Her surprise surprised him. “You said to do something with the body.”
“Where is it?”
The Prime tilted his head to the right. “In the Dumpster.”
“Did you just . . . Mist him?”
He considered that. “Yes.”
“That’s not possible,” she said. She almost laughed at herself. As though if she reminded him he couldn’t do it, he would remember she was right and suddenly lose the ability. “You weren’t even touching him.”
A slight frown creased his forehead. “So?”
“That’s not . . . fuck, never mind.” Exasperated—and massively discomfited—Olivia threw up her hands. “Let’s just get out of here and get you back to your people so they can deal with you.”
Confused, the Prime looked from the Dumpster to Olivia before falling into step beside her again. “You’re upset.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
Another frown. “You’re afraid of me.”
“Generally, my Lord, I think you’ll find most sane people are.”
“I won’t hurt you.”
She stopped and looked at him. “I’m not afraid you’ll hurt me. I’m afraid for the same reason humans are afraid of death.”
“They don’t understand it . . . it’s an unknown.”
“For starters.”
He held her eyes for a long moment, then said, “Olivia.”
“Yes?”
“Olivia Daniels . . . Second in Command of the Australian Elite.”
She felt her mouth drop open. “You remember me?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
“You’re one to talk.”
He smiled. It was a rather attractive smile, aside from the faint edge of menace about it. “Did you die?”
She looked away. “It felt like it. I think part of me did.”
“Then you know death. Therefore you have nothing to fear.” He looked around at the buildings on either side of them, then started walking again, beckoning to her. “This way.”
The only thing she could think to do was follow. “Do you have any idea where we’re going?”
He looked around again. “West.”
“I meant the destination, not the direction.”
“Not really. I just know it’s this way.”
“All we need to do is find a patrol,” Olivia said. “I’m sure they’ll recognize you. Assuming they don’t all drop from coronaries, they can take you home.”
“No . . . not yet. There’s somewhere I need to be right now.”
“But you don’t know where.”
“Not as such.”
“Great.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell me again why I don’t leave your ass right now?”
He looked at her. “I have no idea,” he replied thoughtfully. “Perhaps because you miss being part of the Australian Elite and you unconsciously hope to find a place among us.”
Olivia snorted. “Not on your fucking life, Sire. Just because you’ve got a dead Second and I used to be a Second doesn’t mean I’m going to hop right into that role like some red shirt on Star Trek. I’m done with the Signets. If you want to know the truth, I think I just have to see how this turns out. I want to see the look on their faces when they realize you’re not dead. And I’d like to know a little more about what the hell happened, just for my own peace of mind.”
He tilted his head to the side, again looking like he wasn’t sure what language she was speaking or what species she was. “You’re in hiding,” he said.
“Well, it’s no wonder you’re in charge, if you’re that clever.”
His lips quirked in a smile. “They think you’re dead, but you’re alive, and you’re hiding, which means you did something wrong, or they think you did, and if anyone finds out you’re alive they’ll kill you.”
She felt cold seep into her veins. “Is that a threat?”
He blinked. “An observation. I have no reason to threaten you, Olivia. You did save my life.”
“Did I?” Olivia wasn’t sure of that; she had given him shelter, yes, but at this point, could anything kill him? “Besides, it wouldn’t be the first time a Signet turned out to be a traitorous snake.”
There was an edge in his voice that surprised her. “Do not compare me to the other Signets.”
Exasperated again, she started walking, continuing in the direction he’d chosen. “Fine,” she said. “Here it is: I knew Jeremy Hayes. He was a friend of mine . . . a good friend. He and his wife and daughter . . . they were family to me, once.”
“Jeremy Hayes . . . the rightful Prime of Australia.”
She stopped short again. “You know?”
Solomon’s brow furrowed as he groped after the memory. “He told me,” he said, nodding his head. “Yes, he told me. About Amelia, and how they stole his Signet.”
“Did he tell you where Melissa and Amelia were when Hart’s men came to kill them?”
“No . . . just that they were taken, his wife murdered.”
Olivia couldn’t keep walking; the truth made her whole body ache with sadness and guilt that she had shoved as far down as possible for as long as she could. “Not right away,” she said quietly, backing up until she was leaning against the side wall of a building. “I was guarding them. Jeremy asked me to keep them safe—Bartlett was dead, the territory had been in chaos for three years, and Jeremy was going to make a play for the Signet. I was to keep them under cover until I got the all-clear, but . . . they found us. Somehow they found us, and . . .”
“They killed her.”
“Not right away . . . first they . . .” She put her hands up over her face. “They made it last awhile, and they made the child watch. I was chained, tortured . . . for information, but mostly for sport. I heard Amy crying for her mother . . . begging them to stop . . . and I heard one of them go over to her and strike her, and he was about to rape her but his friends told him, ‘That one’s for Hart.’”
She kept speaking, though she wanted desperately to fall silent; but somehow she couldn’t, couldn’t stop the story coming out for the first time since that night. She had never been able to speak of it to anyone, but by sheer dumb luck here she had fallen in with the one person she could tell, who wouldn’t kill her for it, not with Jeremy as his enemy.
