Lady Killer (45 page)

Clio’s breath caught in her throat.

“What?” Saunders demanded, turning around. “What is it?” His eyes followed hers to the pistol over the door.

“I just cannot stand to see that thing pointing at me,” Clio replied in a voice edged with panic.

Saunders studied her, as if he knew she was lying, then returned to his careful, quiet pacing.

Clio let her breath out, slowly this time. It was the only sign of her discovery she allowed herself.

It had taken two hours, but she had found it. She had forced herself to study the clock opposite her, in part because it kept her eyes off the pistol aimed at her, and in part because there was something about the way Saunders had looked at it and about his being barefoot that triggered her imagination. She watched each piece of it in turn, isolating what she could see of the mechanism through the clock face, forcing herself to look for something that might not belong there.

As if she would know that thing when she saw it. But she had. Finally, at last, she had. Because while she was not an expert on clocks, she was fairly sure that they did not usually contain an archer’s bow inside of them that was gradually being pulled more taut with each advancing hour, or, being pulled with it, an arrow.

Aimed exactly at her. Or at the spot where Miles would be standing if he was tending to her pistol wounds.

It did not require a mind like Saunders’s—which, as he made a point of telling her at regular ten-minute intervals, she did not possess—for her to guess that the arrow was poisoned, most likely with ourali, or that the probable time of release, the moment when the bow would be pulled as tightly as it would go, was midnight. That way he could kill without having to be present. It would be the ultimate display of his power—the power to take a life without moving a finger.

And it would happen in less than two hours.

There was nothing she could do about the pistol, yet, but perhaps there was something she could do about the clock.
Flawless balance,
she remembered Miles saying of the clockwork mechanism.
As soon as the balance is upset, it stops working.
All she had to do was upset the balance. Easy.

Or it would have been, if she had not been bound to a post. Not only was her range of motion severely limited, but any sort of unusual activity would undoubtedly draw Saunders’s attention to what she was doing. He might have been insane, but he was not stupid.

Suddenly, she narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you really think Mariana will marry you when this is over?” she asked.

He spun around and stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“Once she is free of her betrothal, she will have her pick of men. What makes you think she would want anything to do with you?”

“She loves me.”

“Of course,” Clio said with undisguised sarcasm. “How often has she told you that?”

“She has never said it. That would be dishonorable while she was betrothed to someone else. But I know. I
know
.”

“How?” Clio jeered.

Saunder’s eyes flashed. “You are just trying to upset me. But it will not work. I am in control here. I am in charge. What do you know of love anyway? No one has ever loved you in your life.”

Clio let the words sink in, soaking them up like a sponge. “I know that Mariana is incapable of loving anyone but herself,” she said quietly.

“You say that only because she did not love you. And why should she? You are nothing. Nothing at all. Like your wicked father. He was so wretched that your grandmother had to drive him away. She fabricated a spate of vampire killings in the village and framed him for them, so that he would be thrown in jail.”

It was working better than Clio had expected. “What are you talking about?” she demanded, truly confused.

“That is how I got the idea. Your grandmother, Lady Alecia, confessed it to me. She told me of how your father beat your mother, her dear daughter, and how in order to avenge her she made it look as though some of the cows and things had been killed by a bloodsucker. Your father had always been interested in such fiends, and it was only too easy to convince the local constabulary that he was responsible. They locked him up and he died by his own hand in prison.” Seeing that she was truly shocked, Saunders pressed on. “Once your mother had died, Lady Alecia wanted to do the same thing to you, make it look as though you had been killed by the vampire, but something stopped her.”

Clio got a faraway expression on her face. In her mind she was no longer in the tense, hot little room with the pacing madman and two death traps aimed at her heart. She was in a bed, like the beds she had found the girls on.

She is lying there, helpless as someone comes toward her, leaning over her, breathing hot breath on her face, someone is fumbling for her neck, struggling with one hand to pin her down and keep her from crying out, and with the other—

Then her assailant is being dragged away, yelling and screaming, arms flailing. She cannot see who is responsible for her salvation. But she can see the face of the person who had been leaning over her. Who had been trying to hold her down. A younger face, but still the face she knows, the face that has so often looked on her with hatred and contempt. Her grandmother’s face.

It had happened to her. That was why she had felt such horror when she saw the dead girls, why she had beheld the terror on their faces. It had almost happened to her. Her grandmother had tried to kill her when she was an infant.

Rage began to boil inside of her and her eyes refocused on Saunders.

“You should know,” he went on, grinning malevolently, “that your grandmother confided to me that she has always been sorry she did not go through with it.”

Clio was breathing shallowly. “I don’t believe you. You are a liar.”

Saunders’s eyes darkened. “You would dare to call me a liar? You, who are not even worthy of sharing a room with me? Not even worthy, really, of listening to me speak? You are nothing but a stupid idiot, Clio Thornton. You thought you could catch me? You thought you could investigate me? You? You are not even fit to go after a three-legged dog.” Saunders watched the color rise in her face, watched the anger take over, and was thrilled. “You see? I told you that it was inside you. I told you—”

“Stop it,” Clio hiccuped, interrupting him.
Upset the balance.

“Have I grieved you, Clio?” Saunders asked with mild amusement. She hiccuped twice more. “Is it the truth you do not like to hear?” She hiccuped again. “Does it make you sad to know that you are a stupid fool?” he demanded, his voice meaner now.

