Page 72 of Bent Out of Shade
“That’s something. All we need is Detective Chu getting his panties in a twist that you’re involved in another of his murder cases.”
“He knows I’m involved,” I said, “and even if I don’t tell him what happened tonight, his top suspect will still be a vamp. I mean, they’ll realize that the Hastings Mill guy was shot, but the others had their heads torn off. It’s pretty clear-cut.”
“Wait.” Tatiana startled and jostled her mug, spilling tea onto the table. “Torn off?”
Laurent grabbed a napkin and blotted up the mess.
“Tell me exactly what happened tonight,” she snapped.
Keeping an eye on the time, I narrated the story.
Tatiana’s hands closed into tighter and tighter fists, which chilled me, because she’d taken the news of a human heart on her car seat in stride.
Boo was chasing a pine cone around the kitchen. There was a loud snap and she mewled.
The pine cone had exploded into fractures.
“Careful of my cat, tante,” Laurent admonished in a mild voice, squatting down to check his pet for injury.
Tatiana shot Boo a concerned glance. “Sorry, minou.”
The cat nipped Laurent’s finger and squirmed away to bat at the largest chunk, unharmed.
Emmett poked Tatiana’s arm with a teaspoon. “What’s got you so hot under the collar?”
“Sabrina worked to take down gangs as a lawyer,” she said. “Now she’s a newly turned vamp who’s been abandoned and left to survive on her most primal instincts.”
“Sure,” Laurent said. “That’s why she murdered those men tonight.”
“Our assumption is that she murdered all of them,” Tatiana said.
“Okay.” I sipped my tea, wrinkling my nose at the bitter taste. “So?”
“Why the escalation in violence? You said the others had their necks snapped.”
“She was found this morning, which meant she was sleeping.” I shrugged. “Whoever grabbed her might not have known she was a vamp, but they must have drugged her hard because it was well past sunset before she blasted out of that trunk.”
“She was pissed off,” Emmett said.
“Yes, but if she was changed without consent, she’d have been furious before.” Laurent shook his head. “Tatiana’s right. Why weren’t all the kills this savage? Those first ones were more controlled…” He paled and shot to his feet. “Merde!”
I glanced up in alarm. “What?”
Laurent grabbed my wrist, hauling me out of my chair. “Juliette! Arrêtes-toi!”
Juliette glanced up as he tore inside the elevator, dragging me behind him, her hands on Sabrina’s chest. The lawyer’s exposed skin had been cleaned of dirt and blood, and her suit jacket had been removed, leaving her in her grimy, torn blouse. “C’est quoi le problème?” Juliette said. “I was just about to clear the sedative from her system.”
“Dybbuk,” Laurent said grimly.
Juliette dropped her hands to her sides while I gaped at him. A dybbuk had inhabited a vampire? My brain reeled. How was such a thing even possible? And just how fucked did that make us all?
