by Laura Hall
I narrowed my gaze on Charlie and let my charge rise. My eyes went a little silver, a new effect I’d noticed in the mirror last night. By the way his complexion went blotchy, I’d achieved the desired result.
“If I do this, I want in. Full access to the investigation. Files, reports, interviews. Everything.”
His lips twitched. “Done. Lola?”
I’d walked right into a trap.
The vampire came forward, giving me a wide berth, and extended a manila folder. I took it and she jerked backward, rubbing both arms. At my look, she said, “All my hair just went up. Surprised me, is all.”
“Sorry.” I let my charge dissipate and tore open the folder, shaking the contents onto my palm. A sleek cell phone and a clip-on badge.
“The ID card will get you into the precinct and access to the relevant case files.” Charlie gestured to the phone. “I’ve put in my number and Lola’s.”
I bit the inside of my lips and nodded. “Okay. When’s the meeting with the Bankses?”
“Tomorrow morning at ten.”
I glanced at Lola, who shrugged. “Hazard of the job. I’ll catch up at sundown.”
The only vamps who enjoyed sunbathing were Ancients, those who, like Connor, had already been packing centuries at the time of Ascension. Humans like Lola who’d transitioned to bloodsuckers were—unfortunately for their day jobs—still stuck in the dark.
I took one last look at the photo, at the smiling, youthful faces. “I’ll need a copy of that.”
Maybe, just maybe, I could use my other skill set to pinpoint the missing women’s locations. I’d never tried it with a photograph before, but it was worth a shot.
Charlie pulled the photo from the frame and handed it to me. “We’ve got another.”
I drew a slow breath. “I’ll see you at the precinct at eight-thirty?”
“Make it eight. They’re out in Calabasas.”
I nodded; traffic was going to be a bitch. “Good night.”
“Good night, Fiona. And thank you.”
Seven
The next morning was a hellish comedy only Mal enjoyed. Punishment, he told me, for mixing sleeping pills and wine like I was a practiced socialite. The headache was a small price to pay for not dreaming, or so I’d thought before things went downhill.
First, Mal refused to treat my hangover with a spell, giving me a lecture about ethical magic use. Then, after a fabulously long shower, my blow dryer short-circuited. Not my fault, for once. After solving the problem with a ponytail, I spent forty minutes trying to find appropriate work attire in the boxes from my old apartment. The resulting effect was not the competent, professional look I’d been going for. By the sound of Mal’s laughter following me to the small parking lot behind the pub, he concurred.
Finally, my car wouldn’t start.
I was seconds from a temper tantrum when my loaned cell phone rang. Answering without checking caller ID, I snapped, “I know I’m late. I’m coming.”
“It’s Katrina. I’m parked in the alley.”
I hated surprises. Really hated them.
I rounded the corner of the building and stared down the alley. Katrina was leaning against the hood of a black sports car, grinning because she loved surprises as much as I hated them.
I wanted to be mad at her, but the truth was I’d missed her. A lot. “What are you doing here?” I asked, smiling in spite of myself.
She pulled a badge from her back pocket and flashed it with exaggerated flourish. “Agent Accosi, formerly of the FBI, now with the Western Prime’s Office.”
My smile faltered. “You work for the Prime?”
Her own smile wilted a bit, then held. “Yes, for the past four months. After what happened last year I decided the FBI wasn’t for me. The Prime offered me a job. Actually, the Omega did. Adam’s my official boss. And my title is Inspector not Agent. It makes me sound British, right?” When I didn’t say anything, she continued, “I spoke with Detective Ramirez this morning. He’s going to meet us at the Banks’ residence. Fiona? Stop staring at me like that. Your eyes are changing color and it’s freaking me out.”
I was staring because for the first time in memory, I could clearly see a shifter’s aura. I was so floored, it didn’t matter that Connor might have sent someone to keep tabs on me.
Katrina’s aura pulsed with her heart, undulating around her like heat on asphalt. A cocoon of shimmering, jelly-like air. When I tried to look right at it, it slithered out of sight, but if I let my eyes lose focus a bit I saw all sorts of strange details. A congealed shadow on her left shoulder. What looked like a pinwheel of dense air over her right knee.
