Page 5 of Tell Me Why (Tell, The Detective #5)

Most of this, Tell was doing on the fly, but some evenings, as they sat down to have breakfast together, he would give her the details of what was going to happen, so that she would react the way he needed her to, when something changed.

Like following Leonard.

Tell had only rarely asked her to follow someone.

Go be around, certainly, but following was more intentional, and riskier, and they both knew it.

It was only because Tell thought that he was going to finally get Leonard to do something ill-considered that he wanted her to try it, and she understood that without him needing to say it.

She went to go sit on a stool in the corner, watching the technicians work.

She wasn’t entirely certain what Tell had them working on, in truth.

They seemed very studious and industrious, very invested in what they were doing, but there were four languages in the room - German, English, whatever Aleksander spoke, and the shared language between the two of them, which was either French or Italian, Tina wasn’t sure - and the barrier that they had, working together, was substantial.

Like maybe Tell had done it that way on purpose.

It didn’t matter what they were working on, so long as it was impressive enough to keep Daryll pacified, and Tina thought that Daryll had delegated the job of tracking the progress here in the lab entirely to Isabella.

Crissy.

Who would come down about once a night and talk to the technicians, each in their own language the way Tell did, bright smile and cutoff shorts every inch of her like she’d lived here her entire life.

The technicians liked her. Didn’t have any clue who she was.

Flirted with her and competed for who got to talk to her the most.

There were things to learn, there.

There was a steady stream of people through, as every night.

Tell was taking deliveries all night - how, Tina had no idea, but the network of distribution that worked through Kirsten back home seemed every bit as vibrant here as there - and men would jump at the opportunity to walk something in here and speak with Tell for a few minutes, just casually, just coincidentally, just friendly interest.

Spying.

Tina had seen it.

They literally jumped.

And Tell strung them along, cool and distant and yet confidentially and personally.

So bizarre, being able to see both sides of it, where no one ever looked back at her.

Leonard showed up a few hours before dawn; he’d heard that there might be a third man coming to help at the lab, was it true?

Tell was so impressive, making progress at something so difficult so quickly. Was a third man justified?

Were these two just not working out, or was there that much work?

Tell was elusive and playful, not denying anything but not being very direct, either.

Tina thought that he was being too vague to really bait Leonard into a mistake, but she got up and wandered out of the room as Leonard was making leaving-type movements, making her way toward the front of the house, where the men were congregated.

They would start leaving, trickling away, before very long, headed to their day shelters.

Some of them slept downstairs, but those were the lower men.

The upper ones, the ones who had better reputations and better connections, these had their own lodgings around the city and they just loitered their days away, here.

So strange.

“Tea?” Tina called as she went past. “Coffee? Think I heard that they were bringing in a few fountains tonight. Might not have drained them all, by now.”

She and Tell had gone to a vampire club downtown earlier that week and she’d fed on a young man who had behaved the way she’d come to expect from fountains back home.

The frigid, transactional feedings at Daryll’s house weren’t just because she and Tell had been persona non grata.

That was how fountains were , here, because it would have been presumptive of them to react any other way, as far as Daryll was concerned.

Tina had a woman back home who was on her routine feeding schedule who really was just there to get paid, who seemed completely immune - repulsed - by the vampires she encountered, but she was human .

Her personality was present, and Tina thought that they were actually beginning to get along, at this point, because Tina had proven herself not to be like the bulk of vampires.

This was sterile and… bordering on inanimate, this relationship, and she loathed it.

But the vampires in Daryll’s court appreciated it, and they would snag any leftovers at the end of the night, if the important vampires hadn’t wanted to feed.

There were a half-dozen orders, and Tina turned on her heel, making as though she’d heard Leonard coming down the hallway.

“You want anything?” she asked.

“No,” Leonard said, his mind elsewhere.

Tell had hooked him, no question.

The man was an artist.

“You sure?” she asked. “Oscar likes you. I’d save you one of the fountains, if you wanted it. Might be a few left.”

