Dimitri hadn’t had a good day’s sleep in weeks, so there was no sense in attempting it today. Perhaps he would respond to the message.
Lord Corvindale,
I should like to invite you to examine a new collection of works I have recently procured. I am hopeful that one of them might contain the information you seek. Please advise soonest, for I have other interested clients.
G. Reginald.
Gellis Reginald was another antiquarian bookseller Dimitri had patronized, although not for months since he’d found Wayren’s shop. Perhaps the man had heard that his most influential customer had gone elsewhere and wished to lure him back, or perhaps he truly did have something of interest.
Regardless, it was an opportunity to leave the house.
Dimitri put aside his other papers—contracts and balance sheets, bank drafts and bills that he’d taken a moment to peruse and sign merely in order to get Beckett, his man of business, to stop nagging him—and rang for the carriage.
The day was a normal gloomy one, with thick, rolling fog and gray everywhere. Nevertheless, Dimitri needed his cloak. An abnormal wave of bitterness flooded him as he scooped it up and stalked out, leaving a house filled with squeals and giggles behind him.
When they arrived at Reginald’s dingy shopfront, Dimitri climbed out and bade Tren to return for him at the public house on the end of the block.
“I don’t expect to be long,” he said. “Two hours at the outside.”
“Miss Woodmore asked that I?—”
Dimitri flapped an impatient hand and walked into the shop, letting the door slam behind him. Immediately he was accosted by the smells of age and mold, as well as dust and even mouse dung.
He didn’t want to hear a thing about Miss Woodmore. Likely she’d asked Mrs. Hunburgh to have one of the servants pick up some package or other for her, and Tren had been given the task. He didn’t care. Soon she would be out of his house, and out of his thoughts.
And, pray God, out of his dreams.
“Reginald,” he called in his peremptory voice when he saw that the shop was empty. “It’s Corvindale.”
Blast it. Why wasn’t the man waiting for him? He’d sent the message, after all.
Dimitri had no interest in examining the old watches and ratty-cornered Bibles and poetry books the shopkeeper attempted to foist off as valuable antiquities. That was part of the reason he had ceased patronizing the man after a while—his offerings were nigh worthless when one sought words from the ancients, and in their own languages. Too many things were lost in the translation of others, so Dimitri had learned to do his own.
“Reginald!” he called again in a voice that made the glass cases shudder. He sniffed the air, suddenly realizing the faint strain of blood that he’d just noticed was too strong to be something as innocent as a nosebleed.
Dimitri was behind the counter in a moment, pushing through the sagging door that led to the back room of the shop. Once through there, the smell of blood was stronger and richer, causing him to hesitate for a moment to determine the direction of its origin. The room was cluttered in what could have been its normal state, or the scene of an altercation. A single door in the back wall presumably led to the alley behind, and the one window was, thankfully, covered in grime, making the chamber dim and shadowy. On the floor was a half-dried pool of blood.
As he turned, another smell reached his nose. A familiar one that made him frown in shock and confusion.
And then all at once, the back door burst open and three figures vaulted through, into the room.
Dimitri reacted automatically as they lunged toward him, grabbing one by the arm and slinging him into the wall, then turning to meet the others. He ducked and easily sent a second one flying, then swung around to slam a fist into the gut of another. The dull flare of fire in their eyes identified them as makes—relatively weak ones, by his estimation.
He reached for a wooden stool, breaking off one of the legs into a jagged stake as he heard a noise behind him. The scent came with it, the familiar one, and it had him whirling just in time to see her stepping from the door at the front of the shop.
Impossible. She was dead.
Something red glittered on her hand, and as Dimitri stumbled, his chest tightening and slowing, he saw she wore ropes of them. Rubies. Dangling from her ears and around her throat and two robin’s-egg-size gems on her fingers. Tiny ones glittered in her dark hair.
So many… His body lumbered, limbs clumsy and heavy.
His attackers came behind him, pushing him forward when he would have spun away, shoving him toward her, and just before something black and heavy wafted down over his face and shoulders, he managed to gasp, “Lerina. How?”
Her laughter curled around his ears and into his consciousness as he fought to breathe. He saw the flash of red in her eyes and the gleam of fangs. Weakness deadened his limbs and the heavy cloth tightened around him. The rubies came closer; he could feel them through the fabric. Binding, burning.
And then everything went dark.
12