I shook my head to snap out of it. Focusing on her face, her aura was once more near-invisible. “This might seem weird, but do you have old injuries in your left shoulder and right knee?”
She went a little pale under her tan. “I was shot in the shoulder two years ago. Blew my knee out running track in high school.” She studied my face. “You’re not wearing gloves anymore and Adam said you won’t kill my car. Clearly you have stories to tell. Maybe we can get a beer later and catch up?”
I’d never been very good at holding grudges, mainly because the one against my mother took up all available energy.
“I’d like that,” I said and headed to the passenger side of a car that cost more than I’d made in my lifetime. I slid into the bucket seat, sighing at the luxuriously soft leather. Perks of working for the Prime’s Office.
As Katrina settled behind the wheel and started the car, I asked, “You’re here to babysit me, aren’t you?”
She flashed a quick smile. “I do have experience in that department.” I groaned and she laughed, navigating us out of the alley. “The official line is I’m here to consult on this missing persons case. The order came late last night and I was on a plane two hours later. I didn’t know you were in LA until I was briefed on the way down.”
Doing my best to sound casual, I asked, “Who briefed you?”
She gave me a sympathetic glance. “Some stiff with creepy eyes and a bad haircut. Have you met him?”
I swallowed disappointment. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
To my relief, Katrina continued swiftly, “Based on my assessment of the case notes and this meeting with the Banks family, I might ask Adam to come down. He said he can be here tonight or tomorrow. That’s if we think we’re dealing with a rogue Sapphire Mage.” I felt her glance on the side of my face. “Detective Ramirez said you didn’t think ciphers were involved.”
I sighed. “I said I didn’t know. The apartment I visited was wiped clean. No magical resonance and according to Charlie—Detective Ramirez—no trace evidence either. We can’t rule out alchemy.”
“Could you have missed it? The resonance of it or whatever?”
“Not a chance,” I said and left it at that.
She paused, then said quietly, “Sorry. Of course not.”
Half a year later, I still had nightmares about what an alchemical spell felt like right before it tried to kill you. Nails on a chalkboard. Pins and needles all over. The aftermath was just as memorable, a vibration that made my teeth ache.
“I almost forgot,” Katrina said brightly. “I brought you a present.” She grabbed a small leather pouch from a compartment on the dash and tossed it in my lap.
Inside was a thin black cord with a milky crystal attached. The stone bore a muted glow. Immediately recognizing it as a replacement for the one I’d lost, I whispered, “Hallelujah,” and slipped the cord over my head. I didn’t feel the spell take hold—Adam was too skilled for that—but saw the hair on my shoulder deepen to its original dark brown.
With a sigh, I settled back into my seat.
“You really don’t like standing out, do you?” asked Katrina with a smirk.
I snorted. “Habit from when touching people could kill them.”
“Ah, yes,” she said sagely. “The good old days.”
We glanced at each other and burst out
laughing. The tension inside me eased a little and for the first time since the apartment yesterday, I relaxed. “What’s it like working for Adam?” I asked.
Katrina pulled into the parking lot otherwise known as the 101 freeway. With an aggravated grunt, she said, “The first positive is not living in L.A.”
“Yeah, I didn’t miss it when I was in Montana. Now spill.”
She smirked. “It’s interesting. Adam is wicked powerful but doesn’t act like it, you know? Then he turns a boulder to dust or chops down a tree with his head.” She must have felt my stare because she added, “He calls it anger management.”
I could almost hear him speaking the words, in a tone so dry it was hard to tell whether he was joking. I laughed lightly to cover up a surprising pang of loss, though from Katrina’s wince it wasn’t very convincing.
Feeling sad and masochistic, I asked, “Do you see the Prime often?” Silence filled the car long enough to make me nervous. “Never mind. Super awkward question, I know.”
“No, it’s fine.” She cleared her throat. “I see him occasionally. We’ve worked a few cases together. There was this vampire in San Francisco abducting weaker vamps and forcing them to form a nest. He was a total sicko. I helped hunt him down and Connor staked him. Have you ever seen a vampire get staked? It’s disgusting.”
