As they walked down the sidewalk, she glared at him until he finally muttered a reluctant “Thank you” to Orion, who answered with a short, curt nod.
“It’s ridiculous that the local Principe Vigiles is an ice dragon,” Gabriel grumbled as they walked. “Of course he’s going to be biased.”
“Look, I’ve never liked Teague, but under the circumstances, he didn’t actually have a choice,” Orion said reasonably, which earned him a scornful snort and a blast of smoke from Gabriel’s nostrils.
When they arrived at the station, they found a dozen ice dragon centurions waiting for them, looking resolute but nervous. One of them pointed to a door at the back of the lobby. She let him lead her to it.
When Gabriel tried to follow her, the centurion snapped a curt, “Not you.”
Before Gabriel could argue, she slipped through the door, calling out to him, “I’ll be fine!” and then slammed the door shut.
The dour-faced ice dragon centurion ushered her into a room and shut the door with a bang. There was a mirrored wall facing her. She was sure somebody was watching through the mirror.
She sat there for half an hour, growing increasingly irritated and worried about Gabriel. She knew he could handle himself; she was just worried that he would burn someone’s face off and go to prison for it.
Finally a police officer strode in, and she snapped, “I want to talk to my lawyer. Now.”
“Why do you think you need a lawyer?” the officer asked in a condescending tone.
“Seriously, don’t pull this crap on me. I have nothing to say until I’ve spoken to my attorney.”
“Once you speak to an attorney, there’s not going to be much we can do to help you.” He gave her a pitying look.
She slammed her hands down on the table, and he started. “I know my attorney is here waiting for me, so quit acting like you’re trying to audition for an episode of Law & Order, and send her on in.”
Sullenly, the officer turned and walked out.
A few minutes later, her attorney walked in. She was a wolf shifter; she let her fangs briefly descend and gave a low rumbling growl at the officer. “Don’t keep me from my client like that again, or I’ll file a lawsuit and chew your ass off for good measure,” she snapped at him. The officer left the room in a hurry.
Hazel confirmed what Kelly suspected: the police had just held her there for so long because they were stalling and hoping she’d blurt out something incriminating. They had nothing on her – several of Orion’s friends had already testified that they’d been sitting near her and hadn’t seen or heard her muttering any incantations, and nobody really believed that she was a witch. Witches were required to register with the State Magic Boards just like empaths, and the idea that Kelly could have gotten to the ripe old age of twenty-five without anyone noticing a little thing like her having magic powers… Well, nobody was buying it.
Hazel, using her wolf-shifter hearing, had eavesdropped on some of the cops talking amongst themselves. The ice dragons who had blasted the Maplethorpe family had no recollection of what they’d done or why. Their minds had just gone blank, and the next thing they knew they’d been standing outside the restaurant surrounded by a ring of dragons. So there was absolutely nothing implicating Kelly in the attack.
As for motive, Pandora’s family insisted that Kelly wanted them out of the picture because they’d filed a legal challenge to her marriage to Gabriel.
“But the Maplethorpes have motive to frame me, given that they want to force Gabriel to marry their daughter,” Kelly pointed out.
“Exactly,” Hazel said. “And I’m going to demand that you be released immediately.” She went and knocked on the door, and the officer let her out.
A few minutes later, Hazel returned, looking triumphant. “You’re free to go,” she said.
As Kelly walked towards the front door, Principe Teague stalked up to her. “Don’t leave town,” he snapped at her.
She burst out laughing. “Are you kidding me?” she said. “As if I could.”
Chapter Sixteen
Gabriel drove Kelly back to the castle and pulled up on the enormous roundabout, idling the car.
“You swear to me that they didn’t abuse you in any way?” he said for what seemed like the fiftieth time.
Kelly managed a smile. “No, there is no need for you to go sky-challenging anyone. They were no more than mildly surly. After growing up with my mother, mildly surly does not even register on the annoy-o-meter. It would take full-on bitch to even get me to blink twice.”
