Lady Killer

By Michele Jaffe

The “sexy . . . breathtaking . . . wonderfully original” mystery in which a murderer returns from the dead—and is hell-bent on killing again (Jane Feather, New York Times–bestselling author of An Unsuitable Bride).
 
A stridently independent woman in sixteenth-century London, Clio Thornton’s interest in solving mysteries has put her at odds with her wealthy family. But given her coterie of unorthodox friends—and her pet monkey, Toast—that is nothing new.
 
So, when she stumbles upon a grisly murder, she’s determined to investigate, even when all of her discoveries point to an impossible killer: the Vampire of London, vanquished three years ago by Viscount Miles Loredan—her cousin’s husband-to-be.
 
Miles finds her theories impossible to believe. But intrigued by her passion and her beauty, Miles agrees to hire her and support her investigation. What starts as a professional relationship soon becomes personal—and dangerous. Not only because Miles is betrothed to another woman—but because Clio has become the Vampire’s next target . . .
 
For lovers of puzzling mysteries, romantic histories, or just good old-fashioned sleuthing, this is a fast, fun read from “a writer to watch” (Publishers Weekly).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jan 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781626811911

Michele Jaffe

Michele Jaffe is the author of Bad Kitty, Kitty Kitty, and the mangas Bad Kitty: Catnipped and Bad Kitty: Catnapped as well as several adult novels, including the thrillers Bad Girl and Loverboy. After getting her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Harvard, she retired from academia and decided to become an FBI special agent or glamorous showgirl but somehow ended up writing. A native of Los Angeles, CA, Michele and her sparkly shoes reside in New York City.

Book preview

Prologue

I was getting hungry by the time she came in, but waiting is nothing new for me. I have spent the better part of my life waiting on women. Still, I held my breath when she opened the door. I didn’t want her to know I was there, not yet anyway. She liked surprises, I knew, because I had seen her two days earlier with that silver piece in her hand. She had stood in the stable yard and twirled around and hummed to herself in happiness at the surprise. I hoped she would hum for me, too. In fact, I was counting on it.

I waited until she had slipped out of her cloak and settled herself on that squalid mattress she called her bed before I entered. At first she pretended to be asleep, but when she finally looked up, I could see that she recognized me. I was delighted. It is always a pleasure to be recognized, to be seen as you long to be seen, especially when so much time has passed. I smiled broadly to show her how happy she had made me.

Silly, idiotic girl. She started screaming then, turning her head from side to side to appeal to the others, as if they would help her, as if they could feel pity. I almost fancied one of them had whispered to another that they thought my choice was unworthy, but when I turned around they were all still silently looking on as I had found them.

I owed them something, too. They brought her to me, they put her in my path, and I repaid them by letting them watch. An audience is a powerful stimulus. But I would not let them comment. You see, it was only for me to determine worthiness. Only I could make the selection, only I knew why. No one else could understand.

I explained that to her, explained what she was destined for. I wish you could have seen the expression on her face. It was better than I could have imagined, more beautiful than any word-sharping poet could ever describe. I was overtaken with emotion and I lifted her to my breast and held her tight.

I admit that I cried. Don’t look so surprised. What would you have done in my place? It was a beautiful, magical moment. I showered my tears over her, cleansing her, and then I followed them with my lips. I dried them with my mouth, kissing her cheek, her jaw bone, her chin. With each kiss I could feel her excitement growing, feel her pulse quickening. I felt as though I could see the blood throbbing just beneath the skin, just out of sight. I heard her voice then, calling to me, singing out to me, begging me for succor, for mercy, for release. I looked up once to memorize the dear expression on her face.

And then I sank my teeth into her neck.

God it was good to be back.

Chapter One

London: Friday, June 22nd 1590

It was no use. Clio Thornton had tried squinting, closing one eye, and glaring at the book lying open on the desk in front of her, but nothing made it look any better. The two rows of columns refused to add up to the same thing, or even anything, besides nothing. She was broke.

The squealing of door hinges interrupted her thoughts and she just had time to shove the ledger under her desk before a woman in a silver gown rushed into the room.

