“No harm done,” Mircea told her, and caught the heavy disk with a handkerchief.

“No harm done?” Marlowe demanded. “You’ll never get anything off it now!”

The supernatural community didn’t usually check fingerprints, because there are plenty of things that don’t leave any. But a good clairvoyant might be able to get something off the thing, if not too many people had touched it in the meantime. It was why I’d been careful not to handle it.

“That remains to be seen,” Mircea said mildly.

Christine backed into the wall, looking like she wished she could melt into it. She seemed on the verge of tears again. Louis-Cesare came over and led her to a chair. “Ça ne fait rien.”

Marlowe looked disgusted. “Oh, no. Not important at all. Just one less piece of evidence that might have exonerated you!”

“This held Naudiz?” Mircea asked me, wrapping it securely in the square of linen. “You are sure?”

“Originally. Ray saw it when the fey first arrived, but it was empty when I took it off Elyas’s neck. There’s a space in back where the rune should be, but there’s nothing there now.”

He frowned. “But… did Elyas steal an empty carrier, or did he succeed in stealing the rune and was killed for it tonight?”

“If he’d had the rune, he wouldn’t be dead,” I pointed out.

“Not necessarily. I have seen other runes from the same set. If this one functioned similarly, then it had to be cast in order to function. Wearing it alone, particularly when not touching the skin, might not have been enough.”

“If he was fighting for his life, I think he’d have cast it!”

“But was he?” Mircea nodded at the body. “He did not die in a fighting pose and there are no wounds on the body other than the ones that killed him. It appears that he was caught off guard.”

Marlowe nodded. “If he knew his attacker or did not expect to be assaulted when surrounded by his family—”

“They never do,” I muttered.

“—he might well have chosen not to use the stone. It is a talisman with a set amount of power at its disposal. Exhausting it for no purpose would be foolish.”

“Unlike wearing it around his neck while somebody killed him,” I said sarcastically. Louis-Cesare had said that Elyas liked to take risks. It looked like he’d taken one too many.

“Whether the rune was stolen last night or tonight, it gives us something to offer the Senate,” Mircea said. “Anyone at that auction is a suspect—”

“And at least one who wasn’t,” I added reluctantly. I didn’t know how the hell I was supposed to tell them aboutsubrand without landing Claire in the middle of this. But they had to know. The ice-cold prince of the fey was probably the prime suspect.

Mircea had been putting the carrier in his suit pocket, but he paused at my tone. “Dorina?”

I got a reprieve because Muttonchops took that moment to return with the list of party guests, and everyone crowded around the desk. “Was anyone on this list at the auction?” I asked Ray.

“It doesn’t have to have been someone who was invited,” Marlowe pointed out.

Muttonchops shook his head. “On the contrary. We had someone on the door. No one who was not on that list would have been allowed in. Other than Louis-Cesare, of course, who was expected.”

“What level?” Marlowe asked.

“What?”

“What level of master was acting as doorkeeper?”

“We do not typically use a master for such a menial task,” he was told.

“Menial? Is that how you consider your frontline defenses?”

The small amount of cheek showing between Muttonchops’s mustache and sideburns reddened. “This is a home, not a fortress!”

Marlowe looked pointedly at the dead man. “So I see.”

“It could have been anyone at the auction,” Mircea said calmly. “None of them would have had difficulty fogging the mind of even a low-level master.”

“That goes for a lot of other people,” I pointed out.

He shook his head. “I do not think any of the participants would have been eager to discuss the auction. Some of their families doubtless knew, but they were under their direct control. It would have been foolish to tell anyone else and increase the competition.”

And the chance that the fey will hear about it and hack your head off, I thought silently.

“Any one of them could have determined to do as Elyas did,” Mircea mused, “and have gone to the nightclub in search of the fey, either to make a bargain with him or to kill him.”

“Only when they arrived, they found that someone had beaten them to it,” I said. “And they either smelled Elyas on the air or actually saw him leaving. But why not attack him last night? Why wait?”

“Perhaps because the idea of killing a Senate member was more daunting than merely disposing of a fey guard,” Louis-Cesare said.

Marlowe shot him a cynical look. “Or perhaps because he had been invited here tonight and thought the party would be a good cover. If the culprit was on the guest list, he didn’t have to fog any minds to get in!”

Ray still hadn’t said anything, so I poked him. “Who was at the auction?”

He licked his lips, looking between Mircea and Marlowe. “I–I won’t have to testify, will I?”

“Yes,” Mircea told him, holding up the list so he could see it.

“But… but… in front of the Senate?” Ray’s voice dropped to a whisper. He looked terrified.

“I can tell them only hearsay. You were there,” Mircea pointed out.

“Yes, but…”

“And testifying might help your case.”

“My case?”

“The smuggling case against you.”

Ray looked like he’d almost forgotten that trivial detail.

“He also has master problems,” I put in.

Mircea’s lips twisted. “We will see what can be done. Assuming his memory improves.”

“Ming-de, Elyas, Radu, Geminus, and Peter Lutkin,” Ray said quickly.

“Cosmopolitan group,” I commented. “Ming-de from the Chinese court, Elyas from the European Senate, Radu bidding for Mircea, and Geminus—”

“Also North American Senate,” Mircea said, somewhat grimly.

“Oh, yeah. The prick.” He was one of the older senators, rivaling the consul in age, but not in power—or in anything else except ego. He also believed he was God’s gift to women and didn’t know how to take no for an answer. He’d grabbed my ass within thirty seconds of meeting me, and had not taken the resulting knife through the wrist well.

“I don’t know any vampires named Lutkin,” Marlowe said thoughtfully.

“He’s a mage.” Everyone looked at Ray. “Their money spends, too,” he said defensively.

“Lutkin was here tonight,” Louis-Cesare pointed out, tapping a name near the bottom of the list. “And Geminus. But none of the others.”

Marlowe’s expression brightened. “We can blame it on the mage. The others are too prominent or too unreachable in any case.”

“And if he did not do it?”

Marlowe looked at him like he didn’t understand the question.

“There were no silent bidders?” I asked Ray. “Nobody bidding by phone?”

“No. Seller insisted on a binding spell. And that don’t work unless someone’s physically there.”

“He was worried about fraud?” I asked incredulously. “With that group?”

“He was worried period. The guy was freaking paranoid.”

“He probably knew who was chasing him. He didn’t want to risk anyone using a glamourie and impersonating one of the bidders.”

“That’s what I figured.”

I frowned. “So he knew he was being hunted, knew he was in serious jeopardy, yet he still let his guard down enough for someone to…”

There was a sudden silence around the desk. I looked up to find everyone staring at me, a ring of bright, narrowed eyes. “Hunted by whom?” Mircea asked quietly.

There was no point in postponing it. “subrand.”

Louis-Cesare’s head jerked, like he’d been stung. “Comment?”

“And you know this how?” Marlowe asked, his expression darkening.

“He dropped by the house last night.”