by Tegan Maher
I jumped a little when a ferret poked his head out of the woman’s bag and hopped up onto the woman’s shoulder.
“Yep, it’s our first time,” he said with a shrug and a twitch of his whiskers. “I’m not a fan, but Andromeda’s enjoying it, so I’ll deal with the sloppy service and mediocre food.”
“Sid!” the woman hissed, her cheeks coloring. “Stop being rude.” She turned to us. “I’m really sorry. He’s a little spoiled.”
Before I could reply, a scowling Tempest turned to him. I recognized the storm on her face and also realized that there wasn’t a thing in the world I could do at that point to stop whatever was about to fly out of her mouth.
She stood up on her back legs and narrowed her eyes at him. If looks could kill, he would have been dead where he sat. “Says a creature known for stealing shiny things and stashing potatoes in underwear drawers. The service and food here are top-notch. Now take that back before I drag your scrawny backside down to the dock and drown you like the rat you are.”
The hair on Sid’s neck stood up and he growled at her. Before he could respond, though, Andromeda snatched him from her shoulder and held him up in front of her so she could look him in the eye. “That’s it. You’re going back in your travel cage when we get back to the room. You’re not ruining this for me just because you wanted to go on a cruise instead. Now apologize to these nice people if you don’t want to be eating spinach and raw potatoes for the rest of our stay.”
Sid cast us a sullen glance. “Sorry.”
“Sorry, what?” Andromeda snapped.
The ferret huffed a breath out his nose but finished the apology. “Sorry I implied your place is a dump.” He smirked and started to say something else, but Andromeda held up a finger and narrowed her eyes at him.
“One more word and I’ll take you back to the room right now before I order lunch.”
Sid snapped his mouth shut and slunk back into the beach bag, and Andromeda turned to us. “I’m really sorry. There’s no excuse for his behavior. He’s bitter because I decided to come here instead of going on our regular cruise. The blackjack dealer on the ship has a soft spot for him and sneaks him all sorts of junk food.”
“It’s a shame he never learned that you get more flies with honey than vinegar,” Tempest said, her tone superior. “Pretty much everybody here is willing to give you something good. Raul, the five-card dealer, always keeps a bag of those colored mini marshmallows for me.” She cast a smug look at Sid, who’d popped his head back out of the bag, as she ran her fluffy tail between her hands. “Of course, I’m cute and nice.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, a regular paragon of virtue. Now I have to talk to Raul,” I said, then turned to Andromeda. “Don’t worry about it. I totally understand that you have zero control over what comes out of his mouth. Trust me—it’s a situation I deal with on a daily basis.”
“Phew,” she replied, smiling and shaking her head. “I was a little worried there for a minute. We’re here for a whole hour and the first thing we do is get on the bad side of a witch and faerie. Not the ideal way to start a relaxing vacation.”
“You’re fine,” Bob, who’d returned with our food, said as he slid our plates in front of us. “Can I get you somethin’ to drink?”
“Sure,” Andromeda said, pushing her sunglasses up. “I’ll have a rum runner, please. I was going to have a white wine spritzer, but if he’s gonna act like that, I’m gonna need something stronger.”
I snickered. Boy did I know that feeling. To be fair, though, Tempest was often snarky but rarely outright rude and never hurtful. Unless, of course, someone was dumb enough to strike her or me first. Then she’d delight in making her opponent cry.
“I’m sorry,” Cyri said, her brow furrowed as she examined Andromeda, “but have we met?”
The older woman’s cheeks flushed and she fiddled with her wallet. “No, I’m sure we haven’t. This is my first time here.”
“You said you go on cruises,” Cyri said, still looking at her. “What cruise line do you use? We go on them several times a year.”
Andromeda rattled off the name of a popular line. “It’s been a while since we went though, and I’m sure we’ve never met.”
Cyri chewed on her lip but let it go and smiled. “My mistake. You must just have one of those faces.”
Andromeda hummed in agreement.