Today is the day, the woman trilled. Her steps were being dogged by a monkey in a dark blue velvet doublet with two gold medals pinned to it. Don’t you dare say that word to me, Clio Thornton, that word you are always saying: impossible. I am completely sure. I, Princess Erika, have seen the portents in the bottom of the water jug.

Princess Erika set the jug down firmly in the middle of Clio’s desk.

Look for yourself, she offered, and Clio leaned forward. The monkey, having taken up a post on Clio’s shoulder, looked also.

It’s cracked, Clio said. The monkey nodded.

Princess Erika, whose nation of sovereignty no one—including the princess—seemed to know, drew herself up to her full height and demanded, Clio, what am I going to do with you? You call that cracked? That is a sign. A great sign. A very, very great sign. Today, this very morning, fortune comes knocking.

Despite the state of her finances, Clio received this news with great calm. During the two years that they had been neighbors, Princess Erika’s prophesies had become legendary throughout London, because whatever she predicted could be counted on with certainty never to occur. In her career as a seer, Princess Erika had only once made a correct prediction, and that only by accident. Her reliability was held in great esteem by many—travelers had begun to frequent her rooms to receive her solemn assurance that they would die on their next voyage, and merchants sought her recommendations on which ventures she guaranteed to fail. But Princess Erika longed, more than anything, to be a true prophet, and she continued singing out her predictions, dauntless in the belief that if she just found the correct vessel for her portents, all would come out right.

This morning she had returned to the water jug, which explained her enthusiasm. Once, two years earlier, Princess Erika had looked in her water jug and correctly predicted that the heavens would shower diamonds over London. But since then—barring a wild prophesy about Clio’s future, which was more poetic than predictive—the jug had remained silent. Despite its past success, Clio was not optimistic about its results.

Which was why, when at that moment there was a knock on the main door of the house, she was so surprised that she nearly fell out of her chair, sending the ledger thumping to the ground and disturbing the monkey who had settled in for a nap.

For an instant, all time seemed to stand still and the two women just stared at one another in euphoric disbelief. Then Snug, a former, highly unsuccessful, liberator of others’ possessions, and now the head steward-gardener-cook-tinkerer-majordomo-housekeeper-fix-anything-man of Clio’s household, showed their guest into the study.

Many people had come to Clio for help during the years she had lived in London, but none of them appeared less like a harbinger of good fortune than the dark-haired boy who now entered. He looked as though he were not merely unfortunate but almost anti-fortunate, as if he had not smiled in years and had no plans to do so anytime soon.

Above all, he looked hungry. Without waiting for him to speak, Clio rose and began to move quickly in the direction of the kitchen. But she had not taken three steps when she felt the boy at her side, tugging insistently on her arm. Clio remembered reading about boys that if you showed weakness once, they would never respect you. Although this boy was as tall as she was, he was only half her age, which Clio felt gave her the clear upper hand, and she determined not to go anywhere with him until he yielded to her superior authority and ate something. But to everything she suggested—a piece of bread, a bowl of jam, even a little meat pie (which Toast, the blue-velvet-clad monkey, indicated he would be willing to consume by snapping his fingers and pirouetting)—the boy simply shook his head and pulled harder at the fabric of her gown.

It did not take Clio’s years of experience with people in trouble to realize that the boy was either unable or unwilling to speak. And that unless she went wherever he wanted to drag her, he was not going to leave off tormenting her sleeve until every thread on it gave way, which would not be long given that the gown was almost as old as the boy. With a sigh she persuaded him to come into the kitchen just long enough for her to stuff two meat pies into a cloth bag, thrust it into the boy’s hand, and set out at a run behind him, trailed by Toast.

The crowds grew thicker as they progressed down Knightrider Street, changing from dark-coated men of business to rowdier soldiers and sailors as they crossed Water Lane. Several people stopped to stare at the strange procession of boy-woman-monkey, but Clio did not notice, her mind completely taken up with wondering what this mad dash might mean. As they approached Alsatia—the quarter of London referred to by the respectable as Devil’s Keep, and by its denizens as Little Eden in honor of the number of houses of pleasure located there—she had the sudden, sickening thought that perhaps the boy was one of Captain Black’s minions, sent to waylay her. Just then the boy turned down an alley and stopped in a bare courtyard that fronted a tiny building, so small it looked like a child’s play house. He stood next to the door, trembling, as if afraid to enter.

