Thrall

by Jennifer Blackstream

  Normally, the Cleveland Clinic takes confidentiality very, very seriously. But when you’re a powerful sorceress convinced your wife is in mortal peril, and the staff of the clinic are human… Well, they never stood a chance.

  Arianne stormed away from the help desk, leaving the staff member fast asleep with her face on the keyboard, the room number of Iman’s “patient” still on the computer screen. Liam and I followed behind her, both of us bracing for the worst. Liam and Scath both scented the air, and when we got closer to our destination, Liam growled.

  “I smell Sideris,” he said under his breath.

  “Me too.” Scath’s green eyes brightened. “What do you suppose he was doing here?”

  Majesty perked up, poking his fuzzy head out of the pouch. I said a small prayer that he wouldn’t make trouble, promising any deity that would listen that if we could just get out of the building full of vulnerable people, I would absolutely take the time to set off the chaos kitten in the safety of an abandoned lot. Majesty looked at me and tilted his head.

  Can you hear me? I thought at him, semi-hysterical at the idea.

  Majesty meowed, then looked away to stare at the hospital room door.

  “Rhinoceros,” Peasblossom hissed. “That’s what it’s going to be.”

  “Don’t even joke about that,” I moaned.

  Arianne grasped the door to the room and opened it quickly, letting the enchantment that hid her true appearance fall away. She froze in the doorway, her entire body going rigid.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, my heart pounding.

  “Iman,” Arianne whispered.

  I dropped my disguise as I hedged around her and immediately froze.

  Iman was kneeling on the floor of the hospital room. Beside her, lay Aubrey.

  Dead.

  Chapter 13

  “Arianne.” Iman paused in the middle of brushing her hair back from her ear to look up at us. She sounded surprised, but not unpleasantly so. “What are you doing here?” Then she noticed the rest of us, and a crease formed between her brows. “Is something wrong?”

  I knelt beside Aubrey, and Scath followed immediately, keeping herself between me and Iman. The pouch around her swung slightly and Majesty squirmed inside until he could peek his fuzzy head out. His eyes settled on me as I felt for a pulse. As I’d suspected, I found none.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Iman held up her hands in the universal, “It’s all right” gesture. “It’s not what it looks like. But I’m afraid you’ve interrupted something.” She twisted to look around the room, searching for someone or something and apparently not finding them. “Was there someone else in the room with me when you arrived?”

  “Like who?” Liam asked. Peasblossom had dropped his glamour at the same time I’d dropped mine, returning him to his normal, intimidating self.

  Arianne elbowed her way past me to grab Iman’s hand and pull her to her feet. The dream sorceress wouldn’t look at me, her gaze boring into her wife. “Iman, come with me into the hallway and tell me what happened. Tell me everything that happened.”

  “We all need to hear this.” Liam didn’t attempt to physically block the door, but he angled his body toward Arianne and Iman, and his aura swelled as if he expected trouble. The temperature of the room kicked up a degree or two. At least for me.

  Arianne didn’t look at him, but her back stiffened. I glanced at Scath. If the sorceress thought her wife was in trouble, she’d flee. Possibly throw a spell or two to make sure we didn’t follow. Scath shifted a few inches closer to the door, and I called my magic, holding it ready.

  “You know I can’t tell you anything,” Iman chastised her. She glanced around, seeming to notice the rising tension from everyone else in the room. “This is—”

  She stopped talking. I followed her gaze to Liam when he paused next to a patient lying in the hospital bed against the far wall. The woman was hooked up to the usual monitors tracking heart rate and other major functions—but none of them were on. No lights, no soft beeping. Someone had unplugged the whole setup. Liam put a finger against the patient’s throat, even though if there’d been a heartbeat to feel, he’d have heard it. He looked at me and shook his head.

  “Wait,” Iman said, pulling away from Arianne and going to the bedside. “Wait, something’s wrong.” She looked back at Aubrey’s body on the floor. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.” She stared hard at Liam. “You never answered my question. Was there someone else here when you got here? Did you see anyone leave this room?”

