by Tegan Maher
“What ferret?” Blake asked. “I don’t know anything about a ferret.”
“Her familiar,” I replied, scanning the scene in search of anything out of place. “He was with her earlier. His name was Sid, and he wasn’t the most pleasant of creatures.”
“You’re being too nice,” Tempest said, turning to Blake with a know-it-all look that was sheer Tempest. “He was a jerk. He insulted the service and the food like he was some sort of prince or something.”
Blake cringed. “Funny you should say that. The credit card used to pay for the room belongs to an actual heiress. Well, sort of, anyway. She’s half witch and half vampire, which was my first clue that something wasn’t right. Even as a half vamp, she would have probably turned to dust when she died. I don’t know for sure if it works that way, but it was enough to make me think.”
He pulled his phone out and tapped for a couple seconds before turning it toward me. A pretty but ruthless-looking blonde twenty-something smiled out at me. Of course, with her genetics, there was no telling how old she actually was.
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“That’s Pietra Balan. Her mother is a Romanian high priestess and her father is Adrien Balan, leader of the Romanian vampire coven.”
I pinched my lips together. That was one whopper of a hot mess. The last thing we needed was heat like that coming down on us. Not that I was afraid of any witch or vampire, but they could make trouble in the supernatural community for the resort.
“But this isn’t her,” I said, motioning to Andromeda. “This is just somebody posing as her, right? Have you contacted them yet?”
“Oh hell no,” Blake said. “I want as much information as possible before I make that particular call. Right now, I’m running on the assumption that it was identity theft if anybody asks later. The family’s gonna want to know how she slipped past our security.” He raked his hand through his dark hair. “For that matter, so do I. We have pictures of all of our VIPs in the system. Either somebody at check-in got lax, or somebody got into our system. I’m not eager to own either of those.”
I shook my head. “I don’t blame you. Did you check the wallet for ID?”
He shot me an exasperated look. “Of course I did. Nothing but a wad of cash, a fake ID, and some credit cards, all in Pietra’s name.”
“What’s this?” Tempest asked, pulling a vial of luminescent blue liquid from the bag. I took it from her and held it up to the light.
“Some sort of potion, it looks like,” I replied, handing it off to Blake. “I have zero competence there, though. That’s Mila’s schtick.”
My cousin owned a potions and lotions shop in Abaddon’s Gate, and I’d recently learned she was freelancing with some sort of secret agency using her potions skills, too. When it came to brewing, she was the most skilled witch I knew.
“Now, give me a second and let me see if I can get any sort of impression here.” I closed my eyes and let tendrils of my magic flow from me and around the area. It swirled around Andromeda—if that was her real name—and curled up the sides of the giant box.
Bits and pieces of moments that had taken place on the beach flashed through my brain: a couple canoodling, two kids arguing over a toy, a thoughtful woman strolling along the surf line, her hands in the pockets of rolled-up linen pants. Several others flashed through, too, but none of it seemed relevant. Of course, what does a murderer look like?
Right when I was ready to give up, a rush of anger washed over me, and a vision of an angry man swirled past. He was yelling at her and stabbing his finger in the air, but whatever he said was blown away by time as the vision faded. I gasped when I recognized him: Aiden, Cyri’s boyfriend.
I opened my eyes, struggling to understand what I’d seen. I knew Aiden. He wasn’t a killer, but there was no doubt he’d been angry.
“What did you see?” Blake asked, his gaze sharp. He knew me inside out, and there was no way he hadn’t noticed my reaction.
I hesitated. I didn’t want to implicate Aiden before I’d had a chance to talk to him.
“What did you see?” he repeated, enunciating each word. “C’mon Des. We don’t have time to stand here.”
I bit my lip, thinking. I’d never lied to Blake, and I didn’t want to start now. But I also knew in my bones Aiden hadn’t done this, no matter how bad it looked.
I closed my eyes and decided to put my trust in him. I did not, however, trust his security guys, so I put a magical bubble around us.
