The vampire kitchen had a distinct lack of blood and guts.

In fact, it looked more like something out of one of those cooking shows. All the ingredients were neatly organized in identical boxes on identical metal shelves. Rather than homey, it was cold and uninviting. The perfect place for a middle-aged man to scream at you about how dry your chicken was.

I wondered if they had demon TV like that. If not, I was going to make millions pitching the idea.

“Ryley…” Violetta poked her head up from one of the tall garbage cans. “There’s nothing in this one either.”

Figures. Finding anything in the garbage after the previous day’s had already been taken out was a longshot anyway. I scanned the ground, getting down on my hands and knees to look underneath the counters. No luck. It was spotless.

I looked up at Hadria and Nair standing by the kitchen door. “How often do they clean this place?”

“Three times a day,” Nair said. “After breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Without fail.”

Holy shit. Three times a day? I suddenly became very self-conscious about my own kitchen. That explained a lot though. Even if the killer had left some kind of evidence here, they knew it would be taken care of during the daily cleanups. After all, Koln had unwittingly thrown out the garlic bottle.

I stood back up and dusted off my bathrobe. “Come to think of it, is Koln the cook or something?”

“Everyone has cooking duties. It changes every day.” Hadria put her hand up next to her mouth like she was going to whisper. “Just between you and me… Nair, cover your ears.”

Nair did as he was told. Hadria waited a moment before continuing.

“Just between you and me, I hear the food sucks most of the time.” She grinned. “Luckily, I don’t have to eat it. My mom cooks for me and daddy. Her food’s the best. Oh, I know! You should come over and try it sometime!”

Yeah. Not happening. I was never setting foot in this house again.

“Hmm… So Koln must have cooked last night then…” Violetta walked up beside me. “I wonder what kind of food he makes…”

“Seems like a steak and potatoes kind of guy,” I said.

Violetta frowned. “What and what?” Huh. So they had hotdogs, but not steak and potatoes? Okay.

“Human food,” I sighed. “Forget about it.”

“What are you talking about?” Hadria gave us a confused look. “Koln didn’t cook last night. He had the day off because of the ceremony.”

Violetta crossed her arms. “But… that doesn’t make any sense.” She was right. It didn’t.

“Koln said that he took out the kitchen garbage last night,” I said. “If he wasn’t cooking and had the day off, is there some other reason why he would have been in here?”

“I don’t think so…” Hadria shook her head. “Daddy gets really mad if anyone comes into the kitchen without permission. He even chopped off a guy’s hand for stealing a tomato as a snack once.”

Okay, first of all, tomatoes were snacks? Second, they had tomatoes but not potatoes? Third, why was Koln in here last night then? Was he still keeping something from us? Yeah, okay. I guess that last question probably should have been my first one.

“We’ll just have to ask him directly when the trial starts again,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like we’re going to find anything in here.”

“In that case, I will tell the Count that you’ve finished.” Nair turned toward the door.

“Wait,” Violetta called out to him. “We still have a lot of time before it’s supposed to start again, right? Why don’t we use it to look around somewhere else?” Another good idea. Jeez, Violetta was on a roll tonight.

“The Count has given you permission to investigate the kitchen.” Nair stood straight up, his eyes glaring at us. “He has not given you full run of the house, Mr. Allard. If you are finished here, I see little reason to postpone the trial any longer. The trial that, I might remind you, you insisted on having tonight.”

I hated his smug fuck so much. I glanced around the room for things I could potentially use to stake him through the heart with.

“Oh! I know!” Hadria gasped

Nair’s eyes softened a little. “Madam?”

Hadria pointed her thumb back over her shoulder. “You should come see my room.” Uhh… what?

“Your room?” I asked.

“Duh. That’s what friends do, right?” Hadria smiled, her red eye wide. “It’ll be like a sleepover! Without the sleep, I guess.” Uhh… friends? Kidnapper and victim maybe, but certainly not friends.

“Madam, I very much doubt that your father would approve of you letting a...” He eyed me up and down for a moment. “For lack of a better word… ‘man’ into your room.” Where was that stake?

“Oh give it a rest.” Hadria rolled her eye. “I’m not a kid. I can have Ryley in my room if I want to, and I want to. So come on. We’re going!”

Nair’s features hardened again. “Yes, Madam.”

“Is this alright?” Violetta whispered to me.

“I guess so…” I whispered back. “If we go, we might be able to convince her to let us look around at a few other places before the trial restarts.”

With that, we all left the kitchen and took an awkward walk through the mansion. We passed by the stairs that led up to our rooms until we reached a sliding door.

“Okay, you guys wait out here.” Hadria breathed heavily. “A lady has to tidy up her room before letting guests in, you know.”

“Then I will watch over our guests until you are ready,” Nair said. Great. More of this guy.

“Okay, be back in a sec.” Hadria quickly slipped into the room and slammed the sliding door behind her. This wasn’t exactly the direction I was hoping this break would go, but at least we still had a chance to find something to help our case.

I let my back rest against the wall next to her door and Violetta did the same. Nair stood nearby, but he didn’t really pay much attention to us. A few minutes passed like that. During that time, several vampires hurried by us, apparently combing the rest of the mansion for that garlic bottle. I already knew they wouldn’t find it. If the killer had gone through the trouble to dig it out of the trash, there was no way they were keeping it here.

Suddenly, I felt Violetta’s hand on my arm. “Ryley… isn’t that Inel and Bani?”