You almost died tonight.
No, I didn’t. Every last drop of blood could be drained from me, and I would still live, a comatose and withered husk.
What about a stake through the heart?
That only kills young ones.
I shook my head of the memory and went for the final thorn in my metaphorical paw. “And Declan? How’s he?”
Katrina coughed. “He’s, uh, good. Taking some time off.”
A funny feeling twisted my stomach. Declan Thomas, alpha werewolf and third spoke of the Western Triumvirate, lived a shifter’s dream life. He had hundreds of acres of forest to run free in, a wing of the Prime’s ginormous compound for his pack, and the laughable responsibility of protecting Connor, arguably the person least requiring protection in the world.
“Tell me, please,” I said.
“I wasn’t there for the worst of it, right after you left. I guess Connor had ordered Declan to keep tabs on you while he was out of town.”
I will see you in two days, mo spréach.
My chest squeezed. “But it wasn’t Declan’s fault. There was no way he could have tracked me. Adam wiped all trace of me from the compound.”
“I know this, you know this. Declan saw it differently.”
The first time I’d fled the compound was with help from Katrina’s cousin Ethan, at the time still a Sapphire Mage but no less clever for it. Ethan had obscured my scent and planted it elsewhere, misleading Declan and the pack and allowing us to reach a getaway car. Declan had caught on too late and taken it as a personal failure.
To have it happen a second time must have hit him even harder.
“Where is he?” I asked softly.
“Somewhere in the Midwestern Prime’s territory. I guess he’s old friends with her Alpha.”
My gaze caught on the woman in the car next to us. She was alone and clearly distraught, yelling and gesticulating wildly at the thousand or so cars in front of her. Watching her, I felt a twisted camaraderie. The cars were the feelings and fears I couldn’t process because no one had taught me how. So I raged against them. Pointlessly. And meanwhile, I never moved forward and was constantly exhausted.
There was only one person in the world who quieted my perpetual agitation. In whose presence I felt safe and secure. And also free. Free to be who I wanted, to do whatever I wanted, to stop hiding.
But freedom was fucking scary.
“Shit, Fiona,” murmured Katrina. “This isn’t easy for any of us. You’re like the ghost that haunts the Western Triumvirate. It’s a faux pas to talk about you.”
I didn’t say anything.
We inched forward another mile.
Finally, she told me the rest: “The Prime thought the Fae had taken you and that was why he couldn't sense you.”
My fingers spasmed, my charge shivering to life with the surging of my emotions. The engine whined and the navigation display flickered. “Whoa there,” murmured Katrina, and I took deep breaths until my charge quieted and the car recovered.
I told myself what was done was done, that no one ever changed the past by hoping for a better one. But no matter how many jumping jacks for positivity I did, the news still made me want to crawl in a hole for a decade. I didn’t owe Connor apologies. I owed him never speaking to him again.
He’d been a slave of the Fae for a hundred years. I didn’t know the details of his time with them, or even which Court—Red, White, or Black—he’d been with, but I knew he loathed them. All of them. Like the entire race had been somehow complicit in his suffering.
Katrina continued mutedly, “Like I said, I wasn’t there right after you left, but I heard that Adam and Declan couldn’t talk him down and finally called the other Primes. I don’t know what the vamps did, but they stopped him from going to war.”
Dear God.
Connor possessed the only vampiric aura strong enough I could see it, and I knew it was but a pale shadow of his actual power. His true strength I’d felt only once, when he’d thought me in danger from Katrina’s cousin Ethan. But even then he’d kept it leashed, merely opening the door to the dark, limitless universe inside him.
I didn’t know—or remember—how powerful the head honchos of the Fae were, but it was hard to imagine them withstanding a nuclear Connor Thorne.
I shuddered. “He’s really mad at me,” I said inanely. “But I couldn’t stay. It was the right choice.”
Gently, Katrina asked, “Who are you trying to convince?”
