Blood Spirits by Sherwood Smith Read Free Book Online Page A

everything . . . connected? Isn’t Dobrenica . . . ?” I retorted feebly.
    â€œYou see ghosts,” he shot back, twirling his hand skyward. “Does that mean you have fairy dust, Tinkerbell? At the end of August my father suffered a stroke. He sent for Milo, who was still there when he died on the tenth.”
    I remembered Dad’s mention of some old duke. “So that was your father who died? That’s what you meant by Milo holding your father’s ring?” I dropped into one of the chairs that had been kicked aside. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
    He made one of his lazy gestures, probably meant to mask his emotions. “He was older than Milo by four years. Drank like a fish. He wasn’t close to any of us, though he and my sister shared a taste for breakfast cocktails.”
    I said, “So you’re now the duke?”
    â€œYes. Well, technically. As technically as Milo is king.” He glanced at the once-elegant room, now pretty well trashed. “What remains is all this.” He waved a hand in a lazy circle. “I always hated those damn tulip lamps.” He wiped a hand up over his face, then pulled his sword out of the wall and laid it on the table. “I was supposed to go back to Paris tomorrow, but all things considered, I’d better do that tonight. Where’s that coat I brought downstairs? I’ll take you back to Milo’s.”
    I stood there with the sword still in my hand, wishing I could high-handedly say that I’d take a cab, that I’d walk, that I’d do anything but get into a car with him again. But I’d been up for nearly thirty hours, and I didn’t have my purse with me, or even Milo’s address. Yeah, I could have held out my hand for some cash and demanded the address from my lofty stance on Mt. Moral Superiority, but there was so much pain in his absent gaze, that I thought, His father’s death hit him harder than he wants to admit.
    So I laid my blade next to his on the table and said, “Let’s go.”
    Â 
    Tony was preoccupied pretty much the entire way back. When he pulled into the driveway, and I started shrugging out of Ruli’s expensive silklined coat, he said, “Keep it. She’ll never wear it again.”
    His caustic tone surprised me, then I remembered his mention of “a hundred coats upstairs,” which reminded me of Ruli’s super-wardrobe last summer.
    â€œOkay,” I said and slammed the door. There was no use talking to him anymore. He’d only tell me what he wanted me to know, not what I wanted to know.
    He zoomed off, the tail lights vanishing at jet speed.
    Milo’s front door was unlocked, and the parlor lit. I found Mom sitting with her laptop, cruising the net. Her earphones were on. I sank down next to her, catching a few notes of Victoria de los Angeles singing Madama Butterfly .
    â€œKimli,” she said, pulling off the headphones. “You look weirded out.”
    â€œVery weirded out. Things are definitely weird.”
    Mom clapped her laptop shut and set it aside. “What’s going on?”
    â€œIt started at JFK. I was passing this shop window. No, it really started at Fort Williams, when I was grading papers . . .” I filled her in, ending with Tony’s attack. I repeated everything he said, finishing with “this particular day.”
    â€œWhat does he mean by that?” I asked. “Do you think there’s some connection? I don’t mean with my officemate, necessarily, but what about some crazy connection with Ruli? Only why would he attack me to ‘get the truth’—” I made air quotes, “—just because I arrived today?”
    Mom shook her head. “No idea. It isn’t like Milo kept your grandmother’s arrival a secret. She’s been planning this visit for a month.”
    â€œNo one knew I was coming,” I said.
    â€œTrue.”
    I sighed.