You keep our visitor company out here, Clio instructed Toast, whose eyes never left the bag of meat pies in the boy’s hand. Assured that her young charge was going to be closely watched, Clio pushed the door open and stepped inside.

Her stomach rose into her throat and she had to steady herself against the cupboard next to the door as the sight and the stench hit her like an invisible punch. A hundred hands stretched out toward her, a hundred eyes stared unblinkingly at her above red-gash mouths. A severed ear lay on the table in front of her, next to a nose, a golden braid, and what looked like it could have been a face. There were only empty sockets where the eyes should have been, and a large swath of beige matter showed where the ribbon hair had yet to be sewn on.

The dolls hung in rows along three walls of the room, the hooks in the backs of their gowns making them lean forward, leering, grasping, casting crazy shadows across the planked floor, but it was not these that made her knees sway and the knot in her stomach tighten. Beneath a window against the far wall there was a mattress. And on the mattress, dangerously still, lay a girl.

Clio felt a spasm of sadness and horror when she registered that the girl was dead, and then stopped feeling anything at all as her mind took over. This was not the first mysterious death she had been involved in—her solution to the mystery of Ellis Wittington’s drowning two years earlier and her role in catching the notorious Butcher of Buckinghamshire that past April had earned her the two medals from the queen, which Toast now wore on his doublet—and she knew what to expect, but she never got over how clear her thoughts became in the face of tragedy. Unnatural girl, thrives on the misery of others, she heard her grandmother’s disapproving voice say in her head. She pushed it aside and turned back to the task at hand.

Clio looked around the room, memorizing it. She noted the dolls, arranged by dress color, then the small statue of a saint at the foot of the bed, the worn-through boots, the bug-infested straw mattress covered with a patterned piece of fabric—no doubt to brighten the room—and the bouquet of flowers on the window sill, undoubtedly put there with the same end. She noted the two sets of muddy footprints on the floor, one made by the sort of small feet Clio had always longed to have and appearing to correspond with the boots next to the mattress, the other set larger but following the same path from the door to the bed.

Finally, when she had taken everything in and her nose had adjusted to the smell of death enough to keep from gagging, Clio crossed the floor and stood next to the body. Deep green bracelets of bruises circled the girl’s wrists, but no other wounds were immediately apparent. Bending, Clio brushed aside the plait of dark hair that covered the girl’s face.

She recoiled. Huge, glittering eyes stared out at Clio with an expression of acute terror and the dead girl’s mouth gaped open in a silent scream. No. Clio could almost see the words forming the syllables. No, don’t please no, NO.

Clio tried to close her own eyes but she could not. She could not free her gaze from the lifeless one of the corpse, and as she looked, she felt a prickling fear crawl over her. It started at her feet and swam slowly up, until her entire body was tingling. She heard a scream in her ears, in her head, and felt a line of clammy perspiration form down her back. Her heart pounded as she struggled to swallow, but she could hear it over the screams.

There was a noise behind her. The cupboard! She had not looked inside the cupboard, and he had been hiding there. The girl’s face, her scream, had been a warning. There was something coming for Clio. She heard a board creak. The hairs on her arms stood up. She could smell his sweat as he moved up behind her. Another board creaked.

She wrenched her eyes from the girl’s and swung around. A sound rose in her throat, then stopped. From every wall the dolls leered at her, grinning ghoulishly. But there was no one else in the room. She was alone. The door to the cupboard was closed. Her heart thudded. She had imagined the whole thing, there had not been anyone there. She was alone. Her heart slowed. Alone. She swallowed hard and turned back to the bed.

That was when she really knew terror. The hideous death mask of moments before had vanished. The girl was lying on her back peacefully. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were pressed together, and almost curved into a smile. She was still dead, and there were still bruises on her wrists, but there was no sign of the horror Clio had seen in her face.

