This conversation was getting a little surreal. And that was from someone used to talking to Radu. “So you’re a self-professed evil vampire?” A nod. “And I kill evil vamps.” Another nod. “Should I just kill you then?”

“Oh, not yet,” she told me earnestly. “I have done little to redeem myself.”

“Elevator don’t go all the way to the top, does it?” Ray muttered. And then his eyes lowered to half- mast, and he started to grin, lazily. “Oh, yeah, baby. Right there. That’s the spot. Hit that a—”

I hastily pushed the needle a little farther in, and he shut up.

“I thought you believed that vampires lost their souls,” I reminded her. “How do you get redemption after that?”

“It is not easy,” she told me seriously. “For years I could not understand why God would allow this to happen to me. I felt betrayed, lost, unclear what path I should take. I hated my master for making me like this, for giving me these terrible cravings—”

“But you got over that.” I didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm, but Christine didn’t look like she’d noticed.

“Yes. He did not mean to hurt me, merely to change me into what he was. And he does not see himself as a monster, did you know?” she asked, apparently amazed.

I stared at her. “If it hadn’t been for that ‘monster,’ you’d have been dead a long time ago!”

She sat forward, nodding eagerly. “Yes, yes, precisely. That is what I finally realized, too. Louis-Cesare was doing God’s work, although he did not know it. I was meant to live this life, to have this chance. You understand, don’t you?”

“Well, I’m glad you worked through all that pesky guilt,” I told her. And then the point of the needle popped out the back of Ray’s head on a little gout of blood.

Christine and I stared at it for a moment. “Is it… supposed to do that?” she asked.

“Do what?” Ray rolled those eyes up at me. “Did you get the bullet out?”

“Um.”

“Dorina!” Mircea’s less than pleased voice cut through my dilemma. He’d been in a pissy mood since we showed up on his doorstep with a headless naked guy, a terrified hostage and a bunch of vampires claiming that Louis-Cesare was a murderer.

Go figure.

I tucked Ray’s head under my arm and wandered next door, where Mircea, Marlowe and some older vamp I didn’t know were bracketing the dead man. Louis-Cesare sat on a sofa off to the side, with his head in his hands, looking about like I felt. I doubted it was good old-fashioned fatigue on his part—more like the depth of the shit he was in had finally impressed itself on his mind.

Good, I thought evilly.

Mircea had gone casual today, in a midnight blue suit with a slash of pearl gray for a tie. He had the suit coat off and the shirtsleeves rolled up. He had examined the dead man and hadn’t wanted to ruin the Armani, I guessed. “We are ready for your evidence,” he informed me.

“There’s no time for this,” Marlowe said, running a hand through his already-messy curls. He was dressed in his favorite deep burgundy, although it was rumpled enough to make me wonder if he’d had to dress quickly.

“We must make time,” Mircea said sharply. “I need something, Kit. I cannot stand before the Senate and defend him successfully with what we have.”

Marlowe shook his head violently enough to send the curls dancing. “The only evidence she can give will hurt our case, not help it. She took the only thing he had to trade for Christine. And the current ban on duels meant there was no other way to save his servant’s life but to kill the man who held her captive.”

“Louis-Cesare does not stab people in the back,” I pointed out.

“Which is why it would have been an intelligent method to use,” Marlowe snapped. His tone said that he’d have vastly preferred to blame me for this, and how dared I have been with other people when it had happened?

“I had an appointment—” Louis-Cesare began.

“An appointment to give him the price he’d demanded for Christine’s return—a price you could no longer meet,” Marlowe said.

“I used the front door and was ushered in by one of his servants! Even had I lost all conception of honor and decided to murder the man in cold blood, I should hardly have chosen to do so under those circumstances.”

“If you were thinking clearly, perhaps not. But you admit yourself that you were enraged.” Marlowe was good at playing devil’s advocate, but even I knew he wouldn’t be the only one saying these things soon. This was bad.

“Tell me again what happened,” Mircea said. Between the screams and the accusations and the gun pointing, we hadn’t had time to discuss the evening’s events in detail at vamp central.

“After speaking with Dorina, I came up to confront Elyas about his duplicity,” Louis-Cesare said tersely. “I was ushered into the waiting area.” He nodded at the small room with the comfy chairs. “I waited. But after a time I became impatient and—”

“How long a time?”

“A minute, perhaps two. I was in no mood to indulge Elyas’s power games. In the end, I went through without an escort and found him as you see.”

“Then explain why he died while you were standing over him, holding the knife used to sever his arteries!” Marlowe demanded.

“I cannot. I smelled the blood when I opened the door, but I did not know that it was his. I only discovered what had been done when I bent over the body. The knife was on the floor, and I picked it up to get it out of the way of the spreading stain. As I stood up again, he died. I felt it when it rippled through the house, and a moment later, his family was there, along with half or more of his guests.”

“Yes! Dozens of witnesses and a story a child wouldn’t believe.” Marlowe threw up his hands. “If you are going to lie to the Senate, at least make it plausible.”

“I am not lying.” It was the king-to-peasant tone again, and it didn’t look like Marlowe liked it any better than I had.

“The wooden knife was in the heart, Louis-Cesare,” Marlowe said, pointing at the gory thing that now resided on the desk. It wasn’t the usual plain-Jane stake, but a hand-carved specimen with a long, slender blade and a distinctive finial. I even thought I caught a glimpse of some metal—steel or silver—at the tip.

Elyas had been stabbed with the Cadillac of stakes.

Nothing but the best for a senator.

“As soon as the wood penetrated the muscle, he died.” Marlowe continued. “There is no delayed reaction; you know this!”

“There are two ways into the study, as you can plainly see,” Louis-Cesare said icily. “Someone must have entered from the hall, killed him, and left while I was waiting. The study is soundproofed—I would have heard nothing!”

“And this mysterious murderer did this in what?” Marlowe demanded incredulously. “The thirty-second window of opportunity he’d have had?”

“It is possible,” Mircea commented. “Elyas was playing host for most of the evening. He doubtless retired to the study to meet with Louis-Cesare only shortly before he was killed. It may well have been the first chance a murderer would have had to get him alone.”

“It was also the first chance Louis-Cesare had.”

“The master retired to the study not ten minutes before his death,” the old vamp put in, although no one had asked him. He was dressed like a butler, and he looked vaguely like one, too, with bushy salt-and-pepper hair, muttonchop sideburns and a mustache that said he was overcompensating for something. He was likely the senior vamp in Elyas’s household.

I moved around the desk while Marlowe and Louis-Cesare glared at each other. “What is it?” Mircea asked, as I leaned over the body.

“Don’t touch that!” Marlowe ordered, seeing what I was doing.

“I hadn’t planned on it.” The wooden knife in Elyas’s heart hadn’t been disturbed, and the telltale sign was still on the bottom of the blade, on the portion that had stayed outside the flesh—a small ring of pale, almost translucent gray.