“Is poison in the dish you sent over?”
“Nope. But it’s supposed to be! Substituted my precious pear sauce for the sweetener. He’s going to know what I did as soon as they take a bite and nothing happens.”
“‘He.’ So you know who did it?” Alec asked.
Mom crossed her arms and sighed, leaning against a prep table. “I didn’t see Jerzy do it. But I’m fairly sure. Tony insisted the danger was from outside, but I’ve heard enough about that family.” She grinned at me. “I ‘ve been watching them like a hawk. Then this afternoon—this was just after Emilio cruised by with the invite to the picnic—I had to hit the can, but first I scoped ’em all out, like always.”
Mom tapped her fingers one by one on the prep table as she recited, “Sisi was asleep, Robert and Percy had been called to the opera house on some emergency. Luc was smoking outside, and Paul had driven Cerisette and the monster-mother to ear-bend some poor schmuck. The housemaids were upstairs, and Jerzy was in the servants’ room watching a DVD, twenty feet away from the kitchen. When I came back, my sauce was still boiling, whiffing of badly burnt almonds. I had not even poached my almonds yet.” She made a face. “So I tossed it all, and substituted my pear sauce without saying anything to anyone. Jerzy’s been the nicest to me. Total bummer.”
My stomach churned.
“You didn’t tell anyone?” Alec asked.
“No. I’d promised Tony I’d wait until I had evidence, but he split two days ago. You knew that, right?” She grinned at me. “Of course. Weren’t you going with him? What did you find, Kimli?”
“Mom, it’s too long to tell. We better crash that picnic,” I said to Alec.
Alec held out a hand. “I’ve got to pull together some of the outer perimeter—everyone is deployed to watch for danger from without. We had no idea it was right here with us.” He turned to Mom. “What do the von Mecklundburgs know about Tony’s mission?”
Mom said, “Before he left, I heard him tell them that he had to find some portal. Ever since he left, Sisi’s been tripping out about ‘Esplumoir,’ whatever that is.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” Alec’s mouth tightened. “What time is dessert?”
“They’re almost ready for it,” Madam Emilio said, coming back inside.
“Can you stall them?” Alec asked.
We all looked at each other, then Mom grinned. “What could be simpler? Serve the tartlets I just brought. Say that’s the prelude dessert. We’d better get them into the oven to warm—they are prebaked. They’ll be ready in three minutes.”
“Thanks, Marie. Kim, I’m going to get a fast look inside to see where Jerzy is in reference to everyone else. Then I’ll get a team put together. We had better assume that he’s armed.”
Alec walked out of the kitchen, ducking around Madam Emilio who was just re-entering. She gave Alec an absent smile, then said to Mom and me, “Emilio told me he can use up time serving coffee and tea. I’ve got to supervise that. The oven is ready, if want to put your tartlets in to warm.”
Mom kissed my cheek. “Lend me a hand, Kimli?”
“Sure. Though I better wash up—I haven’t had a bath in two days.”
“You’re just going to be on mitt duty. Talk to me instead. Tony told me he was taking you along, so I insisted he take some of my pears for dessert. I thought you might like that.”
“Oh yes.” I had to laugh. “Though I nearly murdered him. I thought he’d kidnapped you.”
“Not me! Everybody knows, don’t mess with the cook, or you will pay.” Her grin vanished. “That joke was funnier before I heard about that poor dog. Geez, it really creeps me out. Jerzy’s my half-brother, and a poisoner? Can’t get my head around it.” She led the way into the bake room. “So what have you been doing?”
“Oh, Mom, it’ll take hours. Tell me about your gig. Is it weird, them not knowing who you are?”
She chuckled as she carefully lifted covered pie tins out of an enormous basket. “Until today, it’s been a blast. I thought it was going to be roughest around Sisi, because I knew she’d tried to shellac my daughter. But she’s been so stoned until the last day or two, she’s like a zombie. The worst is Cerisette. Even her own mother told her to mellow out yesterday—that’s right, put the tray in as soon as I get the tartlets on it—and Robert shouted all over my Cotriade Bretonne that if she brought up your name one more time he would change his will and leave everything to you. What did you do to that girl?”