“I shouldn’t have let them take you.” He scowled.
“It was my choice, not yours,” she reminded him. “And there was no point in having you take on a dozen dragon centurions over a minor matter like that. You’re no good to me dead.”
“Ah-ha! But I am some good to you alive!” His tone was gloating.
She snorted and opened her car door. “You are twisting my words around. Are you coming too? You look like you’re about to drive off.”
“I’ve got some business to attend to in town,” he informed her.
“What business?”
“None of your business.” But he smiled charmingly as he said it.
“Are you going to go do something stupid?” she asked him.
He blinked in shock and gave her a deeply wounded look. “Who, me?”
She shook her head chidingly at him and gave an exaggerated sigh. “That means yes. Well, carry on. Call me if you need bail money,” she said.
“If you knew how many times my parents said that to me…” He grinned as she shut the car door and headed up the front steps.
Gabriel left the castle and drove into town. Specifically, straight to the Maplethorpes house. He knew that if he’d told his family he was going there, they would have strongly objected. That was why he hadn’t told them.
The Maplethorpes lived in a big, gaudy McMansion in a fancy subdivision outside North Lyndvale. The red barrel roof tiles and yellow stucco exterior were trying for Mediterranean, but the modernist angular style of the house’s body was straight out of the 1970s.
Their vast front lawn looked ragged and unmowed; weeds poked at random angles and snaked through the wilting flower beds that ringed the house’s exterior. There were big patches of yellow in the grass, as if it wasn’t being watered regularly. Was somebody having trouble making their water bill?
Probably. All was not well in Maplethorpe-land, Gabriel noted as he pulled up and parked. A tow truck driver had hooked up a Humvee to his vehicle and was climbing back into his seat, ready to drive off. So their big fancy car was being repossessed. Interesting.
Mr. Maplethorpe stood outside on the front porch, face red with fury. There were neighbors standing out on their front porches, watching with interest.
“Car thief! I’ll have you arrested! I’ve called the police!” Mr. Maplethorpe yelled, shaking his fist.
“Good. I got the repo order right here,” the driver said, waving a piece of paper out the window. Mr. Maplethorpe tried to snatch it from him, but the driver yanked it away from him and drove off.
Mr. Maplethorpe turned and directed his wrath at his neighbors. “What you looking at?” he screamed at them. The show was over now, so they ducked back into their houses.
Well, this was new. The Maplethorpe family always made a huge show of flaunting their wealth. They came to town dressed in designer clothing and jewelry from head to toe, drove flashy cars, announced their donations to charity in the local papers, and bought dinners for their country club friends at the most expensive restaurants in town.
But it appeared as if that might all be for show, or maybe they’d just lived beyond their means and it was catching up to them now. Gabriel had thought they only wanted Pandora to marry him for the prestige, but perhaps they also saw it as a financial bail-out. Everyone knew his family was wealthy.
Gabriel climbed out of his car and walked up to the front porch.
Mr. Maplethorpe looked st
artled as Gabriel approached the house. “What are you doing here?” he demanded nervously.
“I’m here to tell you to stop trying to frame my fiancée,” Gabriel snapped “See, I was sitting next to Kelly during dinner, so I know for a fact that she wasn’t muttering incantations. That means I know you lied to the police. You try to pull that crap again, and I will fry your fat ass and not worry about the consequences.”
Mr. Maplethorpe took a step back, his eyes bugging out with alarm. “Don’t you come near me. I’m personal friends with Principe Teague and I will have you arrested. Everyone knows that you’re a criminal!”
Gabriel snorted at that. “Then why are you trying to force me to marry your daughter?”
Mr. Maplethorpe’s face was getting redder and redder. “Because it’s tradition,” he mumbled. “It’s the law. Which some of us actually respect.”
As he spoke, Mr. Maplethorpe was backing towards the door.
Gabriel heard voices inside the house, a man’s and a woman’s, getting closer to the front door, and Mr. Maplethorpe turned around and screamed frantically, “Get back! Get back inside the house! Be quiet!” The voices fell silent.
