Lia let out a bitter laugh. “Are you kidding? She knew Gregor had all of our phones tapped. He didn’t trust anyone. It’s part of why he was so pissed.”
Her voice grew bitter as she adjusted her back in the seat, adding,
“I can forgive what she did to me. But Mom just left Maia there. Alone. At her place in Los Feliz. Maia doesn’t even remember how long she sat there, waiting for mom to come back from her latest ‘trip,’ before Gregor’s goons showed up. Days. Probably over a week. She sat in an empty house, alone, playing video games for days. Watching Netflix. Eating things like potato chips and ramen and canned fruit until she ran out. She eventually went to the neighbors when she got too hungry. She was afraid to call me because she knew I’d be furious with mom. She didn’t want to get our mom in trouble.”
Lia’s back molars ground together.
“…She was seven years old.”
Loki quirked an eyebrow, frowning.
“And she’s never once contacted you?” he said. “Your mother? No cryptic messages on your little machine? No note spelled out in refrigerator magnets or cut up newspapers?”
Lia shook her head, exhaling.
“Nope.”
“Well, well.” Loki’s frown deepened.
Lia was surprised to see real anger in the god’s eyes.
“Shall we find her next, after this?” he said, his voice a touch harder. “Your mother? I would be interested in having a few words with her. I have… questions.”
“No.” Lia let out a humorless sound, half-laugh, half grunt of horror. “Absolutely not. Thank you for the offer, but hell no. I never want to see that train-wreck again. The only good thing that came of this is that she’s out of our lives forever.”
“You are certain?” Loki said.
He met her gaze, his green eyes perfectly still, like mirrored glass.
From the rage she sensed simmering there, she found herself thinking the offer was one hundred percent serious.
“…I would really like to speak with her, as I said,” he added.
Smiling at him, in spite of herself, she laid a hand on his arm.
“No, honey,” she said, caressing his skin, then leaning up impulsively to kiss him on the mouth. “But thank you.”
Loki flinched.
Then he looked down at her hand on him, and her fingers.
He stared long enough that Lia was about to remove her hand, thinking perhaps she’d crossed some kind of boundary with him. She was about to withdraw her fingers when he suddenly caught them in his, bringing her palm up to his lips.
Kissing her hand, then her fingers, tenderly that time, he smiled at her.
“I like you very much, Lia Winchester,” he said seriously.
She smiled wider. “Do you, now?”
“I do.”
Thinking about that, she felt her smile fade.
“What you did to the driver,” she said, watching his eyes. “The man who owned this.” She indicated around at the Bugatti Divo. “The man at the taxi stand. And the stewardesses.”
Lia hesitated, studying his green eyes, wondering if he would tell her the truth if she asked. Wondering if she would know if he was lying.
Worse, wondering if she could bear to watch him lie if she did know.
“Yes?” Loki lifted that eyebrow, giving her a faintly wicked smile. “Is there something you wish to ask me, my darling, sexy, utterly adorable little elf?”
Lia hesitated a beat longer.
Finally, she resolved herself.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.
“No,” he said.
He stripped the humor from his voice, leaving it hard as metal.
“…Absolutely not,” he added. “No, Lia. Never.”
She flinched, then frowned.
“What question are you answering?” she said, skeptical.
“No, I never did that to you,” he said. “NO, I never messed with your mind, or glamoured you, apart from masquerading as that old woman on the plane. NO, I never convinced you to do something you would not have otherwise done. No, I never did to you what I did to them. NO, I never coerced you in some dishonest way to let me fuck you.”
He stared at her eyes, his green eyes serious, verging on guileless.
Squeezing her hand where he continued to hold it in his, he added,
“I’m not even convinced it would work on you at this point, little elf. I’m beginning to think you may have god’s blood in your ancestry somewhere. You are far too clever and perceptive for your own good, even if you are a full-blooded human.”
At Lia’s frown, he grinned.
“No, dummy,” he said, louder, pushing at her shoulder playfully, the way she had with him. “No, no, no. NO. I do not force ANYONE into sex with me. Never. Absolutely never. My pride would never allow it. I certainly don’t do it to pretty elves I have a horrendous crush on, especially ones who suck my cock in dressing rooms… and let me dress them in slutty clothes just so I may molest them more easily… and allow me to fuck them in all manner of perverted ways on commercial airplanes filled with human passengers…”
“Never?” she said, skeptical, raising an eyebrow of her own.
“Never,” he affirmed. “I told you… a little bad. Not evil.”
The frown continued to toy at her lips.
Strangely, though, it wasn’t because she didn’t believe him.
It was because she did.
9
Sisters
Lia bit her lip, staring into the rearview mirror at the enormous beachfront house behind her.
She was seated on the driver’s side of the Bugatti Divo, waiting for Loki, who’d disappeared inside the mansion. She stared at the front door, willing him to reappear. Willing him to come back out, for him to have Maia with him, for both of them to be okay.
Her eyes darted to the clock on the dash.
She looked up to the roof, at the men holding semi-automatic rifles.