“Huh?” I looked down the hall to see spikes and a bun headed our way. What the fuck? Did the Count not understand that suspects couldn’t just walk around freely like this? “Where do you think you’re going?” I made sure to sound less than happy.

They stopped, sending simultaneous tough guy faces in my direction. “The bathroom,” Inel said. “You got a problem with that?”

“Yeah, you got a problem with that?” Bani echoed.

“Uhh… Any reason why the two of you are going together?”

The two of them exchanged a glance. A second later, they slammed their foreheads together.

“Why the fuck are you following me?” Inel shouted. “You can’t go to the bathroom yourself or something? You need me to hold your hand?”

“You followed me, you asshole!”

“Wow…” Violetta giggled. “You two must really be good friends.” Okay. Demons clearly had very different ideas about what friends were.

“Friends?” Bani pulled his head back, scratching his stubble. “I love him… about as far as I can throw him.” Again, not the best place for a pause.

Violetta smiled. “You two say some pretty mean things...” That was an understatement. “But I think that shows how close you are. If you really hated each other, I don’t think you’d even want to be in the same room, let alone walk somewhere together.”

“H-Hey, d-don’t get the wrong idea.” Inel stammered. “We’ve just known each other for a long time. That doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

Bani turned his head away. “Y-Yeah…”

The fanboys were right, these two definitely wanted to fuck. In any case, this was an unexpected chance to pull some information out of them. I wasn’t going to let it slip by.

“So you knew each other before joining the family then?” I asked. “Did you know Koln and Nimeni back then too?”

Inel let out a long sigh. After a moment, he let his back rest on the wall opposite of us. “Yeah. We did.” His voice was finally at a level below screaming. “The four of us all grew up together.”

“You must have been close then.”

Inel sighed again. “We aren’t related by blood but… they were more like family to me than my real one was.”

I assumed that meant they had troubled home lives. Then again, that was probably the case for most of the people that ended up in an organized crime syndicate. It was easy to offer a sense of belonging to those that were starving for it.

“What was Nimeni like back then?” I asked.

“He was… like the glue that held us together,” Bani spoke this time. “We’d always get in arguments, and he’d always make us apologize. When we got in fights, he was the one that stopped us before we went too far.” He laughed bitterly. “We probably would have killed someone if it weren’t for him.”

“That’s…” Violetta whimpered. “That’s so sweet…” He stopped them from beating someone to death. How heartwarming.

“In a lot of ways, it feels like he helped me be who I am today,” Inel continued, scratching his spiked head. “I used to get angry a lot easier than I do now.”

“I know what you mean,” Bani said. “When we joined the family, everyone would always laugh when we kissed… and made up after arguing.” Pauses, Bani. Pauses. “We could only do that because Nimeni taught us to.”

“Yeah.” Inel hung his head. “It’s hard to believe he’s gone now.”

“Ryley…” Violetta tugged on my sleeve. I turned to see fat tears gushing down her cheeks. “Their friendship is beautiful. They couldn’t have done it!”

“Don’t say that,” I whispered. “You didn’t think Goldie could have killed your manager either, remember?” Besides, if one of these guys didn’t do it, we were pretty much dead in the water.

“Hey, Ryley,” Bani called out to me. “I was thinking and… I might know why Nimeni took the money I was saving. He knew… that I was saving it for him.”

Inel looked at him like he had just kicked a puppy. “Huh?” He took the word right out of my mouth.

“Nimeni might not have looked it… but he was actually a pretty smart guy. A lot smarter than the rest of us anyway. He… didn’t belong here.” Bani’s eyes locked with mine. “I wanted him to go to college.”

Demon college? I could only imagine what their higher education looked like. Lyili must have got her degree in guillotine technologies.

“If you were saving it for him, why would he take it?”

“I think he felt guilty…” Bani said. “He didn’t want to leave the three of us behind. I told him that I was paying for his entry whether he liked it or not. After that… he stole it and blew it all.”

Violetta latched onto me again. “Their friendship is beautiful!” Yeah, and it wasn’t good for our case. If it was true, then it really didn’t make any sense for Bani to kill him.

“I think that’s enough of that,” Nair said. He had been so quiet that I almost forgot he was standing five feet from me. “So Nimeni was too good for the family, was he?” Nair sounded furious. “How dare you insult the Count like that?”

“I meant what I said.” Bani looked down to the ground. “I’ll take any punishment you give me. I don’t care anymore.”

Just as the air was reaching one hundred percent awkward saturation, the door next to us flew open.

“Okay, it’s ready!” Hadria poked her head out. “Come on in, Ryley!”

Nair stayed silent for a moment. “I’ll deal with you later.” He turned to go into the room, but Hadria threw her arms up.

“No bodyguards!”

Nair sighed. “Madam, with all due respect, it will be difficult for me to guard your body from out here.”

“It’s just Ryley.” Hadria giggled. “I don’t need my body guarded from him.” Uhh… what was that now?

“Inel, Bani…” Violetta bowed her head slightly. “Thank you for talking with us. We’ll see you when the trial starts back up.” The two of them bowed back.

“Violetta. You stay out here and keep them company,” Hadria snapped. “No offense, but I wanna show Ryley my room. No girls.”

Violetta’s face turned bright red. “W-What?” Once again, exactly what I wanted to say.

Before I could even open my mouth, Hadria grabbed me by the hand and yanked me inside.

Yeah. Really not the direction I had expected this recess to go.