Thin Ice

by Renée Jaggér

  “I’ve told you who knows,” I said, leaning back. My heart thumped in my chest. Was that a mistake? Had I seen something I wasn’t supposed to see?

  “Good,” said the officer, and he ripped the file folder in half. “Debrief her.” The door slid open with a hiss, and he disappeared through it.

  “Sir,” I said, turning to the other officer, “Jax was like a brother to me. If he’s gone, I deserve to know.”

  He sighed through his nose and pressed his lips together. “Jax’s injures were severe, but it looks like he’s going to pull through. No reason for you to worry, though. You’re both going home.”

  I jumped out of my seat so fast the chair fell over. “Going home? As in, discharged? Sir—”

  “It’s an honorable discharge,” he offered, raising his hands as if that’d calm me. “Not uncommon with severe head trauma. There are plenty of soldiers who would love to go home early. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Hart.”

  I woke up in my own bed, shivering despite my blankets. A bad dream? I touched my forehead. It didn’t feel like a dream. It felt like…it felt like before, when I went through the portal at the photoshoot. What the hell was going on with me?

  I exhaled and paused when I realized I could see my breath. That shouldn’t have been possible. I knew we’d paid the heating bill.

  There was nothing to do but get up and plod out to the living room. Maybe Sam had opened a window somewhere and left it open. I checked the house, pausing when I wandered within sight of the kitchen. There was no sign of a shimmering portal anywhere or any indication that there had ever been one. Maybe it had been a dream.

  It could be stress, I thought, pouring the cold coffee from earlier into a mug. I popped the mug into the microwave to warm it up. Stress could cause all kinds of weird symptoms, from full-body rashes to hallucinations. Over the last few days, I’d experienced more stress than normal. Not only was there an assassin trying to kill my new boss, but I’d also been fired from my previous job and had to take a new one in an adjacent field, doing work I hadn’t ever done before. While being a bodyguard was similar to working in corporate security in a lot of ways, there was a lot to take in. Plus, Ronan wasn’t the most forthcoming guy.

  Then there were the vampires. A few days ago, I hadn’t known vampires and fae were real, yet there I was, working for fae royalty and rubbing elbows with asshole vampires like Vaughn. My world had been turned upside-down in the last few days.

  Imagine how different my life will be next week? I pulled the coffee from the microwave just before the timer went off, dumped it in my travel mug, and left it to cool while I went to get dressed for work. I just hoped Ronan was less grumpy today than he had been the night before.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Even though he’d told me his schedule the night before, I checked the app Ronan had instructed me to use. He didn’t have a photoshoot that day, which was a good thing. I didn’t think I could handle getting on another plane and going to another city. When I’d said I wanted to travel, I hadn’t meant as someone’s bodyguard. That beach and those cabana boys were sounding better every minute.

  Unlike the first two days, I didn’t find Ronan in his music room. It had been shut up tight. Instead, he was lounging in the library in a pair of white loose-fitting pants and a matching robe…or a cardigan. I couldn’t tell which it was supposed to be. He looked like he hadn’t slept much either, despite kicking me out the night before.

  “Reading more Dickens?” I asked.

  He lowered the book and rubbed his eyes. “No, this is Dumas.” Ronan tossed the book to me. “You might like it.”

  “The Count of Monte Cristo,” I read from the cover. “I’ve heard this story.”

  “Hearing it and reading it are two different things. No one tells it like Dumas.”

  “No, thanks.” I handed the book back to him. “I’ve got enough reading to do. Did you sleep at all?”

  “Some.” The way he said it made me think he really meant “not much.” Ronan stretched. “I see you wore practical shoes today.”

  I looked down at the dress flats I’d slipped on. Standing around in heels, low though they were, had left my feet throbbing the day before, and I wasn’t in the mood to repeat that mistake. The flats were functional and dressy enough that I didn’t look unprofessional.

  “That’s good,” he continued, striding out of the library. “Since I don’t have any photoshoots today, I thought we’d go for a walk. The weather’s still nice enough, and I’m already tired of being cooped up in here.”

  I cringed. Walking around town would make my job much more difficult. I couldn’t account for every variable. No matter where we went, another shooter could be hiding just out of sight. “You’ll be safer if you stay home.”

  Ronan paused at the bottom of the stairs. “Maybe, but where’s the fun in always being safe? Safe is boring. I want to live my life.” He started up the stairs.

  I followed. “Now you sound like my roommate.”

  “Maybe you should listen to her.”

  “Them.”

  He paused again at the top of the stairs, frowning. “You have more than one roommate?”

  “No, it’s just, Sam prefers to be called ‘they’ instead of a binary pronoun. Actually, you two would get along great. Sam’s an art student at OSU.”

  “I’d love to meet them once my schedule clears. Right now, I’m going to shower and get dressed for our walk. I don’t think I need an escort.”

  I realized I’d been following him to his private suite and stopped in the middle of the hall, flushing. “Oh, uh, I guess I’ll go watch the cameras. Let me know when you’re ready to go.”

  While he showered and got ready, I checked the logs. David noted it was a quiet night and doodled an alien in the margins of the logbook. Must’ve been pretty slow if he’d had time to make a drawing with that much detail.