She looked back at the front door.
It was way too damned quiet.
But Loki told her to wait here.
He told her to get into the driver’s seat once he was gone, and wait for him.
He told her he would be right back.
That was at least thirty minutes ago.
She was beyond worried.
She was worried as hell about her baby sister, Maia.
She was worried, God help her, about Loki.
She was worried he’d been caught, or shot, or worse.
She stared at the mansion’s front door, willing it to open, even as some part of her strained for any sound, looking for any irregularity, any change in the guards overhead that would give her some indication of what was going on inside those walls.
The guards looked the same, however. And most of what Lia heard was the sound of the ocean coming from either side of the rocky, tree-covered cliff. She heard the wind, birds in the sky, the distant sound of a television.
There was nothing else.
Until suddenly, there was.
Gunshots.
Two of them––one right after the other.
Lia jumped in her seat, panting. She turned around entirely in the leather seat, staring through the back window at the front of the mansion.
The red-painted, enormous door remained closed.
Lia turned back to face front, looking at the side mirror closest to her, which she’d tilted at an angle that allowed her to see the guards on the roof.
For the first time, she saw a change there, too.
They were all gone.
The roof was empty.
Lia sat there, panting, listening for more sounds.
The problem was, the only sounds she could think of that would actually tell her anything about what was going on inside were bad sounds.
More gunfire. Screams. Explosions.
She didn’t hear any of that, not now, but once was enough.
Cursing under her breath, Lia yanked on the
silver handle located on the inside of the panel to open the Bugatti’s driver’s-side door. Pushing the door the rest of the way open with her hand and leg, she got out, looked around, then made a run for the front door of the house.
She found it unlocked and didn’t wait, turning the handle and pushing it open, poking her head in and peering around.
No one.
The entryway was entirely empty.
She didn’t hear footsteps upstairs. She didn’t see anyone on the long deck visible through the bay windows below the foyer. The sunken living room just past the entryway was empty, too, right in front of the massive window overlooking the Pacific.
The whole ocean-facing side of the house, including the windows in the living room, jutted out in the shape of a triangle, like the prow of a massive ship. Out on the deck itself, Lia saw a fire pit, a jacuzzi, blue and white deck furniture, a number of fountains.
It might have been nice, if it belonged to anyone else.
Closing the front door quietly behind her, she crept forward, checking out the rest of the living room and bar, both of which were visible to her once she’d crept past the mirrored walls of the entryway. The cathedral ceiling stretched above, but Lia’s view of that continued to be obstructed somewhat by the floor above, and the carpeted stairs, which started on the right side of the foyer.
Everything looked empty.
The house was silent.
Lia knew the basic layout of the house, just from coming here with her mom as she was growing up. Gregor’s office, the kitchen, dining room, and two living rooms were downstairs. So was the security station, a gym, an entertainment room, and a small private theater.
All the bedrooms were upstairs.
So was a second study, a sex-dungeon playroom Lia had the misfortune of stumbling upon once, while she was still in high school, and a second common area with a small wet bar and some pool tables.
Cocking her head, Lia listened, trying to decide which direction to go.
It struck her how foolhardy this was.
She should have waited for Loki in the car.
There was no point coming in here if she had no idea where Loki was, or where Maia was, or what Loki’s plan had been to get both of them out. For all Lia knew, Loki might have cased the whole place already, and not found Maia anywhere inside the building.
Maia could be down by the pool.
Maia could also be down on the beach.
Lia remembered playing down there a lot when she was in high school, entertaining baby Maia and waiting for her mom to “finish up” with Gregor in the house.
Hell, Gregor might have taken Maia with him to the airport.
He might even have done it as a reward for Lia, since he thought Lia was bringing him the windfall of Loki and the ring.
Grimacing at the thought, Lia stood in the entryway, trying to decide what to do.
She was about to back slowly out of the house––
When she heard a car approaching outside, on the driveway.
Feeling every muscle in her body clench, Lia turned her head, staring out the clear glass squares that formed slightly-warped windows on either side of the front door. Through those squares, she saw a caravan of cars heading down the white-paved driveway towards her, and towards the house she’d just broken into.
Panting, Lia watched the cars with their blacked-out windows as they stopped all around the driveway. She flinched as the doors started to open, expelling a lot of men. Over half of those men wore regular street clothes, despite the fancy cars with their chrome fronts and blacked-out windows. Several wore sports jerseys over jeans, with only a few wearing more expensive suits and designer outfits that made her think of Eurotrash club-wear from the nineties.
Gregor’s guys.
Lia recognized most of them.
She knew a lot of them by name.
Holding her breath, she waited, staring around at the crowd of forms, looking to see if Maia came out of any of those vehicles. She only saw a single female in that entire sea of male bodies and faces, and Lia recognized her, too.
Maria Velacruz was one of Gregor’s lawyers and oldest personal friends.
The woman was also pushing sixty.
Definitely not Lia’s twelve-year-old sister.
