"You guys get that you're just a loaded gun someone else is aiming. A tool, a big, dumb, tool." Jessica popped another cracker into her mouth, chewed, then added, "You get that, right?"
"That's not true," Wild Bill whined.
"Sure it is. You guys weren't even a team before the Puppet Master came along. Now you're running around staking dead people. And you don't even know why."
Sinclair nodded approvingly and sipped his Earl Grey. The vampires were comfortably spread out on one side of the table, and everybody else was crammed together on the other side. Father Markus had hung his crucifix around his neck, keeping it in plain sight, which made the other vamps a little antsy. They kept trying to look at him, and then their gaze would skitter away.
Across the table, the others jumped a foot whenever Tina or Sinclair reached for more tea. It was kind of funny.
"So who is the Puppet Master?" Tina asked. "Don't any of you have any idea?"
"No," Ani replied.
"Oh, come now."
"I swear! Everything's been anonymous. We assumed it was some rich vampire victim. You know, someone who lost a loved one to... to one of you."
"Ennnnhhhhh! Thanks for playing... what do we have for her, Johnny?"
"Quit doing your game show host schtick, Marc," I ordered. "You're confusing the vampires. They're not big TV watchers."
"Certainly not daytime television," Sinclair sniffed.
Marc smirked. "My point is, I doubt it. Remember, guys, we were talking about how it had to be a vampire, because he knew who was dead and who wasn't? How would a regular person know that? It's not like Eric keeps a list... oh, John Smith rose from the dead, better write that down."
"No," Sinclair said, and he was actually smiling. Thank God. "I don't have a list."
"Actually, I was saying that," Jessica said, "and you're right. The bad guy's one of you," she said, pointing to the vampire half of the tea table. In fact, she was pointing right at me, and I batted her hand away. "You've got to figure out who, and why. And ouch, not so hard, Bets."
"Sorry. I get nervous when people make announcements about killers and then point at me. So, why? Why would a vampire want to kill other vampires?"
"If we knew the why, we'd know the who," Tina said, sounding like an undead Dr. Seuss.
"You at least know where your funding comes from," Sinclair said. It wasn't a question.
"All funds required for our activities are wired from a Swiss bank account," Father Markus explained.
"Ah, the Swiss," Tina muttered. "Accommodating financiers to Nazis, third-world dictators, and vampire killers."
Nobody said anything to that.
Father Markus cleared his throat. "All our instructions and intel arrive via anonymous e-mails."
"Intel?" I smirked. Someone's been watching too many Alias reruns.
"Devo is our computer expert, but even he has been unable to trace the e-mails."
"Oh, you bothered to try?" Sinclair asked politely. Even seated, he dwarfed everyone at the table. "I thought you had just taken your marching orders and off you went like good little meat puppets."
"Sinclair!" I gasped. Meat puppets? Where had he picked that up?
"So who's a suspect?" Jessica asked quickly. She got up to pace, which was always annoying; but she'd been doing it for fifteen years and wasn't likely to stop now. "I mean, assuming you guys are interested in finding out."
"Of course we are," Father Markus said, offended.
"Why?" Tina challenged. "We're still vampires. You're still our food."
"I am not, young lady," Father Markus said sternly, which was a laugh, because Tina had about ninety years on him. "And it's one thing to assume you're doing the Lord's work, and another to find out you're being used and you don't know why, or by whom."
Tina actually looked chastened; Sinclair mostly looked amused.
"What, find out?" Marc shook his head. "You always knew you were being used. You just didn't care until an upstanding citizen pointed it out."
Father Markus shrugged, but his color was high, like he was embarrassed but didn't want to say anything else.
"So, we think it's a vampire," Jessica said, crunching crumbs into the carpet as she got up to pace. Dammit! "Well, there's a pretty good suspect right here in this room."
"Who?" I asked, surprised.
"Me," Sinclair said.
"Well, if you've been sending us all that money," Ani said sweetly, "thanks."
"Oh, come on. Sinclair the Puppet Master? Well, okay, that makes sense, but he wouldn't kill vampires. Right? Right."
"Why not?" Marc asked. "No offense, Sinclair, but you're not exactly the type to enjoy competition."
"You are a keen observer, Dr. Spangler."
Marc glowed under the sarcastic praise. I wanted to know how Sinclair knew Marc's last name... I'd never told him.
"And now that Nostro's dead," Marc continued, like a gay, male, younger version of that old lady from Murder, She Wrote, "you can thin the herd a little more. And you can sure afford to finance the Blade Warriors."
"That's ridiculous!" I said hotly. "He's a loathsome crumb and an overbearing control freak, but he wouldn't start slaughtering his own people."
"Thank you, Elizabeth," he said politely.
"Well, he might," Tina said with her trademark ruthless honesty, "but he'd do it himself. He wouldn't farm the work out to a bunch of pimply... urn, to other people."
"Also," Sinclair added quietly, "I would never harm the queen."
I grinned in spite of myself. He likes me, he really really likes me!
"Then there's you, Bets," Jessica said, and my grin fell off my face. "It's pretty well known you hate being the queen, and that you can't stand most vampires. Plus, you're not exactly the type to get your hands dirty. It'd be just like you to hire a group to do the work for you."