“Don’t freak out and don’t jump to conclusions,” I said, studying his face.
He sighed. “Do I ever?”
“Sometimes,” Tempest said, nodding so hard her little whiskers wobbled. “You’re moderately prone to histrionics.”
She wasn’t necessarily wrong, but it was typically when she’d done something to push him to the edge of sanity, like cheating in his casino, stealing food from one of the kitchens, or eating wings on his annual reports. All of those things had happened. Honestly, I’m not sure how he hadn’t killed her.
“No, you drive a person to histrionics,” he said, scowling at her. “That’s different.”
I pulled in a deep breath and blew it out through my cheeks, glancing again at Andromeda’s lifeless form. “I saw Aiden yelling at her. He was pissed.”
“Aiden as in Cyri and Aiden?” he asked, his voice low even though there’s no way we’d be overheard.
I nodded, but rushed to say, “You know he didn’t do this.”
He raised his brows and ran his hand down his face. “I do. But what are we going to do? We have to talk to him, and we don’t have long. The board’s gonna be here soon if they’re not already, and we got nothin’ but a dead body and a case of stolen identity.”
“So what?” Tempest said, jumping onto my shoulder, “you want to throw Aiden under the bus?”
“Of course not,” he said. “You know me better than that.”
“You keep them occupied,” I said. “Focus on the identity part of it. We have to know who she is, regardless. And you’re probably going to have to wade through the politics of the identity theft, so do that and let me talk to Aiden. See what I can learn down here.”
“Did she say anything to you at the tiki that might help?” he asked.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Not even a last name.”
“Yeah,” Tempest said, curling her nose in distaste. “She didn’t have a chance to say much because that loathsome beast she was carrying with her stole most of the conversation. And I screwed up and told him about Raul’s marshmallows.”
Blake cast her a dry look. “Yeah, I know about Raul’s marshmallows. That supply has officially dried up. Stay out of my casino.”
Tempest’s expression was mutinous, but she didn’t say anything, probably because she knew she was busted.
“That does beg the question of where her familiar is, though,” I said, furrowing my brow. “Have you checked her room?”
“Not yet,” he replied, nodding to security. They moved toward the body. “I came straight to your place because I want to get the body out of here as soon as possible, but I wanted you to see it first. Besides, I have no idea where we’re going to put her. It’s not like we have a morgue.”
“Well, what did you do the other times?” I asked.
“We put them in the extra beer cooler behind the tiki.”
I whipped my head around and blinked twice. “Say what, now?”
For just a second, humor glinted in his eyes. “I’m just messin’ with you. We put them in the sickbay, but the beer cooler would have been easier. We’re a beach resort, not a morgue. It’s not like we’re prepared for this.”
I cocked a brow at him. “Maybe we should be. Then I don’t have to worry about going for an extra keg and running into a dead body.”
That wasn’t entirely fair. The resort was its own little city; every person who worked there also lived there. We even had our own little shopping square situated among the married housing alon
g with a school and a nice park. With that being said, crime was ridiculously low. As a matter of fact, aside from a couple cases of petty theft, all three murders that had happened at the resort over the years had been committed by guests.
“Haha,” he replied, irritation flickering through his brown eyes. “I’ll ask for funding for a morgue. I’m sure our backers will jump right on that.”
“I’m going up to her room,” I said. “Maybe I can pick up something more there. Lock it down so everything will be as-is in case we come across something that may be relevant later. Besides, you don’t even know where to send her stuff.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” he replied. “If Pietra decides to come here, what are we going to tell her? The room is on permanent reservation.”
I rolled my eyes. “Tell her to suck it up. If you want, refer her to me. Tell her I’m your lead investigator, or bodyguard, or whatever you want to tell her. Besides, what are the odds that she shows?”
Blake wasn’t usually easy to rattle and had zero problems standing up to anybody, so I wasn’t sure what his problem was now. I said as much.
