Chapter Eleven
GENEVIèVE
That evening, we all gathered in the drawing room. Mina paced restlessly until everyone filed in. I lit another candle for Claudette. Marius served drinks…the hard stuff.
Henrik stood brooding in a corner of the drawing room, gazing out over the night. Bene entered from the kitchen with a platter and crackers, looking uncharacteristically downcast. Roux was the last to join us — freshly showered, I noticed, and wearing a clean shirt.
He shot me a thin smile, which I returned.
I didn’t think such a shitty day could have a silver lining, but it did. I’d learned that touchy tigers had their lovable sides, and I’d gained a true friend.
When he indicated the drinks trolley, I shook my head. After a detour there, he sat beside me on the couch, placing a glass before me.
“Water,” he murmured. “Just in case you change your mind.”
No pressure, just a kind gesture. The man was a gem. I nearly touched his thigh by way of thanks, then whipped my hand away. Oops.
“All right. Let’s get started,” Mina said, looking grim.
Everyone looked up. Clearly, this wasn’t their first crisis meeting.
She opened her mouth to continue, then choked up and looked at her feet.
Marius put a hand on her shoulder, and she forced a smile.
I knew how she felt. Could have, should have, would have weighed heavily on me too. We’d had the best intentions in hiring Claudette, but had that inadvertently led to her death?
“I know I have to put my emotions aside and think analytically, but it’s hard,” she admitted.
She wasn’t the only one, as a long silence proved.
“We’ll get the bastards who did this,” Marius snarled.
“Hear, hear,” Bene agreed, as did Roux.
Mina patted Marius’s leg, like he’d made a sweet gesture instead of a murderous threat. But brutal, bloody vengeance appealed to me too.
“Would a really bad joke help?” Bene ventured quietly.
“No,” Marius muttered.
Mina smiled. “Yes, please.”
“A dragon, a tiger, and a lion walk into a bar…”
Mina and I smiled, while Roux and Marius groaned. Henrik shook his head in disgust.
“The lion asks for a Johnnie Walker,” Bene started. “The dragon orders a vodka. The tiger only wants water, and the bartender says, ‘Don’t you want something with more bite?’”
Everyone groaned, and Roux swirled the liquid in his glass. “This is rum, for the record.”
“Okay, okay. Second try,” Bene announced.
I couldn’t wait, but Marius made a cutting motion with his hands.
“No need to make a bad day worse,” Henrik sniffed.
But Bene plowed on. “A dragon, a tiger, and a lion walk into a bar…”
“No vampire?” Henrik grumbled.
“No, because this is funny. Now, listen,” Bene chided. “The bartender is a witch, and she says, ‘I’ll add a little something to your drinks. As a result, you,’ she says to the dragon, ‘get a brain.’”
Marius shot Bene a dangerous look, but he went on, unperturbed.
“‘You,’ she tells the tiger, ‘get a sense of humor.’”
Roux rolled his eyes as Bene plowed on.
“‘And you,’ she says to the lion, ‘get drinks on the house. You’re gonna need it with this crew.’”
I chuckled. It didn’t take a brilliant joke to lift my spirits at this point.
Marius rolled his eyes. “I’m the one who needs the free drinks.”
Bene shook his head. “Greedy, greedy. You already have Mina.”
Huh. Did I sense a touch of yearning there? Not for Mina, perhaps, but for someone to call his own?
Marius grinned from ear to ear. “True.”
“I deserve the free drinks,” Roux insisted.
“No, I do,” Bene shot back.
Mina stuck up her hands, cutting them off. “Oh no. No fighting. Not tonight.”
They quieted instantly. Obviously, Mina’s experience in disciplining unruly middle schoolers applied here too. A parallel I didn’t think the guys would appreciate, so I kept it to myself.
I opened my sketchbook and gripped my pencil, ready to take notes. Notes and doodles always helped me focus. And boy, did I need that now.
“We have to try to make sense of what’s happened,” Mina went on. “Who killed Claudette? Why? Is that related to the attack on Gen and Roux?”
Everyone mulled that over, sipping drinks or staring into the crackling fire.
“I can’t see how, but they must be related,” Roux said.
“I say we start with the nagas who attacked us,” I suggested, mostly because it seemed like the easier place — emotionally — to begin.
Which said a lot, because those beasts had scared the hell out of me.
“Nasty things, those nagas,” Bene said.
I replayed the incident in my mind. “When I yelled at one to get off my property, he said, ‘Not yours for long.’”
Mina frowned. “Implying…what? They’re after the chateau?”
Bene scratched his chin. “Well, considering you can’t make off with an entire building, and assuming no one has made a cash offer for this place…” He looked at Mina.
“Sometimes, I wish someone would.” She sighed, then shook her head. “Just kidding. And, no. No one has expressed interest in buying the chateau.”
