by Tegan Maher
I shrugged and pulled the only full plate left on the bar toward me. “Some, but it was mostly bad.”
I told him what I’d found as I ate, and he rubbed his chin.
“That’s not necessarily bad. At least now you have somebody to hand to Adriene Balan instead of Aiden if you haven’t solved this,” he said.
“Did somebody say my name?” A deep voice rumbled behind me, and I cringed. I’d never met him, but the deep Russian-ish accent was a tipoff that Balan himself was standing behind me. I turned, and sure enough, Blake stood there along with two other men. Or rather, a vampire and an angel.
“Destiny!” one man, the angel, said, stepping forward and smiling.
“Ari!” I exclaimed, please despite the dour-looking vampire still standing beside Blake. “It’s great to see you—it’s been months!”
“It has,” he said, a brilliant smile lighting up his perfectly chiseled features. He was, after all, the angel of water along with a good friend of mine. He was also the head of the board of directors for the resort. I was glad to see him on a few levels. Nobody, not even a vampire, was going to push too hard when a full-fledged angel was around. Ari could turn him to ash with a glance and Balan knew it.
“Are you here alone?” I asked, jumping off my stool and giving him a brief hug.
“Yeah, sadly, this isn’t a pleasure trip. I’m here for the grand opening, and now for the ... unpleasantness.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I told him. “We’re doing our best to figure out what happened.”
Aiden had joined Cyri while I’d been in the office, and Ari’s eyes flickered to them. He knew them well enough that he and Aiden had gone fishing on several occasions.
“Blake tells me you have no solid suspects,” he said. “Though we did find out from the gentleman Margo captured earlier that the witch was a thief.”
I furrowed my brow, but his expression remained pleasantly neutral. Blake might have held back information from Adrien, but he would have been straight with Ari. I smiled at my friend as it clicked. He wanted to keep Aiden’s name out of it altogether if at all possible.
“Actually,” I said, “I just found some interesting security footage a few minutes ago. I was just getting ready to text Blake when you guys got here.”
I told them about the blond guy and Blake frowned. “But you couldn’t see his face?”
I shook my head. “I’m sorry. And I can’t find a trace of either her or him after that meeting. It’s like they just disappeared.”
Blake frowned. “I’ll put the tech guys on it. Have them go through the footage all over the resort, and also see if they can clean up the image a little better. It may seem like they disappeared, but they didn’t. This is Adrien Balan, the head of our expansion committee. Adrien, this is Destiny Maganti. Manager of the tiki and my right-hand woman.”
I nodded, but before I could say anything, he spoke.
“Not exactly what I’d expect of a resort that charges the exorbitant sums that you do. Perhaps we should have spent money on upgrading the security system rather than on building playgrounds for faeries and giants,” Adrien growled.
“I assure you, our security is top-notch,” I replied, bristling even though I’d been cussing the crappy quality of the cams just a few minutes earlier. It was fine for me to do it, but there was no way I was going to let this pompous jerk knock anything about the resort. “In fact, one of our assets captured the man you just spoke to. Our system didn’t fail.”
“I beg to differ, Ms. Maganti. First, somebody successfully checked in under my daughter’s name, and now we’ve had a murder and all we’ve managed to do is capture the victim on some grainy, low-tech film. I’d hardly call that top-notch.”
I closed my eyes when Cyri spoke up. “And I’ll have you know that the faerie addition will more than pay for itself, Mr. Balan. Just as with your family, mine isn’t without resources. Indeed, I’d venture to say we’re well-matched if you’d care to compare assets. It wasn’t money wasted.”
Adrien looked down his nose at her, and it was all I could do not to smile. Cyri’s family was massive and rich. And not just a little rich, either. Throughout the centuries, they’d amassed a fortune in gold and precious gems. Her uncle wasn’t just a hobbyist—her whole family was in the business and were legends in the jewelry and fine weaponry sectors. They weren’t just wealthy. They were Scrooge McDuck rich.
