by Tegan Maher
I laughed and started to say something, but she interrupted me.
“Whoa,” she said, jumping off her chair and assuming a defensive pose.
I glanced in the direction she was looking and scrunched my brow. “What?”
“Don’t look, but there’s a whole family of giants coming this direction.”
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “That’s a good thing. Dimitri could use the business.”
“Wait, what?” she said, confusion etching her tanned face.
I realized what was going on. “You didn’t know about the new giant wing?”
Her face colored a bit as she relaxed. “Yeah, I guess I did, but I didn’t know it was finished and open to guests yet.”
“It is. I’ve only met one so far, but she seemed nice.”
“Nice, huh?” she asked, sitting back down but not taking her eyes off the family. “Back in the day, they were fierce and not too bright. I’ve battled my share of them, and they don’t go down easy.”
“Well you can turn that part of your brain off,” I said. “They’re here for a vacation just like everybody else, and so far, I haven’t seen so much as a hint that they’re here to do battle. Or that they’re not too bright, for that matter. The woman I talked to this morning seemed like she was just as smart as anybody else.”
“Huh,” Steph said, picking up the Mai Tai Dimitri’d made her. Even though she hadn’t asked, everybody knew it was her go-to drink. “I guess things change over the course of a few centuries.”
I grinned. “Just a few? Wasn’t most of that type of warfare over a thousand years or so ago?”
She flapped an elegant hand and the sun glinted off the metal of her armband. “I suppose so. Time blurs when you’re immortal.”
“Funny you should say that,” I said, eating a fry while I still had some left. “Cyri said something along those lines this morning. Her mom has sort of lost track of the real world.”
Steph nodded. “That’s not uncommon for a faerie as they get older. It’s why when we trained and fought with them, we tended to choose younger ones for the elite forces. It’s not that they lose their minds so much as they become introspective and lose focus of the here and now. That’s less than helpful when there’s a battle raging.”
“I can see where it would be,” I said, smiling. “Do you miss those days?”
Her brown eyes shone and took on a faraway look. “I do and I don’t. I miss the excitement of battle, that thrill you feel right before all Hades breaks loose. But I don’t miss the killing so much. Those wars were brutal, and even though part of my job was choosing who lived and died, it wore on me.” She paused. “Smiting bad guys was a great stress reliever, though. You just can’t get that sort of satisfaction today.”
“Well,” Tempest said before popping the last bite of another pickle in her mouth, “You can, but it’s frowned upon by polite society. And the cops.”
“You’ve got that right, little fox,” she said. “I still do some side jobs for the angels, though, and they have the occasional internal skirmish, so I still get a shot at it sometimes.”
“So what’s new around here?” she asked, pulling an orange wedge off her garnish sword and eating it.
“Oh, you know,” I replied, keeping my voice blasé, “Just another garden-variety murder.”
“Come again?” Steph asked, a cherry halfway to her mouth.
“Yeah, a witch was murdered down on the beach this morning,” Tempest said. “It was gross, but only because she was dead. No blood or anything.”
“No blood?” Steph asked, and I could see her warrior wheels turning. “Strangulation? Suffocation?”
“Nope and nope,” I said. “Right now, we have no idea what killed her.”
Shade fell across us, and I looked around to see if it was clouding up. Rain would be the crap-cherry on top of the day. Instead of seeing a bank of clouds, though, it was two people blocking the sun. Two very large people.
“Hey, Destiny,” Tethra said, smiling.
I felt Stephanie tense beside me, but to her credit, she pasted a tentative smile on her face.
“I wanted you to meet my husband.” She turned to the man beside her. “Thomas, I’d like you to meet Destiny, and the cutie beside her is Tempest.”
“Pleased to meet you, Thomas,” I said, holding out my hand. “And this is Stephanie. Steph, this is Tethra, and of course, Thomas.”