To my horror, my mother’s voice echoed in my mind: Sometimes I make choices that hurt other people, people I love, because I’m forced to choose between them and the greater good.
For Delilah, the greater good was synonymous with her personal interests. I certainly hadn’t considered Connor’s feelings when I’d run for the hills. Or the consequences of him not knowing where I was, or if I was alive. I’d only been concerned with myself and my fears.
Which meant I was no better than my mother.
“Finally,” muttered Katrina.
The traffic was clearing.
Eight
Calabasas had changed a lot since I was a kid. Where there used to be mostly uncultivated hills with old, ranch style homes on huge acreage now sat tightly packed gated communities. With help from the car’s navigation system, we found our way to the correct community, where an armed guard at a gatehouse checked a list for our names. After a thorough inspection of Katrina’s badge and much glaring at my driver’s license—an expired one found in one of my junk boxes last night—he let us through.
“I’m surprised he didn’t recognize your name.”
“It’s a good thing, trust me,” I said, thinking about my brief stint as a paparazzi target.
Silence had reigned in the car for last half hour. Katrina knew me well enough to respect when I didn’t want to talk; pushing for conversation would go nowhere. Even when we’d been bartending together, I’d never been much of a chatterbox.
Some people needed to air out their troubles, talk them through. But I was my father’s daughter. Where others emoted, we imploded.
We turned onto a steep driveway, heading toward the colossal mansion at the top. I glanced behind us, then said blandly, “A gated house within a gated community.”
Katrina chuckled. “It’s Steven Banks. Did you see his last film?”
“Nope. Heard it made a lot of people mad.”
She snorted. “To put it lightly. No one on top likes to be pointed at, especially a mayor who’s now a congressman.”
I had a vague memory of hearing customers at the pub talking about it. “There was a barely veiled human trafficking allegation, right? Didn’t it lead t
o some arrests?”
“Yes, but not the congressman,” she said, her lips thinning briefly. “Talk in the Bureau was he paid Banks off. But it couldn’t be proven.”
I scrunched my nose. “Ew.”
“Agreed. It’s not the first time Banks has been linked to shady dealings. He’s a self-serving slimeball.”
I eyed the monstrous stone façade of the modern castle as we pulled to a stop behind Charlie’s unmarked cruiser. After spotting the fifth surveillance camera suspended along the front of the home, I stopped counting. Slimy and paranoid, apparently.
I followed Katrina out of the car, past Charlie’s empty one, and up a flight of slate steps to the huge front door. She made use of a gaudy knocker, but instead of the expected noise of metal on wood, there was a loud chime.
I tugged on the hem of my T-shirt, a faded UC Berkeley artifact that barely met the waistband of my skintight jeans. Combat boots completed my failed efforts. Feeling Katrina’s stare, I muttered, “I know, I look like a college student.”
Tawny eyebrows lifted. “I thought it was intentional. Play the unassuming young woman to connect with Daphne.”
“Right,” I said dryly.
Locks rotated in the door, igniting nerves in my stomach, and a soft green glow ringed the doorframe. After at least ten rotations of hidden mechanisms, the wood slid into a pocket with a heavy thump and the glow faded.
Facing us was a woman, five-two or thereabouts, with blond hair, angular features, and shiny metal skin. Her eyes, which for Katrina were probably flat steel, shone fluorescent blue for me as they rolled up and down our bodies.
I gaped at my first magicked robot.
“Welcome,” chimed a pleasing, if mechanical voice. “You are Inspector Accosi and Fiona Sullivan. I am Marsha. I will lead you to your destination. Do you comply?”
“Yes, thank you,” said Katrina, shooting me a subtle eye roll for my plebeian reaction.
The bot chirped and spun, gliding down a wide hallway. Katrina took the lead and I followed distractedly, stopping and starting multiple times as my sight was tickled by colorful spellwork. Soft yellow haloed the houseplants, purifying air and maintaining soil moisture—I might have seen an infomercial last night. Purple shone from a chandelier and several light fixtures. Maybe they were set on a timer? The floors, walls, and ceiling were dusted with pale gold. A cleaning spell?