All That Bleeds (12 page)

She paced the carpet in her room. If she took Etherlin Security with her as bodyguards, they would report back to the council about her visit with Tobin and whatever happened. On the other hand, she didn’t dare go alone.

Alissa paused from her pacing when her phone rang. She was surprised to see the display with Mrs. Carlisle’s name, since she was working downstairs.

“Hello?”

“Yes, miss, sorry to interrupt your evening. A delivery-man from Pead’s Florists wanted you to sign for some flowers. I told him you don’t sign for deliveries and had to threaten to summon ES to convince him to leave. I’ve unwrapped the flowers. They’re lovely pale purple roses and seem to be okay—nothing dicey in the box with them or anything.”

Lavender roses.
Merrick.

“Is there a note or a package?” she asked, hurrying to the door and rushing from the room. Normally, if he wanted to send her something very discreetly, the messengers delivered the flowers to her while she was out, but she hadn’t been out all day. She should have realized that she needed to leave the house for them to deliver a package to her.

“There’s a note. Garden variety admiration, quite literally—”

“Hold on to the note. I’ll be right down. I suspect I know who the flowers are from. An eccentric admirer.”

“Well, he needs to learn the protocol! As if we’d interrupt you every time someone sends you a gift! You’d never get any work done. I wouldn’t have disturbed you about this, except the boy acted so odd. I wanted to know if you wanted me to call Mr. Easton about it. You know what he always says. Anything suspicious, however minor, should be reported. And I agree with that! There are men who would pay anything to get their hands on you. Deliverymen, even from Pead’s, would be tempted by the kind of money they’d offer. The thing is…your father’s been roaming all over today, and he’s more talkative than usual. I wasn’t sure—well, I thought you might want to go and talk to Mr. Easton at his home rather than have him come here.”

“Mrs. Carlisle, you protect us so well.” Alissa stepped into the kitchen, spotted the gray-haired dumpling of a housekeeper, and flipped her cell phone shut. “You know the council maintains all the household accounts, so I can’t simply give you the raise you deserve. Please accept the sapphire earrings I tried to give you in December. You can take them
to Dusselburg’s, and they’ll give you the cash value. It’ll be a bonus. You deserve it. We couldn’t manage without you.”

Mrs. Carlisle frowned. “Miss Alissa, I’ve told you so many times! Your mother did more things for me and my family than I can ever repay. What would she think of me if I— No, I won’t. She had the best heart. She really did, and you’re the same way.” Mrs. Carlisle dabbed her moist eyes and her voice turned steely. “I’d look after you for nothing and feel lucky to do it. Those Xenakis girls aren’t half as pretty or talented, and they’ve got twenty-five people or more looking after them. The same for Ileana Rella. You’re going to be the Wreath Muse, and you did it all yourself. I like to think that my helping with your dad and the house let you concentrate a little better.”

She’d known that Mrs. Carlisle prized her position, but she hadn’t realized how much pride she took in Alissa’s accomplishments. “It did help me. I couldn’t have managed alone.”

Mrs. Carlisle smiled. “There’s my bonus. And when I see you wearing the Wreath like a crown princess, that’ll be my bonus, too.”

“I still have to get through the voting,” Alissa said.

“You will. You’ll come out on top as you always do. Now, what about tea and some shortbreads?”

“I’ll have tea, but no cookies. I have to go out for cocktails tonight. I should have dinner early so that I’ve got something substantial in my system. May I have the note that came with the flowers? Where are they, by the way?”

“Front hall on the console. The note’s with them.”

“Thank you,” Alissa said. She walked to the front and smiled at the lavender roses that had stunning indigo tips to their perfect petals. She picked up the note.

You’re as lovely as cherry blossoms. M

There were two cherry blossom trees on the grounds. That Merrick knew the landscape made her shiver. What else did he know about her home? And how did he know it? The council hadn’t approved pictorial spreads or Internet images of the muses’ homes since one of Alissa’s stalkers had managed to get almost to her front door before Etherlin Security realized
the invitation and identification he’d used to get past the security checkpoint at the wall were fraudulent.

