But if Yale didn’t kill Ruby, then where was she? There’d been no sign of her in the caretaker’s cottage at Fairchild Manor, where Yale and the others had been squatting in the cellar. Lark had cleaned it all out after the vampires were gone. So Yale had kidnapped the girl sometime in December, but hadn’t brought her to Litchfield with him in January. And with the vampire confined to London — perhaps even imprisoned by the Conclave, as best as I understood his current situation — who was looking after the kidnapped child?
Jasmine was turning away from the guest services desk with two keycards in hand before I’d finished crossing into the reception area. Grinning saucily, presumably due to the room upgrade she’d requested, she scampered past me, directing me toward a second bank of elevators that led to the guest rooms.
I picked up my pace, snagging one of the keys from her. “I’m sure the restaurant here is fantastic —”
“Yep,” she interrupted cheerily. “Classic American fare at the 720 South Bar and Grill. Luckily, they’ll send up room service.”
I just nodded. Getting Jasmine to take a long enough break from an investigation to eat in an actual restaurant was always a fruitless cause. Not that I minded. I’d miss the atmosphere, but Ruby Cameron needed to be found. The sooner the better.
The two-bedroom suite was classically decorated in beiges and browns, with generous crown molding and baseboards throughout. Highly polished, dark-stained hardwood flooring laid in a herringbone pattern led in from the entrance, past a long bar and through into a seating area filled with scoop-backed leather chairs and wood-framed windows that boasted a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree view of Grant Park and Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, the view was obscured by torrential rain. Again.
After I forced Jasmine to pick something from the room service menu, but before the food actually arrived, I set the reconstruction I’d collected in the playground on the glass-topped coffee table. Perched on the edge of the midcentury modern gray-fabric couch, I watched and rewatched the painful scene I’d collected within the cube, looking for clues.
Unfortunately, vampires didn’t emanate magic or leave as much residual in their wake as most Adepts did. As such, what I’d reconstructed and viewed in the playground was exactly what I’d captured in the cube. No hints of other magic at play. No hidden layers that needed to be investigated. Just Yale ravaging Coral’s mind and snatching Ruby, over and over again.
Jasmine had overtaken the desk in the parlor area across from the bar, plugging in a multitude of devices to charge. Some of them, I had no idea what they were or did.
“Aha!” she shouted abruptly. “The asshole was in Chicago.” She slapped her hand on the desk, then shook it as though she’d hurt herself. “Parking charge. On his Visa.” Her fingers flew across the keys of her laptop. “Just a second … I’m seeing if I can access the … yep. Here it is …” She slumped back in her seat, then met my gaze. “The bastard paid for parking two blocks from the goddamn playground.”
I nodded, though the idea of Yale stuffing Ruby in a car and driving off pained me. “It would have been an inopportune time to get towed. You know, when you’re kidnapping a child.”
Jasmine exhaled shakily, getting up and crossing to the bar area to grab a complimentary bottle of water and ransack the treats.
“Did he rent a car?” I wanted to get my mind back on the case, and not perpetually stuck on the image of a terrified ginger-haired child witch in the clutches of an evil vampire.
Jasmine shook her head.
“But they rented in Litchfield?”
She nodded, then chugged half the bottle of water.
“So … stolen car? Or he owns a vehicle, but didn’t want to bring it into Connecticut? Any other charges in Chicago?” I cast my mind back to the receipts Kett had investigated when we’d been tracking Jasmine. Things that would be unusual for a vampire to purchase. “Grocery stores? Restaurants? Takeout? Any indications that he was feeding Ruby?”
“He withdrew cash. Couple of thousand dollars. Same day. I’ll keep digging, just … give me a minute. I just need a … minute …” Jasmine’s voice broke as she turned back to liberate a candy bar from among the snack bar offerings.
My heart twisted in my chest. Jasmine’s pain was, as always, my own. It was just unusual for her to be so … emotionally wrought.
A knock sounded at the door.
“Room service,” I said, too brightly. “Perfect timing.”