  “I think you need to tell us what happened,” I said gently.

  Arianne looked like she was giving serious consideration to a teleportation spell. I knew the look of someone who’d decided saving a loved one was worth any price. Love and loyalty over justice.

  Scath slipped the pouch with Majesty in it over her head and put it on the bed with the dead patient. Getting ready to shift if necessary. Arianne’s gaze flicked to her.

  “Iman, if you run, then the Vanguard will never leave you alone,” I told her.

  “Why would I run?” Iman asked, her voice higher as she began to register the looks on the faces around her. “They hired me for this.”

  “Tell us,” Liam encouraged her.

  Iman glanced from Aubrey’s body to the bed. “I work with the Vanguard’s witness protection program. Today, I received a call telling me to be in this room at eleven o’ clock.”

  Now her confidence faltered. “The way it should have worked is that a member of the Vanguard should have been here with the patient whose body was being donated as a host for the witness. Then the witness would show up separately, independently. The Vanguard would confirm the witness’ identity and reaffirm that they wanted to join the program. Then I would connect the witness to the patient.”

  She pointed to the hospital bed. “We use patients whose families have given permission to take them off life support. The family is given a wooden changeling to bury. The patient’s real body is brought to the room for the transfer of the witness.”

  “You can transfer someone’s mind to a new body?” I asked.

  “Only if there is no consciousness in the other body,” Iman clarified. “If the body is occupied by its original spirit, I can’t force them out to let someone else in. Usually, after I’ve transferred the witness’ consciousness into a new body, the Vanguard confirms it was a success. Then they escort me to the lobby and use a simple spell to wipe the last ten minutes or so from my mind, preserving the anonymity of the witness and their new body. They thank me, pay me in cash, and I leave. Then they return to the witness and transport them to their new life. I don’t know where they go.”

  Now she focused completely on the body lying in the hospital bed. “All I remember is knocking on the door to this room. Then you were here, and I was alone in the room with Aubrey and Janet.” She looked at the dead patient again. “Can you tell how Janet died?”

  I came closer to study the woman lying in the bed. Her dark hair lay in a limp messy ponytail on the pillow beside her, and her pale brown skin had lost its warmth. “We’ll need an autopsy. There are any number of ways to kill someone in a hospital, even without magic. Most of them very subtle.”

  Liam pulled out his cell phone. “I’ll call Kylie.”

  “I’m taking Iman home.” Arianne pulled her wife toward the door.

  And just like that, an uncomfortable silence swallowed the room.

  Iman cleared her throat. “I think Detective Sergeant Osbourne may have some questions for me.”

  “He can ask them at the hotel. And when he’s done, I’m taking you away, somewhere safe.”

  There was something about the way she said the last part that made me think she had a specific hideaway in mind. Somewhere I’d wager we’d never find Iman if it turned out she’d had a hand in these deaths.

  Iman jerked her hand away. “Stop it! Can’t you see that your over-protectiveness is just going to make me look more sus
picious?” She threw out a hand, enveloping the room. “Law enforcement just found me alone in a room with two dead bodies.” She twisted to look at me as she pointed at Aubrey. “This woman. She’s involved in your investigation somehow, isn’t she? That’s what brought you here?”

  There was no point in denying it. “We spoke to her less than an hour ago,” I said calmly. “She told us you were the Emperor.”

  Two things happened at once. First, Arianne grabbed her wife again with one hand, swinging her free hand outward as if throwing a spell.

  Second, Scath tackled the sorceress.

  Arianne’s hold on her wife broke as Scath’s momentum carried them both to the ground. Her spell struck Scath’s stomach, and the sidhe’s breath left her in a loud whoosh of air. Liam’s aura seared my back as he partially shifted, black claws sprouting from his fingertips, muscles cording as he readied to leap into the fray. I only barely registered the familiar rap of a man’s shoes against tiled floor before someone spoke from the doorway.

  “Stop!” Moghadam’s voice broke over the room.