They’d used a taser to subdue him before anyone had opened the door for him, but the contents of his duffel bag, which included duct tape, KY lubricant, a straight razor, and a journal outlining his plans in horrific detail, had upset everyone. Phrases like “forced seduction” and “achieving the afterlife as one” were among the man’s chilling goals. He’d intended to tape her mouth shut immediately so she couldn’t use her magic to confuse him or talk him out of “bringing them together forever.”

Strangely, the security force took the experience harder than she did. As a muse, she understood the way passion could rage out of control, that a spark could smolder into a dangerous and irrational obsession. She’d seen firsthand the devastation the magic could wreak. Unfortunately, becoming a target for emotions run amok was a necessary risk if she were to perform her duties. She’d accepted that early on in life. All she could do was take precautions and hope for the best.

She went to the hall closet and slipped on a jacket and walking clogs and went out, but paused about fifty feet from the trees. Thinking about the stalker who’d gotten to the front door made her trip to the Sliver without an ES detail seem ridiculously risky. What would Cato Jacobi have done with her if Merrick hadn’t gotten her off that balcony? She’d been dying, but what if Jacobi had been the one to give her a transfusion to keep her alive? She shuddered.

The muses had all been trained in self-defense, but the training wasn’t likely to be effective against a supernaturally strong and swift ventala. Her palm-to-the-nose strike had temporarily stunned Cato Jacobi, long enough for her to escape to the balcony, but she doubted she’d be able to take him by surprise again.

The muses had had weapons training, too. When Cerise traveled outside the Etherlin, she was often armed, but Alissa had resisted that path, knowing that viewing people as potential threats who meant to do her harm would negatively influence her ability to help them. She was a muse. A vessel of inspiration. Closing herself down from connecting with
people wasn’t an option if she wanted to be the best muse she could be—and if she wanted to win the Wreath.

That thought brought her full circle. Someone had conspired against her. Someone would do whatever it took to keep her from getting the Wreath. If she had no idea who that was, how could she protect herself? She needed Theo Tobin’s information.

She walked to the trees and circled them, easily finding a small package wrapped in brown paper that blended with the color of the tree’s bark. She sat on a bench that looked out over the lake and opened it.

There was a single number programmed into the small black phone. She pressed the button and, a moment later, she heard Merrick’s voice.

“It’s me,” she said.

“So it is. What can I do for you?”

“I need another favor.”

“Then ask.”

She lowered her voice and gave him a full account of her conversation with Tobin. “What do you think?”

“I think you should stay on your side of the wall tonight.”

“He has something they want. Something that could be damaging to me. If I don’t help him get home, eventually he’ll be found.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“He said you threatened him.”

“You mentioned that.”

“You understand that if I send you to Handyrock’s in my place and you hurt him, I’ll feel responsible.”

“Hmm.”

“So I’m asking you not to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Mr. Merrick—”

“Yes, Miss North?” he said in a smooth, mock-formal tone.

She couldn’t understand why she almost smiled. They were talking about a man’s life. They were talking about her life’s work. There was so much at stake.

“If you could see your way through to avoiding violence, I’d be grateful. I’d write you a letter that was at least ten pages
long and, in it, I’d tell you what I liked best about your apartment and what I liked best about you.”

He laughed. “After a letter like that, I’ll have to change my name to Narcissus.”

“What do you say? Do we have an agreement?”

“I’d love to say yes. Narcissus is a great name.”

She smiled.

“Listen, I hate to cut this short, but I’ve got a few things to take care of,” he said.

“I’d like to hear that we have an agreement about how you’re going to handle Tobin.”

“Alissa,” he said, his tone soft and affectionate.

It gave her an odd thrill to hear him use her first name.

“Yes?”

“It would be better to let this conversation end.”

“It can’t until you clarify things.”

“Are you sure it’s clarity you want?”

“Yes,” she said, though she wasn’t certain at all.