“No,” Clio told him, hiccuping so hard her feet stomped. “It makes me,” she hiccuped, “angry. It makes me,” she hiccuped again, “feel violent.”

“Poor, poor angry Clio,” Saunders said, closing his eyes to laugh. “Furious because you cannot destroy my perfect plan.”

Clio stole a glance at the clock. The hands were quivering in one place, as if caught on the verge of motion.

“You poor unlovable fool.”

Nothing perfect can endure.

Clio hiccuped five times in quick succession, powerfully, hiccups that made her body strain against the post, her feet kick, and the clock hands freeze. Inside, she could see that the gears had ceased to turn. The clock was no longer going forward.

She had stopped it. She had stolen time. The hiccups had upset the balance enough to halt the clock. She knew that Saunders would discover the deception soon, but hopefully she would have thought of some way out by then. Now there was only the pistol left to deal with. She had just shifted her attention there, ignoring the taunts Saunders continued to heap upon her, when two things happened, scaring her hiccups away. With one eye she saw Toast sit up. And with the other, she saw the handle of the door begin to turn.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Saunders saw where she was looking. In a single, swift motion, he crossed to the door and put his arm against it, forcing it to stay closed. “Good evening, Viscount,” he said. “I am so glad you have come.”

“Good. Why don’t you invite me in?” Miles asked through the door.

“I would, but we are not quite ready. We were not expecting you so soon. You are a bit early.”

“Open the door or I will break it down.”

“Oh, that will not be necessary. It is unlocked. But if you open it, Clio will die.”

“Is that true, Clio?”

Saunders looked at her and nodded.

“Yes Miles, it is true.” Her voice changed to one of supplication and she became more formal. “If you got my note, my lord, then you must understand. No small amount of time will save me.”

“She is right,” Saunders assured Miles. “And you must wait until midnight.”

There was a long pause. Then Clio heard Miles’s voice say, “Very well,” and the sound of receding footsteps.

“What are you doing?” Saunders demanded.

“Leaving.” Miles spoke through the door. “You said I could not see her until midnight. That’s almost two hours from now. I’ll be back then.”

Saunders was incredulous. “Where are you going?”

“To get something to eat. I am hungry. It has been a long day and I missed my betrothal feast.”

“But you cannot leave.”

“Why not?”

“Because I will kill her. I will kill Clio.”

Clio could almost hear Miles’s head shaking on the other side of the threshold. “You are not going to kill her. If you do, I will march right in there before midnight and kill you before you can get to me, and Mariana will inherit nothing.”

Saunders stood up a bit straighter and smiled. “Ah, so you figured it out.”

“Yes. Ingenious. You noticed that the betrothal contract only specifies that she shall inherit everything if I die on or after the day of her twenty-fifth birthday, not after the marriage has been celebrated. I should have realized it earlier. You are very literal. And following the letter of the contract you decided to kill me on July first. As soon after midnight as possible.”

“Before you could touch her with your filthy hands. So she would be rich and pure when she came to me,” Saunders rhapsodized.

“Yes,” Miles sounded skeptical. “But you see, that guarantees that you will keep Clio alive, because you need something to lure me back here to my death. I am going to go to a tavern. I’ll be back before midnight.”

“Wait,” Saunders commanded. “Don’t you want to hear me tell how I killed the women?”

“I would prefer to be killed quickly than bored to death slowly.”

If Clio had not been preoccupied, the way Saunders jerked in front of the door would have caused her to laugh. “Bored to death? You find the prospect of hearing about my crimes boring? I assure you, Dearbourn, they are fascinating in the extreme.”

“I have never really been interested in tales of murder. I much prefer romances. Now if—”

Miles’s interesting literary commentary was cut short by Clio, who began to sing.

“
The first time I did see you, dear, my heart in me did pound. I knew that day as I know now, that my true love I’d found
.”

Saunders swung around to face her. “Stop it,” he said. “Stop singing that. Don’t sing that song.”

“
The second time our lips did meet, t’was better than the first,”
Clio went on. “
I felt the air float under me, and like me heart would burst.
”

“Stop it,” Saunders ordered, turning back and forth between her and the door. “Not that song. Do not sing it.”

Clio saw that his eyes were getting a strange tint in them. “
The third time we pressed mouth to mouth,
” she continued, singing louder, “
We lay under the starry sky. And when you said ‘you are my love,’ there was none happier than I.
”

Saunders crossed the room, his eyes roving in their sockets. “Stop. Singing. That. Song. I shall have to kill you, Clio, if you continue. That is her song. The song of the bloodsuckers. I shall have to—”

“
And now your breath goes from you love, and your lips have grown so thin—”

“Stop it,” Saunders whispered, stretching his hands for Clio’s neck.

“—
And one last kiss I’ll give you dear, for all those there have
—Now Miles!” Clio shouted, reaching with freed hands and pulling Saunders in front of her.

The door flew open, the pistol sounded, and for a moment, there was complete silence. Then Saunders’s body slumped to the floor, Miles picked Clio up in his arms, and Toast began to dance in circles.

“It’s over,” she said, hugging him as tightly as she could. “It’s over.”

“I love you Clio,” was all he could say in reply.

“Tell me again about how you found us,” Clio asked as she and Miles and Toast dined at the round table in Miles’s outer apartment. They had arrived home only half an hour earlier, after dropping the Triumvirate, Snug, and Inigo back at Which House. The puppy had been allowed to stay with them, since it was entirely thanks to him that they had been recovered at all.