  I didn’t take my eyes off Arianne and Scath. Scath was powerful, but Arianne was a sorceress fighting for the woman she loved. She’d be as unpredictable as she was strong. And she didn’t strike me as the type to pull her punches.

  Arianne hit Scath with another spell that sent the shorter woman flying across the room into the opposite wall. She twisted in midair, her body melting into shadow. When she hit the wall, it was on all fours, and the body that sprang back at the sorceress was feline. Liam’s shift was graceful, but Scath’s was magic.

  “Arianne, no!” Iman cried.

  “I said stop!” Moghadam snapped.

  Liam grabbed hold of Scath as she rocketed by him, grabbing hold of her left front and back leg and swinging her around to use up the energy of her leap. I flung myself in front of Arianne, both hands held up, a shield humming between us just in case the sorceress threw another spell.

  “Nikolaos was here!” I said, desperation making my voice louder than I’d intended. “Iman is being set up!”

  I had no idea if that was true or not. But Nikolaos had been here, and right now, my number one concern was calming the angry sorceress, making her listen. And there was no way she’d listen to anything we had to say as long as she thought we believed her wife was guilty.

  Arianne’s dark pupils had swallowed the whites of her eyes, and she stared at me with a look that was more avian than human.

  “What?” she rasped.

  Moghadam looked down at the floor where Aubrey’s body lay, and his expression fell. “I’m too late.”

  “Too late?” Liam asked.

  The alpha’s voice was garbled, as if the partial shift had affected his mouth. He’d dropped Scath, and to my surprise, the black cat wasn’t punishing him for his interference. Instead, she’d fixed her green eyes on Arianne. Her thick black tail lashed back and forth, and I could almost imagine I felt her energy. Her desire to leap, to finish the fight she’d started. Liam had to feel it too, but he ignored her.

  The lawyer knelt on the floor, feeling for a pulse as if he had to be sure. “Aubrey is the one who contacted me earlier, when I was with the two of you. She asked me to meet her here. I was supposed to make sure…” His voice broke and he shook his head. “She was scared. I was supposed to make sure nothing went wrong. We had a code word, so I’d know it was her and she was okay.”

  “You left before we did,” I pointed out carefully. “How did we get here before you?”

  Moghadam gritted his teeth. “Someone punctured my tires. Not enough that I noticed when I first got in, but halfway here they were all flat. I had to get a taxi, and the insufferable man took the longest possible route.” He stopped, shook his head. “I know it wasn’t a coincidence. My car wasn’t vandalized randomly right before I was supposed to meet her.”

  He stood slowly and turned to face Arianne and Iman. “Ms. Monet, we’ve met before. At the Doctors Without Borders fundraiser, last spring?” His smooth voice came out strained, almost a little hoarse. That was to be expected, though, considering he was greeting them while standing over the dead body of his friend.

  “Of course, I remember you, Charity.” Arianne straightened and brushed her hands down her dress as if composing herself. She gestured at Aubrey, a quick, almost hesitant flick of her wrist. “I’m sorry for your loss. This woman was a friend of yours?”

  “She was.” He looked around the room, his gaze landing on Liam. “Detective Sergeant, can you tell me what happened?”

  Liam put his phone away as he edged around the hospital bed to put himself between the door to the room and the rest of those gathered inside. “We received a call from Aubrey shortly after you left us. She told us she believed the Emperor had harmed Iman. We immediately tried to contact Iman, and when we were unable to reach her, we contacted her wife.” He nodded to Arianne. “Mrs. Monet brought us here.”

  Both Arianne and I kept our faces composed, careful not to give away the incredibly misleading nature of Liam’s choice of phrase.

  “It’s ‘Ms. Monet,’ Detective Sergeant,” Arianne corrected him. “Using a specific title to denote a woman’s marital status is terribly outdated.”

  “Ms. Monet,” Liam amended.

  Moghadam looked from Aubrey’s body to the patient in the bed. “And you found this tragedy.”

  “Did Aubrey tell you what was going on?” I asked.