Clio forced herself to breathe to keep from screaming. Breathe, think, breathe. It was a trick of the light. An illusion. It was nothing, a fake—it had looked so real—there was a logical explanation for it. There was, damn it—but the fear, the fear had been real. It had been the girl’s fear, locked somehow in the air of the airless room. She knew it, the fear of someone about to die.

It had looked so bloody real.

Clio shook her head, shaking away the feeling that she was lying to herself. She had never had a premonition in her life, she did not even believe in them, but she knew with unwavering certainty that something horrible had happened in this place. She concentrated on focusing her thoughts, on pressing the chilling vision down into the darkest corner of her mind. It had been so real. She would consider it later, rationally, logically, objectively. Right now she had work to do. She still had no idea of how the girl had died, she reminded herself, let alone who she was. Work to do. Seizing on this, Clio moved her eyes from the serene face. Behind the girl’s head, wedged in the corner between the mattress and the wall, was what appeared to be a dark blue silk kerchief, similar to one Clio had at home, its fine fabric looking startlingly out of place in the humble room. Clio reached across the dead girl’s body to finger it—

And froze.

What stunned her was not so much what she saw, but how unsurprised she felt seeing it. It was as if she had known—had known even as she mistook shadows on the girl’s face for a scream—what she would find. She blinked twice, just to be sure, but this time there could be no trick of light. Just at the point where the woman’s neck met her collarbone, on the smoothest, purest part of her neck, were two dark brown dots, slightly larger than pin pricks, but much, much more deadly.

Although Clio had never seen anything like them, she knew instantly what they meant. The Vampire of London was back.

Impossible, Clio whispered to herself. She had been in Nottingham looking for the missing daughter of a baronet when the vampire first made his appearance three years earlier, but she remembered the stories and had the news sheets about his crimes in her files. Twenty-four London women died that summer at the vampire’s hands, and scores of others perished indirectly by being forced to sleep with their shutters closed in airless rooms during the long, hot months. Families bankrupted themselves buying mirrors when the belief that a vampire could not bear to see his reflection gained popularity, and herbologists got rich selling secret essences guaranteed to be anathema to demons when applied to the neck. The behavior of vampires past was closely analyzed by the leading lights of Oxford and Cambridge for clues as to his method of selecting his victims, but the London fiend’s preferences remained a mystery. He seemed to strike indiscriminately, preying on women of all complexions and social classes. Their only common denominator was that they were all young and smallish in stature. The inanimate figure lying on the bed in front of Clio was both young and diminutive, so it was not any lack in the victim that had made Clio whisper impossible. Nor was it because she had never really credited that the vampire existed. It was quite simply because the Vampire of London was dead.

Or supposed to be. He had been killed three years earlier, shot down in broad daylight as he tried to escape pursuit by stealing a boat and making off down the Thames. Two hundred Upstanding Citizens saw the first shot go into his thigh, saw him waver, and then watched as the second shot went directly into his heart. Two hundred Upstanding Citizens saw him look toward his assassin with surprise, saw him stretch his throat to yell, You’ll be sorry Dearbourn, and saw him fall backward into the swirling rapids of the Thames at the base of London Bridge. Two hundred Upstanding Citizens saw the body pelted against the strong supports of the bridge once, twice, three times, until it was sucked into the powerful vortex of the river and disappeared entirely. No one had ever survived a fall that close to the bridge’s supports—even the most seasoned boatmen avoided the rapids at all cost—but the river was dredged religiously anyway, for three months, without a sign of the vampire’s body. Two hundred Upstanding Citizens swore that the vampire was dead and the entire city of London rejoiced.

But Clio knew something that the Upstanding Citizens did not know, a detail that had been kept secret by the special commission the queen dispatched to look into the public menace. She knew that next to each corpse had been found a pure, white gardenia. And now, looking at the windowsill next to the mattress on which the dead girl lay, Clio saw what she had failed to see before. There was not a bouquet of flowers there. There was a flower. A white gardenia.