Kneeling by the coffee table, we watched as night fell across the expansive lake. Jasmine nibbled on a burger mounded with aged cheddar, lettuce, tomato, and pickles on a brioche bun, and served with sweet-potato fries. I savored a smoked chicken flatbread layered with Mornay sauce, gouda, and pear, and sprinkled with toasted pecans.
While we ate, Jasmine opened all the notes she had compiled on Yale, then read through them out loud. Other than the parking receipt and the cash withdrawal, nothing else she’d found had indicated where Yale might have gone in Chicago. Or where he was in the weeks between his kidnapping Ruby, then kidnapping Jasmine in Connecticut.
“What about his brood?” I asked. “They’re dead now, but they weren’t then.”
Jasmine grunted noncommittally. “I have profiles compiled on each of them, but not a lot of data. First names, most likely false, and observations. But I didn’t take it any further after you and Kett had your grisly way with them.” The word ‘grisly’ was accompanied by a wide, viciously pleased grin. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I didn’t dispute my best friend’s version of the events that led to me inadvertently destroying two of Yale’s brood, Mania and Amaya. I’d used the magic of my white-picket-fence bracelet — which I had impetuously named Vampire’s Bane — amplified through the wild energy called forth from the Fairchild estate. It had reduced the two vampires to ash, after Kett beheaded Valko. Yale had managed to avoid the immolation, though I’d ejected him from the estate. Kett had captured him afterward, taking him to London.
Still, I wasn’t the one who’d been imprisoned and forcefully fed on for three days. If Jasmine felt that vengeance had been exacted purposely on my part, then I hoped it helped her work through her memories of terror and confusion. Kett’s taking of Valko’s head had certainly been done at Jasmine’s behest. And that had indeed been grisly.
I was slightly surprised that Jasmine hadn’t filled the files she’d started for Valko, Amaya, and Mania, as well as Yale’s nameless maker, after she’d been kidnapped. Given her psychological makeup, I would have thought that owning her kidnappers and her rapist after the fact — at least on a digital level — would have given her a sense of power over them.
I hadn’t thought to suggest that, though. Perhaps because I’d wanted to believe Jasmine’s insistence that she was all right, that she’d been seeing an empathic counselor routinely through the Convocation. Though it was likely that she’d been doing okay, at least engaged in the process of healing — right up to the moment she’d been handed the investigation of a kidnapped nine-year-old witch.
Perched over my plate, I cut another wedge from my flatbread, chewing the cheese-smothered smoked chicken thoughtfully as I ruminated out loud. “August 14.”
“Declan’s birthday,” Jasmine said without looking up from her laptop.
I set down my fork, taking a sip of the red wine Jasmine had selected from the generous collection of bottles underneath the bar. “Ruby’s birthday. You said Coral registered her birth with the Convocation.”
Jasmine glanced over at me, then shrugged. “So they’re both Leos. People share birthdays.”
“True.”
She bowed her head over her keyboard, multiple windows open across her screen. I had no idea how she kept track of what information she was inputting where.
I reached over and pushed her plate closer to her. She smiled, obligingly dipping a sweet-potato fry in garlic mayo.
“Why would Yale kidnap a young witch?” I asked. “He spends years avoiding the notice of the ex
ecutioner of the Conclave, carefully cultivating his shiver from willing Adepts.”
“Or unwilling,” Jasmine interjected.
“Or possibly unwilling,” I conceded. “But a nine-year-old couldn’t be remade, could she? Besides the fact that Kett indicated turning a child was against Conclave edict, would Ruby’s magic be mature enough to accept or assist in the transformation? And if she could be turned, to what end?”
“Ask Kett.”
I thought about texting the executioner, but then decided the question could wait until I saw him. “I know the particulars aren’t important to finding Ruby as quickly as possible, but it bothers me. Yes, Yale likes to play games. But kidnapping a witch is only going to draw the Convocation’s notice, then eventually Kett’s attention.”
“Eventually,” Jasmine said wryly.
And suddenly we weren’t talking about Ruby anymore. My stomach squelched. “He showed up within hours, Jasmine.”