“Nothing. At all. Whatever happened is entirely in her head.”
Mom waited until I’d slid the last tray in, then dusted her hands. “Three minutes.” She cranked the timer, and set it down. “That’s what I figured. So I said . . .” Mom switched abruptly from her L.A. Americanese to her elegant French, “‘My dear girl, you are young and thin and rich, so why are you not enjoying life?’ Her mother tried to lay a heavy, ‘Voilà tout, Madame Tullée,’ on me, like the Queen Bee, and so I gave her a dose of, ‘Nobody is ever rich enough, and beauty doesn’t guarantee happiness, but you know what? You’ve got a head start on someone sixty-five who can’t get up from their bug-filled sleeping bag in order to dumpster dive for breakfast.’”
“Wow, Mom! And they didn’t kick you to the curb?”
“And go without my pâte feuilletée and brioche every morning? Robert said to her, ‘Why don’t you stop whining and go do something?’ The Twiggy twins slammed off in different directions, leaving us some peace and—”
The door opened, and Alec poked his head in. “I got a glance past Emilio’s shoulder, as I’m supposed to be lying down upstairs, sick with the flu.”
“Jerzy’s in there, right?” I asked.
“Next to the duchess. If he has a weapon he’s got both doors effectively covered, and he’s definitely on the watch. I think if I try to get Dmitros’s attention he’s going to know something is up. I don’t want him suspicious until I can get people in place.” He pinched the skin between his brows. “Milo didn’t want Vigilzhi guards in sight—looks bad—so this will take a few minutes. Please stall the pears so he won’t get suspicious.” He ran out.
“I wish I had my sword,” I fretted.
Mom grinned. “Wouldn’t a sword fight in a dining room be more danger to everybody else?”
“But Gran is in there!”
“No, she’s not. She’s upstairs—in the guest room you used last summer. Madam Emilio told me right before you arrived that it’s the nicest one. Milo was going to scope out the vibe before springing Gran on them. Right now nobody except Kilber and the Emilios know who she is, or that she’s here. That’s the way she wanted it.”
A minute later the timer went off. Mom and I looked at each other.
Madam Emilio bustled in. “Those ready?” she asked, as I fetched out the trays, the hot air buffing my face. “Good. It’s positively wintry in there, Emilio says. Not the air, the atmosphere! Br-r-r-r! I think they need something sweet.”
Mom was swiftly setting the tartlets on a beautiful tray in Royal Doulton’s blue-and-gold rimmed Harlow pattern. I watched her fingers, so skillful as she carefully removed curling sprigs of orange zest from a napkin and sprinkled pinches of cinnamon over the tartlets, which completed the presentation.
“There,” she said, and made a face. “Do you think this is my last Madame Tullée dish? I don’t know about this spy gig. It’s weird, pretending to be somebody you’re not. Like reality TV that never turns off. I get it, how tough this was for you last summer.” She leaned over to give me a cinnamon-scented kiss. “Okay, over to Jeeves. I’m going to ready the Pièce de résistance myself, since I’m here.”
I picked up a couple of the fine porcelain trays, and headed toward the servants’ door to the dining room so I could hand them off to Emilio in his butler outfit.
These tartlets should buy us time, I was just thinking, when I heard a familiar voice coming from the other entrance to the dining room.
Tony’s voice.
THIRTY-NINE
>
TONY AND PHAEDRA HAD GONE straight to Mecklundburg House, where they discovered that everyone had come to Ysvorod House for the winter picnic. They came armed to the teeth but hadn’t counted on Kilber, who wouldn’t let them in unless they surrendered rifle and sword at the door. So they entered the dining room unarmed.
The second Tony walked in, Jerzy stood up and pulled a pistol out of his pocket. He pointed it at Milo.
Everybody froze for a nanosecond, then the duchess screamed.
From my stance just outside the servants’ door, I heard Tony’s greeting cut off, and then the duchess’s scream.
I shoved my trays at Mom, who was right behind me with the third tray. I banged open the door in time to see Commander Trasyemova lunge out of his seat—across from Jerzy, whose head turned.
He grinned.
