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When I was finally done, I stood back to appreciate my handiwork. Any normal person would be feeling chilled by this whole thing, but I felt positively merry. I was going to bring an end to one of the worst serial killers the Earth had ever seen. If that wasn’t a reason to celebrate, I didn’t know what was.
Grinning, I turned towards the door, finally ready to leave, and got the shock of my life.
Finch Greyiron was standing in the doorway looking at me. His arms were crossed over his chest, and his eyebrows were raised in sceptical bemusement. “You missed a spot,” he said.
Chapter 22
DIANA
Late the next morning I was on a train zooming through the countryside towards Edinburgh. It was Friday already. I was impatient to get the interview with Constance Ashbeck over and done with. I was jittery and impatient and far too excited to sit still, so being on a train was the worst thing that I could subject myself to.
Constance Ashbeck was going to tell me what I needed to know. She had to. I had not prepared my damn kill room for nothing.
Nothing was exactly what I thought I would be using it for when I had laid eyes on Finch standing in the doorway of the kill room yesterday. My navelstone had vibrated fiercely the moment I saw him and Finch had been damn lucky that the sword had not appeared in my hand. I was sure it would have slain him on the spot.
As I had mentally debating the various options of what to do, including tying him up and leaving him there until I had decided how to deal with him, he had said, “You missed a spot,” and pointed to the back of the door, which I had failed to coat in plastic wrap.
I had raised my eyebrows in enquiry. “Experienced with kill rooms, are you?”
“Not exactly,” he had said. “But maybe I will be after I find the guy who took Zezi.”
He had meant it too. I could tell that by the feel of the psychic music coming off him, which had been quiet and intense and full of a quietly leashed rage. Finch wanted to find the people who had taken Zezi and he was not averse to dealing out harm to them. Looking at him, this defied belief. He looked nothing more than a harmless chilled-out a young university student who should be playing a guitar and smoking weed and passing out from getting drunk. There was definitely more to this guy than met the eye, and I didn’t just mean that he was half goblin.
I had decided to trust Finch. I hadn’t told him what I planned to do with the room, but I had told him it would be in his best interest to never come back to it and to never speak of it to anyone. I had believed him when he said that he would not. In exchange for his silence I head promised that I would use my psychic skills to help him find Zezi — as soon as my DCK case was over. He hadn’t wanted to wait, but I told him that there was simply no way that I was going to be able to concentrate on anything else. I would be of no use. He had grudgingly backed off.
Plagued by the thought of what I wanted to do with Devil Claw once I got my hands on him, the journey crawled by. I didn’t want to think about my doubts about my ability to take him on. I just wanted to believe that when the moment arrived, I would be prepared. That this was meant to be. That everything would be fine, just like it had been in the Ronin house when Marielle came at me.
Several hours later I arrived at the hospital in Edinburgh to find Storm waiting impatiently outside of Grace Newman’s room. The doctor was in there with her, and had refused to let Storm in until she was finished. Storm told me that Remi and Monroe were speaking to the forensic team, and that Leo was off work given that it was the day before the full moon.
Finally the doctor came out of the room and told us we could have fifteen minutes with Mrs Newman, but we were not to upset her. Storm reassured the doctor that we would be as gentle as could be. The doctor practically swooned at his smile. We entered the room, and I shut the door firmly behind myself and Storm.
Inside, Grace Newman was sitting propped up against many plump pillows in a bed that was very nice for a hospital bed. She was exceptionally thin, gaunt even. She had a bandage on her cheek and another one on her arm, and seem to have escaped very lightly for an encounter with the Devil Claw Killer himself. He could have snapped her like a twig without even trying. Clearly he had not made any attempt at all to actually kill her. He had wanted her fully functioning so that she could tell us whatever she knew.
But she had no idea about that. This woman believed that she was Grace Newman now, and she thought that we believed it too.
It was not only her bed that was nice. So was the silk robe she was wearing and the furnishings she was surrounded with. In fact, the whole room looked more like it belonged in a hotel than a hospital. It seemed that someone was providing the best of care for her.
However there were no flowers on the bedside table next to her. No cards either. No rich new lover by her side, which she could have easily had given that she was still beautiful. All those years being fed tiny drops of the vampire Gaius Ronin’s blood — her reward for being his blood-slave — had done much to delay the effects of time on her face and body. Time had caught up with her somewhat these six years, but she was a still lovely. A lovely lonely woman in a lavish room, and an angry one too by the look on her face.
“I have already spoken to the other officers,” she said. “I’ve given the my account of what happened. I see no benefit to having to relive the whole experience with you.” Her voice was shaking. She had addressed her comments to Storm, clearly thinking that I was of little consequence.
“Nice room you’ve got for yourself here,” I said. “Who is paying for it?”
She looked astonished at my tone. Her mouth opened, and then it snapped shut again. And then it opened. “I want that woman out of here,” she said to Storm, her voice trembling. “I am a victim! You can’t treat me like this!”
I stalked right up to her bed and took a seat in the chair beside it. Up close, the hollows beneath her eyes were dark and made her look even more fragile, even more the victim that she wanted us to believe that she was. “And what about your victim?” I said. “What about Leonie Ashbeck?”
Her eyes went wide, and then they flicked from me to Storm and back again. Her mouth trembled. “Who?” she said in a faint voice.
I gave her a satisfied smile like a cat that got the cream. “Leonie, your niece. Or have you forgotten her already?”
Storm had come to stand beside me, and he spoke in a far more reasonable tone. “We know who you really are, Grace,” he said. “You may not remember me, but we met once a long time ago, when you were called Constance.”
Her gaze fixed on his face and after a while her stoic expression crumpled. She had recognized Storm, and clearly with that memory had come an influx of other unpleasant ones. She took several deep breaths, clearly trying to halt the wave of panic that was coming her way. When she spoke again, she ma
naged to inject the reediest thread of steel back into her voice.
“Why are you here?” she said to him. “I thought this was about the attack on me yesterday. You have no right to come looking for me in relation to anything else. You have no right to come here. Do you know how hard it was for me to leave that other life behind?”
