8: FRAMING DEVICE
“Can I help you, ma’am?” came the sharp voice of a guard from directly behind the bush where Lissa was hiding. She cursed herself and crawled out. It had been foolish, perhaps, to try to spy on Madame on her own estate. Lissa prided herself on her keen senses and quiet steps, but of course there would be guards, guards who knew the land better than she did.
She brushed twigs out of her hair. Real twigs from real plants; strong, boisterous plants that weren’t reaching scruffy twigs towards any available light source like those on the public streets. A declaration of Madame’s wealth and power, that she could wrangle the electricity needed to grow them so well on private property.
“I was just, um, lost,” she tried.
“Oh, Lissa darling!” Madame swooped in from the main garden, although Lissa had watched her enter the house less than a minute before; she must have run around for the right effect. “Tory dear, don’t worry about it; Lissa’s a friend of our dear Benny. I’m sure she was just trying to find the most convenient moment to call on me. Do come in, dear; I have a wonderful new tea imported from the South that I’m certain you will just love.”
So Lissa followed her inside.
While another of Madame’s children served the tea, Madame herself looked Lissa up and down, sharp eyes peering over her narrow, Progenitor-like nose and even sharper chin resting on her long, spidery fingers. Being in the presence of madame like this always made Lissa feel young and unimportant. She had no idea how her sister stood to face the woman in government every day.
“So, my dear,” Madame crooned, “what brings you to my parlour this morning?”
Fuck it. “I’m worried about Benny.”
“Ah. This is about the… incident with his sister. And those other humans.”
“He’s innocent. You know he’s innocent.”
“Do I? Lissa, dear, Benny’s always been a little unstable, you know that.”
“He’s a kid!”
“And children are as capable of murder as anybody else.”
“He was with me at the time of the murder. It happened early in the night and we were together for almost the whole day. It wasn’t until we were heading home that I lost him at the train station.”
“Yes, I heard you’d amended your story to say as much”
“Amend – my story has been consistent the whole time! Because it’s the truth!”
“Then why does the police report record you admitting to being at the train station at the time of the murder, and later changing your mind?”
“If that’s what the report says then the report is a lie!” Lissa gripped her teacup and took an angry sip. (It was indeed good tea.) “That’s not what happened. I told the truth the whole time. What’s going on, Madame?”
“A good question! What are you up to, Lissa dear?”
“Nothing1 I’m telling the truth! And what about the other two, huh? What grudge did he have against those? Even if he killed his sister, which he didn’t, he goes out later while under suspicion of murder, so he shouldn’t have been able to leave the Scarlet City at all, but he somehow goes out and kills two more random humans that were far too young for him to have possibly known? Why?”
“A truly great question. What reason would he have for that?”
“Exactly! He – ”
“He did happen to be out of sight of everyone when the other two murders happened, it’s true, but it probably does make more sense to look for somebody else who was unobserved in the vicinity of all three murders, right? Somebody who’s older, and has spent a lot of time in the human city above, so would conceivably have an issue with all three of the victims, or at least their company. Somebody else with the right blood type not to have taken any of the victims’ blood, all of them being type A, and given the specific timing of Benny’s sister being killed on the very night that he was out of the city for the first time, somebody aiming to frame him specifically.”
This was going a lot smoother than Lissa had expected. She eyed madame cautiously.
“I suppose that our suspect would need to be someone able to control Benny’s movements that fateful first night; someone who would not only know when he was out and about but would be able to ensure that he was unmonitored near the train station for a period of time. And somebody who had a good reason to be out alone on the night of the second killings, in the general area of the clubs that my boys like to frequent, when they were taking Benny out for the second time. So someone with a passing familiarity with my boys, at least, as well as a good familiarity with Benny, who was well placed on those two nights, and is a Bee or a Zero. Can you think of anyone who matches that description, Lissa dear?”
Dread curdled in Lissa’s stomach.
“Got cold feet in framing your scapegoat did you, dear? Decided to try to clear his name after all that work positioning him?”
“I didn’t… I’d never…”
“I know you’re not the type, Lissa.” Madame patted Lissa’s shaking hand comfortingly. “But then, I thought the same about my Benny… and one of you is surely guilty.” She flicked a few fingers, and one of her children materialised to clear the tea things away. “I wouldn’t worry about my boy. He broke my heart moving out on his own so soon, but I can protect my own. If this is his crime, then I can protect him from serious consequences. Me and mine can simply keep a close eye on him and keep him away from humans and it need go no further. Of course, if you are the murderer, then protection from consequences becomes a bit more difficult. So my suggestion, my dear, is to stop prying into things and incriminating yourself further. If you’re lucky, this will probably blow over without serious incident. So keep quiet and try not to be unlucky, hmm?”
Lissa frowned at her. Why, though? Why frame Benny like this? Why threaten her to get her to back off? Was there some reason that those humans needed to die; some reason that – ”
“And give my regards to your sister, will you? Getting that age-blind reproduction act through the senate is a true achievement, it must have taken most of your family’s luck! I do hope there’s enough left for you!”
The weight of the dread in her stomach increased.
“Thank you for the tea,” Lissa said woodenly, and left.
That’s what this was about. It had nothing to do with Benny, or the humans, at all. Benny was a conveniently naive and protected scapegoat, a safety catch on the plan in case the bullet didn’t need to be fired. A bullet aimed at Taira, through Lissa.
This whole setup was to make Lissa a hostage, to keep Taira’s politics in check. To prevent her from doing anything that would cause too many problems for the elite elder vampires, cause too much change or remove too much of their comforts. Forcing Taira into the position of a pretty face advocating for youth power and autonomy to keep the youth pacified while doing the smallest amount of actual change. No more big moves, Taira, or it’ll be so unfortunate for your family and your career when it turns out that your beloved twin sister is a mass murderer.
As Lissa walked the streets back home, out of Abby territory and down the long road with Bee turf on one side and ’Pay turf on the other, the dread inside her churned into fury.
How dare they. How DARE they. How dare people like Madame, resting on their power and age and superior blood, screw over the lives of others in their sick little games just because they could, just because they wanted the continued power and luxury to keep doing so. There were still leaves in her hair from Madame’s stupid bushes, plants she didn’t need or seem particularly interested in, the taste of expensive imported tea (grown in some far-off human land with precious blackwater-free water to make it safe for the humans in that city and then shipped to Lakeview through poorer contaminated regions by train, before ending up in the hands of a vampire in the Scarlet City to whom the avoided contamination didn’t matter anyway and brewed into tea with blackwater) still on her tongue, as she stalked home under the dim neon stars of the Scarlet City’s endless artificial night.
Madame had wanted her to stop making waves, to sit on her hands like a good little hostage lest she create enough problems to pull the trigger on the gun at her head regardless of her sister’s actions. She wanted a neat little setup where everyone would fall in line to keep everyone safe.
Fuck that.
She was innocent, Benny was innocent. Three humans were dead and now she knew exactly why.
It was time to find out exactly who, and how. And prove it.
Nobody used Lissa like this. She was going to blow their whole operation wide open.
Derin Edala 