“And who might you be?” Adrien asked, narrowing his eyes at her.
“Cyri, of the Southern American clan,” she said, her spine straight and her eyes clear and proud. “And this is Aiden. I’m aware of who you are, Mr. Balan.” The last was said with just a trace of distaste without being out-and-out rude. Faeries and vampires didn’t get along well historically, though I’d never known Cyri to look down on anybody. Until now, at least. “And I can assure you that everything that can be done is being done. My family alone will make the expenditure well worth it.”
Well, then, I thought to myself, barely able to keep a straight face. I guess she told him.
Chapter 14
Adrien Balan didn’t spend much more time at the tiki after that. In fact, he left like he never wanted to see the place again. Blake and Ari stayed, though. They took a seat on the other side of me so that we cornered the whole end of the bar.
“Stupid vampires,” Cyri said, waving a chip. She curled her nose. “Talkin’ down about faeries like he’s our better. Who does he think he is?”
Aiden nodded. “They think they’re the know-all, be-all of society just because they’re immortal. They often forget faeries pre-date them. They’re an aberration of nature.”
I held up my hand. “Now wait a second. I know plenty of good vampires. Look at Elena. She’s awesome.” Elena was a waitress at the tiki, and you wouldn’t find a nicer person.
“That’s true,” Cyri said with a sigh. “The older ones like Belan just make it so hard to remember that they’ve evolved.”
That was true. Over the last century or so, vampires had become more like family units rather than the traditional hierarchical covens of centuries past. When Cyri said they’d evolved, she meant exactly that. They’d found a way to reproduce, and ever since then, they’d been changing slowly. Having a family made a person different whether they were alive or undead.
Blake gave her a tired half-smile. “I did like the way you stood up to him, though. He’s not a bad man; he just gets a little too big for his britches sometimes. It’s good that people are willing to knock him back to size sometimes.”
“Hmph,” Cyri said. “I’m not afraid of anybody. I’m not better than anybody, but I’m not worse, either, and I won’t let somebody treat me—or my friends—like we are.”
“And by the way, Ari,” Aiden said, “thank you for not throwing me under the bus.”
Ari took a long draw from his beer and waved him off. “No worries. We all know you didn’t do it, so there’s no reason to put a target on your back. That wouldn’t serve anything.”
Aiden hung his head. “No, but it’s not looking good, is it?”
“It’s not as bad as it could be,” Colin said. “Trust me, I’ve gotten people off with much less than what we have. She hasn’t exactly made friends. We do need to find that man, though.”
“I locked the resort down as soon as we found her this morning. People can still come, but they can’t leave. I went through all the departures from the time she was last seen until we discovered the body. There were only four, and I know all of them. I’ll vouch for them. The killer is still here.”
“Let’s review what we know so far,” Colin said. “I’ve only gotten bits and pieces of it, so maybe there’s something obvious that you guys have missed. I have fresh eyes.”
“Same,” Cyri said. “I don’t know much of anything about what’s gone on other than just the murder and now the blond guy.”
“Okay,” I said, “it can’t hurt.”
I recited the facts I had: the poisono
us potion, the dark-haired guy I’d seen at her door, the jewelry I’d found in her room, Zachary Whitehall, the board shorts, the blond guy.
“What about you, Blake?” Aiden asked. “Is there anything else?”
He started to shake his head but stopped. “Actually, there is. There’s the giant who came and complained about missing jewelry this morning. I went to talk to him, but Adrien showed up and I didn’t have a chance.”
Colin pinched his lips together and shook his head. “Did you see any giant footprints out there?”
I thought back to the scene. I’d looked around to see if anything stood out, and I was fairly certain giant footprints would have. “No, I don’t think I did.”
“You don’t think? You’re not sure, though?”
Blake pulled out his phone and pulled up the pictures. Since he was sitting beside me, I leaned over to see what he was looking at.
“Oh, you took your own pictures of the crime scene,” I said, squinting to better see them. “Smart.”
