his head. “Of course not. But she worries about him more than any other vampire in the States. He thinks outside the box.”
“What does that mean?”
Quinn sighed, taking his time to answer. Simon and Lily were staring at him, hanging on every word. “Do you remember last spring when Scarlett Bernard came here, and we learned she was pregnant? Maven asked me to find out who the father was.”
I nodded. I had been present for that conversation. Nulls, like Scarlett and my niece, Charlie, weren’t supposed to be able to procreate . . . but apparently two nulls could have a kid together. This wasn’t common knowledge, but Maven had seen it before, centuries ago.
She had asked Quinn to find the father, because, well, you just didn’t want an adult null running around without knowing their loyalties. Quinn had learned the man was dead, and that had been the end of the matter. Oh, he’d asked me if I wanted more details, but I’d declined. Scarlett and I had become—well, “friends” wasn’t the right word, but she was an ally, and it didn’t seem right for me to pry into her sex life if it wasn’t something I absolutely needed to know.
“His name was Jameson Thomas, and he used to be Malcolm’s pet null,” Quinn said. “He broke off on his own in Vegas, and Malcolm sent skinners to kill him.”
Simon’s back went as straight as a steel rod, and Lily actually gasped. “Jesus,” I blurted. Skinners were mercenaries—usually well-armed humans from expensive security firms—who killed people from the Old World for money. Sending one of them after a null, who was basically a human . . .
“That seems like overkill,” I said.
“Apparently,” Quinn said dryly, “it was just enough kill.”
I tried to imagine Maven, who had banned skinners from Colorado, sending some of them after an enemy, but I couldn’t picture it.
At least I was getting a better picture of New York’s cardinal vampire. That story reminded me of a witch I’d met in Reno a few years earlier, Sara, who had figured out a novel way to kill vampires. She shot them with a crossbow, aiming for the heart—but that’s a difficult shot, especially if it’s dark and the vampire is moving. More often than not, the arrow would go into the vampire’s side, or stomach, or the wrong side of the chest . . . in which case Sara would simply use her magic to pull the arrow sideways.
I didn’t know much about that kind of spell—it was well beyond anything I could do as a boundary witch, and it didn’t involve the usual sympathetic magics the Pellars frequently practiced. But Sara had discovered a way to make a very small thing—moving an arrow a few inches in an unexpected direction—bring down an angry vampire. Out-of-the-box thinking.
“So what do we do now?” Simon asked Quinn.
He gave a slight shrug, looking uncomfortable. “There’s nothing else I can do, unfortunately. Whoever helped Morgan has done an excellent job of chopping off any loose threads that might lead back to him. I don’t have any more threads to pull.”
I knew then that Quinn believed it was Malcolm. He tended to be careful about pronouns, especially when discussing suspects.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t the only one who picked up on that. Lily narrowed her eyes at Quinn. “You do think it was Malcolm. And you’re not going to do anything.”
Quinn laid his hands flat on the table and gave her an open look. “I don’t have any evidence, Lily. Certainly not enough to act on.”
“So, what, Malcolm gets to skate on murdering our mom, just because he’s a creative thinker or whatever?” Lily clenched her fists, and I actually saw a tiny spark jump out of one of them as she involuntarily flexed her magic.
Simon saw it too, and reached over to cover his sister’s hands. To anyone else it would look like he was trying to be supportive, but he glanced at me with worried eyes. Neither of us had ever seen Lily lose her cool in public like that.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” Quinn began, but Lily abruptly rose from her chair, her food practically untouched.
“I don’t feel like eating,” she said. “I need some air.”
“I’ll come too,” I said, starting to stand up, but she waved me off.
“I just want to be alone,” she snapped. “Stay with your boyfriend.” With a last, angry look at Quinn, she stalked out of the restaurant.
Chapter 6
After she’d left, Simon kept trying to apologize