I gave her an encouraging nod, and she reached out to take Tethra’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Destiny mentioned that she’d met you. How’s the new addition?”
“Oh, it’s fabulous,” Thomas said, his brown eyes wide. “I can’t believe how much attention they paid to detail. The kids adore the pool, and the rooms are amazing. It’s nice to sleep in a bed we actually fit in! Even the food portions are perfect. In fact, I couldn’t eat all my dinner last night, so I had them box it up and I had it for lunch today.”
Tethra turned a concerned gaze toward me. “We are a bit worried about the nastiness we heard about this morning down on the beach, though. That’s not a regular occurrence here, is it? We were assured this resort is safe, and we don’t want to have to worry about something happening to the kids. Or to us, for that matter.”
I shook my head. “No, and this resort is safe, I assure you. There are special circumstances that she was involved in. I’m not free to discuss the details, but trust me when I tell you it wasn’t a random crime.”
I had no way to know that for sure, but the last thing we needed was to scare people off on the grand-opening weekend.
“See honey,” Thomas said, smiling at Tethra, “I told you there was nothing to be alarmed about. I’m sure it will all be sussed out in no time.”
I smiled at his British accent. It seemed out of keeping with his appearance. I guess I was going to have to get my preconceptions of giants out of my head.
“I’m sure it will be,” I replied. “So go on about your days as you’d planned. You’re perfectly safe, all of you.”
“Was it that woman I saw you talking to this morning?” she asked.
“It was, why?” I hoped she’d seen something because I needed a thread to pick at in case the man didn’t pan out.
“No reason in particular. It’s just that I thought I saw her going through a woman’s bag while the owner was in the restroom is all. But then the woman came back and they chatted, so I figured they were friends.”
“Can you tell me what this woman looked like?” If the woman knew Andromeda had been pilfering through her purse, she could have been buddying up just to figure out who she was so she could give her a come-to-Jesus later. It would be stupid to do anything in broad daylight.
“Sure,” she said. “She was a faerie. Platinum bob, wearing a purple bathing suit and aviators.”
“Thank you. I’ll follow up on that as soon as I’m finished here.”
We chatted for a few minutes, and after they left, Steph turned to me. “You lied to them about being safe. There’s no way to know that.”
I picked at a piece of lettuce left on my plate. “I didn’t lie. I just said what needed to be said.”
“Which might have been a lie,” Tempest replied.
“Most likely, it wasn’t, and we don’t need people packing up and leaving because they’re afraid they’re going to be murdered in their sleep,” I insisted. “We know she was involved in shady stuff. When you play with fire, you’re eventually going to get burned.”
Steph nodded and shoved her glass forward for a refill. “If she’d dared steal anything from me, I’d have killed her where she stood, but that’s just me. I’m old-school like that.”
“I wouldn’t have been nice, either, but I wouldn’t have killed her,” I replied, “but there are just as many people like you as there are me here.”
If Andromeda had been pilfering people’s jewels even in the short time she’d been here, my suspect pool had just gotten a lot deeper.
Chapter 11
“C’mon, Tempest,” I said as soon as we finished eating. “We need to go check this guy out and see if he’s our killer.”
Before I could stand, though, my phone buzzed with an incoming text. I picked it up off the table and unlocked it. The message was from Mila.
You were right. This is a transformation potion. I was right, too. It took me a minute to separate the components, but it contained rosary pea, which is def not part of the recipe. Lethal in even a tiny dose, and this one wasn’t tiny. You’ve got your method of death.
I grinned. At least now I knew for sure what had killed her. It wasn’t much, but if we could find the substance on one of our suspects, we’d have them dead to rights. I tapped out a response.
Owe you big! Love ya!
“You look happy,” Tempest said. “What did she say?”
I told them, and Stephanie nodded. “That used to be a semi-standard method of murder. It takes so little to kill you that people don’t even notice the taste. If we were anywhere but here, I’d wonder where they got it, though. Unless I’m mistaken, it’s only found in Indonesia. But with Abaddon’s Gate right there, I’m sure it’s readily available if you know who to ask.”