Two hundred Upstanding Citizens, Clio thought grimly, were wrong.

Clio, rational and unafraid and not at all having trouble keeping her breathing steady, rose from the bed and crossed the floor. She looked more closely at the larger set of footprints now. The previous night’s short rain had been the first London had seen in over two weeks, which meant that both the girl’s muddy footprints and those Clio tentatively assigned to the vampire had been made last night, between an hour before midnight when the rain started, and three hours afterward, by which time the ground would have been dry. Clio filed these observations away clinically, as if she had never seen a dead woman scream, and was about to leave when her eye fell again on the cupboard.

The door was not quite closed. It had been closed—hadn’t it?—when she looked before, but now it hung open, just a crack, just enough for someone to be watching her, just enoug—

Clio crossed to it and threw open the door. It was empty. EMPTY she told herself. But she stood looking at it, into it, for a moment, to steady herself. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Not in the course of an investigation. Cool. Levelheaded. Unafraid. Those were the words people applied to Clio. She did not believe in supernatural killers—there were enough bad people in London alone to logically explain all the murders in the world, she had said numerous times. No need to go into the realm of true demons. She had not even believed in the Vampire of London when she first heard about him. She knew that if she had been in the city at the time, she would have found a logical explanation for his behavior. She was convinced that he was no more than a man cloaking himself in a legend.

But suddenly, for the first time, she had to wonder. No man had ever survived the rapids that sped under the supports of the Thames. No man had ever resurfaced from that particular swim in the river. But the Vampire of London had. Shot through the heart, he had survived. Which meant…

Reason came to her aid. No man had survived, but it did not mean that no man could. Things were not necessarily what they seemed. It was just this room, this place that was playing with her mind, the heat, the smell, the dolls, and the fact that she had not really eaten anything in two days.

The vampire was just a man, she told herself firmly. A girl had been murdered by someone and she simply had to find out who. This was no different than any other investigation she had undertaken, she was just hotter, and hungrier, her mind was playing tricks, but it would stop, now. She gave the cupboard a scornful look, cast a final glance at the corpse, and stepped out into the courtyard.

Toast had climbed atop a stump of wood and was delivering one of the lengthy performances for which he was named—consisting largely of lifting an invisible glass and drinking it down with intermissions of loud and somber sounding twittering—while the boy sat on the ground before him. From the way he rolled his eyes at her, Clio could tell that Toast was finding the boy an unsatisfactory audience, probably because he had not yet yielded up the packet of meat pies, and the monkey was only too happy when she sat down next to the child.

The boy turned hollow eyes to her, then gestured with his head toward the room and pointed two fingers at his neck.

Yes, Clio said, searching his face, I saw them. The pricks. Did you find her like that?

The boy looked down at his lap, his face hidden by his dark hair, and nodded.

When? Today?

The boy nodded again.

Is she your sister? Clio asked. The question was almost unnecessary. Their features were very similar and the girl looked to be only three or four years older than the boy, but Clio wanted to be sure.

The boy answered in the affirmative, this time raising his face to hers. Anger flashed across his hollow eyes, and then expectation.

Despite his lack of speech, Clio understood the boy’s request instantly. Of course. As soon as I have settled you at home, I will dedicate myself to learning who hurt your sister, she replied. For most people in London, such an assurance from her would have been all they needed to sleep more soundly in their beds, because Clio’s reputation for wresting the truth out of mysteries was well known. There were a few skeptics who suggested that a person who would willingly take into their home any being—man, woman, child, animal—who merely seemed hungry or lonely or even just sad could not be nearly as intelligent as Clio was said to be, but her supporters far outnumbered her naysayers. People had begun to come from all over England not only to seek her aid—which was how she supported her menagerie—but merely to cast eyes upon her, causing the ancient ruin of a house she and her companions occupied on the corner of Milk and Honey Streets to become something of a tourist attraction, rivaling even the gallows at Tyburn in popularity. Indeed, so often did visitors stop her neighbors on the street with the question Which house is Clio Thornton’s? that they had forgotten the true name of the rambling old building with the rose bushes growing over the facade and now called it simply Which House.