One of the voices had sounded weirdly familiar. “Is that Marvin?” Gabriel said. “Is our former employee at your house?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Maplethorpe blustered. “You’re trespassing. Get off our property.”
“Gee, I don’t know how you’d expect me to marry into your family if I’m not even allowed to visit my in-laws.” Gabriel smirked, and he sauntered off and climbed into his car.
Curiouser and curiouser, Gabriel mused as he drove back home. Marvin could certainly visit the Maplethorpes if he wanted to – but why would he? They didn’t own a jewelry business. Marvin didn’t have any inside info that they could use against him – at least, not that Gabriel knew of, and when it came to security the Kingsley family was pretty tight.
* * * * *
When he got back to the castle, Gabriel went to the south tower and climbed into the elevator. Once he got to the metal door in the hallway, he paused to steel himself mentally for what he’d see on the other side.
He leaned forward in front of the retinal scanner and opened his eyes wide. The door slid open for him.
Alexandra was sitting with her back to him, staring at the wall with a vacant expression and muttering to herself.
“Hey, Princess Alex,” he said, using his childhood nickname for her. She barely bothered to glance at him, and then turned away again.
She’d been beautiful once – a slender, laughing girl with glossy black ringlets of hair that shimmered and bounced. She was a shadow of her former self now, heavily medicated, wearing copper anklets so she couldn’t shift into her dragon form.
The madness was getting stronger. The medication should have kept her under control, but it was losing effectiveness. Without the medication, she’d be raving one minute, quiet the next…and then she’d attack without warning, whether in human or dragon form.
She’d been wearing bracelets rather than anklets up until the other day. Then she’d managed to slip out of her bracelets and shift while he and Kelly had been up on the roof. She had hurled herself against the walls so hard, she’d cracked them. There hadn’t been enough room for all the guards to shift, since she’d already been in dragon form and filling up most of the enormous chamber that was now her prison.
One guard had shifted and protected the others as best he could while she’d blasted them with her flame. The nurse had shot her with several heavy-duty tranquilizer darts before she’d finally settled down. She’d burned several of the guards quite badly.
If they didn’t find a cure soon, they’d lose her forever. Evangeline’s mother would descend into a dark world of insanity from which she’d never come back.
They’d had high hopes for the Dragonsblood Ruby, but it hadn’t worked. They’d looped it around her neck and waited for days, and nothing had happened.
And now it turned out that Marvin wasn’t trustworthy, they’d need to find a new gem empath. Gabriel knew he couldn’t ask Kelly to help with this, and he doubted that they could get Christopher to come back.
Gabriel’s father, Emerson, was in the room, holding a book. He came every day and read to her, just as he had when she’d been a little girl. Evangeline had been there earlier. She visited almost every day, as painful as it was for her.
Emerson glanced up when Gabriel walked in. Then he looked at his daughter, and his normally cheery smile faded. “She’s getting worse. She’ll be past the point of no return soon.”
Gabriel nodded somberly. “I know, believe me.”
Emerson looked him straight in the eye. “I know that you don’t want to involve Kelly in this, and I know that trusting her would be a risk, but she might be our only hope.”
Chapter Seventeen
Gabriel’s family had gathered around the table in the great hall and they were sampling dishes that were to be served at the wedding reception. Kelly stood back by the wall and watched.
The fact that she’d very likely sensed the Dragonsblood Ruby had rattled her far more than she’d expected. The problem was, she actually liked Gabriel’s family. Sure, they were a crazy bunch of criminals. But they were also warm and good-hearted and accepting, and they made her feel welcome and wanted in a way she never had before.
She liked Gabriel. Okay, more than liked him. She loved the way that he made her feel. He made her feel sexy and funny and desirable. She loved how loyal he was to his family, how he always stood up for her. She loved…him?
No, definitely not. Impossible.