He scrolled through them, pausing so we could look at the sand. When we’d looked at everyone, I shook my head. “Nope. No giants, so that guy and his family are in the clear.”
“So basically, it all boils down to finding the blonde guy,” Aiden said.
“Looks that way,” I said, then realized Tempest had been silent throughout the whole conversation. I glanced at Colin and smiled when I saw her curled up in his lap.
“She passed out as soon as she ate,” he said. “I figure she’s being quiet, so there’s no need to wake her.”
“True story,” I said. “The secret to getting her to be quiet—feed her and let her fall asleep.”
She’d done a lot of magic that day, too, so even though we joked, I was glad to see she was getting some rest. Fortunately, she wasn’t like a little kid—she’d sleep all night no matter how much she napped now.
“Amber and Dax say hi, guys. They don’t feel like coming up.”
Though my friends could technically walk on land, they didn’t like exchanging their tails for legs and said it felt weird to be dry. As a result, they rarely did it.
“Let’s go down and say hello,” I said, pushing my stool back.
“Should I wake her?” Colin asked, and I shook my head.
“Hang on.” She had a bed tucked in an out-of-the-way spot behind the bar, so I levitated her off his lap and over to it, careful to keep her curled in a ball as I did. When she didn’t move when I settled her into the bed, I smiled. Snug as a bug in a rug. She’d have been cranky if we’d woken her.
“Cheer up,” I told a sluggish Aiden as we strolled to the water bar. “We’ll solve this. It might be tonight or tomorrow or the next day, but it won’t be longer than that. I promise.”
“Thanks, Des,” he said, casting me a sideways glance as he stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
I took my time walking to the edge of the water. I’d left my flip-flops at the tiki, and the warm sand felt amazing under my feet. I curled my toes into it and rolled my shoulders to let some of the earth magic smooth away the tension. I was surprised when we got there, though, because instead of just the mermaids, Tethra and Thomas were there, too, floating on their backs and holding their tiki mugs propped on their bellies.
“Hey, guys!” I said when I got there. “I assume you’ve all met?”
Everyone nodded, but I knew Colin, Blake, and Ari had no idea who the giants were. I made the introductions.
“We’re so glad you decided to give us a try,” Ari said. “It was tough getting the word out.”
“Oh, trust us,” Tethra said, her eyes a little glassy, “we’ll help you spread the word. Thomas is a fiction writer, so he can work from anywhere. You’ll be seeing a lot of us, won’t they dear?”
“Indeed you will,” Thomas said, kicking a spray of water toward his wife with what must have been a size-fifty foot.
She laughed and kicked water back, then covered her mouth and giggled when I threw up a quick shield to keep all of us from getting soaked. “Oopsie,” she said, still giggling though her cheeks pinked a little. “We’re still trying to adjust to the size differences. I guess a small splash to us is a downpour to you.”
“No problem,” I replied, glad they were having fun. “Where are the kids?”
“Oh,” she said, waving an unsteady hand, “we took advantage of the sitting service the resort offers. They’re doing fun kid stuff while we’re doing fun grown-up stuff! I figured we had them at the beach all day, so we deserved some time to ourselves.”
“I hate to interrupt your fun,” Blake said, “but you were here at the beach all day?”
Tethra nodded. “All day. We ate lunch at the tiki—which was delicious, by the way—but that’s as far away from the water as we got.”
“Did you by chance see a witch walking the beach?” Ari asked.
We’d found Andromeda’s body about a quarter of a mile from there, but she would have probably walked down this stretch of beach to get there. Other than via the faerie section, it was the only way.
“Dark hair? The one you were talking to at the tiki, Destiny?”
“That’s her,” I said.
“Oh, my,” Tethra said, rolling over so she was kneeling on the shallow bottom rather than floating on her back. “Is that the person they found murdered today?”
I pressed my lips together, loathe to spoil her vacation.
“It is,” Cyri said before I could respond. “And if you can tell us anything about it at all, it could be a big help.”
