Long Live the Queen (The Immortal Empire) (23 page)

“You’re lying.” He had to be, but I was oh-so-grateful for the distraction.

“I swear it on my mother’s grave. That’s where the phrase ‘rule of thumb’ comes from.” At my dubious look he added with a chuckle, “Look it up if you don’t believe me, wench.”

“I will.” He was a top-notch liar, my wolf, and liked to take the piss out of me whenever he could. This could very well be one of those times, and I would never know the difference unless I looked into it. He’d been right about people emptying chamber pots out of windows into the street, so he might very well be right about this.

It was very educational at times, being involved with an older man.

We resumed our cuddle. Just as I was drifting off, I heard Vex whisper, “I love you.”

My lips curved as a rush of strength and peace coursed through me. It was going to be all right. “I love you too.”

Four hours later, we were woken up by the ringing of my rotary. I snatched the bloody thing off the night stand and was about to fling it across the room when I saw that it was Avery’s number.

“What?” I didn’t care if I sounded surly.

“Xandra, you have to come to the funeral home with me.”

“Now? Why?”

“Sometime today. The director says there’s a problem.”

I didn’t want to say it, but I’d already figured out that we wouldn’t be able to have an open casket. Poor Vardan had looked like a blood-covered chewed-up prune when he finally died.

“Is it an emergency?”

“He didn’t say, only that he wanted me to come by. I’m not going alone.”

So why did I have to be the one to go with her. “Did you call Val?”

“He’s on a case.”

“His father just died!”

“I reckon that’s the case.”

I frowned. “Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”

“I don’t know and I don’t fucking care. Are you coming with me or not?”

“I’m with you, don’t get your knicks all in a twist. I’m not going to be ready for another four hours, though.”

“Why not?”

“Avery, I need sleep. I’m going to go back to bed for a couple of hours and then I’ll come and fetch you. Vardan’s not going anywhere. He won’t care.” A little callous, but true.

She sighed – loudly. “Fine.” I could picture her pout perfectly in my mind. Wasn’t she exhausted too? And why didn’t she take care of this with Emma? She didn’t need me with her. Then again, as the oldest, Val and I usually took point on these family issues. Avery had never had to do something like this on her own before.

“I love you. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Right.” Then she disconnected.

“Cow,” I muttered, and flopped back on to the mattress.

Vex merely drew me against his chest. No doubt he’d heard the entire conversation. “Do you want me to go with you?”

“No.” Actually I would love it if he came along, but if he did, I couldn’t make a stop at Buckingham Palace on my way home. I wanted to talk to Victoria, and I wanted to do it in private. If I accused her of killing my father, and of being behind Ali’s
creation, I wanted to do it to her face – and I wanted to do it with no one else around so the gossips didn’t get wind of it, or just in case I was wrong.

I was reckless, yes. Impulsive too, but I liked to think that I wasn’t stupid, at least not entirely.

“What the rutting hell do you mean, our father’s body has gone missing?”

The attendant at the Eternal Flame funeral parlour looked as though he might vomit at any moment. I kept my boots out of the splash area just in case, fists clenched at my sides. What I really wanted to do was reach out and grab him by the throat and shake him until his trachea snapped in my hand.

And then I’d rip his heart out of his chest and eat it. I’d smear his blood over my face, lick it from my lips and fingers until they were clean. Then I’d stick my face in the empty cavity of his ribs…

“Xandra? Xandra!”

I shook my head at Avery’s panicked tone. I hadn’t moved any closer to the attendant, but he’d backed away from me. Frightened little thing was practically perched on his desk, face as white as one of his… clients.

Avery didn’t have much more colour, but at least she didn’t look so terrified. She appeared curiously disgusted as she pointed over my shoulder. I turned my head, and saw my reflection in the mirror.

Fang me
. Well, on the plus side, at least I knew why the last few times I’d gobbed out had felt odd.

