And judging by the expression on his rapidly healing face, I thought he might be reevaluating that whole letting-me-live thing. But then he got a look at my former passenger, who the current had wafted back to us from somewhere above. I knew it was the current, because this guy clearly wasn’t going anywhere under his own steam ever again.
Shoulder-length black hair drifted around a dead white face, its eyes given the illusion of life by the portal’s glowing bands of psychedelic light. But illusion was all it was, judging from the slash of black across his throat. It was crusty and he was either bled out or so close it made no difference, so I was assuming this wasn’t recent. Also, either he was a vampire or somebody had decided to be thorough, because there was a stake buried hilt-deep in his chest.
He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place him. Something that obviously wasn’t true for Scarface. “Shit,” he croaked.
And then “Varus.”
And then he let me go.
Chapter Thirteen
“You are certain he said ‘Varus’?” Marlowe demanded, and then stuck his head into the portal before I could say anything.
Not that I’d been planning on it. I’d already answered that question, and a bunch of others, the best I could. Yes, I thought that’s what Scarface had said. No, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. Yes, the dead guy had resembled the briefing pic I’d been given the night before. No, I couldn’t positively ID. I’d had all of a second to look at him, and he hadn’t exactly been at his best.
And for that matter, neither was I.
I was slumped at the bottom of the basement stairs, clutching a glass of whiskey and wishing it were stronger—or something else entirely. Yeah, something else would have been good, because even decent Bushmills was pretty much useless against whole-body whiplash. Every joint I had felt like it had been pulled out of place by a vengeful giant and then popped back in—more or less—to the point that just sitting hurt like a bitch.
Much less sitting and having to listen to Marlowe.
But I didn’t have much choice, since he and a couple of his servants had shown up right on the heels of the excitement, so soon that they must have been on their way here anyway. That wasn’t much of a surprise—I hadn’t really thought he was through with the Senate’s only eyewitness. But I had to admit to curiosity on one point.
I rotated my body to keep from having to move my neck, and looked at Claire, who was standing on the step above me. “I thought you weren’t letting him back in.”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at me, eyes wide and shocked, the way they’d been ever since I’d gotten back. Claire didn’t appear to find me funny right now.
That was okay; I wasn’t finding me too funny, either.
Or maybe she just couldn’t understand me. My voice sounded perfectly clear in my head, but what had come out of my mouth was a lot closer to the wah-wah-wah sound Peanuts characters hear when an adult is speaking. That probably had something to do with the crack my jaw had taken when Ray hauled me out of the portal’s gravity, which was pretty much nonexistent, and back into ours, which dislikes hovering humans for some reason.
My body had hit a pile of the twins’ dirty laundry, but my jaw had hit concrete. So along with whiplash I was now impersonating Popeye on the right-hand side. That wouldn’t have been so bad, given what could have happened tonight, except that it ensured that I still couldn’t eat. So in addition to weakness from the blood loss and generalized oww through every joint, I also had the bonus of clawing stomach pains.
So I wasn’t real thrilled when Marlowe pulled back inside and glared at me. “Describe him!”
“Leave her alone! Can’t you see she’s hurt?” Claire said, putting a hand on my shoulder. Which would have been more comforting if not for all the bruises.
“Ow,” I said indistinctly, and she snatched it back.
Marlowe was still looking at me, and he didn’t look much better than I did. At a guess, he’d been up for something like forty-eight hours, and unlike most vamps, he wasn’t bothering to hide it. His clothes were rumpled, his shoes were covered in caked mud, and his usually curly mop was sticking up in a way that would have been comical if not for the fierce white face below. He looked like he might have been leading the search for Varus ever since he’d left here, and now I was telling him that the guy had been dead the whole time.
But I couldn’t help that.
“I’ve already told you everything I know,” I said, as clearly as I could manage. “If you don’t believe—”
“I believe you,” he snarled. “That’s the problem.”
“Come again?”
“You aren’t the first person to find a body today,” he told me, trying to pace. But the twins hadn’t quite grasped the concept of housecleaning, and he almost immediately ran into another pile of random stuff. Which he kicked violently against a wall. “They’ve been turning up like flotsam in portals all over the city!”
“What?”
“I opened one at my own flat not two hours ago, only to find a corpse plastered against the security shield. Like a bloody bug on a windshield!”
I blinked. “Who was it?”
“One of Varus’s chief competitors. As were the others. We’ve retrieved members from three different families so far—that we know of.” His lips twisted. “The owners of the illegal portals have yet to report in.”