But Clio’s assurances seemed not to placate the boy at all. He frowned and poked a finger in his chest, then pointed at her. When she appeared not to understand, he did it again.

"Oh, Clio said finally. She tried to smile a boy-soothing smile. That is a very kind offer, but I am afraid that I only work alone. The best way for you to help me would be to go and eat—"

The boy shook his head fiercely and again went through the pointing regimen.

Clio began to worry that she had not been firm enough with the boy at the beginning and she felt a twinge of panic. When she said she only worked alone, she had been telling the truth. Those who kept track of such things could tell you that Clio Thornton had solved exactly 203 mysteries in the past three years, and she had wrestled with all of them solo. She might turn to others for information, but she always worked by herself. It was a rule she had made years earlier, and it was a rule that no one, especially not anyone under the age of thirteen, was going to get her to break.

She frowned at the boy, trying to look simultaneously maternal and intimidating and authoritative, and he frowned back at her in blatant defiance. She puffed out her cheeks and he puffed out his, she squinted at him and he squinted back, she bit her lip and he bit his, too, with even more vehemence. Clio had received enough lectures on the evils of stubbornness during her growing up to be able to teach an Oxford course on the topic, but she felt she had never really understood its drawbacks until now, and finally, when he out-sneered her, she had to concede that she had met her match.

She gave in with a sigh. Very well. You can help me. However, if we are going to do this together, it must be very clear that I am in charge. The boy looked past Clio, as if he could not hear her. That means that you will do whatever I say, she repeated. Otherwise, I shall find this fiend alone. Do you agree?

The boy frowned slightly and then gave a slow nod in agreement.

Clio, who had not realized she was holding her breath, exhaled loudly. Good. Excellent. Now that he had agreed to be led by her, he no longer looked quite so formidable and Clio felt herself relax slightly. As she did, she remembered the piece of blue silk she had taken from next to the mattress. She held it toward him and asked, Have you ever seen this before?

The boy fingered the fabric, then shook his head, and shook it again when she asked if it had belonged to his sister. Having confirmed that the kerchief had been imported into the house, and recently, made finding its owner a top priority. Perhaps whoever left it there saw someone around the property before the girl died. Or, perhaps it belonged to whomever—whatever—killed her.

It had been so real.

Clio did not know if it was the memory of the girl’s face or the feel of a hairy arm brushing against hers that made her shudder. She looked down and was just in time to see Toast bring the blue handkerchief to his face and sniff it suspiciously. Then, before she could stop him, he turned into the alley and dashed out into the press of people on the main street.

Now it was Clio’s turn to do the dragging. Without pausing to think, she grabbed the boy by the arm and set out after the monkey. During the several-year term of their acquaintance, Toast had demonstrated two outstanding qualities: a tendency to purloin small objects, and an incredible sense of smell. Generally he exerted these only in pursuit of meat pies, but on occasion, and Clio hoped this was one, he had been invaluable in helping her track down suspects by following their scent. If Toast could find the owner of the kerchief, Clio would certainly be closer to finding the killer. Possibly much, much closer.

Her mind keeping pace with her feet, Clio forced herself to consider that Toast might be leading her directly to the Vampire. Even if one discounted that he was a demon, he was indisputably a most cunning, dangerous criminal. It had taken a madman to capture him, and even then, as Clio now suspected, the capture had been only temporary. What in the queen’s name did she plan to do against someone like that?

She had never faced a murderer alone before, and never a fiend. Suddenly the knife she always carried in her bodice for protection when she went out on investigations felt very small and ineffectual. But even as she considered the wisdom of turning around and waiting until a constable could be found, she saw Toast turn abruptly and go into a tavern door and she knew she had no choice but to follow him. As she reached the tavern and saw the sign with a picture of a heavily made-up woman hanging over it, Clio felt a flicker of surprise and relief. Despite its name, the Painted Lady Tavern was one of the most respectable houses in the area, more often hosting poets and playwrights than the ruffians and rakes who crowded the benches at other establishments.

