“She’s so terribly busy tonight,” said Jade. “Least I can do is make sure she can pour her draughts.”
Sebastian slid into the booth across from Jade. She was a particularly beautiful woman, her bright brown eyes and russet-brown skin luminous in the pub’s yellowish light. She wore a well-tailored houndstooth man’s suit and a cloche hat over her bobbed black curls, and her pink lipstick matched her scarf.
He offered her a rueful apology as he balanced his cap on his knee. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“And here we gave you so much notice.”
Jade’s self-deprecating smile was so charming that Sebastian found himself smiling back. “It is not a problem,” he said, his voice warming. “I am always at your service.”
“Are you?” Zhang said dryly, his arm still around Jade’s shoulders.
Sebastian hid a wince. He never meant to put anyone on their guard around their partner, but he still managed to stumble into it regular as clockwork. Then again, Zhang could have simply been worried Sebastian was going to do something villainous, like kidnap them. In fairness, there was precedent.
“And at your service as well, of course,” he said to Zhang, as sincerely as he’d addressed Jade. “You found my family’s missing siphon clock. You will always have my gratitude.”
“Hmph.” Zhang didn’t seem mollified, but he did let it go. “The siphon is still in New York. My mother has it.” He was as handsome as Jade was lovely, with high cheekbones and deep brown eyes that popped against his pale skin. His jet-black hair shone when it caught the light. He was a scholar too, Sebastian remembered, and despite Sebastian’s magic, didn’t seem the least bit nervous.
Handsome, smart, and unintimidated.
Sebastian cleared his throat, forcing his thoughts to move on. “Did you learn anything more about the man who stole the siphon clock and tried to auction it?”
“Perhaps,” Jade said meaningfully. “The Earl of Blanshard, known in his English social circles for his collection of continental antiques. I had a run-in with him at the world’s fair in Paris in May, but we haven’t found any trace of him since.”
“We presume he only put the siphon up for sale because he was forced to by the Puppeteer,” Zhang added.
Sebastian didn’t quite hide his flinch. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted to talk about.
Jade’s voice was gentle with pity as she asked, “Did you meet Lord Blanshard when you were under that same blood magic?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Perhaps he came to Baron Zeppler and the Puppeteer’s attention after I was sent to New York.”Oh, perfect, Sebastian, why not bring up New York, where you kidnapped one of their friends and had a standoff at gunpoint with another?
Jade hesitated. “How are you, by the way?” she said seriously.
Sebastian shrugged, trying for a lightness he hadn’t felt in years. “Oh, you know,” he said, possibly too quickly. “Keeping busy, moving on.”
But Zhang shook his head. “No one simplymoves onfrom blood magic,” he said. “Are you actually going to claim you’re fine, that you don’t even have blood terrors?”
Wake up, de Leon. I need your magic—
Sebastian shoved away the echo in his head, and tried to smile reassuringly. “I am grateful for your concern,” he said, which was true, and then he added the lie. “But I really am fine. My magic weakens other magic; why would the Puppeteer’s blood magic be able to keep its hold on me?”
Like that question didn’t haunt him with every nightmarish waking.
“But the newspaper clippings you sent are not about the siphon or the Earl of Blanshard, are they?” he said hurriedly moving the subject off himself. “Three bodies with no known cause of death?”
The couple exchanged a look, seeming to have a silent conversation. Then Jade leaned in. “You’re probably wondering why we think the deaths are connected, and the killer one of us.” She lowered her voice. “We did some more digging into the deaths. Jianwei went into the police stations and morgues on the astral plane.”
Zhang had leaned in as well. “There’s no known cause of death because there’s no explanation for three shriveled bodies.”
Sebastian’s eyes widened.“Shriveled?”
“Like someone put a straw to their jugular and sucked them dry,” said Zhang. “Skin translucent, muscles atrophied, bones thin and brittle.”
“Neither of us have ever heard of magic like that,” said Jade. “Have you?”
Sebastian chewed his lip. “It does remind me of a story, yes,” he said. “Of an eighteenth-century paranormal. In English, they would have called him the Vampire.”
“Family legend?” Zhang correctly guessed, because he was from a many-generations paranormal family too, Sebastian remembered. “What does a paranormal have to do to get a moniker like the Vampire?”
