Chapter 18 #2
If the Oscars had installed cameras inside their apartment at that moment, Sylvia and Aster would have swept every category.
(Vampires historically hold the most awards for Best Actor and Best Actress. Lauren Graham herself holds twenty-seven awards, which she’s received as several different people. Most famously as Katharine Hepburn.)
Sylvia’s fingers scrunched around the fabric of Aster’s pants, but besides that, everything else about her stayed still. After a moment, she laughed.
“Oh yeah, Sherlock?” She taunted, leaning forward. “And who do you think did it?”
The confidence in Wallace’s shoulders deflated a little at Sylvia’s condescension, but not completely.
With a huff, he finally sat down, sliding his lanky body into the eggshell armchair that sat next to the television.
It swallowed him up, making him look like a grape in the palm of a giant’s hand. Hardly a threat.
Still, she felt Sylvia tighten her grasp on her knee when he came closer—the faintest evidence of nerves—and Aster’s heart swelled that she was what Sylvia held onto when she felt scared. Like an anchor.
(A totally stupid thought to linger on when they were potentially about to be accused of murder, but Aster had never been great at prioritizing.)
“My step-brother was caught up in a lot of…” Wallace’s leg bobbed nervously. “Well, he…”
Wallace made a bunch of pathetic hand gestures that said nothing. His leg bobbed even more.
“Dear god. Out with it,” Sylvia muttered. “Which is it? Lobbyists? Mafia? Slave traders?”
His leg stopped bobbing when he gasped. “Slave traders?” Wallace looked positively scandalized. “I mean Tommy was a dickhead, but I can’t believe you’d even suggest that.”
Sylvia pursed her lips and Aster could tell, from a single look, that she wanted to say I’ve been alive longer than the Atlantic slave trade, I’ve watched the CIA topple governments—and entire nations—on a whim, and I know just how many things powerful people get away with if they have a good enough public relations team, so yes, it wouldn’t be so surprising, but in a truly uncharacteristic show of self-regulation, she just shrugged.
“He was in a lot of debt,” Wallace revealed finally, to which Sylvia full body gasped, replying “the son of a billionaire? In debt?” like the know-it-all asshole she was, and Wallace believed it for only a moment before he realized she was just being herself, and continued on, “My step-dad didn’t know about it.
But I looked through a bunch of files—” Wallace reached for the knapsack he was wearing, and began extracting a series of manila folders.
“—And Tommy’s company, the company we all worked at, was failing miserably.
” He set the folders down on the table, and Sylvia, feigning disinterest, picked them up and began to skim apathetically.
“So he kept inflating the bottom line by buying and selling some sort of… financial assets… I don’t know, it’s all so vague, but he was selling them to a bunch of high-rolling buyers around the world. In several locations. Beijing, Tokyo…”
“And Vienna and Bucharest,” Sylvia mumbled, reading off the file.
Aster’s eyebrow arched, seeing the way something had activated inside the other woman.
Sylvia had that singular, burning focus about her suddenly, but it flickered out almost as soon as it’d come.
She tossed the folder onto the table. “So, what? You think his loan sharks killed him?”
Wallace bit down on his lip and stared at his lap for a moment.
When his head raised again, a chill entered his voice.
“It was either them, or my step-dad.”
Then Sylvia snorted.
“Oh my god, you think Daddy Dearest killed his inept son?”
“Maybe,” Wallace huffed, throwing his hands up.
“I don’t know. These were the only files I could get from his office before the police arrived and whisked everything away.
But it wouldn’t surprise me. My step-dad never seemed to care about Tommy.
Or me. Or Mom. He was so— he was so strange.
Like, vacant. He’d switch emotions on a whim, happy to sad to angry, and then not even seem to remember why he’d been in a mood a few minutes ago.
So no. I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t even remember that he did it. ”
Sylvia stilled next to her, her shoulders going rigid.
It wasn’t hard to imagine why.
Everything in Wallace’s description was accurate to the behavior of a thrall. Which meant that he had been—and likely still was—under Yasmine’s thumb.
Which meant that killing Yasmine would be the only way to claim him as their own.
Which Aster hadn’t really had a problem with, not when it was so… theoretical. But talking to Yasmine’s son—sitting across from him like this, observing him in all his adolescent awkward squirminess—the idea sat differently in her chest now. Her stomach turned uncomfortably.
“Wallace,” Sylvia said slowly, licking her lips. “Why are you talking to us about this?”
Wallace blinked. He narrowed his eyes, giving them a look again that said Isn’t it obvious?
“Well. No offense, but you’re the two biggest bullshitters I’ve ever met,” he said.
“Well, at least she is.” He gestured toward Sylvia, and Aster didn’t take offense.
“I’m not good at lying. Or… talking to people.
If I try and figure this out myself, I’m going to keep hitting constant dead ends.
I… I was hoping that you two might, well, come with me to the funeral tomorrow and help…
dig through this. Talk to people. Try and figure out who might have been behind it. ”
Wallace twiddled his thumbs nervously. Sylvia turned to her, then, with a completely impassive expression, except for the most subtle twitch at the end of her lip.
What was…
Oh.
Sylvia was trying… not to laugh.
This was all incredibly funny to her.
Why was Aster even surprised?
“And before you ask, I know, I know, I can’t just ask you to help without…
compensation,” he said, wincing like the words physically hurt him.
He shoved his hand in his knapsack again and pulled out a checkbook.
It had W. Sokolov inscribed on the back.
“But Tommy’s not the only one with deep pockets.
My mom got… a lot of money in the divorce. So…”
Oh my god.
Aster could hardly believe what she was hearing.
Wallace wanted them—Sylvia, and Aster—to help investigate the murder of his step-brother.
For money. Probably a ludicrous amount of money.
The step-brother that Aster had, in fact, murdered.
Whose father they were planning to enthrall.
And whose ex-wife they were most likely going to have to murder in order to do so.
Yes. That’s what was happening.
Aster and Sylvia had got up to a lot of mischievous shit in their day, but this, somehow, might have taken the cake. Or perhaps the whole cake shop. And the whole neighborhood.
Sylvia reached down and gingerly picked up her coffee cup, slurping it quietly.
“Fifteen thousand dollars,” she said.
Wallace blinked twice, then signed.
“Fine.”
Sylvia laughed happily, set down the coffee mug, then clapped her hands. She turned to Aster, and with the biggest shit-eating grin she’d maybe ever sported, said, “Well, then. What are we going to wear?”
“I mean, those suits seem fine,” Wallace remarked.
And Sylvia giggled, because she couldn’t help herself.
“You’re so right Wallace. What a happy coincidence.”