Tony leaped in front of Milo, and I swear Jerzy’s grin widened as the muzzle of the pistol shifted. He pulled the trigger.
Tony’s hands went up as blood flowered in obscene crimson in his chest. He spun around and fell across the table, smashing face down into the dishes. Milo threw his arms across Tony, shouting, “Kilber!”
Beka recoiled, head back in such anguish she might have been shot as well. She has, my hindbrain gibbered. She has, straight through the heart.
That’s when everybody went berserk, shouting and screaming and getting in each other’s way. Kilber arrived at a run through the dining room doors as Jerzy shoved the Prime Minister violently into Beka, causing the two to crash into Shimon. Two steps, three. I braced myself in the door—you were wrong about the sword, Mom—Jerzy’s distorted grin loomed.
I brought my hands up, but I didn’t have a sword. He grabbed my necklace and used it to sling me face first into the door frame. I staggered back just in time for the commander to smash into me, and we both fell to the floor.
My head buzzed. I was barely aware of the commander’s brief “Sorry, Kim,” as he helped me sit up so I wouldn’t block the doorway, then he dashed after Jerzy.
There was a confusion of stamping feet around me as I gradually regained my senses. I discovered I was sitting in a moat of tartlets. My head and neck throbbed. Mom lay groaning a yard away, her face covered with pastry where Jerzy had smashed one of the platters over her head.
“Mom?”
“I’m okay,” she whispered. “No. I’m alive. Ow.”
My necklace was broken. It lay a few feet away, the crystal glittering wildly with color. I scooped it up then got to my feet, my head doing that whirl-stop, whirl-stop of dizziness as it throbbed where I’d hit the doorjamb.
Through the open door came shouts, “Where is he?” “Must be in the garden!” and “What happened? What happened?”
I bent down to help Mom to her feet but staggered, too dizzy to steady either of us.
“Busted!” she muttered. “Got to sit down.”
“I’ll help,” Madam Emilio said, one hand pressed to her hip. “Oh. Our sitting room is through here.”
She and Mom helped each other out. I started after them on autopilot as rainbow lights twinkled up the wall and across a framed photo in sepia tones of some Victorian-era woman. I blinked down at the crystal necklace in my palm.
My prism!
I can find him, I thought, and ran painfully through the main kitchen to the service porch, where our coats lay. Cold air flowed in through the back door, which had been left wide open. My hands shook as I dug my prism out of my coat pocket and held it up to my face. If I could just see what direction Jerzy had run in, I could find Alec, Dmitros, someone, and tell them where to look.
I gazed into the crystal with Jerzy’s face vividly in mind. Iridescence flared all over the ceiling, drawing, no, forcing my eyes upward.
Upward? Like, in the house? I peered at the back door, which was still open. Distant voices were sharp in the chilly night air, the search being organized.
It made perfect sense—open the back door, then run back inside and hide until the search had spread beyond the house.
Hide . . . right where Gran is.
If my head hadn’t been swimming, if I hadn’t been so full of anguish and rage about Tony, I probably would have thought about why I was seeing lights instead of Jerzy’s face. And I probably wouldn’t have done something as stupid as trying to chase an armed maniac all alone.
But I didn’t, and I did.
I replaced the prism and stashed my broken necklace in a coffee mug on a shelf to keep it safe and to keep my hands free. I knew where to go.
Weapon . . . weapon? I grabbed up one of the kitchen knives, then whirled around and pounded up the back stairs toward the upper part of the house. The only clear thought in my head was a voice loop, He can’t get my Gran, he can’t get my Gran.
Except for the glittering chandelier hanging over the front stairwell, the upstairs wasn’t lit. Rainbow sparkles splashed the stairs, and the walls, as I ran up, my head throbbing in time to my steps.
I reached the darkened hallway, and slowed, knife at the ready.
I remembered the layout: the big rooms at the front belonged to Milo and Alec. As I started down the main hallway toward the guest rooms, I caught the murmur of voices almost smothered by the louder noises echoing up from below.
The door to my old room was open—empty, except for a trace of Gran’s familiar scent, Shalimar. She’d been here and recently, too.
She wasn’t downstairs, and she wasn’t in the room . . . that meant she’d been grabbed by Jerzy. To use as a hostage?
