Autumn Whispers (An Otherworld Novel) (13 page)

The kitchen was jammed. Breakfast time had become a thriving bustle in our home, with the exception of Menolly, of course. Everybody other than Iris and Bruce was there. Smoky and Trillian were handing stacks of plates and dishes of food from Hanna, who was in charge of the counter, to Vanzir, who arranged them on the table. Camille was on the phone, trying to talk over the clamor. Nerissa had her head jammed in the refrigerator, looking for something while Rozurial filled juice glasses. Shade jumped in to help, while I slid through the chaos to sit by Camille.

Camille had one finger in her ear while pressing the receiver against her other ear and was shouting over the mayhem. And then, she let out a loud “Oh, fuck” and, at the tone of her voice, the kitchen quieted down. A moment later, she punched the End Talk button and looked up, mute sorrow on her face.

She inhaled sharply, slowly exhaled, and shook her head. “That was Chase. He’s down at the Wayfarer. The fire’s out, the embers are cold . . .”

“What’s the damage?” Nerissa closed the refrigerator and approached the table, a guarded look on her face. She’d have to be the one consoling Menolly the most, even though we’d all be there.

Camille flashed her a bleak look. “Eight dead—they found another body in the remains. The bar is eighty percent destroyed. The fire marshal says a candle in one of the upstairs rooms tipped over, or something like that. It caught the curtain on fire and . . .”

“Oh crap. One of the guest rooms. Was the occupant one of the victims?” If not, then whoever it was had left the candle burning unattended.

“That’s the thing . . . the door was locked, and there seems to be no record of a guest checked into that room.”

“We were right. Arson.”

Camille shrugged. “Yeah. I told them about the calls. Would be way too easy to cloak arson as an accident. And while there’s a record of all guests, Menolly’s office with the computer was a casualty. We have no way of accessing any of their names or where they came from. And you know, nobody’s going to remember in this mess. Chase talked to Derrick and to Digger, but neither could help much.”

“Do they have any clue whether any vampires were caught in the fire? Nothing would be left but piles of dust to mix with the ashes.” Fire could destroy so much, including all traces that someone had once walked this world.

“We won’t know for sure, ever, though tonight when the vamps rise, we might be able to figure out a few things. See if anybody was at the club with a vamp who has vanished. You know how that goes.”

I nodded. “Yeah, sadly.”

Camille attacked her stack of pancakes and sausage. “How are you feeling? How’s your hand? You up to going out to Interlaken Park to find out if there’s any evidence that Violet may have had a stalker?”

I held up my freshly bandaged wound. “It hurts. It’s going to hurt. As long as I take it easy, everything should be fine. It doesn’t look like it’s spreading and I feel a lot better than last night.”

She glanced over at Nerissa. “Tonight, we have to head to Otherworld. Menolly’s going to have to know about the extent of the damage as soon as she wakes up. I think . . . we’d all better gather here around 5:30. Sunset is at about 6:30 for another week or so till Daylight Savings Time kicks in. We need to have as much info as we can on what’s going down regarding the bar. Can you gather up everything you can find out while you’re at work?”

Nerissa nodded. “Will do. I guess sometimes it’s a good thing that I work for Chase’s division.” She finished up her breakfast—mostly, Menolly’s wife ate a lot of meat, some vegetables and fruits, and a small amount of other foods. Her inner carnivore came out in spades. Earthside werepumas were known for their high protein consumption. “Okay, I’m off. I’ll be home before Menolly wakes up, and I’ll see what I can find out. Chase or I will call you if anything comes up that we need to address right away.”

As she gathered up her purse and threw on a jacket, the look on her face spoke for all of us. Telling Menolly that the fire had destroyed most of the bar would be bad enough, but we all knew the victims were the casualties that tore her to pieces. There was no way to cushion her heart from the death.

Nerissa had no sooner closed the door when Hanna turned around from the sink. “Someone needs to watch Maggie. I am to help the Duchess with Iris today, so the housework will have to wait.”

She stood, hands on her hips, staring at us. Hanna was tough. When Hyto kidnapped Camille and carried her off to his lair in the Northlands to face torture and death, Hanna had helped her escape at risk of her own life. Camille had brought her home, and now Hanna lived with us and helped Iris out with the housework and taking care of Maggie.

I decided to delegate. “Smoky, you and Vanzir help Hanna today. Rozurial, can you and Trillian prepare for our trip tonight? Shade, come with Camille and me to check out the park?” And then, it occurred to me that—in the chaos surrounding the fire at the Wayfarer—we hadn’t filled everybody in on what was happening. They knew something was up, given Grandmother Coyote and the gargoyles, but they had no clue about everything else.

“On second thought, let’s start at the beginning . . .” I nodded to Camille, and we laid out everything that had happened the evening before.

“So, let me get this straight: A—Grandmother Coyote wants you to find out what’s going down with the daemonic activity at the Farantino Building and put a stop to it. B—You have to track down a group of dreglins and exterminate them. And C—Tad and Albert want you to find out what happened to their friend Violet.” Vanzir grinned at me. “That about it, pussycat?”

The dream-chaser demon liked to needle me, but his teasing had evolved into a fond playfulness rather than the edgy sarcasm that had at first prefaced it.

“That’s about it. I honestly don’t know what to think about Violet—there’s still a nagging voice that says she just disappeared off on some trip, but I don’t want to chance us being wrong.” I glanced up at the clock. “Okay, let’s head out. First, we’d better swing by the Wayfarer and see just what the damage is. Then we’ll stop at the FH-CSI and I’ll have them look at my hand. After that, we can do a little daylight surveillance of the Farantino Building. And then, over to the park.”

