea why they were all in the basement.

  David hung up and turned off his cell phone. Accepting the offer of a bedroom from the pack Alpha, David took his tired body to bed and slept.

  Christmas day was coming to a close when David drove his rental to his son’s house—friends had picked it up from the hospital for him.

  Red and green lights covered every bush and railing as well as surrounding all the windows. Knee-high candy canes lined the walk.

  There were cars at his son’s house. David frowned at them and checked his new watch. He was coming over at the right time. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want to intrude—which was understood to mean that he wouldn’t come when Stella was likely to be there.

  He’d already have been on a flight home, except that he didn’t know how to contact Devonte. He tapped the envelope against his leg and wondered why he’d picked up a Christmas card instead of just handing over his business card. Below his contact information he’d made Devonte an open job offer beginning as soon as Devonte was eighteen. David could think of a thousand ways a wizard would be of use to a small group of mercenaries.

  Of course, after watching David tear up the vampire’s body, Devonte probably wouldn’t be interested, so more to the point was the name and phone number on the other side of the card. Both belonged to a wizard who was willing to take on a pupil; the local Alpha had given it to him.

  Clive had promised to give it to Devonte.

  David had to search under the giant wreath on the door for the bell. As he waited, he noticed that he could hear a lot of people inside, and even through the door he smelled the turkey.

  He took a step back, but the door was already opening.

  Stella stood in the doorway. Over her shoulder he could see the whole family running around preparing the table for Christmas dinner. Devonte was sitting on the couch reading to one of the toddlers that seemed to be everywhere. Clive leaned against the fireplace and met David’s gaze. He lifted a glass of wine and sipped it, smiling slyly.

  David took another step back and opened his mouth to apologize to Stella . . . just as her face lit with her mother’s smile. She stepped out onto the porch and wrapped her arms around him.

  “Merry Christmas, Papa,” she said. “I hope you like turkey.”

  If Vanity Doesn’t Kill Me

  MICHAEL A. STACKPOLE

  For a guy who squeezed into a rubber nun’s habit before hanging himself in a dingy motel room closet, Robert Anderson didn’t look so bad. Sure, his face was still livid, especially that purple ring right above the noose, and his neck had stretched a bit, but with his eyes closed you couldn’t see the burst blood vessels. He looked peaceful.

  I glanced back over my shoulder at Cate Chase, the Medical Examiner. “I’ve seen worse. Is that a good thing?”

  “Let’s don’t start comparing instances.” With her red hair, blue eyes, and cream complexion, Cate should have been a heartbreaker. She would have been, save she was built like a legbreaker. One glance convinced most men that she could hurt them badly, and not in a good way. She jerked a thumb at the room’s vanity table. “What do you think?”

  I shrugged. Dragging it along had tipped over a can of soda, and a half-eaten sandwich had soaked most of it up. The Twinkie had resisted the soda, being stale enough you could have pounded nails with it. “Looks like he unscrewed it from the wall, shifted it so he could watch himself. Auto-erotic asphyxiation?”

  She nodded. “Suffocating as you climax is supposed to take the orgasm off the charts. You pass out, you can strangle to death.”

  “Not my idea of fun.”

  “There go my plans for the rest of our afternoon.” She flicked a finger at Anderson. “Take another look.”

  I caught her emphasis and breathed in. I closed my eyes for a second, then reopened them. I peered at him through magic. He was a silhouette, all black and drippy. Corpses tend to look like that. I’d seen it before.

  “Something special I’m supposed to see?” I faced her as I asked the question, and magic rendered her in shades of red gold, much like her hair. It put color into everything, save for that Twinkie. It was neither alive nor dead.

  Cate shook her head. “Something, I hoped. Anything.”

  I waited for her to expand on her comment, but she never got a chance.

  Detective Inspector Winston Prout charged into the room and thrust a finger into my chest. “What the hell are you doing here, Molloy?”

  “I invited him, Prout.”

  I smiled. “Coffee date.”

  He glared at the both of us, about a heartbeat from arresting us for indecent urges. He was one of those skinny guys who’d look better as a corpse. He wouldn’t have to keep his parts all puckered and pinched tight. He habitually dressed in white from head to toe, and had exchanged his skimmer for a fedora after his recent promotion to Inspector.

  “Civilians aren’t allowed in a crime scene, Molloy.”

  “My prints, my DNA are on record. I haven’t touched anything.”

  “If you don’t have a connection to this case, get the hell out of here.”

  I hesitated just a second too long.

  He raised an eyebrow. “You connected?”

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “A little.”

  “Spill it.”

  “Your vic?” I nodded toward the man in the closet. “He’s married to my mother.”