While Bob made the drink, my phone beeped with an incoming text. It was from Colin, saying he was going to be back the next morning as planned. That made me smile.
We’d been a couple for a while now, and I was seriously considering a future with him. What that would entail, though, I had no idea. He had his law stuff, and I wasn’t willing to move away from the resort. I loved it there. Also, his family wasn’t too thrilled over the fact that he was dating a witch, so there was that to deal with. So far, I’d put off meeting them, but I was realistic enough to know that I could only make so many excuses before I’d have to deal with it. I pushed it aside. That was a kettle of fish I’d fry another day.
I tapped out a response, then looked up when Andromeda spoke.
“It was nice meeting you, and again, sorry for Sid. Hopefully, we’ll see each other again.”
“Sure thing,” Cyri said. “Enjoy the resort, and if you get a chance, try the crème Brule at the Italian restaurant in the main resort. It’s to die for.”
I waved and smiled, and she sashayed away toward the infinity pool. “She seemed nice.”
“Yeah,” Tempest said, snagging a beer-battered onion ring from my plate. “She needs a new familiar, though.”
I glared at her as I cut my grilled cheese, bacon, and tomato sandwich into quarters and put a wedge and another onion ring onto a side plate Bob had given me. Normally, I limited her onion ring intake because they caused her to produce enough methane to poison an entire movie theater full of people, but since it was early and we were going to be outside, I figured I was safe.
“Yeah,” Cyri said, crinkling her pert nose. “He wasn’t very nice, was he?”
“He wasn’t,” Tempest replied, her cheeks stuffed full of sandwich. “And I wish I wouldn’t have told him about Raul. Now he’s gonna be fake-nice to get my marshmallows.”
I cocked a brow at her. “I’m sure you’re fine. Besides, what have you been doing? You know you’re not supposed to be in the casino, and you definitely don’t need to stuff yourself on marshmallows. If Blake finds out you’ve been in there, I’m the one who’s gonna have to hear about it.”
I loved her, but Lord love a duck, the girl had a gambling problem. The worst part was that, even though she had zero interest in money, she was really good at winning it. Too good. She’d bat those long eyelashes and get some poor sucker to let her play with them since familiars weren’t permitted to gamble alone. I wasn’t sure how she did it exactly, but she won way more often than could be attributed to luck. Blake had banned her after she’d helped a visiting vampire haul in almost twenty grand in a day.
She drew her brows down but didn’t make eye contact. “I haven’t been gambling. I just like to go in there sometimes and watch. And play in my head.”
“Uh-huh,” Cyri said. “Remember, I’m up there gambling a lot. Do I need to stress how you were watching the last time I was up there?”
“You’re ratting me out?” Tempest asked, scowling at her “I helped you win a hundred bucks that day.” She slapped a paw over her mouth and glanced at me, knowing she’d let her own cat out of the bag.
“Yes you did,” Cyri said, brows raised, “which I promptly lost—intentionally. I don’t know how you do it, little fox, but I know it’s not on the up and up.”
Cyri’s food arrived and we ate together, chatting about this and that until a tall blond guy wearing black designer board shorts, flip-flops, and a baby-blue polo approached.
“Hey, man,” Bob said, moving closer. “What’s up? What can I get for you?”
“Hey, dude,” he replied in the most Bill and Ted
accent I’d ever heard a person use in real life. “I’m here to see a chick named Destiny Maganti about the manager’s job. I guess she’s like, the acting manager or something.” He slid his fingers through sun-streaked blond hair and I raised a brow when the sun glinted off the many stones set in an over-the-top pinky ring. Great, a rich boy there to slum it.
I cringed, tempted to slink away before Bob could point me out. Instead, I pulled my big-girl britches up and forged ahead even though I didn’t recognize the name. “I’m Destiny. And you are?”
“Not going to get the job,” Tempest muttered under her breath before she grabbed my last onion ring and popped it into her mouth. I glared at her even though she was probably right.
