more, again felt some weight slide within it. A note? Something I need to open now? Or is it best kept for home? She raised her chin to search for Richard and saw him in wary conversation with the Lord Mayor.
And where has Sebastien gotten off to?
That breeze touched her face again, and she turned to seek its source. Bellied draperies revealed some passageway beyond them, and Garrett chose to investigate.
Rather than a window, the draperies concealed a doorway to a tiny balcony, just large enough for two. It was unoccupied, and Garrett pushed weighty silk velvet aside and stepped onto pale marble gleaming blue in the moonlight. She drew her right glove off and draped it over her arm before lifting the seal on the packet with her fingernail. Night wind scarfed her skirts and petticoats around her thighs. She tilted the packet and the contents slid and dropped.
A gold chain fine as a breath of wind fell across her hand. She closed her fingers quickly, before the swinging weight of the pendant could drag it loose, and raised it to the light. A dark stone shaped like a tear swayed in a shaft of moonlight. "Henry."
There was writing inside the parchment. She slipped the jewel into the cuff of her glove, forgetting to replace the other one, and folded the letter open.
For fondest remembrance, it said, and was unsigned. A peace offering, then, and not a deeper gesture. A breath she had not known she was holding hissed between her teeth; the perfume of forsythia and daffodils filled her throat, dizzying. She clutched the rail, not knowing if what she felt was grief or gratitude, and didn't notice until she opened her eyes again that her glove had slid down her wrist and dropped over the railing.
"Bother." Garrett tucked the note into her remaining glove, collected her wits, picked up her skirts, and—when another quick glance around the ballroom showed no trace of Sebastien—began her descent into the gardens to retrieve it. She was halfway down the sweeping stairway when she heard the scream.
DCI Garrett was something of an expert on screams. She placed this
one as female, aristocratic, and as the discoverer rather than a victim of an atrocity. She turned on the stair, somehow managing her gown, and sprinted back up as fast as she could run.
Cecelia Eliot lay across the striped silk divan in the ladies' lounge with her head pillowed on the scrolled mahogany arm, pale and empty in a way that made Garrett think of a discarded stocking. A torn discarded stocking, ripped from heel to hem. . .for Eliot's chest was torn open, her throat slashed from ear to ear, and her royal blue gown as spotless and dry as the silk of the couch. Jacqueline stood beside her, trembling, pale hands clutched white-knuckled in front of her mouth.
The little room smelled of cloved oranges, lavender and face powder. Garrett almost gagged. She kicked a vanity bench in front of the door to hold it open and laid her ungloved hand on the Duchess's arm. "Your
Grace, come away." Jacqueline looked at her, but Garrett didn't think the woman saw her. "Come away." She heard running footsteps—servants,
the Aztec ambassador, the Lord Mayor, and—God bless—the Duke.
Richard! Garrett stopped her cry just in time, as Sebastien came up the
front stairs four at once. Garret bent her attention to Jacqueline. "Duke Richard. Your Lady needs help." Gently but firmly, she placed Jacqueline into his care and focused on Nezahualcoyotl. "The Mayor," she said, and Nezahualcoyotl turned to intercept the man before he could see his wife in such disarray.
Garrett turned back to the body, crouching beside it. She raised her hands before her as if drawing in a net, but she did not touch. "Don Sebastien." She didn't need to look up to know when he knelt at her side.
"Crown Investigator." Her title now, and his voice rose cool and professional over the sound of a woman's sobbing.
"Detective, what do you notice about the scene?"
She saw the slight smile quirk the corner of his mouth, heard the low resonance of Nezahualcoyotl's voice as he led Peter Eliot away. Jacqueline had recovered herself and was speaking to Richard in a voice that carried soft, urgent command.
The wampyr's gaze swept the bloodless body, the terrible wounds.
A thoughtful pause, and then: "Her jewels are gone."
Garrett nodded and waited, knowing there would be more.
"And there are no marks on her arms or hands. Also, the blood is