  Since there wasn’t much to do, I got started on the list of things I needed. It was longer than I’d expected it to be. I hesitated with my hand over the send button in my email after I finished it. If Ronan bought everything on that list, it’d total several thousand dollars easily. He wasn’t struggling financially, but I had to take a minute to appreciate that I could just ask for something, and he’d make sure I got it. That wasn’t the sort of treatment I would’ve gotten working overnight security for Kloud9. As far as jobs went, maybe this one wasn’t so bad.

  “Ready to go?”

  I looked up from the computer. Ronan had already put on his coat. “Sure,” I said and grabbed mine.

  Ronan’s house sat on several acres of land that butted up against the Scioto River. Between the gated backyard with the pool and the river, however, stood a grove of trees whose leaves had turned red and orange. Many had already fallen, coating the ground in that special crunchy texture only found in late fall when the forest floor frosted over. It was chilly out, but not cold enough to be uncomfortable for November, although if the temperature kept dropping like it had been, we’d have snow before Thanksgiving.

  “I’m sorry about being short with you last night,” Ronan said after we’d been trudging through the leaves a while.

  I shrugged. “Nothing to apologize for. It’d been a long day, and I’m sure having your mother break into your house isn’t easy.”

  “I suppose it’s not really breaking in. She’s right about one thing; I owe her a lot for what I have.”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “As long as I’m not obligated to answer.”

  I stopped walking and turned to face him. He took a few more steps before turning around expectantly. “You’re royalty. Fae royalty. Why would you walk away from that?”

  Ronan sighed, his breath escaping in a puff of white. “The fae courts are complicated social machines. I was expected to behave a certain way, to stand aside and defer everything to my mother. My entire job as her son was to get married to someone politically powerful and have as many little
fae children as possible. I had other ideas.”

  “So instead, you became a model and an amateur musician? To me, that doesn’t seem like it’s worth trading in a crown for.”

  He chuckled and turned around to keep walking deeper into the woods. “Being the son of a ruling monarch doesn’t mean I’ll get to be king. My mother’s been in her position for thousands of years, and she’ll stay there thousands more, increasing her power base as much as possible.”

  “Fae are immortal?”

  He tilted his head in thought. “Not immortal, no. Just long-lived, I suppose. Most are, anyway. It has to do with our connection to the courts and to Faerie. The closer that connection is, the longer you live. I gave up all claim to my title and live here on Earth instead of there, so I suppose that means I won’t live as long as most. Kind of makes life more worthwhile, knowing I’m not going to outlive everyone I know.”

  I sped up to walk beside him rather than behind. “If you gave up your titles and left, you don’t owe your mother anything. She should respect your space.”

  He gave a derisive snort. “If only. I couldn’t completely walk away. No, that would decrease her power. We had to come to a compromise. In exchange for the freedom and support I enjoy, I remain part of her court. That means I have to answer when she calls, I have to obey her orders, and I have to play the good son whenever she demands it of me.”

  “Why?”

  “As I said, the courts are complicated social affairs. It’s just how things are.”

  “And every fae is in a court? How many are there, and how does it get decided where you go?”

  He stopped walking. “You are asking a lot of questions.”

  “Probably because you’ve been avoiding answering them. I checked the book you gave me, and it doesn’t say anything about fae, courts, or dealing with royalty.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t,” Ronan said, dusting off a tree stump. He sat on it, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back lazily. “Walter knew, but he wasn’t very interested in the other world. He always said the less he knew, the better he could sleep at night. Almost anything that had to do with the fae courts, I handled or passed off to someone else when I could.

  “To answer your questions, almost all fae are in a court. A few operate independently, but you’d have to be extremely powerful. Enough to be a queen in your own right, I’d think. Not even I was granted that privilege.”

  I crossed my arms. “People get sorted into them automatically?”

  “No,” he said thoughtfully. “There are only two courts. Most of us stay with the one we’re born into, but there is some mobility between them. Not much, but some. On occasion, you run into someone who has enough fae blood to count who doesn’t know what they are. When that happens, they get to choose which court they will swear allegiance to. There’s usually a lot of contention between the courts when there’s an undecided—people fighting to get them to sign on to their side. Honestly, everything devolves into childish bickering. It’s not pretty. But once you have your twenty-eighth birthday, you’re locked into whatever court you’re currently in. For most of us, it’s obvious where we belong. I don’t want to imagine having to choose. Why the sudden interest?”

  I considered telling him about what I’d been experiencing: the weird portals into the past, freezing the vampire, and waking up in a near-frozen room. Maybe it was magic. It might be fae magic for all I knew.

  Instead, I shrugged. “Just curious.”

  He placed his hands on his knees. “Well then, maybe you’ll indulge some of my curiosity. I’ve spent the last few days telling you about my family and me, yet I hardly know anything about you.”

  “You have my service record,” I pointed out. “And you’ve no doubt done a background check.”

  “True, but all that only says so much about a person. Tell me about yourself. About the real Callie Hart.”