As Camille polished off her breakfast, Shade began clearing the table. My mind was scattered, but in the back of my thoughts, I couldn’t help but think that the dam had broken. Our lucky streak was over and we were back on the job.

• • •

Camille drove again. I was getting tired of my Jeep being in the shop but Jason was working as fast as he could, and we trusted him. Parts could only be ordered so quickly, and with three rush jobs ahead of mine, things had been poking along at a snail’s pace.

We inched through the rush hour traffic. At this time of the morning, it was still bumper-to-bumper and would be for another hour. Camille had her iPhone plugged in to the dash and her playlist was blasting away. I grimaced. How anybody could listen to Nine Inch Nails at this time in the morning escaped me, but it was her car, so we listened to her music.

The morning gloom was thick and the rain heavy, and the streets were slick. Camille flipped off the music, just before an SUV swerved into our lane.

“Fucking idiots are out in droves.” She slammed on the brakes as the SUV cut her off, nosing in where there wasn’t room. The Lexus skidded to the right, and we almost crashed into a Mercedes parked in front of a coffee shop, but Camille managed to straighten out and avoid the collision. After that, she focused on the road, and Shade and I kept quiet.

A couple more near misses—both times a big hunking gas guzzler trying to shove into too tight of a space—and we were onto the street where the Wayfarer stood. Or what was left of it. We pulled in, parking in front of the smoking remains, and Camille turned off the ignition. We stared, none of us saying a word.

The fire hadn’t spread to the neighboring buildings, luckily, but the bar was obviously gutted. I slowly unfastened my seat belt and opened the car door. The smell of smoke hung thick in the air, and the scents of charred wood and wet ash filled my nostrils. I sneezed, and Camille echoed me. She came around to stand by my left, while Shade flanked my right.

The yellow caution tape still surrounded the entrance, blocking off half the sidewalk. Derrick Means was standing there, staring up at the bar with his hands jammed in his pockets. His hair, usually in a ponytail, hung straight—as black as Camille’s but with a shock of white streaking through it. He had eyes the color of my own—emerald green. He was damned good at his job. A werebadger, Derrick had quickly become Menolly’s righthand man at the Wayfarer, acting as both bartender and, at times, bouncer. Now and then he played the part of a sounding board.

He turned as we approached. “Fucking mess, if you ask me.”

I nodded. “Yeah. It’s worse than we feared. Menolly doesn’t know yet, just how bad the damage is. We can’t tell her till she rises tonight.”

Derrick coughed, then spit on the ground. He wiped his mouth. “Going to break her heart. Does she know about Chrysandra?”

Camille let out a sigh. “Yes. All three of us were with her when she died. She didn’t go easy, I’ll tell you that. And Menolly knows that six others died—she hasn’t heard about the eighth victim yet.”

“The fire marshal says a candle ignited curtains in one of the rooms. I tell you though, it couldn’t have. Nobody was in that room. The damned door was locked. They had to break it down. And I know for a fact we didn’t register anybody into it—it hadn’t been cleaned yet after the last guest left.” Derrick scowled, kicking the wall with the toe of his heavy boot. “Did she tell you about the calls?”

We stared at him. So he’d had the same thought we had.

“You know about them?” I cocked my head to the side, squinting up at the second floor. Even from out here, it was obvious how heavy the damage had been.

“Oh, hell yes. But Menolly wouldn’t let me report the first one, and the second—I was there when you were. I heard her trying to get info out of the freak. I’m convinced this was somebody’s idea of payback. Who? I dunno. But somebody wanted to destroy the Wayfarer and they found a way to do it.” The bartender shook his head. “And you just wait—two humans were among the dead. Their families aren’t going to wait long before they lawyer up and sue Menolly’s ass off.”

That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. I didn’t think it had crossed Camille’s either, by the look on her face.

“What the hell . . . you think somebody might actually do that? What if it’s found to be arson? Would she still be liable?” I hopped over the tape and cautiously approached the building. As I peered in the window, which was now an opening with a pile of jagged glass surrounding it, the inside of the bar was a surreal sight.

In the dim light, I could still see broken timbers from the ceiling that had come crashing down to the floor. The rows of booths were now piles of rubble, the tables and chairs were so much charcoal, and the bar—the beautiful hand carved bar—was a charred, ruined mess. The Wayfarer was a total loss.

I turned around. “Did the cops say when we can pick through the ashes to see what we can salvage?”

Derrick shrugged. “They told me that we can go back in, but we better have a demolition company come here first and remove some of the hanging beams. It’s dangerous. Over eighty percent destroyed. But that means there may be a few things worth saving, and they said that the foundation of the structure is still viable. Menolly can rebuild, if she wants to.”

“If it
is
legally deemed arson, we can collect the insurance. But if it’s labeled an accident, then who knows what’s going to happen. And if, like you said, the families of the victims sue . . . it could wipe out everything.” I rubbed my head. “What are we going to do?”

Camille maneuvered over the caution tape and wrapped her arm around my waist, peering in. “You know as well as I do that the worst part of this for Menolly is going to be the eight victims. Money is only money. You can always make more. But lives have been lost and that’s never easy.”

“Yeah. I know.” I knew she was thinking of Henry Jeffries, a regular at the Indigo Crescent—Camille’s bookshop. He’d volunteered to work for her part time and the thanks he got for his trouble was a violent death come too early, meted out by our enemies. He had left a good share of his money to Camille, though, and she’d expanded the shop and rebuilt after it had been partially destroyed in an explosion, adding on a coffee shop next door.