“Tobin knows you’re under my protection. We had an agreement that if he ever found out anything that would put you in a compromising position, he would come to me and I would pay him to not sell the information or the pictures elsewhere. I also told him that if I ever found out that he’d done something to put you in harm’s way, I would kill him. At the time, I was thinking about high-speed car chases through French tunnels, but the threat was definitely broad enough to include abduction by another ventala syndicate member.”

She leaned against the bench and tipped her head back to stare up at the sky.

“When I meet with him, I won’t hurt him unless I think he deserves it. But if he conspired to put your throat under Cato Jacobi’s fangs, no one can save him. Not even you.”

The conversation pressed down on her like a massive weight. “People can never make a mistake? You never give anyone a second chance?”

“That would depend on the person and the mistake.”

“Please try,” she said, her voice creaky with emotion. “Your friendship means something to me. I don’t want to lose it.”

For several moments, he said nothing. She waited.

“All right. I’ll let you tie my hands,” he said.

“May I call you later?”

“No. When we’re done with this conversation, erase my number and get rid of the phone.”

“Oh,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. She enjoyed hearing his voice. She wanted more of it, of him. “I don’t think there would be much increased risk in me keeping it for the night.”

“I’ll be in a dead zone for cell service for the next few hours. You won’t be able to reach me again on my cell before the charge on that one runs out.”

“I see.”

“If you want to talk again by phone, I’ll arrange for that to happen. Is that what you want?”

Yes.
She ran a hand through her hair. “I suppose it would be safer to wait until after the vote. But then, yes. I’d like that.”

“So would I.” There was a brief pause and he added, “Stay in tonight with the doors locked.”

“I will, and thank you for going to Handyrock’s.”

“You’re welcome, Alissa.”

Merrick hung up and walked out of his office. He took the elevator to the basement and used a key code and his fingerprint to enter the safe room. The room was mostly metal. Reinforced steel tables, chrome and halogen lights, and a few chairs, including the uncushioned one with wrist and ankle clamps. It was bolted to the floor with the seat positioned directly over a drain.

It was a hard room in every sense of word. It had been designed to feel uncompromising, merciless, and final. Merrick, retired from work as an enforcer, had hoped never to use it, but this had to do with her, and while he might be reckless with his own life and future, he found he could not be that way with Alissa’s.

Ox sat on one of the two stainless-steel tables. The white boxer’s tape that covered his knuckles was tinted pink, and he was cleaning his nails with the tip of an eight-inch, razor-sharp blade.

Sweating under the lights, the guest of honor’s hair was plastered to the sides of his face and hanging down over his swollen left eye.

“I can see that you encrypted the last photos you took and mailed them to yourself before you erased them from your hard drive. So how about those passwords?” Merrick said.

Theodore Tobin shook his head. “You’re going to kill me either way. If you see the pictures they made me take, you’ll just do it slower.”

“You’re still going with the story that you were in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

“I’m telling you. The guy they had was a rank amateur. When they saw my camera with some shots I’d taken of her on the memory card, they shot him in the head and pointed the gun at me. It was take the pictures or die. When we were done, Jacobi stood over me while I emailed the files to him, but he didn’t understand that in the transfer, I put them through my custom software. It’s insurance to make sure I get paid. The first photos are infected and degrade to random black and gray pixels in hours. He’s got nothing. I swear. And no one ever will. I would never sell that trash to anyone.”

“Yet you kept the original files.”

Tobin sighed. “I wasn’t thinking it through.”

“I think you were. You decided those pictures were your life-insurance policy if he caught up with you.”

“I’ll erase them. You can watch me do it,” Tobin said breathlessly.

“I don’t need you to erase them. I’m going to do that myself just as soon as you tell me your passwords.”

Ox chugged a bottle of water, then cracked his knuckles. “We might want to try out the hook. I could work the body for a while, so I don’t knock him out again.”

Merrick gave a short nod.

Ox went to Tobin and unlocked the clamps. Then he hauled the guy up and hung him from a hook that was over a second drain in the floor.

Merrick gave Tobin his most cold-blooded stare.