S Stirling - The Council of Shadows

Ellen shook her head and smiled. "I'm a survivor, Gis," she said. "You know that."

Demarcio nodded. "I suppose this means you don't want me to keep the job open?"

The two women shared a laugh; then the gallery owner turned to Adrian again. He could feel-and could have seen, even if he were mind-blind-her suspicions click into place once more.

"What do the police have to say about this?" she asked shrewdly, her eyes darting between them.

"Nothing," Adrian said. "My sister is dead. And…Ms. Demarcio, some people cannot be controlled by the police, by the authorities. By any conventional means. They are too rich, too…powerful for that."

Demarcio nodded, and he could feel her agreement; it was something like the scent of mint. Ellen had told him a good deal about her, among other things that she was a rather paranoid variety of left-winger. That didn't interest him in itself-human politics were a smoke screen, self-deluding nonsense at best, and had been throughout the century since the Council of Shadows reached its full monstrous power. But that mind-set would predispose her to believe an edited version of the truth.

Since the world really is ruled by an all-powerful evil conspiracy. Just one of werewolves and vampires and sorcerers, rather than capitalists and generals.

"But you can deal with them?" she asked him sharply.

He nodded. "I must, I find," he said. "After what happened to Ellen. And my sister was not acting alone. She was part of a, umm, cabal. Of…younger members of some very old, very powerful families. Families that already wield great hidden power, you understand; shadowy influence within governments and corporations and intelligence agencies. Influence sufficient to silence or kill those they consider threats."

"Like, for example, your family, the Brezes?"

"Yes. I have been something of a family black sheep, you might say."

I actually managed to say all that without outright lying, he thought, slightly amused. It's even accurate to call Adrienne's followers a cabal. Shadowspawn politics work that way, like a Bronze Age monarchy's court intrigues. Or the other way 'round, since those kings probably had a great deal of our blood. As one might expect from their taste for human sacrifices.

Demarcio sat watching him for half a minute. "You're not telling me everything, are you, Mr. Breze?"

"Adrian, I think," he said, smiling and indicating Ellen.

The charm of the smile bounced off her like buckshot off a battleship.

"You're not, are you, Adrian?"

"No. Because you have no need to know more, as yet; and because knowing more would endanger you. Endanger your life."

"Oh."

A flash of apprehension, very little of which showed. "Is this a social call, then?"

He shook his head. "Not entirely, Ms.-"

"Giselle."

A nod. "Not entirely, Giselle. I'd like to know what happened here after we all, how shall I say, left. It would be entirely in character for Adrienne to have…energetically suppressed any police investigation. Naturally they would have asked you questions; and questions sometimes reveal information as much as answers do."

And naturally you would have found out as much more as you could: out of concern for Ellen, and because according to her you are the biggest gossip in Santa Fe and possessed of an insatiable curiosity.

"There was a detective, two of them, SFPD. They came around, asking questions. And then…nothing. When I called, they said the investigation had been moved to the dead-files section. That was…" She cleared her throat, then continued: "That was when I thought you must be dead, Ellen."

Her beaming smile died. "Then there was the incident, a couple of months ago."

"Incident?" Adrian said.

His voice was still calm, but there was an edge of danger to it now. He could feel the flux in her mind, the primal fear of death welling up. And a ghost wind touched the back of his neck as well, the Power hinting of risk. An effort of will fought down the instinctive rage that the presence of another Shadowspawn in his territory brought. His breed were still more jealous of such things than normal humans, and whatever his conscious convictions, the back of his mind still thought of this place as his.

"One of the detectives…Cesar Martinez…was found dead. With his girlfriend. They're calling it a murder-suicide. The details were, well, pretty gruesome. Then-"

Adrian listened through the description, and called up the newspaper reports on his tablet. His brows went up.

"Thank you very much, Giselle," he said, after they'd made arrangements to meet for dinner. "That was, as they say, interesting. And suspicious."

Demarcio looked as if she'd like to shiver, despite the comfortable temperature. She shook hands with him, and hugged Ellen fiercely.

On the street outside Ellen sighed. "It's going to be rough explaining to her that we're just here for a visit," she said.

"It would be no favor to spend too much time in her presence," he said grimly. "That double murder is a classic. Tokairin Michiko, at a guess, now that my sister is no longer with us."

Ellen shivered. "Michiko wanted to kill me, right there, that evening," she said. "I can remember her waving a crab leg in that restaurant in San Francisco and saying how much fun it would be for the two of them to kill me together, and smiling at me as if I were supposed to chime in with, 'Oh, that sounds hot.' And when Adrienne said she had other plans for me, the mad bitch pouted at me, as if she expected me to agree what a poopy stick-in-the-mud killjoy Adrienne was being."

He reached into his jacket and pulled out his cigarette case, ignoring a brace of hostile looks as he lit up. Ellen scowled and pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her jacket; she'd more or less given up on pressuring him to quit.

"She is not a nice person," Adrian replied. "And her passion for little masterpiece atrocities-"

"Like a pointillist painter. Maybe she likes playing up the dragon-lady thing."

"Precisely. Or her liking for being hands-on. That weakness means that perhaps we can arrange that something not very nice happens to her!"

"Oh, yeah." Something deadly flickered in Ellen's voice for a moment. Then: "You sure she came and took care of it herself?"

"Probably. We will have to check, of course. It might be worthwhile to contact this surviving detective; at need, I could blur his memories afterwards. I do not like doing that, both because of the effort and because it is ethically a little dubious. But one does what one must."

"She's the big Shadowspawn honcho of the west now, she and her hubby, now that her grandfather's dead."

"He is a retiring type. By our standards."

"So how come she doesn't just send a goon to do it?" Adrian shrugged. "Boredom, perhaps. Shadowspawn don't go in for large organizations, my dear; they don't even make optimum use of the human ones they control. And they act on impulse. A highly educated impulse. We must investigate further."

"We're well settled in and getting some results," Peter Boase said.

"No complaints about the facilities?" Harvey Ledbetter asked.

"The cook, pardon me, the chef, is too good. Fortunately this is a great area for high-impact running and looks like it'll be great for crosscountry skiing, too. Otherwise I'd look like a blond garden slug with limbs, but otherwise no complaints, nada. Anything we want appears like magic as fast as FedEx can fly."

Harvey looked around at the pines. Peter had the wiry, tensile build of a cross-country man, and this would be the perfect ground for it. The old base had been tucked away in a remote valley in Dalarna, designed to ride out a Soviet nuclear strike and provide a center for prolonged resistance. It was blasted deep into the granite up where Sweden faded into Norway in a tangle of hills graduating into mountains. The hills were densely green with fir and birch, and he could hear the sound of trickling water, smell rock and greenery and sap, watch a squirrel run chattering up a tree like a streak of red fire. The sun was bright, though it was well after eight, and it glittered on the long narrow lake below. Snow peaks shone like white salt far to the west, floating like the ramparts of Jotunheim in a saga.