“I heard something,” Ares said after a long silence between the four of us. Apparently, Lourdes didn’t have anything to actually tell us, she just wanted to bring it up to get a gold star. “Something that might interest you, Verona.”
I quit glaring at Lourdes in order to glower at Ares Necroline—everything about his tone irritated me. Too much history I couldn’t forgive, and now everything he did drove me wild. “What’s that?”
“The National Gallery has a new exhibit for the Auction this year,” he said, his words slow and careful.
“It has a new exhibit for the Auction every year,” I said with a sigh. “It’s the event it isbecausethey have a new exhibit to showcase. That is hardly news.”
“It’s ‘Weapons of the Ancient World’ this year. There areswords,” Ares said as he rose. “And they’re going to be part of the Auction.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. There was only one set of swords Ares Necroline might think I’d be interested in. Cold sweat broke out on my back at the thought of seeing them again. My mouth went bone dry as the world turned on its axis.
Ares shook Lourdes’ hand with a curt nod, brushed a kiss to Lux’s hand, and then bent close to my face. “You might want to check out lot A342,” he murmured. His breath caressed the sensitive shell of my ear, sending a delicious chill through me. “See you next month.”
Lux drained her champagne glass, then placed it on the tray and rose from the table, looking worried. “Do you want to come shopping with me, LouLou?”
Lourdes sighed. “Only if we can go downtown to your guy for imports.”
Lux grinned. “But of course, my love. Ember?”
She sounded like she meant it. The offer was genuine, which I appreciated. As much as they were pains in my ass, Lux and Lourdes had been good friends when the rest of the Maere split on me. Lux might side with Necroline too many times for my liking, but she always made it up to me later. Long brunches on the river, girl-talk at the salon. She’d been the one to help me decorate when I moved into the new place on my own. Now, she stretched a hand out to me, her elegant nails shining with iridescent polish as she waved them at me.
I shook my head as I squeezed Lux’s hand. “Thank you, but I have things to do.”
As the acting head of the Maere, I was required to maintain some semblance of respectability these days—especially with all my people scattered to the wind. I was a walking target. Notthat I could die, but it was a pain in the ass to heal from the efforts of those who wanted to test the theory. Besides, I had to get home, change my clothes, and get downtown. It was time to find Lara and end this. The chickens were long past due to come home to roost.
CHAPTER 3
ARES
I unbuttonedmy jacket as I opened the back door of the sleek black sedan waiting for me outside of the bowling alley. A news station was playing on the radio. One of the better stations, but Saints, if the shit they let go on the air wasn’t a bunch of utter drivel. The public radio hosts were interviewing an influencer, trying to ask her questions about whether or not shereally likedthe things she hawked on her platform.
“Shut that shit off,” I scolded as I slid into the back seat, not wanting to hear the answer. Everyone was selling something all the time now. There was no trick to it. No art. We were all just selling our souls to the Authority. To the Corps. And, much as I hated it, the Consulate.
Avaline and my brother were waiting, sitting in companionable silence in the front seat. Eryx read the newspaper. He preferred a fresh hard copy each morning to using the app that came on his phone, and the car smelled faintly of leather and fresh ink.
Eryx flipped the switch on the radio, but not before the host announced that they’d be interviewing freshman Senator Cromvale next. I grimaced at the name. The Three-Cities Senate was as corrupt as the rest of them.
Avaline’s favorite little Poltergeist was consuming something disgusting in the back seat. “Out,” I commanded.
It gave me its hellish version of puppy dog eyes, to which I glared. Av looked in the rearview at her pet and shook her head. The thing was about to throw the disemboweled rat at me in protest.
“That would be an unwise choice,” I murmured, twisting the family ring on my right index finger. “You know what I can do.”
The Poltergeist disappeared, not wanting to be blasted out of existence, I suppose. “I do not enjoy that thing,” I remarked, checking for signs of rat detritus before I moved over.
More likely than not, the rat hadn’t been real, just an illusion to disgust me. Poltergeists were like that—they mostly wanted to irritate the fuck out of their victims.
“His name is Stanley,” Eryx reminded me, voice dry as a bone.
Not a hint of humor whatsoever. My brother was not joking. The cursed Poltergeist had aname. I gritted my teeth, suppressing the urge to give a lecture about respecting spirits’ essential nature and not treating them like pets.
For her part, Avaline was, as ever, the picture of perpetual calm—alert and deadly. My crew joked that the necromancer never slept, and I couldn’t deny she had a kind of otherworldly air about her. She’d been that way since we were children. Of course, that was so long ago at this juncture, that it was practically irrelevant.
“Did you give her the information?” Av asked.
“Yes,” I replied tersely.
She’d never felt good about what happened twenty years ago. Av’s sense of honor made it difficult to reconcile that what we’d looked into hadn’t caused Lara’s capture—though I couldn’t deny it had been relevant to the scenario, if she’d been taken for the reasons we suspected.