Then Lia saw a man get out of the middle car, wearing a full Armani suit, dark gray, with a black shirt and a black square in his front lapel pocket.
He buttoned the suit jacket as he stepped out of the back of a Rolls-Royce someone else had been driving, gazing up at his mansion, a hard frown on his face.
Gregor.
She had no trouble recognizing that salt-and-pepper curly hair, the full mouth, the pale skin, the rings he wore on four of his fingers.
She knew Gregor Farago was Hungarian or something like that, but he looked so much like a mobster out of a movie, from his clothes down to the way he spoke, his hand gestures and those dumb sunglasses he was always wearing, she forgot and made him Greek or Italian in her mind, somewhere Mediterranean.
Unfortunately, Lia knew that face, though.
She knew it well enough to recognize the exact expression Gregor wore, even with the dark wraparound shades obscuring his eyes.
Gregor was murderous.
She watched her “boss” tug down the edges of his suit jacket, then follow three of his men towards the front door of his house.
Feeling her breath start to stall and hitch in her chest, Lia turned back towards the interior of the house, trying to decide what to do.
She was still standing there, half-paralyzed, when she heard a scream.
The scream came from inside the house.
It was a girl’s scream.
A heartbreakingly familiar scream.
Lia heard it echo over her head, and knew it came from upstairs.
She didn’t think.
Turning on her heel, she darted across the foyer, running up the carpeted stairs two at a time in her furred boots. She dashed down the hallway at the top of the stairs, aiming her feet for a row of doors she knew as bedrooms, including the one where she’d slept in high school, the same one where her sister had been sleeping for the past five years, ever since their mother abandoned them.
Lia ran, all-out, for that room now.
As it turned out, her instincts were good––accurate, at least.
Lia stopped in the doorway, grabbing the wood frame in both hands as she stared inside, panting. The scene greeting her eyes confused her at first, alarmed her, then infuriated her, then alarmed her all over again as she took in the three people inside her old bedroom.
She found Loki with her eyes first.
She felt nothing but relief when her new god-boyfriend appeared to be all right.
She couldn’t say the same for the man currently with Loki, but honestly, Lia couldn’t have cared less about him. He definitely wasn’t Lia’s priority.
Her eyes swung around the rest of the room then, searching for Maia.
She found her in a matter of seconds.
Her kid sister Maia, twelve years old, was crammed into the opposite corner of the room from Loki and his new “friend,” in the crevice behind a twin bed with unicorn sheets, and only a few yards away from Lia. The bed, which was covered in fluffy pink and white pillows, and a unicorn comforter, had been pushed into an odd angle, almost like someone had trapped her back there, behind the bed.
Or maybe like they’d put her there for safekeeping, moving the bed to shield her.
Maia sat on the floor, her knees bent, her eyes too round in her face.
She was staring across the room, where Loki was dealing with the other person in the room, an enormous man Lia knew.
Ernie.
Ernie worked for Gregor, and was pretty high up in his inner circle from what Lia knew. She had no idea if Ernie was his real name. Everyone called him Ernie, either because it actually was his name or because he had a bizarre habit of wearing shirts with horizontal black, orange, and yellow stripes, making
him look like the Muppet character of Burt and Ernie fame.
Unlike the Muppet, this Ernie was built like a tank.
Each of his arms was bigger than both of Lia’s legs put together.
He had an enormous barrel chest, a sagging gut, thick legs, huge hands.
Juxtaposed with his size was a strangely young-looking, baby-round face.
Between his shape and the clothes he wore, he’d always looked like an oversized toddler to Lia, although he had to be in his late thirties, at least. As long as she’d known him, Lia always thought he looked like the offspring of some kind of fairytale ogre.
Right now, Ernie wasn’t having a good day.
Loki was slamming the big man’s head against the wall.
Repeatedly.
Not at all gently.
He was slamming it hard enough, Ernie’s skull had already worn a hole in the paint and the sheetrock below, and was now connecting with a solid thunk with the wooden, two-by-four stud that lived under the paint and sheetrock.
As Loki slammed the man’s head into the wall, he muttered angrily under his breath.
At first, Lia didn’t understand him. She heard him muttering words in some other language, something she didn’t recognize.
Then he switched to English, and she understood perfectly.
As she did, the rage she’d felt when first seeing her sister bloomed back in her chest.
“We… do… not… touch… children…” Loki growled, slamming the man’s head harder. “We… do… not… think… about… touching… children. We… do… not… dress… children… in… adult… only… clothing…”
Lia’s jaw clenched until it hurt.
She looked at Maia again, and, more to the point, at what she was wearing.
Her hands clenched into fists as she fought to suppress her rage.
Then she ran for her.
“MAIA!”
She more or less screamed her name.
The horror and fury she’d been suppressing exploded out of her, so intensely she couldn’t think straight, could barely breathe. Lia shoved the bed out of the way, running for her sister, feeling her horror deepen when she saw the rest of what her sister wore.
Someone had painted her face with gaudy, burlesque-style, clown make-up.
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