What was more, she knew the proprietor well. Indeed, Clio had recovered Lovely Jake’s prize pig for him that spring, and so was relieved to see him standing behind the bar as she entered. Whispering to her young companion to stay by the door and not move, a request to which she got only a barely visible sullen nod, Clio scanned the length of the dimly lit room looking for Toast. It was empty except for a solitary figure hunched over the table near the stairs and snoring loudly, around whom Toast was dancing ecstatically.

The thought that a vampire would sleep all day in order to be fresh for his kills flashed through Clio’s mind, but was quickly dispersed by a hearty welcome from Lovely Jake.

Miss Thornton, it is an en-orm-ous pleasure to see you, he boomed. Lovely Jake had earned his nickname playing the Maiden in numerous plays to packed playhouse crowds in his youth three decades earlier. Although it was hard to imagine the now enormous man as a captivating damsel, his voice, particularly when he chose to exercise it, could still command the attention of even the farthest boxes. He was exercising it now. How is the Triumvirate these days? he bellowed, as if in proof. "They have been off scene, if you will pardon me a theatrical expression, this long month. Have they a new project afoot?"

It’s a pleasure to see you, too, Clio said quietly, her eyes not leaving Toast. Then, moving close to Jake, she stood on her toes, pointed in the direction of the sleeping figure, and whispered, Who is that man?

Jake looked remorseful. It would bring honor to us both if I could speak his name, he replied, in his idea of a confidential whisper, audible in Southern Kent. "But I cannot—nay, I must not. I do hate to wear the mask of secrecy, but you see, I took a stack of gold as long as my shoe and promised to, as we thespians say, stand mute upon my mark. Clio eyed Jake’s enormous shoe and felt her heart sink. There was no way she could match that offer. I can tell you this, though, my dear Miss Thornton, Jake went on. That is neither a happy man, nor a content man. His role upon the stage of life hangs heavy upon him. I begrudge no man my company, but one would think he would have had enough of it by now. He has been here, much as you see him at this moment, since yesterday midday, or as we say in the theater, intermezzo, and I must confide that I do not see any sign of exit, End Act I, on the near horizon."

If the man at the table had been in the tavern since the previous noon, there was no chance that he had made the muddy footprints Clio had seen at the doll house, which meant there was little chance he was the vampire. Clio’s relief that she was probably not facing a fiend just now was undermined by what that meant: the murderer was still out there, possibly getting ready to kill another victim. Her only consolation was the bizarre dance that Toast was performing around the sleeping man. The monkey’s sense of smell was as unerring as a dog’s, so there had to be something linking this man to the dead girl. Impatient to question the sleeping man at once, she just nodded her thanks to Lovely Jake and headed straight for the table.

The man was snoring contentedly, his head down over his arms, his body covered with a red silk cape. Clio stood over him, watching him sleep for a moment, then suddenly remembered the expression of horror she thought she had seen—it had looked so real—on the girl’s face.

She was not afraid. She was not afraid. She was not afraid.

She cleared her throat and said, Excuse me.

The man resettled himself in the crook of his arm, but did not stop sleeping—or snoring.

Excuse me, Clio said again, this time louder.

Still nothing. Rationalizing that Jake would not allow her to be killed center stage in his tavern, Clio ventured closer. She tapped the man on the crown of the head while bending near his ear and whispering excuse me directly over it.

Miles Loredan, Viscount Dearbourn, was feeling belligerent. He would not kill whomever had replaced his head with a pumpkin, that was all right, but the scurvy villains who were trying to carve it out were going to find themselves facing the sharp point of a sword. Wasn’t it enough that they had pulled him from wonderful oblivion? Did they need to compound their sins by beating his head with cudgels? What had he—

A vague thought seeped into his ale-soaked head, a memory of his cousins towering over him several days earlier, as they left the Turkish bathhouse, and promising that if he was not home by four bells to prepare for his betrothal ball, they would send an escort who was sure to rouse him. Aha, Miles realized triumphantly, the devils playing squash-the-squash with his head were his cousins’ minions of