My eyes were bigger, deeper-set. My cheekbones had
widened and lifted. My nose, mouth and jaw protruded like a short muzzle from which long, curved fangs glistened. Claws had sprouted from my fingertips, slicing into my palms so deep that blood had rushed to the surface and pooled on my skin.

What would have happened if Avery hadn’t caught my attention? How much more would I have changed? I looked less animalistic than a goblin, but I was close – minus the fur.

Nature wasn’t quite done with me, I reckoned. That realisation made me want to hop up on the desk with the attendant and tremble a little myself.

“Can you fix it?” Avery asked, looking at me like she’d had a shot of vinegar.

“Bugger if I know,” I replied. My voice sounded at least two octaves lower and slightly impeded by the size of my fangs. I took a deep breath and visualised returning to my normal self, the way I usually did.

Nothing.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
. Right. Do not freak out. Keep calm. Picture Vex. Lovely Vex, with that little grin of his, talking you off the ledge.

Soft, cool fingers closed around mine, slippery with my blood. It was Avery. She squeezed twice – the way I always used to squeeze her hand when we were children.

It’s a bizarre and somewhat painful process, having the bones of your face change composition and shape. It was like an intense muscle cramp that lingered for a little even after you’d walked it off or pressed it against something cold; or like getting punched where there was already a bruise.

Regardless of this uncomfortable procedure, I was able to bring myself back to a state of normality, thanks to my sister providing a little grounding.

When I opened my eyes, not only was Avery watching me – with a little smile – but so was the attendant and another morgue employee, a woman with red hair. Human red.

“Apologies,” I said, warm-faced. “That happens sometimes.”

“You might want to have that looked at,” replied the new person without a hint of sarcasm. She held a clipboard to her chest like it was a shield. “I’m Dr Quincy, the director. Perhaps you ladies would join me in my office so we might discuss this unfortunate situation.”

“Unfortunate?” I arched a brow. “That’s a bit of an understatement, is it not?”

Her bland expression didn’t change. She was good, this human. “Then would you care to join me in my office to privately discuss this colossal fuck-up?”

I admit, I looked around for hidden cameras. This was starting to border on paranoia.

“Yes,” Avery replied. “We would.” Still holding my hand, she pulled me towards the woman. I held on, despite thinking of how Vardan’s blood had stuck our hands together.

The woman’s office was a tiny glassed-in closet of a room. Did all these places come with some sort of prerequisite for bad lighting? Honestly, my skin looked the colour of an underripe lime.

“Please sit,” the woman said. “As I said, I’m Moira Quincy, director here at Eternal Flame.”

“I’m Avery, and this is my sister Alexandra.”

“Yes.” Dr Quincy seated herself behind the pressboard desk as Avery and I sat opposite. One of the legs of my chair was shorter than the others. I resisted the urge to rock it back and forth until one of them slapped me.

Actually, a slap might be nice.

This was shock, I thought. The thought was followed by the urge to laugh hysterically. You’d think I would have developed a higher threshold for histrionics by now, but no. No matter what happened to me, I inevitably reached a place where I wanted to beat my head against a wall until my brain leaked out of my ears.

I simply didn’t want to deal with this, but like all things, I didn’t have a choice, so I had to do as Vex often told me: put on my big-girl knickers and do what had to be done.

“Why don’t you tell us what happened to our father’s body, Dr Quincy?” I made the suggestion so that it wasn’t really a suggestion. If I was going to deal with this, I was going to have to be in charge of the situation.

The woman removed her spectacles and sat forward, resting her forearms on the desk’s cluttered surface. I’d wager she knew where everything was in that mess. “First of all, I want to apologise to you for this unf—this situation. The duke’s body was delivered here and processed as usual. By processed I mean cleaned and examined. We strive to treat our people with the same respect and care that we give the living.”

“How lovely.” Bitch. Bitch. Bitch. “Obviously someone decided not to respect our father, though, because he’s missing.”