She was right about that. “True. If we don’t manage to nail the killer soon, I’ll call Michael and see if he knows where it might have come from. He’s got a massive network of shady people he works with.”
Steph lifted a brow. “I thought your brother was in law enforcement of some sort.”
I laughed. “He is, but he started life on the wrong side of the law. He still has friends on that side who help him out in return for whatever he can offer them.”
“Okay,” Tempest said. “We were on our way to find this guy and arrest him. I want to go to Abaddon’s Gate tomorrow. Colin promised me the next time we went, I could get chocolate-covered bacon, and I want to hang out with Calamity rather than just bump into her.”
“Stephanie smiled. “Go get your bad guy. I’ll stay here and hold down the fort.” She gave me a hopeful look. “Unless you want me to come help. I’ll gladly torture the truth out of him for you.”
I held up a hand. “I think I’m good, but if it comes down to torture, you’ll be my girl.”
Her grin spread. “Now I sorta hope you need help. I haven’t gotten to engage in a good torture session in centuries. It’d be fun to see if I still have it.”
Tempest scoffed. “Of course you still have it. You’re a freakin’ Valkyrie!”
My friend lifted a shoulder. “Fine. It would be fun.”
I shook my head at her idea of fun, then segued back toward where we’d been headed. “C’mon, Tempest. Let’s go talk to our good friend Zach.”
Within just a few seconds, we were standing outside the entrance to his suite. I rang the buzzer and waited but got no response. I knocked, but still, nobody answered. After a few minutes, I decided to listen to the devil on my shoulder and held the master key up to the reader, whispering the spell to go along with it. The door clicked, and before I could second-guess myself, I was through the main door and headed toward the door to his inner rooms.
Knocking again, I waited. When ten seconds had passed, I made the executive decision to enter. In for a penny, in for a pound. One of the ways the resort differed from human places was that all guests agreed in advance that their rooms were subject to search at any time as long as there was good cause, and this certainly qualified. Since I was approved staff, I was within those guidelines, but it still felt weird going into somebody’s room while he wasn’t there.
The room was standard, with the flowered furniture and sliders that led to a small balcony with a great view of the ocean. I picked through his drawers but found nothing. Not even clothes, which was weird. I checked the closet for a duffle bag and hit paydirt. After stopping to listen for a second, Tempest nodded. “Go ahead. The coast is clear for now. I’ll keep listening.”
She was a sarcastic, blithe little brat most of the time, but when I really needed her, she was always there. I smiled at her and tore into the bag.
“Well lookie here,” I said after digging through the side pockets. I pulled out a small baggie with two seeds that were red with black caps. I Googled rosary pea and came up with a picture that matched perfectly. “It looks like we have our murder weapon, and thus our murderer.”
I texted Blake to let him know and attached a picture for good measure. Now to find the guy.
“I wish we had that handy-dandy tracking potion of Mila’s,” Tempest said. “We could be home watching TV in half an hour.”
“Yeah,” I replied, “but we don’t. We’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
She sighed, and my phone buzzed with a text. Sure enough, Blake had responded, saying he’d put the entire resort on notice and that anybody who sighted Zachary Whitehall was to notify him and security immediately. The entire resort staff had a networking app on their phones that kept them in touch with the entire place, so it shouldn’t be long before we found him.
“C’mon,” I said. “If he’s not here, he’s in the main part of the resort somewhere, so we may as well head that direction.”
We’d just stepped out of the room when Tempest put her paw on my leg. “Stop. And be quiet.” She tilted her head, listening. “There’s somebody over in her suite.”
Since it was just on a different end of the same floor, we crept closer, doing our best to move as fast as we could without making any noise. I followed her since she was the one with the fox hearing. She stopped at the corner where the wall dipped into a little alcove and tilted her head again for a few seconds, then nodded. We were close enough that even I could hear the doorknob rattling and a man muttering something.