He jolted funny, hearing it after she’d already said it. She nodded.

Oscar liked him .

She didn’t know if it was her card to play, but she’d done it, and it looked like it might have worked, so she wasn’t going to feel bad about it.

“He…” Leonard started, then nodded. “Yeah. I’ll take one, if they’re there. I’ll be…” He looked around the room, his eyes a bit dodgy. “No. Never mind.”

“You sure?” Tina asked. “Someone else is going to take it, if you don’t. Shame to let it go to waste like that.”

She was teasing.

She was bad at this, but she was trying to pretend like she was Isabella, that simple familiarity, the way she deserved it, without having actually done anything to earn it.

He didn’t seem to think she was bad at it.

There was a head jolt like he remembered he needed to put her in her place, but he was torn, looking around the room without looking, thinking about where he had been and where he was going. He wasn’t mentally organized, and this was the point where either Tell or Isabella would pounce.

Tina waited.

“All right,” he said. “All right, yeah. I’ll be…

” He was about to lie to her. Only it wasn’t going to work because he actually needed to tell her where to find him, so he had to change his plan and find a new place to be where it wasn’t where he was actually going to be, so that he could send her there and he would actually be there.

“I’ll meet you out front,” he said. “At the fountain?”

“Um,” Tina said, a bit surprised. It was a beautiful fountain, and broadly speaking, the vampires didn’t appreciate it at all. A few times, Tina had gone out to sit on the edge of it, just to feel like herself again, like everything wasn’t a giant game of cloak-and-mouse, so to speak. “Okay?”

“You go out there, sometimes,” Leonard said. “It’s not raining. Going to start getting cold, though. They don’t run it through the winter.”

“Okay,” Tina said, regathering herself. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll bring one out to you.”

A fountain at the fountain.

Was he teasing her? Was he telling her a joke?

She wasn’t sure.

He nodded once, sharply, then turned to go on, and Tina watched after him for a moment, then started for the kitchen.

Tea.

Coffee.

Fountains.

She organized the provisions and went back to the front sitting room - parlor?

foyer? was there another, more southern term for it?

- and distributed everything, making sure to leave all of the fountains but the last there with the vampires.

It was her intention to retrieve the last of the leftover fountains and go outside to meet Leonard, but at the end of the day, they were sentient human beings with memories and the ability to speak, and she didn’t want to fall for them being a mechanism that Daryll used to spy on the people working for him by treating them like bovine livestock, if that was indeed the intent.

And she didn’t like having one of them follow along behind her as she walked, even when she wasn’t trying to be discreet about it.

Leonard wasn’t at the front room anymore, any more than she had expected him to be, but she followed him by trace scent down into the warehouse.

She still wasn’t technically supposed to be down here, but if they caught her, she’d left a book in the car intentionally to give herself an excuse, and they came through here every evening and morning as their escort dutifully kept them from being absconded with again.

She wasn’t great at this, and Leonard was one of the more curious and industrious of the spies, which meant he didn’t spend his whole night sitting up with the rest of them, waiting for Daryll to do something interesting; his scent was natively everywhere, but Tina caught the scent of one of the women who was more normally only upstairs, and followed the paired scent to the end of the hallway, listening hard and reminding herself that she had absolutely no pressing need to breathe as she squatted, trying to figure out where the sound of voices might be coming from so that she could find something to keep between herself and them.

It was there, the voices, but the warehouse was too big and echoing for her to be able to hear words clearly.

But that was Leonard’s timbre, and Tina recognized Venus’s voice as well.

She peeked, finding Leonard standing against a wall to her far left, arms folded and legs crossed as Venus spoke to him.

There weren’t many women involved in Daryll’s business.

Tina hadn’t figured out what it took for them to break into it, whether it was age or just aggression, but they were all aggressive, and she had a strong idea that they were also some of the oldest vampires there.

Some of the most cynical among them, as well.

There was nothing between her and them.