“Damien Bray. Dude, cool! We’re allowed to drink on the job?” He eyed my near-empty beer glass. “I knew this job was made for me!”
“No,” I said, scrunching my brow in disbelief. “We are not allowed to drink on the job.”
An expression of confusion only seen on kids under five crossed his face. His eyes were so glassy that I could practically see myself in them. “But you’re drinking on the job. Wouldn’t that be like, workplace discrimination or something?”
Cyri choked on her drink, and I shot her the stink eye. She didn’t even try to hide the evil glee on her face.
I turned back to surfer boy and nipped it in the bud before I lost my mind. “I’m really sorry you came all this way, but the job’s been filled.”
“Oh,” he said, bobbing his head. “Bummer.” He shrugged and grinned like the semi-idiot I was sure he was. “Surf’s up, though. I only came because my pops made me. I figured it was a free beach vacay, so getting the job would have totally harshed my mellow, anyway. I’m gonna bail and go get my board.”
“Sure, dude,” Cyri replied, giving him the hang-ten hand signal as he turned and left. “Peace out.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Peace out? Really?”
She preened and flipped her lavender hair over her shoulder. “Really. I spent some time in California back in the eighties. I’m not just talkin’ the talk. I’ve done my time in the greenroom. I’m totally bitchin’, man.”
“Of course you are,” I replied, laughing before I realized I’d just put an X on yet another folder. “That’s a perfect sample of the quality of applicants so far.”
I sighed. Maybe Bob was right and it was best not to upset the status quo. I’d been sort of hoping Bob would want the job, but he’d turned it down for the same reason I had. Neither of us wanted to manage staff, deal with money and inventory, and handle unhappy guests for a salary that equated to less than what we made it tips. It was good money, but not nearly as good as what we made.
“I’m calling it a wrap,” I said, motioning for Bob to fill my glass. “If I have to deal with one more bubble-headed stoner or uptight goody-two-shoes today, I’m gonna lose my mind. I’ll start again Monday.”
I had the entire weekend off, and I was gonna spend it relaxing in the sun, hanging out with Colin, and doing various forms of nothing. Maybe I’d even go to Abaddon’s Gate and visit my cousin, Mila.
Rather than hang around the tiki, I headed home to do some laundry and be lazy. I’d just binged my third episode of Big Bang Theory, season five when somebody pounded on my door. I jumped because I had wards set all the way around my house, and they should have gone off way before anybody made it that far. That meant it could only be one of two people—Colin or Blake.
“Destiny, open up!” Blake yelled, and I bound toward the door at the note of panic in his voice. Blake didn’t panic.
“What’s going on?” I asked as I pulled the door open.
He rushed past me into my living room.
“What’s going on is that a faerie just found a dead woman on the beach. And if that’s not bad enough, we have no idea who she even is.”
I sighed. This wasn’t the first murder we’d had at the resort, but I’d really hoped we could get through just one weekend without an emergency. There I went wishing again.
“Come on in and tell me everything. Start at the beginning.”
Chapter 3
Tempest, who’d been napping beside me on the couch, grumbled as she stood and stretched. “So what do you want us to do about it?” she said, yawning. “We’re off today, and we didn’t kill her. We can vouch for each other.”
“Oh, well excuse me for interrupting your nap with a murder,” he sniped at her.
“You’re excused, but only if you let me go back to sleep,” she mumbled, yawning.
“C’mon,” I said, motioning toward the kitchen. “Do you want something to drink?”
He barked out a laugh and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I’d love about a liter of bourbon, but I don’t think, as the director of the resort, that would play well when the higher-ups get here. I’ll take tea if you have it, though.”
I pulled the jug from the fridge and dropped some ice into two glasses before filling them.
“Now,” I said, handing him his tea and motioning to the kitchen table, “tell me everything, and start at the beginning.”
He took a deep breath then a drink of tea. “Okay, so we have a few groups of VIPs here this weekend for the grand opening. We’re booked up in both the faerie and giant additions. One of the faeries found a dead woman down at the water’s edge. She barely saw her because it was high tide.”