I wanted to say something like, "Knock it off!" or "Drop dead!" But nothing she had said was untrue. So I just drank tea and glared.
"Except she has no interest-or participation-in vampire politics. And she wouldn't know who was a vampire and who wasn't. Not to mention, she doesn't have the money to fund this operation. Which brings us," Sinclair added lazily, "to you, Jessica."
"Oh, come on!" I yelled.
But Jess was unfazed. "True, I'm a pretty good suspect." She started ticking the reasons off on her long fingers. "I've got the money. I'm sympathetic to my friend's plight-namely, that she doesn't want to be queen of the vamps. I don't much give a crap if vampires get killed or not-sorry, guys. I'm rich enough to be able to hide my tracks. Except there's one problem."
"She isn't the one," Father Markus said.
"No?" Jessica smiled.
"No," he said firmly. "I've known your family since you were small, Miss Watkins. It's not in you."
"You knew my father, right?" she said, hanging onto her smile.
"I did. It's not in you," he repeated stubbornly.
"Hello?" a voice said, and then Monique stuck her head through the doorway. Tina and Sinclair didn't move, but the rest of us jumped a foot. "Did I miss anything?"
"Who is that?" Jon slobbered.
"Never you mind. What are you doing here, Monique?"
"Nobody was at the hotel, so I made an educated guess. What's going on? My, what a beautiful room." She settled herself between Tina and me, looking adorable in beige capris and a red sleeveless sweater.
"We're trying to figure out who the Puppet Master is," I explained. "Um, Monique, you're not rich, are you?"
She was pouring herself a cup of tea, and didn't spill a drop. "Oh, good gosh no," she said mildly. "Not compared to some." She raised her eyebrows and nodded at Sinclair and Jessica.
"And what of the good Detective Berry?" Sinclair asked.
"What, Nick?" I was totally surprised. He wouldn't have occurred to me in a million years.
"Isn't it true that he's reappeared in your life after a three month absence? And as a member of the police force, he has access to information the rest of us can only dream of."
"Yeah, but... he's so nice."
"He didn't look terribly nice when he was drooling and cringing and crawling around your carpet last spring," Tina said frankly.
"But he doesn't remember any of that!"
"Doesn't he?"
I fell silent; I had no idea what Nick remembered.
"After his experience with us, he has good reason to hate vampires," Sinclair added.
"The trouble is," Tina said, "we have too many suspects. It could be any one of Nostro's followers. Betsy isn't exactly... ah... acknowledged by all of us as the rightful queen."
"Mongrels," Monique said under her breath.
"Some vampires might perceive that as a chance to seize power," Tina continued.
"Which eliminates the number of suspects to about three hundred," I said glumly.
"More like two hundred thousand," Sinclair corrected.
"That's how many vampires are running around on the planet?" Ani asked, looking appalled.
"Give or take a few hundred."
We batted the subject around a while longer, but soon enough it was close to four in the morning and we decided to call it quits. Also, we were out of tea and the rest of the cookies were squashed.
Tina and Sinclair left first, giving the Blade Warriors their backs, which was a major diss, but I kind of liked them for it. I wanted to know how they'd known to come back earlier tonight. I started to follow them out when Ani grabbed my arm.
"Uh... Betsy... Betsy's okay, right?"
"It's my name," I said, puzzled, as Marc and Jessica filed past us, arguing, as usual.
"I was... uh... I was wondering about Tina."
"Tina?"
"Short, good legs, blond hair, big pretty eyes-Tina."
"Oh," I said, catching on, "that Tina. What about her?"
"What's her, you know, her situation?" Ani was practically jumping from one foot to the other-I wondered if she'd had too much tea. "Is she with that Sinclair guy?"
"Uh, no." I am. Sort of.
"So what's her story?"
"She's a hundred-year-old vampire who could eat you for breakfast before snapping your spine like a drumstick," I said, deciding to nip this in the bud right now. "She's loyal to Sinclair, fierce as shit, stubborn as hell, and a killer on a liquid diet. That's her story."
"Right, but is she seeing anyone?"
"Ani, you're a vampire killer!"
"Well, you guys have spent the whole night explaining that some of you are good," she snapped back. "You're the furthest thing from a vampire I've ever seen. You're like those cheerleaders I went to high school with. I think in the interest of live-to-undead personal relations-"
"Oh, ick. Go away. No, she's not seeing anyone. But being that the last time you two met, you tried to cut her head off, I foresee problems in this burgeoning relationship-aagghh!"
Tina had stuck her head through the door. Dammit! I was tying bells to her and Sinclair. "Ani, dear, you left your headlights on," she said. "I thought you might like to know."
"Thanks!" she said, leaping past me and practically knocking me into the table. "I'll take care of that right now. And I... I've been meaning to talk to you. To... um... apologize for trying to kill you and everything."
"That's all right, dear. You didn't know any better."
"Right! That's exactly right! I thought all blood suckers were heartless killers, but I see now that maybe I was wrong." The door slammed behind them, but I could still hear Ani. "Maybe we could talk it over a cup of coffee or something... sometime..."
"Ick," I said again, but who was paying attention? Nobody.
