Even Vampires Get the Blues - By Katie MacAlister Page 0,69
luck with that earlier." I ignored the faint pull of pain in my shoulder. "Both Paen and I are still alive and kicking."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Pilar said, his eyes flat and black with denial.
I gawked at him for a moment, glancing at the cab-driver before saying in a low voice, "You're not going to try to make me believe you didn't shoot me a few hours ago, right? Not to mention shoot a few holes into my cousin a day ago? Because there's no way I'm going to believe it wasn't you who shot Clare - not that many people walk around Edinburgh with a spider monkey on their shoulder - and I know you were on the other end of that crossbow earlier today."
"You must have me confused with someone else," was all he said, and sat back, refusing to answer any of the other questions I pelted him with on the ride to Cockburn Street. Beppo tried to make friends with me, but I was too upset and confused to do more than shake his hand when he offered it to me.
Pilar was all but glued to my side as we walked upstairs to apartment 12-C, the building as elegantly quiet as I remembered from my previous visit. The cold that seeped from him was so great, however, I made sure to put as much distance as possible between us.
Caspar opened the door with the same polite smile he had when I last left him. "Good afternoon, Miss Cosse. How nice to see you again."
"Thanks," I said, entering the apartment when he waved me in, Pilar and Beppo hot on my heels. "If it's not too rude of me to ask, why are you trying to have my cousin and a friend killed?"
Caspar looked genuinely astonished, I'll give him that. Either he was a hell of an actor, or he hadn't asked Pilar to shoot Clare and Paen full of holes. For a brief moment I wondered if I'd seen my attacker correctly, but one glance at Pilar reaffirmed that he was the man I'd recently stared down at the other end of a crossbow.
"Miss Cosse, I must humbly beg your indulgence. Am I to understand there has been a murder attempt on your life?" Caspar asked, taking my coat.
"Um... yeah. Something like that," I said, deciding not to say anything about Pilar. If he was acting on Caspar's request, then I wouldn't be telling him anything new. And if Pilar wasn't working with Caspar... well, that meant he had his own purpose in wanting us dead, and I'd have to find out just what that was. "I had no idea you and Pilar were... acquainted."
Caspar ignored the slight emphasis. "Ah, yes, Pilar and I go back many years. I've found it beneficial to employ him from time to time."
"Do you always hire someone to bring people to see you? I'd think a simple phone call and invitation would be less of a drain on the old expense sheet." I took the seat he indicated. The room was just as sunny as it had been earlier, but something in it was still rubbing my warning system the wrong way.
"Indeed, no. But I thought it expedient to have Pilar bring you himself. I know you are a busy woman, and what I have to say to you is of the utmost importance."
"Shoot," I said, then flinched. Pilar smiled a particularly unpleasant smile. The temperature in the room dropped a good ten degrees as he took a seat on a chair against the wall. Beppo jumped off onto a bookcase, and started examining a leafy spider fern. I pulled my eyes from the two of them to the pleasantly smiling man who was busy at a sideboard. "Er... go ahead."
"Might I offer you an aperitif first? Sherry?"
"That would be lovely," I said, matching his polite tone despite the fact that I'd more or less been hustled there by a murderous hired thug.
He handed me a tiny glass containing a few sips of dark sherry. "You're a plain-speaking woman, Miss Cosse. I like that. A toast to plain speaking and congenial understanding."
I clinked my glass against his, taking a sip of the sherry. I'm not a big sherry drinker, but this stuff was downright nasty. I wondered for a moment if it could have been drugged, then put that wild thought down to having watched too many old black and white movies.