“Nothing that I haven’t already mentioned.”
“Hmm. I was thinking about this on the ride out here.”
“You were not,” he countered. “You spent the trip out here fondling my leg and thinking the most erotic thoughts that a man can bear. And a couple I couldn’t.”
“I did both. I’m a woman-I can multitask. Anyway, I was mulling over the situation with Alec and the reapers, and I think I see the truth. It all comes back to Frederic.”
One eyebrow went up.
“You have the most expressive eyebrows. I love that about you,” I said, smiling before I continued. “See if you follow my reasoning, which I admit right now might be the teensiest bit flawed, because I’m a bit rummy from lack of sleep. One.” I held up my fingers to tick off the items. “Denise was protecting someone.”
“You don’t know that for certain.”
“I’m pretty sure of it. It’s the only thing that makes sense. Two, Frederic killed her.”
He nodded.
“Three, with the Zenith gone, the director of the board of governors is more or less in charge of the whole shebang.”
His nod was slower in coming this time, but it came at last. “There is a new Zenith, though,” he pointed out.
“Sooner or later, yes. But what if the later is much, much later? What if Frederic wanted to be in charge but, because he’s male, could never be a Zenith? What if he set up Denise, giving her some convincing line of bull that had her believing he was a good guy, but in reality he was setting her up for the fall? And then when she did fall, he shot her to keep her from talking? Voilà. Instant leader of the reapers, with no witnesses and no questions asked.”
He thought about that for a few minutes. “It is possible, I grant you. But where does Alec fall in this theory of double cross and hidden agendas?”
“Oh, Alec.” I sank back into the water, enjoying its warm, silky feeling on my naked flesh. “Well, we know vampires can’t be reapers, even if they’re from the Ilargi side of the family, right?”
Kristoff made a vague gesture.
“Right, so, he can’t be an Ilargi, but he can work for one.”
“Why would he wish to participate in the stealing of souls?” Kristoff asked.
“He doesn’t want to. Or rather, it’s a necessary evil in order for him to ingratiate himself with Frederic.”
“The director?”
“Yes! Frederic is the Ilargi! Don’t you see? He’s doing a double-cross thing, just like you said. He got Denise out of the way, and now he’s going around eliminating ghosts so Zoryas can’t do anything with them. Alec probably contacted him with some weird tale of wanting to help the reapers without letting him know he was a vampire, so Frederic set him up to appear to be the Ilargi, just in case anyone nosed around.”
“Less experienced reapers would not recognize a Dark One as being such on sight, but I assume the director would,” Kristoff pointed out. “Sooner or later he would come face-to-face with Alec and know that he was not what he appeared.”
“Exactly.” I back-kicked a couple of feet. “But by then the illusion of Alec being the Ilargi was in place. I don’t doubt that he’s innocent, as your gut instinct said. They probably have him in maximum security back in Brotherhood Central. The reason he’s still alive is because they don’t have a Zenith, so therefore, they can’t fire up the local Zorya and get her to off him.”
“I hesitate to ask this, but my curiosity to hear your explanation outweighs my better judgment: Why would the director wish to effectively destroy the ghosts his organization was created to protect and aid?”
I smiled. “Because he’s mad, of course. He doesn’t care about ghosts anymore. All he wants is to rid the world of you guys, so he’s eliminating any distractions that would keep Zoryas from performing his purposes-killing vampires.”
“But there is no Zenith, and thus the murders can’t be performed.”
“That had me confused, too, until I realized something really obvious-the original purpose of the Zoryas was the ghost bit, right? And all the ceremonies and such were created around that. The stuff with the vampires came later, much later, so it’s quite probable that the rules just got grandfathered in. I’m willing to bet you that if a group of Brotherhood guys got together and started that evil cleansing ceremony, so long as they had a Zorya present, she could smite the hell out of her victims. The Zenith thing is just a holdover from days long past. And before you say we have no proof of that, may I remind you of this?”