“After you called.”
“He probably would have noticed you were missing earlier …” I trailed off, frowning as I realized I was defending Kett’s actions and motivations. I really didn’t know him well enough to be doing so.
Jasmine eyed me, twisting her lips in a smile. “I get it. He’s not omniscient.”
“Thank God.”
She laughed.
“How does Yale make money?” I asked, turning the subject back to the investigation. Not that either of us were any less emotional about a missing child, but Ruby’s kidnapping was something we could hopefully solve instead of simply enduring. As we endured our childhoods, our family. As Jasmine endured having been kidnapped and assaulted by Valko. “I mean, he had money, right? He has money?”
“Not anymore,” Jasmine said nastily. “I donated it all. Well, all of it that I found. He’s the type to have gold stashed in a few different places.”
I couldn’t help but grin. Jasmine might not be able to rip a vampire’s head off, but she could seriously screw up someone’s life with only a few keystrokes.
Taking another sip of wine and allowing the rich, earthy nectar to roll across my tongue, I hesitated to broach the idea that had been planted in my mind months before. “Kett implied that … well, we were arguing … so maybe he brought up Jasper as a distraction …”
Jasmine narrowed her eyes at me. “But he implied that our uncle was involved in my kidnapping.”
“He implied the possibility.”
“Of course he did. Because then he wouldn’t be solely to blame.”
“I’m just thinking that we now know Yale kidnapped two witches. But why? You were leverage against Kett. And maybe some sort of revenge on Jasper’s part. But why take Ruby? Why take a nine-year-old?”
“Yale boasted about adding you to his menagerie. Maybe he wanted another witch? Maybe that Mania bitch was driving him nuts.”
I shook my head. “That was just because I leveraged being Kett’s chosen child against him in order to make him back off. In the kitchen of the cottage, when I was trying to buy you and Declan time to get to the manor. I don’t think it was an actual offer, much less a plan.”
“You think he took Ruby for someone. You think he makes money kidnapping kids?”
“Or maybe doing anything nefarious for a price. I don’t know. But I hope so. Because then there’s a chance she’s still alive.”
Jasmine nodded sadly. “I’ll look into the family and closer into Yale’s finances. If it’s work for hire, then Yale was probably hired by someone who knew Coral and Ruby. Otherwise, it’s too much of a coincidence, and therefore potentially untraceable. Her father’s dead, so that leaves the grandparents on either side.”
“Jon was out of the country.”
“Yeah,” Jasmine said hollowly. “Good alibi.”
Silence fell between us. Pontificating without enough information to back up our suppositions was exhausting, though the two-hour time difference between Seattle and Chicago wasn’t helping. I forced myself off the floor, cleaning up our dishes and stashing the tray in the hall. Then I wandered into the bedroom to unpack and iron an outfit for the next day. All of my busy work was comfortingly accompanied by Jasmine’s fingers clicking away on the keyboard, and by the sound of her voice as she murmured to herself.
After I brushed my hair out of its twist, then brushed my teeth, I curled up on a scoop-backed leather chair next to the window, tucking my legs underneath me and gazing out at the quarter moon hovering over the otherwise dark lake. Another thunderstorm had passed while we’d eaten.
I didn’t know Chicago well, even though I’d been to the city a few times on Convocation business. Despite the fact that Coral and Ruby were Camerons, the Chicago coven wasn’t comprised of members from the founding three families. A mixture of witches called the city home, with most of those drawn to the metropolis for work rather than magic. But whether or not Coral and Ruby were in contact with the main branch of the family, Mauve, the head of the Cameron coven, wasn’t going to be pleased that a vampire had kidnapped a witch child of her bloodline. That was something I needed to tell Kett — though I wasn’t sure when it had suddenly become my job to act as a buffer between the Convocation and the Conclave. It wasn’t a burden I would have taken on voluntarily.
It was bad enough that the Fairchild elders had been all huffy, demanding retribution for Jasmine’s kidnapping. Not that I’d had to deal with the fallout. As always, Jasmine had managed our parents, though she’d refused both Dahlia and Rose when they asked her to stay in Litchfield. She showed up at my doorstep in Seattle instead, with two obscenely large suitcases and three boxes.