“They had beaten me so badly I was able to lie there and pass for dead . . . so they left us there to rot until sunup, and took the girl. Hours later Jeremy arrived, and I heard . . . I heard him find Melissa. His grief . . . I swear, it tortured me in ways the men couldn’t begin to. And I knew if he found out I had failed him, he would kill me. The fear drove me mad—I just had to survive. To run. So I did.”
She felt hands on her shoulders and looked up into his deep, lake blue eyes, which were, just now, full of compassion, which she would never have expected given how cold they had been. With everything that he was going through, he still felt compassion for her . . . perhaps, just perhaps, he was the man they said he was. She felt a glimmer of hope for the first time in years.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said to her gently. “You couldn’t have known what McMannis and Hart were planning. You did the best you could.”
“If he ever finds me, he’ll kill me,” she said.
Solomon made an indefinite motion with his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure, Olivia. I think . . . whatever his actions, Jeremy Hayes is a noble man.”
Now both her eyebrows shot up. “You can say that after he killed you?”
A nod, slow and measured, but certain. “He did what he had to do for his daughter. I would have done the same. It gave him no pleasure to kill me or anyone else. He just wanted it over.”
He took a step back, and she could breathe again. Something about him in close proximity made her pulse skyrocket, though whether it was regular old attraction or mad atavistic terror, she couldn’t quite decide.
“At any rate, Olivia . . . whether you want a place with us or not, you need not fear for your safety. You�
�ve helped me, and that alone earns you the right to our aid.”
“I don’t want aid. I want to go back to my life and live it in peace.”
“Do you really?” He smiled. “I find that hard to believe—you were a Second in Command. That kind of authority and power is hard to shake off.”
She smiled back. “Clearly.”
The compassion was still in his eyes, as was a glint of humor, but he turned back to the road, and said, “Come on . . . it’s not far now.”
* * *
Once again, it all came back to Morningstar.
The Queen pondered the data readout on the monitor. “Give it to me in small words, Doctor. I’ve had a long week.”
Novotny grinned. “Basically: Ovaska, your new mystery attacker, and the earpiece Hart handed over three years ago are all connected. The transmitters used by Jeremy Hayes to blow up Monroe and Prime Janousek are not. All of the transmitters and earpieces are made of similar materials, but when you compare them all very closely you can see that they were made by different people, in different places.”
“So whoever’s after Stella works for the same group that’s been killing Hart’s Elite—how does Ovaska figure in?”
“It’s a tenuous connection, I admit, but it can’t be a coincidence that the Morningstar people who had Ovaska on their payroll to kidnap you also made a large payment to a development firm in New York that specializes in exactly this kind of technology. We ran a search for this particular titanium alloy and they’re the only company using it for telecommunications. Morningstar, I believe very strongly, was behind both Ovaska’s mission and these unknown assassins.”
“And none of it has anything to do with Hayes.”
“Not as far as we can tell, my Lady. He was working on Hart’s behalf, but whatever his associations with the Order of Elysium or anyone else, he is absolutely not connected to Morningstar.”
“What about the knife the attacker left behind at Stella’s?”
“We’re still analyzing it. So far there doesn’t seem to be anything remarkable about it at all—it could have come from any military surplus store. And, unfortunately, there are no prints on it, either.”
“We need to find these people,” Miranda said. “I need to get an update from . . . our intelligence operatives . . . on whether they have any useful information or actual names we can dig into. Thank you, Doctor.”
Waiting for the elevator, she called Deven, but surprisingly Jonathan answered.
“He’s in the middle of a debriefing,” the Consort told her, “and that’s not a euphemism for once. What did you learn?”
She related the highlights of Novotny’s report. “Do we have anything new on Morningstar?”
“That’s part of what Dev is up to right now. I’ll have him call once they’re done. In the meantime . . . how are you?”
“Me? Right as rain,” she said as the elevator lurched downward.
“That bad, eh?”
Miranda leaned back on the handrail. “I’m okay, I guess. I mean, I’m not bouncing off walls and I’m not dying. Somewhere in between.”
“Did you hear about Hart?”
She straightened. “What about Hart?”
“Apparently whatever deal Hayes had with Lydia paid off. Hayes got his daughter back and disappeared with her—and the entire harem. And Hart’s whole Elite’s in a tizzy; they’d been working on getting a computer network going for communications, but it mysteriously got a virus and went belly-up.”
“What happened to the girls?” she asked. “Does Cora know about what happened?”
“I have no idea, and yes—Jacob’s the one that gave us the news. He’s been keeping eyes and ears on the Council since they all left Austin, and things are, in his exact words, ‘exceptionally weird.’ Rumors flying, allegiances shifting. No one has come out and said that Hart had a hand in David’s death, but he seems to have lost quite a few of his followers.”
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer sleazeball,” she replied.
“We don’t have a lot of details yet. I’ll let you know if I get anything.”
