key in the lock. "I was boorish at dinner. I don't know what possessed me, and I hope—" he paused. "I hope you can forgive me."
Garrett stepped to the side, and began putting the tools of her sorcery away. "No apology is needed. Thank you for the necklace, Henry. It's lovely."
"Necklace?" His voice was tight and heavy as if he wept. The floor creaked behind her.
Garrett whirled, carpet burning the naked ball of her foot, and grabbed for the wand in her open bag. Not fast enough. His hands—those strong,
tapered fingers—reached for her throat, lengthening as she watched,
strange hollow-pointed claws curving from the nailbeds in a welter of puckered flesh.
Garrett shouted at the top of her lungs. Henry's eyes shone blankly glossy, glazed by the moonlight. Talons pricked her skin and she heard—as if through cotton wool—the sound of someone pounding on the heavy, ancient door. She drew a breath to scream but—alien, dagger-tipped, not the hands she remembered so well—his hands closed on her throat and he pressed her back against the bureau still littered with her instruments of sorcery.
Garrett reached out right-handed and tore the emerald out of his ear.
Henry jerked away with a cry, blood racing over suddenly human hands as he clapped them to ripped flesh.
One more resonant thump: the lockplate shattered with a splintering crash. Sebastien and Richard burst through the door. They halted at the spectre of blood and moonlight, at Garrett tearing her gown open and wrenching the emerald necklace from her throat as Henry swayed and went to his knees.
"Richard, your stickpin!" She pointed at his collar, and he flung the jewelry away like a serpent discovered in a pocket.
"Abby Irene—" Sebastien started.
"It's the ambassador," she said. Henry looked up at her, the sanguinary flow still staining his hands and his shoulder. Sebastien turned, Richard half a step behind him.
"No."
A voice accustomed to obedience, and both men froze in the doorway as Henry forced himself to his feet. A slow red drip trickled down his jacket. He didn't seem to notice. "I'll handle this."
Garrett supported herself against the dresser. Sebastien and the Duke stepped aside, but turned to follow as the Prince pushed through the shattered door and stomped out of sight.
Silence ensued for some minutes, and Garrett found the strength to go and seat herself on the bed. She wondered when a servant would be along or worse, Duchess Jacqueline. But some time later, Sebastien stepped in from the hallway and reported: "He kicked the door in."
"Oh."
Henry followed no more than ninety seconds later, Richard at his side. He held something clenched in his fist like a shed snakeskin, and he held it out to Garrett like a man offering his best hound the fox's tail. "Your glove, my lady?"
Garrett took the limp, bloodstained thing and dropped it on the floor between them. "He needed a binding. The emeralds to limit it, to bind you and identify the target. Some personal item to trigger. He must have done the same in London."
"I left before the killing—"
"Did you?"
"I. . .." Henry pushed bloodstained fingers through his hair. "Yes. I don't remember. But how could I not remember?" His arm dropped to his side as if his own touch disgusted him.
Garrett moved away from the dresser, into the center of the room. "He said his mother was white."
"French," Prince Henry answered. "A concubine to the Aztec Emperor. She died of the same pox that scarred him as a boy. When the Aztec court came to England, when we were both boys." The Prince had too much courage to turn away. "I taught him English. We were—friends."
"The Emperor found uses for him, I take it. But they didn't suit his
ambitions?"
"Or maybe his taste for revenge." Richard shrugged.
"Bastards and second sons—" irony dripped from Henry's tongue "—make good ambassadors."
"We can't let anyone know he used you for his scheme, Highness. You've no guilt in this thing." The Duke coughed into his hand. Garrett studied Richard's face, and Henry's. And the wampyr's, though Sebastien stood silent by the door.
Henry swallowed and looked down at his hands. "I can't. . .lie about this, Richard."
"You're asking him to conceal evidence of a murder." Garrett was surprised at her own voice, level and disbelieving.
"It could mean the revolt of the colonies if you don't. The end of our alliance with the Aztecs: this is the Emperor's bastard son. Everything the French could have wanted."
Henry looked at Garrett, his deep-set eyes glistening, stricken in the bluing moonlight. Garrett looked away.