I didn’t recognize anyone, and I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the locations, either, so I started googling, using a pen from Sashi’s dresser to make little notes. I kept an ear out, but although I could hear movement in the kitchen, I didn’t want to risk getting any closer, even just by peeking my head out of the doorway. The thaumaturge witch had shown me a lot of trust by letting me into her house like this; it seemed only fair that I try to trust her with Cliff.

When I’d gone through the whole list, I saw that of the thirty-eight vampires who had gone missing, fifteen had last been seen on the Strip. Thirteen had vanished from downtown, and three from apartment buildings in the residential districts. The rest of the locations were unknown, at least in the little time Wyatt had had to investigate. He had said he would dig into it some more when he woke up that night.

I leaned back against the chair, thinking it over. The locations made sense, since Laurel had told me that the vampires in Las Vegas pretty much stuck to downtown and the Strip, but knowing that wasn’t particularly helpful, as far as I could see. I turned my attention to the dates, opening up the calendar on my phone so I could get a sense of any pattern.

Minerva, the vampire who had been fighting Silvio for control of the city, had disappeared January 19, along with three others. The following week, four vampires had disappeared, then four more, then five, then seven, always on a Friday or Saturday. The numbers might be slowly escalating, but it was hard to tell with the amount of data I had.

I pulled up the Demeter performance schedule to see if there was any correlation, but the show was on two times every night except Tuesday, so I couldn’t see how it was related. But why did the vampires always disappear in multiples? And why on the weekends?

When I couldn’t really see any big shiny clues in the information, I decided to call Jesse for a consultation.

“Hello!” he said in a shout. Loud eighties rock was playing in the background.

“Whoa, hi. Everything okay?”

“Hang on.” There was some fumbling of the phone, and I could clearly hear him saying to someone else, “Look, man, don’t let him rile you up like that, okay? . . . I know what he said, but violence is never the answer. I gotta take this.”

Another moment, and the music died down. “Hey, Scarlett,” he said, a little breathless.

“Werewolf fight at the bar?”

“Yep.”

This wasn’t surprising. Half my job consisted of cleaning up after a bar fight went too far at Hair of the Dog. I’d had to get rid of fingers, toes, arms—and once, seven rabbit corpses. Don’t ask.

“And your solution was ‘violence is never the answer’?” I said, amused.

“Well, it isn’t,” he said defensively.

“Unless the question is, ‘What is never the answer?’” I pointed out.

There was a pause, and then Jesse said, “Did you actually need something?”

I explained the list of missing vampires, and told him the little I knew about their disappearances, including Ellen and Margaret.

When I was finished, Jesse said, “Hmm. The locations, is that where you know for a fact they were, or where they were last spotted?”

“Uh . . .” I thought over what Wyatt had told me. “Last known locations, so where they said they were going, or where the last person to see them alive saw them.”

“Okay, look. I’m not there, and I don’t have all the details, but my guess would be that each of these missing vampires got a phone call to come to a party.”

I blinked. “Why a party?”

“Because that’s what happens on Friday and Saturday nights,” he said sensibly. “And because of the whole Vegas culture. If someone said you could go to an exclusive party or a new club opening or whatever, but you had to keep it a total secret, wouldn’t you go?”

“Hell no,” I said. “I’d laugh and put on my jammie pants.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s you. To the average Vegas resident, an invitation like that would be irresistible.”

I thought that over for a moment. “Wyatt didn’t say anything about Ellen going to a party . . . except for the big public reception that the Holmwoods held on opening night, but the skinners wouldn’t have killed her right there in public.”

“Maybe not, but if one of Ellen’s friends pulled her aside at the reception and invited her to come to a post-show after-party, would she have told her husband about it beforehand?”

Huh. “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I never met Ellen, so I’m just going from what Wyatt told me, but I got the impression that he’s sort of the curmudgeonly homebody, and she was the social butterfly. They’ve been together forever, and vampires stay up all night. She might not have felt like she needed to tell him exactly where she was going after the show.”

“Especially if they’re from a time before cell phones,” Jesse pointed out. “Not all couples feel the need to know where their spouses are at all times.”

“Okay, I can buy that. But who lured her to the after-party?”

“Say you’re a skinner, and you want to kill a whole bunch of vampires,” Jesse went on. “You find the names of one or two, maybe by asking around at the show. You call that vampire and say, ‘Hey, I’ve got this great club opening just for your kind. We’re doing an exclusive party in two hours, and we want you to come.’”

“Wouldn’t that seem awfully suspicious?”

“If you knew the skinners were in town, maybe. But what if the person on the phone said you could bring a friend? Or two friends? I bet if you dig deeper, you’ll find that most of the people who disappeared knew at least one other person who vanished on the same night. People think there’s safety in numbers, and I would imagine vampires already see themselves as bulletproof.”

“Huh.” Based on what I knew about the Old World . . . he had a point. The vampires in question would probably have felt comfortable enough to let their guards down, confident that no one would try to take on two or three of them at once. “Damn,” I said, half-admiringly. “That’s a hell of a trap.”

“Can you get the phone records for the missing vampires?” Jesse asked. “If we’re right about this, they would probably point you right at the skinners.”

Could I? I didn’t see how. Silvio might have access, but even if I hadn’t stabbed two of his bodyguards, he’d made it clear that he wasn’t going to admit to a problem.

Wait. I could probably get Ellen’s records from Wyatt, when he woke up. And before that . . .

“Scarlett?” came Sashi’s voice from the kitchen. “You can come out now.”

She sounded tired, but otherwise I couldn’t read her tone. Was Cliff better? Worse? Dead? “Okay,” I called. Into the phone, I said, “Jesse, I’ve got to go, but I need a favor. Can you call Abby and see if she can get the phone records for the vampire that Dashiell sent, Margaret?”

“Yeah, I’m on it.”

We hung up, and I hurried into the kitchen.

Chapter 21

Cliff was still spread out on the floor, with a large white bandage covering his abdomen. Sashi was sitting on the floor next to him, her back leaning against the cupboard. Neither of them moved as I approached, which brought me up short. “Is he . . .”

She gave me a weak smile. “He’s going to be fine. You got him here just in time.” She gestured to the piles of bloody towels on the floor all around them, like wounded soldiers after a battle. “He really should have a transfusion, but if he rests a lot and gets plenty of iron and sugar, he can recover without it.” She raised an eyebrow at me. “Unless you happen to be O positive?”

“Actually,” I said, surprised, “I am.” It wasn’t the world’s rarest blood type or anything, but still. Every once in a while, things do just kind of work out. It was sort of encouraging to be reminded.

“Brilliant!” Sashi said, turning to dig in her first-aid case.

“But how do you know that’s Cliff’s blood type?”

“He woke up for a few minutes, from the pain. I asked him then,” she said, pulling out some tubes and needles. “Here, let’s get a transfusion going, shall we?”