Just thinking about Hart—about the Council—drained her emotionally, and as she hung up and stuffed her phone back in her pocket, she found her eyes aching.
She didn’t want to know what Hart was doing. It didn’t matter what the other Signets thought. She didn’t have the strength to care about anything beyond her own borders right now. It felt like, for the moment, the South was insulated from the rest of the world; the whole Council, as far as she could tell, was watching them, equal parts horrified and mystified, their understanding of their own existence shaken by the thought that the one thing they counted on—not dying alone—might fail them.
After everything Hart had done to destroy the South, he had failed. She imagined that once he was over his outrage at the harem escaping him, he would go right back to gathering up innocent girls to abuse and turn his attention back on Austin. He had tried everything to nullify their power, and not even sending Jeremy to kill them had succeeded. The South would not be taken down.
The thought gave her only a hollow sense of satisfaction. It was a Pyrrhic victory . . . if it was a victory at all.
“My Lady,” Harlan said as she approached the car. “Where to next?”
She stood by the car for a moment, breathing around the sudden knot in her throat. “I need to stop by a couple of District businesses. There’s been some unrest.”
“My Lady—”
She turned back to the driver and was surprised; he looked genuinely concerned and for just a second abandoned his seamless professionalism.
“You should cut yourself some slack,” he said. “When my wife died . . . we’d been together for nearly four decades. I didn’t even leave the house for most of a year, and we didn’t have a mystical bond. You have a right to hurt. No one here would judge you for taking some time off.”
She had no idea what to say to him. She’d had no idea he was ever even married, but of course he had been—they all had their histories, they’d all lost loved ones. Mortal or immortal, everything died eventually. She barely knew anything about most of the vampires who worked for her, but she knew they were all in pain.
Miranda just nodded, eyes bright, and said, “Just . . . going for a walk. To hunt. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
Harlan bowed, cleared his throat, and ducked back into the car.
She set off down the street blindly, not caring where she was headed. She just needed to be . . . away . . . for a moment.
There were too many things for her to feel. She wished she could simply turn off her heart for a while, run on autopilot for a few years; she was surviving, and thanks to Deven’s healing ability—that was the only explanation she’d come up with—she wasn’t going mad, but it seemed like every night her wounds grew new scabs that were ripped off the next night by a sound, a smell, a memory. How long would this take?
She knew the answer, and it filled her with despair. Normal people who lost a spouse suddenly and violently would take years to recover, and some never did at all. She of all people knew the depths to which pain’s serpentine roots could dig into the soul and coil around, squeezing out every breath of happiness. The prognosis for a woman losing her soul mate was even grimmer.
Once again, the enormity of the future before her sprawled out in her mind, and she wanted to curl up and wail; she could rule the South, she could live without David, but could she do it . . . forever?
She felt bent beneath the weight of her life as she wandered through the Shadow District, passing the front windows and entrances of bars and businesses that only a few weeks ago she had laughed in, danced in, drank in. The thought of laughing—really laughing, hard and breathless, to the point that she snorted loudly and made everyone around her laugh even harder—seemed so beyond comprehension it might as well have been some curious phenomenon she’d read about in a magazine.
She might have felt guilty, or at least self-ind
ulgent, over how poorly she was handling things, but so far no one had suffered; the territory was safe, her Elite managing just fine. She hadn’t retired to her bed to waste away. And Deven had said that even David had lost his mind for a few days when he thought she was dead; Faith had mentioned that once, too, that the Prime hadn’t moved or spoken, just curled up in a ball.
Miranda couldn’t imagine him doing that. She couldn’t imagine her Prime being so completely lost that he simply stopped functioning. But Dev swore it was true, swore he’d had to call David out as he had Miranda, set him back on his feet.
She paused, suddenly amused. At some point she had apparently decided to love the Prime of the West, and he her, with a fierceness that she would never have believed possible only three years ago. David would be pleased.
Wavering on her feet, she dug in her coat for the broken Signet, her fingers closing around it. “I miss you, baby,” she whispered. “I don’t know how . . . what the . . .”
Something felt odd. She flipped the Signet over in her hand, feeling along its polished surface, the stone cool against her fingertips. It took a moment to realize what was wrong.
It usually hurt.
She yanked the amulet out of her coat, walking over to the pool of a streetlight, even though she could see just fine; it was an old human habit, wanting to verify things in light even when they were obvious.
Miranda stared at the Signet, unable to breathe.
When she had put it in her coat that evening, the stone had been cracked, several shards missing; they were mostly in the box in her room, but she guessed a few tiny slivers would never be found. The edges of the shattered stone were sharp and hurtful when her hand had squeezed it, the pain grounding her out of her thoughts and into the harshness of reality.
Now the stone was whole.
Not only were the cracks healed, the missing shards were no longer missing. It might as well have regrown itself in the course of the night.
It wasn’t possible. Was it? Was this what happened after one broke, so that whoever was in charge of such things didn’t have to make a new one? How could that even happen?
David would have had a theory already, something to do with crystalline molecular structures.
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