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We stopped at a thick wooden door that would take several humans to push open. Beatrice flicked it open with a tap, making me wonder how strong she was. She tended toward Victorian garb, but I knew her age to be pre-1700 at least.Draugraccumulated strength with time.
Inside the room an opulent rug filled the center, covering stone floor. A fire, raging despite the room being empty a moment prior, created enough warmth to chase away the damp January weather. It wasn’t cold exactly, but the damp was pervasive.
“Sit.” Beatrice motioned to a series of over-stuffed sofas, one with lions’ paws for feet. “Tell me this news that has you worried.”
“There was a murder in the city, at the edge of the ghost zone, and in the room with the headless corpses was a box . . . addressed to me.” I took a breath, hoping my faith in this woman was not misplaced. “The heads of three dead crows. Mask. Glitter.”
For a moment she said nothing, merely held up a hand.
A few seconds later, Eleanor, one of Beatrice’s most trusted, appeared. “My lady?”
“Go to Lauren. Tell her there is a threat to her and either bring her here or stay there to keep her safe.” Beatrice reached a hand toward the dead girl.
Eleanor took it, dropped to a knee and kissed it, and then she stood. “My life for her safety, my lady.”
Then the young woman was gone. Beatrice made a “continue” gesture. She stood by the fire as we filled her in on the grisly scene at the Hebert house. When we were done, she turned to face us.
“They were all twice-dead? You are sure?”
I nodded. “Beheaded. If they weren’tdraugr,they were still killed as if they had been.”
“Of course,” she murmured. “The photographs?”
I held out my phone, and she simply stared at it. “I used my phone camera.”
“Show me.” Beatrice kept her hands far from the device, so I scrolled through them, pausing and enlarging at her request.
I couldn’t read her emotions or thoughts without her projecting them, but her expression shifted to that emotionless state that was “public Beatrice” not the more human way she had started being in my presence. If there were no witnesses, that meant she was hiding something—or upset. I understood that much.
Finally, Beatrice walked away. “They were from Prague. The deceased. Not local. Notmysubjects.”
“Prague?”
Beatrice moved toward a small bar that I hadn’t noticed at first. “They are a new tendency.” She gestured with a still-empty glass. “They read too much ‘classic’ literature in their lives, I fear. Younger. Not even a century typically. Much is made of their rebellion. The elder factions do not approve.”
Draugrwere as toddlers, noshing on everyone the first decade. If these were older than that, they were obviously in possession of their mental faculties. They were aware of themselves before they were slaughtered.
“They select proteges. Apprentices or some other ridiculousness.” Beatrice gave a delicate little shudder. “And they call themselves ‘vampires.’ As I said, too much modern literature.”
“Did you know they were here?” Eli asked.
“No.” Beatrice frowned. “I do not begrudge them their childish ways. In the past when we were hidden, they were a threat. Always with the melodrama. Taking up with artistes. They were why we are exposed now.”
I stared at her mutely as she carried me a glass of bloody whisky.
“It’s mine,” she said. “You will need the strength. I will see to Lauren’s safety. She may be your mother, but I am the only elder in her family. She is my responsibility.”
That certainly didn’t bode well. Of course, I was starting to suspect that nothing involving my grandmother did. I sighed and sipped the blood and whisky. Both were aged enough to be powerful stuff. As I sipped, I updated her on Iggy, on the police grant, and my general sense that there was a threat that was greater than dear beheaded Harold.
“Iggy is a useful man,” Beatrice began in that way that said there was much she was not saying.
I gave her a look.
“He knows where the bodies are buried.” She shrugged. “Once he was an assassin, and had I been seeking a lover, I would have kept him. Iggy was not much for cages, sadly. And I was never quite sure which of us would first try to murder the other.” She glanced at Eli and added, “The women in my family often have regrettable taste in men.”
“Geneviève seems to be an exception.” Eli’s voice could freeze infernos.
“Perhaps.” Beatrice offered him a glass of whisky, no blood. “No bonds are made by sharing my wealth.”