“Holy crap,” I said. “How was she killed?”
He lifted a shoulder and drew his brows over his chocolate eyes. “No idea. That’s why I’m here, at least partly. She doesn’t have a mark on her.”
“So what can I do?” I asked, confused. “What was she? Witch, shifter, faerie, vampire? That matters if you’re looking at what might have killed her.”
He sighed. “One of my security guys is a werewolf. He says she might have been a witch because she didn’t smell like a shifter, and she wasn’t a faerie. Not a vamp; she’ wasn’t dust. That’s all I have to go on.”
“Was there anything weird about her body? Weird positioning or frothing at the mouth or anything?”
Something had to have killed her, but with magical beings filling the place, there were a hundred ways to get dead without having any marks.
“Nope,” he said, shaking his head as he took another drink of tea. “Other than the fact that she was dead, she looked perfectly healthy.”
Tempest snickered, but I shot her a zip it glare. His hands were shaking, which was weird. Blake was one of the most competent, unflappable people I knew. I tilted my head at him.
“What haven’t you told me yet?” There had to be something to make him that anxious.
He pulled in a deep breath and puffed it out through his cheeks. “She was using somebody else’s identification, somebody very important, at least in certain circles, and we didn’t catch it. She’s a complete mystery. Nobody knows who she is, and I can’t find anybody that even talked to her. She just checked in late last night.”
“So what do you want from me?” I asked, failing to see where I fit into anything.
“Will you come see if you can read anything I might have missed? It’s going to take a while to get any information on her. I have my guys on it, but we don’t exactly have any local cops on hand to help us.” He sighed. “I don’t know what else to do.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling a little guilty that I was irritated to be watching my weekend plans fade away. A woman was dead, and I was upset because I wasn’t going to get to lounge on the beach. I scooped my wallet off the table, clipped it onto my belt loop, and held out my hand. “You drive. Tempest! If you’re going, you have five seconds.”
“Fine,” she said, jumping off the back of the couch and making a running leap to my shoulder. “But it better not be gross.”
As soon as she landed, I felt the familiar pull of space as we teleported out of my house. A second later, the pulling stopped, and the world settled into focus. The kiss of the sea breeze washed over me, giving me a sense of calm that
didn’t exactly mesh with the body lying on the beach a few feet from me. Two guards stood between us and her, their expressions neutral.
I took a second to scan the area. Just because we were on one of the more remote beaches didn’t mean we were alone. We were, after all, still on a beach at a popular resort. I didn’t see anybody, but I muttered a few words and cast cloaking and muffling spells anyway. We didn’t need this to get away from us before we could control the spin if necessary.
“I’m a little surprised you just left her here,” I said. “Why didn’t you move her?”
“I wanted you to see her before we moved her. Like I said, I’m hoping you can pick up something I can’t.”
I did have some degree of perception that was likely a result of living so close to the water. All of my powers were boosted, and I could often get a sense of things that other magicals couldn’t. I wasn’t psychic, but sometimes I could pick up impressions from the recent past. It didn’t always work, and I didn’t use it very often. I was a bartender, for heaven’s sake. Dealing with demanding people, hurting feet, and thirty minor disasters a shift one time was bad enough. No repeat necessary.
“Go ahead, then,” I said, trying to prepare myself for whatever was waiting for me on the other side of the guards. I gasped when the guards stepped aside, giving me my first full view of the body. Andromeda lay on her side, her sunglasses askew and her hat upside down beneath her head. The contents of her bag had spilled in front of her as she’d landed, and a bottle of sunscreen, a couple lipsticks, and a wallet were strewn in front of it.
“What?” Blake asked when I gasped. “What do you see?”
I waved him off as Tempest jumped from my shoulder. “Nothing yet, but I met her. She was at the tiki earlier. She ordered a drink. Her name’s Andromeda.”
“Where’s that nasty ferret?” Tempest asked, her nose twitching as she sniffed the air.