When a redhead is embarrassed, there’s no hiding it, as was the case with the doctor. She flushed a brilliant coral red. “Yes, and I must apologise again—”

“No.” I cut her off, leaning forward. “You
mustn’t
. What you must do is tell us every fucking detail of how you lost our murdered father.”

“Xandra.” Avery put a hand on my arm, I flung her off. Wonderful, she’d got blood on my sleeve. I just picked this
coat up from the cleaners and now I was going to have to take it in again.

“No. I’m not trying to be a cow, but someone killed our father, and now the only evidence of that has disappeared.” I turned to Quincy. “That is what you’re saying, yes? That he was taken before you could determine cause of death?”

I hated it when people gave me condescending looks. So rude. “Well, I think it was fairly obvious he died because of his injuries…”

“His injuries had started to heal before he was given some ‘medicine’ that made him vomit out his internal organs like a blender without a lid. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s unusual, yeah?” Because he was an aristo, Vardan’s body would have been brought straight here for examination and preparation for interment.

Oh, she hated me. Can’t say that I was all that heartbroken over it. I was somewhat accustomed to getting what I wanted, and this woman wasn’t inclined to be generous. I’d been challenged before, but never by someone who had lost my father’s corpse.

“It is unusual, yes. Perhaps if I had a blood sample I could at least test that for any toxins.” She didn’t seem particularly convinced it would work.

“You didn’t take a sample when he was brought in?”

She flushed darker. “His injuries and blood loss made it seem a simple case. I’m sure I would have noticed if he’d been poisoned when I examined his stomach and tissue.”

Of
course
she would have noticed. “I gave the bottle of poison to my brother to have tested. He’s with Special Branch.”

Quincy cleared her throat. “Yes, well we spoke to them as
well earlier today. It seems their evidence has also gone missing.”

I opened my mouth, but Avery cut me off. “Would a piece of clothing yield anything beneficial?” She reached into her purse and pulled out a bag containing what I assumed was the shirt she’d worn when our father died. It looked like little more than a blood-soaked rag or towel.

“You brought it with you?”

“I thought we might need it.”

She was smarter than I ever gave her credit for being. “I was going to throw mine out.”

My sister barely met my gaze. “It was Dede’s.”

Ah. There was that lump in my throat. I’d become rather accustomed to the feeling. I looked at Dr Quincy. “Take care that you don’t lose that as well, will you?”

“Of course.” She withdrew something that looked like a swab with a plastic cap. She dabbed the swab into the bloody shirt, and then capped it. Then she drained blood from the bag – the top was literally blood-soaked – into a small vial that she also capped and quickly labelled.

Perhaps she wasn’t completely incompetent after all. She sealed the bag and gave it back to Avery. “If this is special, I’d rather you hold on to it. I know of a cleaner who is a miracle-worker when it comes to getting blood out of clothing.”

Avery smiled – a hopeful, childlike expression that made me wonder if I could hit Quincy hard enough to poke her nose out the other side of her skull. Jealousy was not a good colour for me, but this woman had lost our father. She didn’t get to play hero for my sister. Only I got to do that. And Val, of course. I was the one that fixed things, not this ginger bint.

“You were telling us how our father went missing.”

“Yes, of course. After cleaning the body in preparation for internal examination, I was told that a very important telephone call had come for me. At the same time someone buzzed that they needed help bringing a body down from one of the upper floors. Jeremy – the boy you frightened so very well – went to assist. I suppose I don’t have to tell you that there was no call and no body.”

“No,” I replied sweetly. “I deduced that one all on my own. I once saw it in a film. Am I also to assume that our father’s body was gone when you both came back?”

“Correct.” She turned to Avery. I reckoned she was done with me. “I assure you, Lady Avery, that this sort of thing simply doesn’t happen here. I have no idea how anyone could have got in here and walked out with a body… er… the duke.”