“Push him against the wall, Bani!”

“Make him your bitch!”

“Fuck him… up!”

I suddenly realized that the things people yelled during fights sounded oddly… sexual. Well, in this case, they were sexual. So yeah. I guess it was more like sexual talk sounding like what people yelled during fights. Weird.

For whatever reason, I seemed to be cursed by fanboys everywhere I went. Maybe it was a demon world epidemic. I’d have to ask the king to declare a state of emergency or something. “This is Minzfel all over again…” I mumbled.

Violetta tilted her horned head and looked up at me. “What do you mean?”

Oh Violetta. Poor, naïve Violetta. How little she knew.

“Forget about it.” I didn’t have the time to explain. Much more importantly, I didn’t want to. Oh, and Inel had accused someone other than Koln and I needed to follow up on it. That was important too.

“Go on, throw a punch.” Bani pushed his forehead into Inel’s even harder. “It’ll be the last thing you ever do.”

Inel’s eyes practically bulged out of his bony skull. “You want some of this? Huh?”

“Nair, I just thought of something,” Hadria yelled over to her bodyguard. “If you shot Inel in the head, do you think it would go through Bani’s too?” Hadria was asking the important questions.

Nair nodded. “If they were lined up correctly, then I believe it would.”

Alright. As riveting as their ‘conversation’ was, I didn’t have all night. I mean, I guess I technically did have all night; I just really didn’t want to spend it listening to these freaks. Hadria seemed to be enjoying this as much as the rest of the crowd, albeit in a different way, so I was going to have to wear the non-existent Lyili pants and get things back on track.

“You two can suck face later.” Suck. Because vampires. Nailed it. “Inel, tell us why you said that Bani wanted Nimeni dead.”

Before Inel could start screaming at me over my awesome pun, the Count’s rusty door voice went as loud as I had ever heard it. “Enough!” he barked. “You’re embarrassing us in front of our guests.”

The two men’s backs straightened in an instant. The crowd died down, and an oppressive silence took hold of the room.

After a few seconds, the Count spoke again in a softer tone. “Inel. Bani. Answer Mr. Allard’s questions.”

“Yes, Count,” they answered in unison.

I suddenly had a newfound respect for the Count. Sure he was a crime lord that fixed bocce ball games, but he had to put up with a bunch of overgrown babies. At least I could rest assured that I would never have to be in charge of a team this stupid. Uh-oh. I hope I didn’t just jinx that.

“Now…” I cleared my throat. “Why did you accuse Bani?”

Inel’s eyes shifted around. “It’s… not that I’m accusing him or anything.” Fuck. All that bravado and he wasn’t even going to say Bani did it?

“So then why did you say that?” I asked.

“It’s just that…” Inel paused. “The two of them haven’t been getting along lately.”

“Is that true, Bani?” Oh god, my tone. I sounded like I was scolding a pair of kindergartners for getting in an argument about whose turn it was to play on the swing.

The unshaven man-bun nodded reluctantly. “He… fucked me…” The crowd gasped, on the edge of their seats. “Over. He fucked me over. He took my savings and blew it all.” Everyone groaned. Wow. Someone obviously needed to work on where they put their pauses.

“Wait…” the Count started. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?”

“I’m sorry, Count.” Bani hung his head. “Nimeni said he’d pay me back and begged me to keep it between just the four of us.”

“I know this is shocking and all, but can you go into a little more detail?” I sighed. “You say he took your savings? How much did he take?”

“Around five hundred large centipedes,” Bani said.

Violetta gripped onto my arm. “Oh my gosh!”

Meh. Not as impressive as Coach’s five thousand, but then again, these were centipedes we were talking about. At some point, a pile of centipedes and a larger pile of centipedes were essentially the same thing.

“He told me he could double my money by playing cards… but he lost everything.”

I sighed. “Uhh… not to sound like a jerk, but…” That’s how every jerk started their sentences. “Isn’t that kind of your fault?”

A vein erupted to the surface of Bani’s forehead. Gross. “I didn’t fucking say he could do it…” He spoke slow and deliberate, just barely holding back his rage. “I turned him down and he did it anyway.”

“Oh…” I said. Nimeni… sounded kind of like a dick. Still, someone being a dick didn’t mean it was okay to murder them, even if that dick blew your savings. In any case, this was a motive I could work with.

Before I could even take my next breath, Hadria put her hand up in the air and waved it around like a maniac. “Hey! Hey! I have something to say.” Goodie.

“…And what might that be?” I asked.

Hadria’s pale little face lit up. “You’re thinking of trying to say Bani did it now, right?”

“…Yes?” The instant the word left my mouth, Hadria slammed both of her fists down. Holy shit.