She hadn’t unpacked those boxes yet. They occupied the corner next to the Pilates apparatus in my second bedroom, perhaps indicating that her stay was temporary. Which worried me. But I didn’t ask.
Our past had been blown wide open, and we had returned from a confrontation with our family alive — though not unscathed. But I still didn’t want to chance saying the wrong thing at the wrong time.
I didn’t want to chance Jasmine leaving.
Chapter 4
A knock on the hotel door woke me from a light doze. I’d fallen asleep on the couch, with my head propped in the crook of my arm and my legs comfortably curled around Jasmine.
She was up and moving before I’d fully opened my eyes. It was dark. A single standing lamp at the far edge of the couch was the only light, with deep shadows spreading beyond it throughout the room. I hadn’t drawn the curtains, but I couldn’t determine the weather over the wide, dark lake.
“What time is it?” I murmured sleepily to Jasmine’s retreating back.
“Almost midnight.” She sauntered over and opened the door, revealing her brother.
My breath caught in my throat — just as it had when I’d laid eyes on him for the first time in over twelve years the previous January. I’d been expecting Kett. Though I should have realized the vampire probably wouldn’t have knocked.
Over six feet tall and broad shouldered, Declan filled the doorway. Light from the hotel corridor spilled into the room from behind him. I blinked rapidly, forcing my eyes to focus in the sudden brightness. No one would ever call Jasmine’s half-brother handsome. Arresting, perhaps, but there was nothing beguiling about Declan Benoit. Swathed in black leather and with his golden-hazel eyes hidden behind gray-tinted glasses, he was intimidating and forbidden.
To me, at least. But I’d broken Declan’s heart many years ago, and though he might eventually forgive me, he would never let me forget.
“Took you long enough,” Jasmine groused.
Declan grunted, pressed a kiss to his sister’s forehead, then stomped into the suite, tossing a large leather duffle bag onto the floor of the closet immediately inside the door.
“I had something to take care of,” he said obliquely. “Before I could leave.”
“Oh, yeah? What was that?”
Declan didn’t answer, turning his gaze on me as he removed his glasses.
Jasmin
e gave his duffle a slight kick. “And what is that? Your entire wardrobe?”
I shifted off the couch as Declan continued to ignore his sister, prowling the length of the room toward me. He skirted the coffee table, towering over me without a word. Then he leaned forward slightly. I touched his shoulder as I pressed a polite kiss to his stubbled cheek. He didn’t reciprocate.
The bond between us was healing, but still tenuous.
“You look tired,” he murmured. “Have you found the girl?”
I shook my head, forcing myself to drop my hand. I could feel his warmth even through his jacket.
He pivoted away, eyeing Jasmine questioningly.
“Yale,” she said, grabbing her laptop, then settling into a chair opposite the couch.
“Yale?” Declan glanced back at me, incredulous.
I nodded, gesturing toward the oyster-shell cube on the coffee table, swirling with blue-and-red-streaked magic. “I collected a reconstruction implicating him.”
I retreated to the far side of the couch, curling my legs up and leaving the remainder of its length vacant.
Declan narrowed his eyes at the cube, his expression grim. “I thought your vampire had him under control.”
“Best as we can figure,” Jasmine said, “this happened in December.”
Declan scowled. “So the vamp is on his way.”
“I’m tracking Yale’s movements, putting together a pattern.” Jasmine’s attention was already back on her laptop. “But yeah, we’re also waiting on Kett.”
Declan grumbled something as he shucked off his ankle-length, pockmarked black leather jacket. Then he reached for the room service menu.
I was feeling completely useless, as I almost always did whenever I participated in an investigation. At least at a level beyond collecting reconstructions, or presenting my findings to a lead investigator or at a tribunal. So I allowed my gaze to rest on Declan as he ordered food and got settled into the suite.
Unleashing Echoes (Reconstructionist 3) Page 6