“I guess that means scaring you two off to clear the way for someone else,” Bene concluded.
Killing us off was more like it, I feared.
“That would never work,” Marius declared. “No one scares Mina, and anyone stupid enough to try would never get past us.”
“No one scares Gen either,” Roux murmured.
Or, wait. Was I picking up on an unspoken thought?
I glanced over a moment too late to see whether his lips had moved or not.
Either way, my heart fluttered a little.
“Oh, I get scared, all right,” Mina muttered.
“Well, you can be pretty scary yourself,” Bene said agreeably. “Especially when you do that frowning thing.”
“What frowning thing?” Mina protested.
He pointed at her face. “That.” Then he pointed at me. “Gen does it too. It’s scary as hell.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I decided.
Mina gave me a long-suffering look that said, How little you know.
“In any case, the nagas took off,” Roux said, keeping the discussion on track. “And a few hours later, Claudette was murdered.”
I folded my hands tightly. I’d had Roux to help me, plus Bene and Henrik. Claudette had had no one.
Roux nudged me, indicating my glass, then his.
I gave a weak chuckle and took a sip of his. Rum beat water at this point.
“So, we’re back to how — or if — those two things are related,” Mina said.
“Anything new about the murder?” Roux asked.
Mina nodded glumly. “Clement called me about twenty minutes ago.”
I jutted my jaw. Of course he had. Why call me, the pertinent eyewitness?
Deep down, I knew Clement was a good man. He cared about justice, and he mourned for Claudette. He’d been snippy with me, but that showed how hard he’d been hit by Claudette’s death. So I could forgive the way he’d treated me today.
But I would never, ever forget.
And one thing was for sure. I was forever cured of my childhood crush.
“Apparently, evidence at the crime scene suggests Claudette was collecting information on us. For whom or for what purpose, I can’t begin to fathom.” Mina bit her lip, then looked at Roux. “So, you were right.”
“He’s smarter than he looks.” Bene patted him on the back.
Roux stared into the fireplace. “I wish I were wrong.”
“Even so, I don’t have it in me to blame Claudette,” I said quietly.
“Me neither,” Mina agreed. “I can only imagine that someone bribed or blackmailed her into doing it. Maybe the same someone who has their eye on the chateau.”
“Someone?” Marius scoffed.
“Yeah, I can think of someone,” Bene agreed.
Mina and I stared at him. Who, then?
“Let’s see…” Bene began sarcastically. “There are hundreds of chateaux in France, but someone is interested in this particular one. A supernatural someone with the connections, money, and ruthless willpower to send nagas and vampires our way.”
I looked around, stumped.
“Celeste,” Henrik growled. “It has to be.”
“Makes sense,” Marius agreed, pointing to Mina. “She hates you…”
Mina grimaced. “Not even my toughest students hate me.”
“Well, they’re not driven by jealousy,” Bene pointed out.
“Jealous of what — this?” Mina gestured around. “The leaky roof, the endless repairs…”
The hot dragon shifter at her side, I thought.
Roux snorted, and I whipped around.
Did you hear that? I tried mind-speak.
He made a face. Hot? Please.
Oh. My. I would definitely have to watch what I thought from now on. But it did prove we’d broken through that barrier in our minds.
I gulped. It felt weirdly intimate. Was I ready for that?
My gut warmed. Yes. Yes, I was.
“Celeste was trying to maneuver her way into taking over Gordon’s business,” Bene said. “So losing her job before she was ready to execute her plan must have been the last straw. And from her perspective, that was our fault.”
“Her own damn fault,” Marius growled.
Anger energized the room, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the men set off to lynch Celeste that night. But we needed to think things through.
“Sounds plausible, but we need more to go on than that,” I said, then faced Henrik. “I hate to ask, but I must. Did Claudette ever mention anything to you in the time you…uh…”
I faded out, unable to find a delicate way to say during your brief, bloody fling.
Vampires were usually as pale and pasty as your average librarian, but Henrik went crimson with indignation.
“I would have said something if I had any reason to suspect her motives.”
Kind of rich, considering his motives — easy sex and freely offered blood. Yuck.
“Any idea who she’d been with in Paris before coming here?” Mina asked.
Henrik shook his head, slowly returning to a vampire’s normal, “healthy” hue. Another yuck.
“I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. But I can travel to Paris and make some inquiries.” His eyes glowed red, hinting at how final those inquiries might be.
I couldn’t bring myself to be appalled. Anyone who had used or abused Claudette deserved the worst.
“Okay, that’s one theory — Celeste masterminding all this. But it’s iffy, at best,” I decided. “Any other possibilities?”
Everyone looked at Henrik, then Marius, and both growled.
“No…uh…enemies who might be after you?” I asked Marius carefully.