He just shook his head, and it seemed in that moment like he’d aged ten years in the three years since I’d met him. “It’s just that I’ve been taking some flak lately for spending so much money all at once. Some of the investors think I should have done either the faery section or the giant expansion, but not both at the same time. My argument was that I don’t want the resort to be in a perpetual state or expansion or remodeling. Now they’re both done, and we can get back to normal. A murder isn’t exactly going to make for smooth sailing on the grand-opening weekend.”
I hadn’t realized how much stress the last few months had put on him, but at least now I knew why he was so gung-ho for it to work. And I’d forgotten all about the grand opening. The optics really were cringey.
“Are they really being that terrible?” I asked.
“Only one,” he said with a mirthless smile. “The head of the expansion committee. That would be Adrien Balan.”
“Oof,” I said as I made the connection. The vampire king and father of the woman Andromeda was impersonating. “That really sucks for you. I’m sorry. I’ll help you as much as I can.”
My gaze wandered over Andromeda once more. “Have you already ran her prints? Maybe you can find out that way.”
He shook his head. “No. Like I said, I came straight to your place after I secured the area. Besides, I don’t exactly have connections with local law enforcement.”
It looked like I was going to have to make this a family enterprise. Mila needed to see the potion, and my other cousin, Cori, was a sheriff in her small town.
“I’ll hang onto the potion and take it to Mila to see if she can decipher what it is,” I continued, pulling out my phone and tapping a message. “And get your guys to take her prints. I’ll send them to Cori and ask if she can run them through the databases. Castle’s Bluff is small, so I don’t know if they have that sort of capability. It won’t hurt to ask, though. What’s her room number?”
“She’s staying in 218,” he replied. “One of the VIP suites. Do you have your master key with you?”
Of course I did. I’d stood in for Blake on a couple occasions when he needed to be off-resort, and there was always a master keycard that opened all the rooms. “As long as you haven’t changed it or the spell since you went out of town a couple months ago.”
“Nope,” he replied. “It’s still the same.”
“Then I’m good. I’ll talk to you in a bit. C’mon Tempest,” I said, turning my back to the body before I teleported. I didn’t want my last vision of the beach to be of a dead body.
Chapter 4
Since Andromeda’s suite was in the VIP wing, it had its own private, locked entryway that opened to a public foyer where a guest could receive visitors or hold small, intimate gatherings before you even got to the door to her suite.
The place was locked down like Fort Knox, so if she’d been killed there, it was likely by somebody she knew or at least trusted enough to let into the suite. I took my time, stopping to examine the room. Nothing seemed amiss, so I opened my senses. I didn’t exactly hit paydirt, but I did see something. Andromeda, opening the door to her suite to a man with broad shoulders and dark hair wearing a gray suit. Unfortunately, his back was to me and the scene flitted away before I could draw it closer. Fortunately, I was one hundred percent sure it wasn’t Aiden.
I growled in frustration and tried to rewind and see if I could grasp it again, but experience had taught me that I only got one peek. It was as if once I saw it, it evaporated. A one-use vision, no do-overs. Maybe I’d get another glimpse of him in the suite.
“Did you see something?” Tempest asked, standing up on her back legs and sniffing.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure it’ll do us any good. Just a guy. Dark hair, built, gray suit. I saw him from the back.”
“Did Andromeda seem happy to see him?” she asked.
I sighed. “I’m not sure. I was concentrating so much on him that I didn’t pay attention to her. And it was just a quick glimpse.” I paused, trying to pull up anything my subconscious might have seen but shook my head. “Nada.”
She stood on her hind legs, her whiskers twitching as she sniffed. “I smell men’s cologne, but I don’t recognize it. I would if I smelled it again, though.” She tilted her head.
“Let’s go inside and see if we can pick up anything else. Or maybe she had a planner.” I moved toward the door, slapped the keycard over the reader, and muttered the password spell. The door clicked and I pushed it open.