  “There’s not much to me. I’m pretty boring, I promise.” I shrugged and paced slowly back and forth in front of him. “I don’t have much of a family aside from Sam, my roommate. My dad was never part of the picture, and my mom…she died when I was a baby. Iron poisoning, of all things. Apparently, it’s really easy to overdose on it. She had an allergy to ingesting iron and didn’t know.”

  Ronan nodded. “Even easier for fae.”

  “Maybe you should employ a taster in case someone crushes up iron supplements and puts them in your kale shakes.” I meant it as a joke, but Ronan looked as if he were considering it. “Anyway, I spent my childhood in and out of foster homes. Signed up to be in the Army as soon as I graduated. Did my time there, came back, got my job in security, and here I am.”

  Ronan stood with a grunt. “Maybe it is boring. Maybe you just haven’t had your adventure in life yet.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “My adventure?”

  “Everyone has one or two. No one’s life is completely boring. Well, maybe someone’s is, but that’s by choice. I believe everyone has something exciting waiting for them. Technically, you could count all this as your first big life adventure. It’s not every day you get to save a prince and hunt assassins.”

  “That almost sounds like the plot to one of the books you keep in your library.”

  He nodded and started walking again. “It does, doesn’t it? The best stories have a seed of truth in them. Speaking of assassins, I had a thought last night. Do you think the police can match the shell casing you saw to a particular gun?”

  I shook my head. “Only if it was registered to a private citizen, and if my hunch is right, this guy is not some freelancer off the street. I think he’s had military training. Someone like that is probably too smart to use a gun registered in his name. We can try that if you want to, although that means handing the evidence over to the police and letting their CSI work with it. It’d be months before we got a definitive analysis back. Crime labs are notoriously slow. It isn’t like it is on TV.”

  Ronan frowned at me. “You don’t think the person shooting at me was working on his own?”

  “I think he’s a hired professional. Someone with a lot of money wants you out of the way. We’re better off following that angle, I think. Who benefits the most from your death?”

  “No one,” Ronan said, shaking his head. “That’s what I can’t figure out. No one should want me dead, especially anyone able to send vampires after me at a factory. If that vampire had succeeded in his attack, we’d have an all-out war on our hands. My mother would be obligated to fight until every last one of them was destroyed. Things have been tense between vampires and fae for a long time, but no one wants a war. It’s bad for everyone. To try to force one would be stupid.”

  Maybe not, if your fortune is made when people go to war. I pictured Vaughn’s smug grin in my face. How much money would he make by selling his private army to vampire higher-ups? And when the bodies started dropping in the streets, the human law enforcement agencies would want backup. He could sell consulting services to them as an expert in urban warfare. With the US ceasing many overseas military operations, his bank account had to be hurting. Maybe this was Vaughn’s way of drumming up extra cash. I wouldn’t put it past a vampire to go after blood money, but I couldn’t make the accusation until I had irrefutable proof.

  We stepped through another line of trees and were suddenly in a clearing where several wooden targets had been hung up. Ronan grinned wildly and shrugged off his coat, holding it out to me. “You want to see some magic, Callie?”

  “What?”

  He rolled up his sleeves. “I know you got some tossed at you last night. What you did with it was pretty impressive. I thought maybe you’d like to see what it looks like when it’s not trying to hit you in the face.”

  Ronan turned to face the targets and unleashed a shimmering silver beam of power. It struck the closest target about the same time he let off a second shot. The second hit the target and froze it solid, just like I had with the vampire.

  I sucked in a breath, wa
tching him hit target after target, coating them in layers of ice. Magic. The word felt foreign, impossible. Yet after everything I’d learned over the last few days, maybe nothing was impossible. Magic certainly wasn’t, not anymore. What he’s doing looks like what I did. There was no denying what’d happened in that parking garage outside the club. I had done exactly what Ronan was doing, except I’d done it to a living thing.

  What if I’m fae? One of those who doesn’t know? It seemed unlikely, but the pieces were beginning to fit. The weird powers, the iron poisoning that’d killed my mother, my inability to fit in anywhere I went. What if the reason I hadn’t been attacked in Iraq had nothing to do with me being a woman and everything to do with me being fae?

  “Ronan, what happens if a vampire feeds on fae blood?” I asked suddenly.

  He lowered his hand and tilted his head to the side. “Enough of it can put them in a vegetative state, or so I’ve heard. It’s all rumors since no one’s witnessed that happening for a very long time. There are also rumors that some used to do it on purpose, and that it produces a sort of relaxed euphoria.”

  “Which would leave them vulnerable to other predators.”

  “Why? What are you thinking?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing.” Except that I should ask Vaughn about it the next time I saw him.

  That fit too, but I didn’t want to go jumping to wild conclusions. There were perfectly viable normal explanations for everything, too. Until I took a harder look at my family tree, I couldn’t say anything. From the sounds of it, if it did turn out I was fae, I’d have some tough decisions to make. The more time I could buy myself to learn, the better off I would be.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I made it through another workday, this one without anyone trying to kill my boss or me. It was as good a day for a drink with a friend as any. By the time I got home, I was looking forward to seeing Jax. It’d been a long time since we’d met in person, and it sounded like he was doing much better. Maybe things were looking up for both of us.