“I’m continually shocked at the subjects people can take degrees in these days,” Rafe agreed. “Politics and Policy. Things we used to learn at court.”
“And those who failed politics and policy found themselves in the Tower,” Lochlan agreed. “Or headless.”
Seriously, these two were starting to remind me of my parents and their friends moaning about how much better things were in their day.
“My point is, Pam was bright, and knowing her, she’d have made sure she got a lot of money when she divorced.”
“The Percival Browns don’t need money,” Lochlan said.
I thought about Hugo with his bazillions and his successful companies and his fancy art collection. His title. “What do they need?”
“I don’t know, but Hugo’s a chess player. I’ve always thought he runs his business and his life like a game.” And his son was a chess piece to be moved around the board? I doubted Alex wanted to be his father’s pawn. No doubt he thought he was the king of his own board.
The next evening, we had a meeting of the vampire knitting club. As usual, I headed down from my flat about ten o’clock at night and made sure everything was ready in the back room. The chairs were all set up, and the trapdoor that led down into the tunnels beneath my shop was open. It wasn’t that the vampires couldn’t come and go even when that door was locked, but they tried to respect that if it was locked, there was probably a reason why I didn’t want them coming upstairs.
The first ones to climb up and into my back room were my grandmother, who’d only been a vampire for less than two years, and Sylvia, a glamorous older woman who’d been an actress in the 1920s. She still had an air of celebrity about her and always dressed in the height of elegance. She and my grandmother were best friends and, since my grandmother had been turned into a vampire, had become almost inseparable. They’d had an interesting influence on each other. Since, obviously, they couldn’t use mirrors, they had to do each other’s makeup. This meant that my grandmother looked far more glamorous than she ever had in life, and that Sylvia was sometimes a bit of a work in progress. Naturally, nobody ever said anything to her. And still with her beautifully cut silver hair, the bone structure, her tall, slim figure and beautiful wardrobe, she always managed to look stunning. My grandmother was wearing a lot fewer of the flat shoes and frumpy skirts and cardigans that she used to wear. Naturally, she’d been able to give up the support hose, and she’d grown more sleek and powerful. She still looked like an older woman but someone you’d look and say, wow, she looks good for her age.
Gran enfolded me in a hug. “Lucy. I’m so glad you’re all right. What a dreadful thing. I really don’t know what you’re doing waitressing anyway. Is the shop doing that badly? You know my investments are doing extremely well, thanks to all the guidance from Sylvia and Rafe and the rest of them. I’d be happy to give you a loan until things picked up.”
While I was grateful, I also felt a bit insulted. “I’m doing fine, Gran. The shop’s never going to make me a millionaire any more than it did you, but I get by. I don’t need to work shifts for William. I do it because it’s fun. And I like to support him.” I glanced around to make sure Rafe wasn’t anywhere near. And dropped my voice just in case, because vampire hearing is about a hundred times better than human hearing, and I didn’t want to be overheard. “Besides, I’ve got my eye out for the next Mrs. William Thresher.”
“Yes, poor William. He doesn’t get a chance to mingle with mortals very often, does he?”
“No. Not when he’s stuck out at Rafe’s estate working all the time.”
Gran said, “I think Rafe feels it too. Yes, my dear, anything you can do to encourage a romance would be an enormous help.”
“And what about this murder? I understand from Rafe that you knew the victim.” This was Sylvia, who wasn’t big on wasting time in small talk if there was juicy gossip to be had.
In my experience of vampires, and I’d known this bunch for quite a while now, their biggest problem was boredom. I suppose when your life stretches ahead with no foreseeable end and money isn’t an issue and you don’t have to hunt for food anymore, boredom would be anyone’s biggest issue. Solving crime helped keep their sharp, vampire minds engaged in the same way that knitting kept their nimble fingers engaged, and both helped pass the time.
“I’ll tell you everything when everyone’s here, then I don’t have to keep going through it.”
“Very sensible. And how’s your knitting coming along?”
That was probably the only question that would make me wish we were talking about murder right now. “Fine,” I said in that sort of tight voice that made it clear the opposite was true. Not fine was how my knitting was going.
Both of them knew me well enough to see right through me. “Let’s take a look. Where have you gone wrong?”
“Not wrong. Maybe there’s something off with the pattern. Did you ever think of that?”
They looked at each other, and it was clear they both suspected that I was at fault more than the pattern.
I let out a huge sigh. “Fine. Do your worst.” Actually, I was quite pleased because I’d made a mess of it again, and I knew that between them they would straighten out my knitting in no time. Honestly, it was the only way I could ever finish anything. Every time I got into a tangle, they’d straighten it all out for me and then usually knit a few extra rows to speed me on my way. I