“Wait,” she said, putting her paw on my leg. “There’s a weird sound coming from somewhere in there.”
“What kind of weird sound?” I asked, tilting my head to see if I could hear anything. “Something mechanical? Somebody moving around?”
She furrowed her fuzzy little eyebrows and listened again. “It’s something alive. Crying, maybe? Not exactly, though. And a metallic rattling.”
I opened my senses and was overcome with a wave of sheer anguish. I pulled in a breath and struggled to push the emotion away. It was so powerful it was almost debilitating.
“Wow,” Tempest said, swaying a little. It wasn’t unusual for her to pick up on my emotions, but it was usually more of a sensory thing rather than actually feeling the same thing I did. “That’s some serious grief. Be careful.”
I pulled my magic up and shook my hands as it raced to my fingertips. My senses heightened, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Okay, I’m ready.”
Pushing the door the rest of the way open, we crept forward. The hair on Tempest’s neck and back was standing up. We were only a few feet in when I heard it, too.
“It’s coming from back there, in the bedroom,” I said, motioning toward the rooms in the rear of the suite.
I muttered a spell to mute our footsteps as we moved in that direction. I put my hand on the push-down handle and eased it down until the latch clicked, then glanced at Tempest. She nodded, her gaze trained on the door.
Pulling in a steadying breath, I pushed the door open. A cat carrier lay on its side beside the bed and Sid was curled in front of the caged door, sobbing. The bars of the cage were bent a little, a sign that he’d struggled to get out.
“Sid,” I said softly, using the same voice I reserved for startled or scared wild animals. He rolled to his feet, teeth bared. “Sid!”
His sobbing had stopped, but he didn’t seem to be registering who I was. Tempest moved forward.
“Sid,” she said, her voice soothing. “You need to calm down so we can let you out.”
He paused, and my heart went out to him. I bent down to open the cage, but he lunged at my fingers. I barely managed to yank my hand back before he bit me.
“He doesn’t realize who you are,” Tempest said. “He’s not thinking rationally.”
My mind raced and I cringed as he snapped at me again. “Sleep!” I comm
anded, and my magic raced down my arms and flowed toward him. Instantly, he dropped to the bottom of the cage, unconscious.
Tears welled in Tempest’s eyes. “The poor thing. I don’t think we’re going to get anything from him, at least not anytime soon. His witch died, and his heart is broken. A piece of his soul is gone.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, having no idea if she was being literal about the soul thing. I knew the grief of that broken bond could be incapacitating, but what happened to a familiar after they lost their charge was up to the fates. I suppose it depended on the will of the universe or the strength of the familiar.
Tempest swiped a tear from her eye. “It means it’s out of our hands. He’s not going to be able to tell us anything even if he did see something. Can you see or feel anything in here?”
I opened my sense just a tad, but the profound grief washed out any other emotions or visions that may have existed before it. “Nothing but Sid,” I said.
“I figured, but it didn’t hurt to try. That probably means she wasn’t killed here. That level of fear would have likely trumped grief if she saw it coming.”
“Maybe,” I said, shuddering as I pulled my shields down and struggled to shake off the last vestiges of the emotion. “What should we do with him, though? He needs a vet to make sure he didn’t hurt himself.”
He was knocked out, but his little sides still shuddered.
“He needs a healer,” she amended. “No doctor is going to be able to fix what’s wrong with him. And you’re right. He might have hurt himself trying to get the door open.”
We had an excellent medical staff comprised of people who were trained in both Western medicine and as healers. Blake had made sure to get only the best, and I was glad. I leaned down and tipped the carrier gently upright so that he rolled to the bottom with no extra bumps or bruises, then picked it up.
“C’mon,” I said, and she jumped onto my shoulder. “We need to take care of him before we can do anything else.”
I struggled to separate the clinical from the emotional, but even asleep, his emotions were still raw and overwhelming.