“Wait, what?” Amber said from her stool at the water bar. “Somebody was murdered?”
I nodded. “Yeah, earlier today on the other end of the beach by the North Wall. We need to figure out who did it.”
“That’s terrible,” Dax exclaimed, frowning. He turned to Tethra and Thomas. “Please don’t think less of this place because of that. We bring our kids here all the time because it’s a safe place for them to play, and this won’t stop us.”
Thomas lifted a shoulder. “We’re not thrilled about it, but we also get it. We’re giants; trust us when we say we understand how dangerous it can be when you put a bunch of magicals all in one place. Until the last few decades, a place like this wouldn’t even have been possible. Honestly, I’m surprised stuff like that doesn’t happen more often.”
Tethra gave him a small smile. “Thomas has seen a lot of war in his time. It freaked me out a little until he put it in perspective because I grew up in a less populated place in Upstate New York. When I was born, there just weren’t any other magicals. No reason to go to war.”
Thomas returned her smile. “And you’re considerably younger than I am, darling. By the time you were born, most of the big wars were over even in Europe. Trust me when I say that a single witch’s murder isn’t enough for me to deem a place unsafe.” He turned toward me. “No offense.”
“None taken,” Blake said. “I understand exactly what you were saying.”
Tethra took a long drink from her cocktail. “She looked like she was having such a nice time with her husband, too. It’s a shame somebody snuffed her out that way.”
That caught my attention, and Colin’s too, apparently because he beat me to the question. “You saw her with a man? What did he look like?”
She scrunched her angular face. “Tall for a human, but nothing that would stand out. Blond hair. They were quiet but it didn’t seem like they were fighting or anything. Do you think he killed her?”
“We’re not sure,” Cyri said. “But we need to question him. He’s the only lead we have right now.”
“What time do you think she was killed?” Amber asked, leaning forward and propping her chin on her elbow.
“We’re not sure. Sometime this afternoon,” I said.
“We swam by with the kids because they were following a bale of sea turtles. Our youngest is fascinated by them,” she said. “There wasn’t anybody swimming, but we did see a couple
on the beach. We were too far away to be of any help, but they were both there. You said the North Wall, and that’s where we saw them.”
“Nobody else?” Ari asked, and Amber shook her head. “Nope. They were alone. They didn’t seem to be fighting, but they weren’t canoodling, either. They were doing their own thing. She was walking in the surf, looking down. He was sitting on a blanket drinking something.”
We chatted for a bit more, but neither of them remembered anything else. I was getting tired, and honestly, I didn’t know where else to go. If all we had to go on was that he was blond, then we really had nothing at all. There were dozens of blond guys on the resort at any given time.
“It was a pleasure to meet you,” Ari said. “Amber, Dax, it was nice to see you. We’re going to come as a group in a few weeks, so we’ll all have to meet up then.”
“Sounds great,” Dax replied.
“It was nice to meet you, too,” Tethra said. “We didn’t think we’d ever see a place like this catering to us, but you’ve done a wonderful job. The kids had so much fun today. I probably took an hour’s worth of video just here on the beach. We’re going to have to edit it way down in order to send it to my mom. She didn’t want to come because she’s been so disappointed at other attempts to draw us in, but now she’s gung-ho to get here.”
“Wait,” Colin said. “You took videos?”
“Yeah,” Tethra replied, then a look of dawning crossed her face. She stood up and I cringed a little when I saw how red her shoulders were. Apparently she hadn’t reapplied that sunscreen as often as she should have.
She lumbered toward shore, where she dug around in her bag. “I don’t know if we captured them or not, but we sure can look.”
The giantess began scrolling through videos while the rest of us stood around her, the silence expectant. After five minutes, I was losing hope. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and started to ask if she could just send the files to us. My feet were killing me, and I was full from the steak.
“Here it is!” she said. Excited, she passed the phone to me. “Just hit play. They come into the frame a few seconds in.”