  That little revelation had Prout’s eyes bugging out the way Anderson’s must have at the end. I’d have enjoyed poking them back into his face, but he got control of himself pretty quickly. He was torn between wanting to arrest me right that second and fear that I’d already set a trap for him. He’d wanted a piece of me since before his stint in the Internal Affairs division. He saw it as a divine mission and getting me tossed from the force for bribery hadn’t been enough.

  He punted the two of us, leaving a tech team to do the crime scene. Cate and I retreated through a hallw
ay where painters were trying to cover years of grim in a jaunty yellow, and to a nearby coffee joint. We ordered in java-jerkese, then sat on the patio amid lunchbunnies catching a post-Pilates, pre-spa jolt.

  “You didn’t know about Anderson, did you?”

  Cate shook her head. “Should I say I’m sorry for your loss?”

  “If it will make you feel better.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He was a shit. He and my mother were very Christian, which meant they were usually anti-me.”

  Cate understood. Prejudice against those who are magically gifted isn’t uncommon, especially with Fundies. It’s that “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” thing. Having a talented child is as bad as having a gay kid was late last century. My mom had compounded things by being the society girl who ran off with a working man—my father—then getting pregnant and actually delivering the child. My having talent was the last straw. She ditched my father, the Church got the marriage annulled, and she made a proper society match with Anderson.

  I blew on my coffee. “Why did you call me?”

  Cate leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “Anderson’s the fifth Brahmin that’s died like that in the last two months. Very embarrassing circumstances. The deaths have been swept under the carpet.”

  She fished in her pocket, produced a PDA and beamed case files into mine. I glanced at the names on each document. I knew them. I dimly recalled that they’d died, but I couldn’t remember any details. I’d met three of them, liked one, but only because she didn’t like my mother.

  “How did Amanda Preakness die?”

  “You won’t want to look at the photos. She drowned. In her tub. In chocolate syrup.”

  “What?” She’d been slender enough to make Nancy Reagan look like a sumo-wrestler. Tall and aristocratic, with a shock of white hair and a piercing stare, she could have dropped an enraged rhino with a glance. She always threw lavish parties, but never ate more than a crumb. “Not possible.”

  “Not only did she drown in the syrup, but her belly was stuffed full of chocolate bars. Junk food everywhere at the scene, all washed down with cheap soda.” Cate shook her head. “Nothing to suggest anything but an accidental death. Or suicide.”

  “Neither of which could be reported, so her society friends wouldn’t snigger at her passing.” I frowned. “No leads?”

  “Plenty. Problem’s no investigation. I pester Prout. He hears, but doesn’t listen.”

  “Which is odd since you suspect our killer is talented.”

  “Has to be. And strong.”

  Just being born with talent isn’t enough. Talent needs a trigger, and not many folks find that trigger. Mine’s whiskey—I discovered it when I was four by sucking drops from my old man’s shot glass after he passed out. The better the whiskey, the faster the power comes.

  Once you find the trigger, you next have to learn your channel. For most folks it’s the elements: earth, air, fire, or water. A talented gardener with an earth channel is good; one who works with plants is better. Some channels are a bit more esoteric, like emotions. I even met a guy whose channel was Death.

  Not really a fun guy, that one.

  If there was a killer, knowing his trigger and channel would be useful. I could guess on the channel being emotional or biological, but that didn’t narrow things down much. More importantly, it really did nothing to figure out why the murders were taking place. Without a why, figuring out who was going to be tough.

  I set the PDA down. “What’s in this for me?”

  Cate rocked back. “Stopping a murderer isn’t enough?”

  “Not like it’s my hobby. I work mopping up puke in a strip club. I know where I stand in the world. I don’t see this getting me ahead.”

  “Maybe it won’t, Molloy, maybe it won’t.” Cate’s eyes half lidded and she gave me a pretty good Preakness-class glance. “Maybe it’ll stop you from sinking any lower.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “You’re not there yet.” Her expression hardened. “If you were I’d ask if you had an alibi for when Anderson died.”

  I guess being a murderer would be a step down. Not that I minded Anderson being dead. Given the right circumstances I might even have killed him. Or, at least, let him die. A shrink would have said it because he was a surrogate for my mother, and that secretly I was wishing her dead.

  There wasn’t any “secretly” about it. I knew I had to start with her, so I reluctantly left Cate. The part I was resisting was that seeing her would prove she was still alive.

  I tried to look on the bright side.

  Maybe she was sick, really, really sick.

  And not just in the head this time.

  The Anderson Estate up in Union Heights was hard to miss. Fortune 500 companies had smaller corporate headquarters. The fence surrounding it had just enough juice flowing through to stun you, then the dogs would gnaw on you for a good long time.