Oh no you don’t, I muttered as I tiptoed down the hall, then paused at the corner to listen. The adjacent hallway led to the wing called the Children’s Suite, unused by any actual kids since the early thirties, when Milo was a boy. It had been closed off, unheated, so it was deep-freeze cold.
From the far end came noises. Voices. I ran soundlessly, closing the gap.
“. . . but your father was not a villain,” Gran was saying to someone. “One might say his heart was perhaps too generous.”
Jerzy laughed softly. When you didn’t see his handsome, friendly face, the sound was creepy.
“Might one?” Jerzy asked, mocking her elegant diction. “Or might one say he could not keep his trousers buttoned? He was certainly unable to resist my mother, who was an evil witch, I was often told as I was growing up. Who knows? It might even be true.”
I slowed, staying back about fifteen yards. I had two weapons: the knife, and surprise. I had only one chance, and I had to get between him and Gran.
“Do you believe she was evil?” Gran asked, calm and conversational, as they turned the far corner.
I tiptoed behind, wildly making and discarding plans.
“Do you really want to know, Princess Lily?” Jerzy asked. “Or are you just speaking to postpone what awaits you here?”
“I wish to know,” she said, still calm, still conversational. Everyone is king or queen of their own demesne. “And if what you say is true, that you will live forever, and that my life is ending, well, I would like to enjoy what remains by gaining understanding.”
“They all said she was the devil. I never met her. She sold me to Sisi’s family when I was a baby—of which they never failed to remind me. How poetic, this justice! And how fitting, that my first meal will be the purity of Dsaret blood.”
Now. I hefted my knife, poised to close the distance—
And froze when a third voice spoke, a female voice, low with laughter, said, “Are you not a little ahead of yourself, dear boy?”
Jerzy said, “I have someone much better than Alec Ysvorod. Who can wait his turn. Discovered her quite by accident. Or is this what you call synchronicity? Why are you here? Where is Elena?”
“Elena is not here,” the female cooed. “She and her followers seem to be caught outside the city. But Augustus is present. You may complete your covenant with him.”
“Augustus,” Jerzy stated with satisfaction. “Better than Elena.” Then, with a kind of ritual cadence, “I offer my
blood in covenant.”
I popped around the corner just in time to see Jerzy and Gran, outlined by silvery moonlight, passing inside a room.
“We will accept of your blood in covenant,” repeated the female. She sounded young. “Chérie, will you do the honors?”
How many people were in that room?
“—you?” Jerzy exclaimed. “But I thought—”
“Your covenant is about to be kept. Or shall you wait another year?”
“No, no,” Jerzy said in haste. “It does not matter. Merely surprise. By all means—it should be a pleasure of an agreeably twisted sort.”
We will accept? It was time to run for help. But first I had to spot Gran, make sure she wasn’t in imminent danger.
“Chérie?” the female said.
I pressed myself flat against the wall and sidled to the door, then carefully peered in. The moonlight streamed in through two tall windows. It was enough to reveal a confusion of figures. Which was Gran?
Jerzy’s ruddy hair glinted like dying embers. He seemed to be sitting in a chair, with a female in a long pale blue gown half-leaning, half sitting on him in a parody of passion. That’s when the noises started. He gave a groan and a hissing indrawn breath as the female made kissing, sucking sounds—again, a horrible parody of passion.
“Not all. Not all,” whispered the female from the shadowy corner of the room. “We must keep our covenant.”
Reality hit me then, knocking my wits askew as I realized, These people are vampires. For the first time I could actually see them. No crystal.
Gran’s pale face was outlined by moonlight. She’d been shoved into a carved wooden chair, from which she gazed into the face of a young woman who was also silhouetted against the window.
For a heartbeat I stared in astonishment at the two profiles, one young and one old. It was as if the same woman faced herself at her coming of age and at the other end of life: They were the same size, the same build. The only difference, besides the aging in Gran’s face, was the silver of Gran’s hair in its coronet, unsteady after a long journey and being shoved around by Jerzy. The other’s pale hair was perfectly coifed, marcelled around her face, and twisted up into an elegant chignon in back.