I gathered my magic in my hands and stepped around the corner. A dark-haired man was standing in front of a door with a keycard, tapping it over the entry pad and muttering different variations of a spell. He kept glancing down at a piece of paper in his hand.
“Freeze,” I said, and Tempest rolled her eyes.
“Cliché!”
I shot her a quick glower as the man spun around, hands up.
“I’ll take that keycard now,” I said. “Toss it toward me then put your hands out, wrists up.”
“It’s not what you think,” he said, doing exactly as I’d told him to do.
“I think you killed Andromeda and are now trying to get in her room. Let me guess—she robbed you, and you want your stuff back so it can’t be traced back to you.”
“No!” he exclaimed. “I mean, yes to wanting my stuff back. It’s not actually mine. It’s my grandmother’s. She stole it a few weeks ago when she was posing as an heiress at a fundraiser. I didn’t kill her though!”
“Sure, you didn’t,” I said. “Put your wrists forward like I said.”
“You realize those keycards are one-use and room-specific, right? I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but there’s no way you were going to access her suite. Some murderer and crook you are.”
“I swear, I didn’t kill her,” he said, his voice desperate. His eyes were darting back and forth, and he was obviously looking for an escape route. There wasn’t one, though. I had him trapped in the little alcove, and there was nowhere to go.
“Put. Your. Wrists. Up. I’m not telling you again.”
He sighed and did as I asked, but as I was casting the spell for the magical cuffs, he shouted a stunning spell and fired it at me. It barely grazed my leg, but it was enough to drop me to the floor. Before I could recover, he sprung overtop of me and charged down the hall and into the stairwell.
“Are you okay?” Tempest asked, worry lacing her tone.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, struggling to stand. “Go get him!”
She bolted down the hall but stopped at the door. She pushed against the door, but it was the kind that had the push-bar. There was no way she was going to be able to open either it or the one at the bottom of the staircase.
“Dammit,” I snapped, trying my best
to shake the spell off my leg as I hobbled down the hall bracing myself against the wall. I pulled my cell out as I did and called Blake.
“Lock the place down!” I said as soon as he answered. “Now!”
I didn’t give him time to answer before I called to Tempest. “Jump on my shoulder!” As soon as she landed, I ported us to the most obvious place for him to go: the bank of portals in the main lobby. They were the closest exit, and I was sure he’d head straight for them.
I landed where I’d planned, but it wasn’t graceful. Since it was Friday night, people were pouring out of the portal, and I landed right in front of a portly brownie. He knocked me ass-over-teakettle, and I plopped to a stop a few feet away.
“Young lady,” he exclaimed, his voice gruff. “What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, pushing to my feet and hobbling as fast as I could after my target. “Your first round of drinks at the tiki is on me!” I called over my shoulder.
As soon as Whitehall saw me, he’d bolted toward the front doors. There were so many people that I didn’t have a safe shot to blast him.
“Stop him!” I barked at security, but he’d already pushed the doors open and was running through them. They gave chase, but it ended up being for nothing. By the time I limped out the doors, the security guards were standing around Margo, who held Zachary Whitehall by the seat of his pants.
“Should I chomp him?” she asked through clenched teeth so that she wouldn’t drop him. I could barely hear her over his panicked screaming as he dangled twenty feet in the air.
I smiled and shook my head. “No, no need to chomp him, but don’t let him go until I can get a spell on him.”
One of the security guys stepped forward and held his hands up. Golden tendrils of magic swirled between his hands. “I can do that for you.”
Thankful, I leaned against Margo’s pedestal and let the last of his stunning spell wear off. The security guy bound his hands then asked Margo to lower Whitehall to the ground.
Margo’s biggest gift is being able to see into a person’s heart. If this man had murder in his, she’d know it.