“Then objection! A real objection for real!” Whew, with all the fake objections flying around these days, I’m glad she clarified that again for the millionth time. “Just a while ago, daddy said Bani drank right before he did. That means he drank after Nimeni did. And that means he hadn’t touched the cup yet. And thaaat means…” Hadria heaved like she had just run a marathon. “Umm… I guess that’s it.”

“Oh no!” Violetta cried. “That means it couldn’t have been Bani!”

“That’s what I was trying to say!” Hadria pointed at us. “Thanks.”

Violetta smiled. “Oh, it’s really no trouble.” Yes, it was trouble. Trouble for me. Why the hell was she helping the prosecution?

“Madam Hadria said it perfectly.” Bani glared at me. “Not only would I not kill Nimeni, it was impossible.”

“But… Mr. Koln couldn’t have done it either,” Violetta said. What the hell was she talking about?

“Of course he could have.” Hadria twirled a lock of her black hair around her thin finger. “In fact, now that I think about it, isn’t this pretty obvious now? My mom didn’t have any reason to off Nimeni like that. Neither did daddy. Obviously I didn’t either. The only other one that touched the cup before it got to him was Koln, so it has to be him that put the garlic on. Duh.”

“I know… I know that, but…” Violetta put her hands up to grab onto her horns but pulled them down at the last second. “Just look at Koln’s eyes. I can tell he’s in pain right now. He’s in pain that he lost his friend!”

Hadria glanced over at Koln sitting silently before looking back at us. “But at the trial earlier today, glasses guy killed his friend, didn’t he? Koln probably just feels bad that he murdered his friend too.”

“B-But…” Violetta’s voice cracked. I had never heard her sound so… desperate. Hearing her like this gave me a pit in my stomach. It was like the residual embarrassment you get while watching someone crash and burn. “Mr. Koln, please listen to me.”

Koln looked up.

Violetta took a shaky breath and continued. “I was in the same position you were in. Well, it wasn’t the exact same position. I was under a guillotine. But that’s not the point! The point is, all the evidence seemed to point toward me too.”

She put her hand on my arm. “But Ryley believed in me. Even when everything looked hopeless, he fought. He didn’t give up on me!”

The pit in my stomach became a bottomless one. First, did she not realize that I only defended her to save myself? When your life’s on the line, people tend to get pretty motivated. Second, I didn’t believe in her. In fact, at the time, I was pretty sure she did it. Third, I almost gave up like five times. So yeah. Basically the opposite of everything she had just said.

It sure made me seem like a nice guy though.

“Mr. Koln.” Violetta clenched her fists. “You have to believe in us. You may have given up on yourself, but we haven’t given up on you!”

“Wow, this is getting kinda heavy,” Hadria whispered to no one in particular. “I thought trials were supposed to be fun…”

Koln just sat there in silence. Predictably, the musclebound child-of-the-night didn’t seem to care about anything Violetta had said.

And for the first time, this really, really pissed me off.

“Hey, asshole!” I didn’t slam my fists down this time. No. I took a page from Minzfel’s book and flipped the entire fucking table. Well, I tried to, anyway. It was… actually really heavy.

I put my hands under the front and pulled up, arching my back and thrusting with my pelvis. It didn’t budge. Now it just looked like I humped the table instead. Cool.

Everyone just stared at me in silence. I gently let go of the table and just stood there. I guess I could have transitioned to a table slam, but the moment had passed. I would gladly take my guillotine now.

“I… found something before the ceremony last night when I was taking out the trash,” Koln’s deep voice filled the quiet room. “In the kitchen. There was… a strange bottle in the garbage.”

Holy shit, Koln was finally saying something that didn’t amount to a confession. I wasn’t sure if it was Violetta’s speech or my humping that had inspired him to give us this information, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“A bottle?” I asked. “What kind of bottle?”

“I’m not exactly sure.” Koln leaned back in his chair slightly and rubbed his bald head with his hand. “It looked like some kind of spice bottle, but I had never seen it before. It wasn’t something we kept around.”

Was this… going where I thought it was going?

“I didn’t think about it until after Nimeni died last night but…” Koln continued. “I think it might have been garlic.”

I started to panic. “Is the garbage still here?”

“Yes.” Koln nodded. “It… should be out in the dumpster.” This was it. Finally, some evidence.

“Count!” I shouted. “That bottle needs to be found immediately.”

“Of course,” the Count said. “My men are already on it.”

“On it!” The entire audience leaped from their seats and rushed to the exit. They slammed into the door and poured out of the room like a swarm of ants. I wasn’t sure why it getting the garbage required over a hundred people, but okay.

The more important question was... why had Koln kept this information from us in the first place?