  Moghadam hesitated, then sighed. “Yes, she did. It’s why she asked me to be here. She was worried the Emperor might find out what she was doing and sabotage the process. She wanted me to be here, with the intention that when she was in her new body, she would approach me and let me know she was all right.” He paused, one hand fingering the cuff link on his opposite wrist. Finally, he looked at Liam.

  “Detective Sergeant Osbourne, I’m afraid I was not entirely forthcoming earlier. I was attempting to protect my client, but I’m afraid I may have erred too far on the side of caution.”

  “What do you mean?” Liam asked.

  He motioned in my direction. “I heard Ms. Renard say that Nikolaos was here. Is that true?”

  Liam kept his expression neutral. “It is.”

  “He can smell him,” Peasblossom supplied helpfully.

  Moghadam jumped. Peasblossom had chosen to make herself visible when she spoke this time, peeking out from under my hair to make it clear who was being helpful.

  “I— Yes, all right.” Moghadam looked at a loss for a moment.

  “This is Peasblossom,” I told him. “She’s my familiar.”

  “I see.” He cleared his throat, addressing Liam again. “And you’re certain what you…”

  “Smelled,” Peasblossom prompted.

  “Yes, are you certain Nikolaos was here? In the flesh? It couldn’t have been a mistake, perhaps Aubrey visited his home, or was with him recently? You’re certain Nikolaos was here?”

  “Positive,” Liam said.

  Moghadam ran a hand over his face. “Yesterday when you came to Nikolaos’ house. When Nikolaos and Stafford remained in the house alone together, I noticed the look on Stafford’s face when he came out. That smug smile. And the tension in Nikolaos’ expression. I’ve seen that dynamic before.” His mouth tightened into a grim line. “I believe Stafford was blackmailing him.”

  “Blackmail?” Liam shared a look with me. I remembered what he’d said before about Stafford using his gift for less than legal purposes instead of solving cases, if the financial incentive was strong enough.

  “You said you’ve seen that dynamic before?” I asked.

  “Have you ever been to Fortuna’s Stables?” Moghadam asked.

  I stiffened. “I have. But I’m a little surprised you have.”

  “I go where my clients go, Ms. Renard. And I’ve had more than one client driven to that awful place out of desperation. The fights can pay well. I don’t judge them for it.”

  “Who did Stafford blackmail at Fortun
a’s?” I asked.

  Moghadam’s mouth twisted into a sneer. “As I said, Ms. Renard. You’d be surprised how many among Cleveland’s rich and influential had a dark side they’d rather remain hidden. Some of the sins they pay for with their charitable donations are committed at that wretched place. And they have gotten more depraved recently.”

  Guilt took a bite of my confidence at the reminder of the consequences of what I’d previously considered a victory. I wilted against the hospital bed. Liam gave me a look, shaking his head in warning. I gave him a weak smile he probably didn’t believe.

  “We need to find Nikolaos,” Liam said. “I want to ask him what he was doing here, see what he has to say.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Arianne announced.

  I stared at her, flicking my gaze to Moghadam before meeting her dark-eyed stare that was still a little less human than it should have been.

  “Secrecy at this point is rather pointless,” Arianne said coldly. “As an accusation has been leveled against my wife. No one will believe that I would not involve myself at this juncture.”

  “If you’re worried for Iman, then shouldn’t your focus be on staying with her and keeping her safe?” I really didn’t want to come right out and say I didn’t think it was a good idea for our suspect’s wife to be involved in the hunt for an alternative suspect. Not that I thought Arianne would rather kill Nikolaos and blame him posthumously than see her wife punished for the Emperor’s crime.

  Though I wasn’t completely dismissing the possibility.

  “I’ll have some of my wolves stand guard,” Liam jumped in quickly. “That way Iman will be safe, and Arianne can work with us to find Nikolaos.”

  I stared at Liam, shocked that he was willing to let Arianne tag along. He must have the same concerns I did. Then I noticed the squinty-eyed stare Arianne was using to bore into the alpha, and I realized that Liam was forcing Arianne to make a choice. Agree to a guard on Iman—just in case she was the Emperor—or stay away from Nikolaos.