  The gate was already open and a squad car was parked there. The officers waved me past, but it wasn’t any blue-brotherhood thing. I’d never known then when I was on the force. I’d just gotten their asses out of trouble at the strip club.

  Took me two minutes to reach the front door. Would have been longer, but I cut straight across the lawn. Wilkerson, the chief-of-staff—which is how you now pronounce the word “butler”—opened the door before I’d hit the top step. “It will do no good to say the lady of the house does not wish to see you, correct?”

  He didn’t even wait for me to reply before he stepped aside. He looked me up and down once. He channeled my mother’s mortification, then led the way up the grand staircase to my mother’s dressing room. He hesitated for a moment and memorized the location of every item in the room, then reluctantly departed, confident the looting would begin once the door clicked shut.

  The room was my mother. Elegant, well-appointed, tasteful, and traditional. I’m sure it was all “revival” something; but I couldn’t tell what. Even though she’d made an attempt to “civilize” me in my teens, very little had stuck. I did know that if it looked old, it was very old, including some Byzantine icons in the corner with a candle glowing in front of them. In a world where even people were disposable, antiques held a certain charm.

  Not so my mother.

  She swept into the room wearing a dark-blue dressing gown—clearly Anderson’s—and dabbed at her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief. Her eyes were puffy and rimmed with red. For a moment I believed she might have been crying for him, but grief I could have felt radiating out from her.

  My mother doesn’t radiate emotions. She sucks them in. Like a black hole. I think that’s why her daughter is a nun in Nepal, I’m a waste of flesh, and my half-brother is the Prince of Darkness.

  “There’s nothing in his will for you, Patrick.”

  “Good to see you, too, mother. I hope he spent it all on himself.”

  Her blue eyes tightened. “It’s in a trust, all of it, save for a few charitable donations.”

  I chuckled. “That explains the tears. Hurts to still be on an allowance.”

  “Yours is done, Patrick. I know he used to give you money.” She fingered the diamond-encrusted crucifix at her throat. “He was too soft-hearted.”

  “He gave me money once, and it wasn’t Christian charity.” I opened my hands. “I came from the crime scene . . . ”

  Her eyes widened. “You beast! If you breathe a word!” Tears flowed fast. “How much do you want?”

  “I don’t want anything.” I shook my head. “Five people have died in the last two months, your husband included. All of them nasty. Sean Hogan, Amanda Preakness, Percival Kendall Ford, and Dorothy Kent.”

  “Dottie? They said it was a botox allergy.”

  “It doesn’t matter what they said, mother.”

  She blinked and quickly made the sign of the cross. “Are you confessing to me, Patrick? Have you done this? Have you come for me?”

  “Stop!” I ball
ed my fists and began to mutter. Like most folks, she bought into the Vatican version of the talented. She figured I was going sacrifice her to my Satanic Master, or at least turn her into a toad.

  Tempting, so tempting.

  She paled and then sat hard on a daybed. “I’ll do anything you ask, Patrick. You don’t want to hurt me, your mother.”

  I snorted. If she had enough presence of mind to invoke the maternal bond, she wasn’t really shocked, just scheming. “How was Anderson hooked up with the others?”

  “Hogan did the trust work, damn him. Everyone else we knew socially. The Club, of course, the Opera Society. Various nonprofit boards.” She paused, her eyes sharpening. “Yes, this is all your fault.”

  “My fault?”

  “Absolutely. They were all on the board of the Fellowship. All of them.” Her accusing finger quivered. “I never wanted him to have anything to do with that place, but he did, because of you. And now he’s dead.”

  “The Fellowship never killed anyone.”

  “They saved your life, Patrick. I know. He told me.” Her eyes became arctic slits. “If they hadn’t, if you were dead, my husband wouldn’t be. Dear God, I wish it were so.”

  She burst into a series of sobs which were as piteous as they were fake, so I took my leave. It really hadn’t been her best effort at emotional torture. Anderson’s death had hurt her. Probably was more than having a leash on her spending. I wondered how long it would be until she realized that herself.

  From the Heights I descended back into my realm. People in my mother’s class acknowledge it exists, but only just barely. It’s where they go slumming when cheating at golf has lost its thrill. For the rest of us it’s just a waiting room. Prison or death, those are your choices. Sure, you hear stories of someone making good and escaping. Never seems any of us down here knew them when; and they damned sure don’t know any of us now.

  Reverend Martha Raines could have made it out, but she stayed by choice. She was kind of the “after” picture of Amanda Preakness doing a chocolate diet for a decade or two; but her brown eyes had never narrowed in anger. Not that she couldn’t be passionate. She could, and often held forth at City Council meetings or prayer services. She kept her white hair long and wore it in a braid that she tied off with little beaded cords the children in her mission made for her.