But whatever her feelings for him were, she still couldn’t be with a man who made a practice of stealing from other people. He claimed that the family was on the straight and narrow, but he’d stolen the Dragonsblood only a year ago, and his father had been arrested for breaking and entering eighteen months ago.
“You’re still awfully quiet,” Gabriel said to Kelly. “Dragonsblood got your tongue?”
“Oh, you’re hilarious.” She gave him a sidelong glance. “I don’t suppose you’d like to just secretly turn in the Dragonsblood and be done with it?” Please, please let him say yes. It would be an acceptable compromise. Her firm wouldn’t have to pay the insurance fee, Gabriel wouldn’t have to go to jail…
“What’s a Dragonsblood again?” Gabriel said with a perfectly straight face.
“For the love of God, you are so irritating. You guys aren’t broke,” Kelly said in exasperation. “So why would you steal that ruby?”
“Exactly.” Still with the straight face. Fine, if that was the way he wanted to play it.
“You guys go ahead and figure out what you want to eat at your reception. It doesn’t matter to me, because I won’t be there,” Kelly said, and turned and walked away, leaving Gabriel staring after her in confusion.
She couldn’t keep doing this. She couldn’t keep falling deeper and deeper for Gabriel, and for his family, when she knew how it would all end. With Gabriel in prison. With her heart broken.
Gabriel followed her out of the room and grabbed her by the arm.
“Hey,” he said. “You’re upset about something new. You weren’t upset like this before. Is it something that someone has done or said to you? Talk to me. Please.”
She yanked at her arm, but he held on.
“We’re in a relationship, right? When people in relationships have problems, they talk.” He glanced at something behind her. “Oh, great. Incoming.”
Teresa stormed down the hall towards them. Her face was pale. She’d been crying; her mascara had run down her cheeks leaving gritty black trails, and her eyelashes stuck together in little spikes.
Winthrop was trailing behind her, looking distressed. “Miss Henderson… Oh, Miss Henderson…”
Teresa ignored him and stormed up to Kelly and slapped her face. Kelly gasped in shock and took a step back.
Gabriel stepped in front of
Kelly, and the air around him rippled and shimmered as it grew hotter. He towered over Teresa, jabbing his finger into her shoulder.
“The only reason I didn’t fry your face off for that is because you’re her sister,” he growled at her. “Try that again, and I will end you.”
“What the hell?” Kelly said furiously, rubbing her stinging cheek.
“This is all your fault,” Teresa spat at Kelly. “Chad’s family found out you got arrested and they insisted that he break up with me. They’ve packed up all my things and they’re shipping them here.”
Kelly was sick of being on the receiving end of Teresa’s abuse. “Excuse me, it’s my fault that Chad has no balls and his family are a bunch of snobby dickwads? First they make you suffer for the fact that our father was a criminal – something we have no damn control over. Now they insist that Chad has to dump you because of something that I’ve done?”
“So you’re trying to say it’s my fault?” Teresa glared at Kelly.
Kelly shook her head in exasperation. “Why do you always need it to be someone’s fault? If you really need to assign blame, Chad’s the wuss who dances whenever his mommy and daddy jerk his puppet strings. And you know what? Yes, this is also somewhat your fault. You chose to be with a guy whose family treats you horribly. And you let him sit there like a big passive man-baby, never once speaking up in your defense. Frankly, that’s on you. You don’t want to be treated like dirt, then don’t stay with a guy who treats you like dirt.”
Teresa gasped in outrage.
Kelly shook her head. “You’re pretty, you’re smart, you’re talented, and you let a guy treat you like crap. I’m sorry that you’re upset, but I’m not sorry it ended.”
Winthrop walked up just then, holding a kerchief, which he offered to Teresa. “Can I do anything to help?”
“Yes, you can! Quit following me around and mind your own damn business!” Teresa screamed.
Winthrop went pale, and said in a stiff, formal tone, “Yes, ma’am.” Then he turned and hurried away, his back ramrod straight. It was the first time he’d let Teresa out of his sight since Gabriel had ordered him to guard her.
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