I had already looked up the address of the Ronin nest. I couldn’t allow the fact that it was a rich man’s mansion deceive me into forgetting it was a vampire nest. I couldn’t go there unprepared.
Stefan Ronin’s mesmerism might not have not worked on me, but that didn’t mean that the same would be true of the other vampires in the brood. They would be pure-blooded vampires rather than dhampirs. It was interesting though that he was a dhampir, that rare and almost mythical of things. I was so curious that looking it up was the first thing I planned to do when I got home.
But first I had to make a pit stop at Grimshaw’s. The bell rang as I let myself in, and I found Theo in the back section of the shop behind the counter, his head bent over his ledger as he updated it. He looked up when he heard me, and smiled as if pleased to see me.
“Diana!” he said. “What brings you here? I wasn’t expecting you.”
Clearly he was distracted by whatever he was writing because his head was already bent over the ledger again and his round spectacles had slid down his nose. His brown hair had a dash of gray at the temples, and he pretty much always wore a tweed suit that looked surprisingly good on him. If you saw Theo walking down a street you would think he was an upper-class English gentleman, and never guess that he was a wizard.
“Hey Teddy bear.” I went over to the counter opposite him and leaned my elbows onto it as I watched him scrawl his neat little notes.
“Everything all right?” he said distractedly.
“Do you sell truth serum?”
That did get his attention. His eyebrows shot up towards his hairline. “Most certainly not. Why did you want it?”
“Oh, you know me,” I said casually. “I’m always on the hunt for murderers. Truth serum would be a handy tool in my kit.”
“You’ve never asked for it before.”
“I’ve never interviewed vampires before.”
“I see.” Theo pushed his glasses up his nose and eyed me thoughtfully.
Theo’s knowledge of magic and otherkind was expansive and varied. He knew that it helped me to sense things about the people that I was interviewing if I was able to touch them. And he had probably already figured out that I wanted the truth serum because I wasn’t sure how I felt about getting within touching distance of a vampire.
He pursed his lips, and then said mildly, “I’m not sure you want to be associating with vampires.”
“This vampire knows who killed Magda.” I explained my conversation with Steffane Ronin to him.
When I finished Theo looked a mixture of both understanding and pained, no doubt because he knew that nothing was going to sway me from my current course of action. He tried, bless him.
“I’m not sure that your compulsion to hunt down this Devil Claw Killer is entirely healthy,” he said. “This man is a monster experienced in his savagery. You can’t seriously think that you’re going to be able to kill him?”
Theo knew all about my compulsion for killing. I had been forced to tell him everything in the hopes that he might be able to help me from going out of control. We had made a pact that if it came down to it and I did have to kill someone, I must absolutely make sure that they were truly guilty. I had been very much surprised to find that mild mannered Theo had seemed to understand that some monsters deserved to die and that the world would be a better place without them. Maybe one of the reasons he hadn’t freaked out was because he felt some sense of responsibility for me. While he hadn’t told me that I must not kill a monster, we had never been truly tested yet. The opportunity for killing had not arisen.
“Will you make a truth serum for me?” I asked. Theo was skilled wizard. I had no doubt he could whip up the complex potion without too much trouble.
Theo shook his head. “You know I can’t do that. We agreed that if you go down this path, you would have to tread it alone. There are too many eyes on me, and it would be better if there is no trace of my magic on anything that you do. We are still agreed that no one must ever know if you do this? You must be extremely careful?”
I nodded. “I will be careful. I promise.”
Theo still looked worried. “I am not sure this Steffane Ronin sounds entirely trustworthy. Vampires never are. And the Ronin brood is especially powerful. If you must go to their nest then you will need to take precautions.”
He hurried around the shop fetching me a few things, and came back with a little spray bottle, a little metal box, and a rather impressive-looking wooden stake. When I picked it up, it was surprisingly heavy.
“It has a silver core,” he explained. “And you must not use this except under the direst of circumstances. Like the rest of otherkind, even vampires are protected under our legal system.”
I picked up the little bottle. It had the look of a medical spray and the letters VX on front.
“It’s holy water,” said Theo.
“What’s with the weird bottle?”
Theo made a bit of an embarrassed face. “It’s to fool vampires to think it’s got Vaerus X in it. It’s the only known pathogen that affects them. Gives them a nasty illness for weeks. Just waving the bottle around might persuade them to keep their distance.”
“I would happily spray them with the Vaerus X if you’ve got any,” I said.