Bone Palace, The - Amanda Downum Page 0,53

clean on the hem of his coat and handed it back to her.

She couldn’t argue with him, not when she couldn’t hear herself speak. She willed the witchlight brighter and turned to find Khelséa.

The inspector crouched beside the broken lantern and another petrified vampire. This one had not died as prettily—one silver bullet had shattered his breast and the other his skull. Azarné brooded over a third corpse like her namesake bird, her hands sticky with blood.

Khelséa looked up when Isyllt knelt beside her, her face drawn and ashen with pain. She only shook her head when Isyllt spoke, and when she pulled a hand away from one ear, a thin streak of blood glistened on her palm.

From the vaulted chamber, Azarné and Spider tracked their brethren’s spoor down a narrow corridor, up a flight of half caved-in stairs to another room. Isyllt knew the den was near before they reached the top of the steps; the musk was unmistakable.

The room reminded her of the lairs of street children she’d known in Birthgrave. Of places she’d slept herself. Torn, stained mattresses and nests of blankets wedged into corners, a single lamp on a broken wooden crate. Only the smell of sour sweat and stale food was missing, and Isyllt was just as glad the vrykoloi hadn’t brought their dinners here.

And as with orphan dens, the vampires had hoarded precious things, hiding them under mattresses and loose stones. But this treasure was more than polished stones or bits of glass, pennies or a sharp knife. Gold and gems sparkled and glittered under the erratic witchlight. Earrings and bracelets, chiming girdles, fabric stiff with gold bullion, slippers glowing with sequins and stones. Jeweled coffers and vials of perfume, statues of saints carved in bronze and sandalwood and alabaster.

But not all the clothing was the same size, nor all the colors those Isyllt remembered Lychandra to wear. How many tombs had been pilfered over the years?

Among the glitter of jewels, she found a long lock of brass-blonde hair, braided and coiled and tied with silk thread. A lover’s token, the kind sweethearts exchanged. Had Forsythia kept a knot of her vampire’s hair in return? Isyllt wished she could have asked him, and didn’t know whether to weep or curse in her frustration.

They emerged filthy and exhausted from a sewer access in Birthgrave. Not the sort of place Isyllt liked to be at midnight, but she was too tired and sore to be nervous. If anyone tried to cut their throats or purses, she would be perfectly content to let Spider eat them and throw the bodies in the river.

No one tried, though, and they staggered into a better neighborhood and finally managed to waylay a carriage. The man’s eyes widened when she showed her ring, and she shoved Khelséa into the cab before he could decide to bolt. Spider ghosted inside as well, but Azarné had vanished.

The carriage deposited them at St. Alia’s, Archlight’s own hospital—the driver didn’t wait, despite Isyllt’s promise of more payment if he did. Khelséa found a physician to inspect her ruptured eardrum, but Isyllt waved away offers of assistance. The hospital was unusually full, and she wanted sleep more than anything—dying in the night of the concussion was a risk she was prepared to take.

Spider waited for her when she emerged; the building’s wards were too powerful for him to easily pass. He didn’t offer her his arm this time and she was just as glad, though she could have used it.

“He thought I killed Forsythia,” she finally said when they reached Calderon Court. She could hear again, though her ears still rang like cathedral bells and her voice sounded queer and not her own.

Spider shrugged. “I imagine lairing there hadn’t been good for his mind. Who knows what he thought, or why?” He met her eyes unblinking, but she didn’t know his tells enough to find truth or deception in his face or stance. He wasn’t telling her everything, though, and he’d silenced Forsythia’s vampire before she could learn more. “Does it matter? You have what you sought.”

It matters to Forsythia. But that would hardly sway him. Nor could she say it had been too easy, though she knew in her gut it had.

“No,” she said at last, wrapping her arms around herself. She couldn’t stop shivering. “It doesn’t.” He was a demon, with his own agenda—she couldn’t let herself forget that for a few kisses.

He reached for her, but stopped at her flinch. “You should rest.