“I already sent a request for the soirée’s security video. It’s in process.” EJ tucked his hands into the front pockets of his Agric khakis, a bit of body language that was supposed to say,I’m cute and harmless, but never worked on me. “Uncle Alex is informed and currently working.”
“Ties,” I said on a soft breath. “So many ties tous.”
Our “uncle,” the queen’s adopted brother, Alex Younger, oversaw the finances and the electronic security team for the queen, and he was freaky good with electronics and AI. Every event at the Dark Queen’s Winter Residence was always caught on dozens of cameras. If he agreed to help us, we would soonhave reams of video in all the spectrums, including the magical spectrum. Alex had created and patented a sensor that detected magic in almost the same way that aseeingworking could, and with those sensors, every magical incident and every magical person at the reception would be detected at every moment. There was no privacy in the public areas of the queen’s home.
If Ivyanna Holmes had been removed from the queen’s premises by a paranormal, we would know soon enough.
EJ said, “Assessing the more likely probabilities for the subject’s whereabouts. One: Ivyanna left her vampire, Karson Marrazzo, your ex-husband, aka Asshat, and willingly took off for Europe with a new vamp, perhaps even Edmund himself. Two: she’s still in Asheville, willingly, with another vampire. Three: she was abducted by a vampire in a clan unrelated to Yellowrock—or the emperor’s—clans.”
“Four,” I said. “She’s dead at the hand of Karson Marrazzo and will never be found. May I suggest that you ask Alex to call Edmund’s security people?” I asked.
“Done.”
I didn’t look up at that, swiping through the office stills of Chancy Bigelow.
The war had changed EJ, leaving him always thinking worst-case scenarios. Protocol Bolt-Hole had been his baby, to be initiated if one of his potential horrific scenarios ever came to pass. He had enemies, magical, vampiric, and mundane, left over from the war, just as I had my own adversaries and a bounty on my head left over from a duel in my past. “You don’t have to hover,” I said gently, tilting my eyes up at him, still standing in the doorway.
EJ grinned, a rare and fleeting expression on his freckled face. “I never hover. I hound. I entreat. Occasionally, I nag.More often, I kill people. I neverhover. I like Edmund. He should come visit. He could sleep on a couch somewhere. Pizza for lunch, sis?”
Ignoring that laughable comment about royalty sleeping on a couch, I asked, “You offeringrealpizza? With meat? Not that imitation cauliflower-crust, veggie-topped, healthy stuff you usually force me to eat?”
“Real pizza. With Coke.”
Pizza and Coke was what we ate when a case turned out to be more than we expected. Iknew, with that sixth sense, that this case was far more than we bargained for, but we couldn’t turn it away either. The results of that would be even worse. “Deal,” I said.
EJ didn’t ask what the “deal” was. He turned and left the office, engaging the security system on his way out. “I don’t remember Ivyanna,” I said to myself, “and that’s odd too.” I pushed the photo across the desk. The woman was so gorgeous, it seemed impossible to have missed her, even among the hundreds present at the event.
I looked back at the door, worrying about EJ—always worrying about EJ and Cassey, our younger sister. EJ was born an old soul. At age twenty-three, after the years in Europe in the war, where his only companions had been ancient library books, like Chaucer, Eliot, and Dickens, and ancient vampires for conversation, he acted old, formal, and stilted.
I put the five thousand dollars in the safe, checked my concealed weapons, and looped my defensive amulet necklace around my neck. I went to work on the case.
Chapter Three
EJ
EJ sent the pizza order ahead and ducked out of the cold wind into a specialty tea shop, his jacket flapping. He was a coffee guy himself, but the shop imported expensive teas, the kind Aunt Jane and Uncle Bruiser liked. Without telling his sister, EJ placed orders every month, double orders on holidays, to be sent to his aunt. He never received thanks, but the gifts had never been returned either. Tea—or hunks of meat from Hallelujah Bacon, a local artisan pig farmer—kept the queen and her Beast entertained and let her know he thought of her, and not because he wanted something.
Beast was the other soul that lived inside with the queen’s human one. Beast was a mountain lion, and Aunt Jane could turn into Beast, or sometimes a half form that was human-Beast. She could turn into other animal shapes if needed, if she had the animal’s genetic material, but Beast was the favorite. There were whispers that the crown she wore wasn’t something she had fought for and won, but rather that the crown had chosen her because she possessed two souls. EJ didn’t know. He’d been too young to know the details and no one talked aboutsuch things if they valued not being eaten by Beast. So he sent Beast treats too.
Freedom was nice and EJ wanted as much autonomy as he could get, but he also wanted resources for the day the shit hit the fan. EJ had been trapped before. He knew the value of potential allies, assistance, and a protective place to retreat.
This time, for the first time, EJ might want something. A favor. Something big.
As he crossed the street, the wind tearing at his clothes and hair, he ruminated about the client’s personal irregularities and the fact that this case could be a setup for them or someone they loved. He needed more data, and fast. “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action,” was a quote he’d learned as a royal child. This scenario didn’t fit the quote perfectly, but well enough to make him dig deep and keep all options open.
Perhaps the most important thing to consider was the look on his sister’s face when Chancy entered the office. That expression had warned him immediately that this case, and this client, were going to require additional resources. His sister didn’t know he studied her nonverbal responses on the vids as intently as he did the clients themselves. Her precognition had kept them alive several times as children, and he’d taught himself to recognize her tells, small things: the way her fingertips fluttered as if she were playing a piano, the tightening of her eyes, the way she closed her mouth, too firm, too stiff.
And then there was the sound of her magic. In the same way that Angie saw magic without casting a specific working, he heard it: soft notes, or tapping and ticking. The background melody of Angie’s magic had changed pitch when Chancy entered the office.
Her precog had stirred, for only a second. That was enough.
He entered the tea shop and engaged a second part of his mind, the frivolous part that made women happy. Absently, he flirted with Londyn as she prattled about golden tips and first flush and all the desirable tea traits, which tea drinkers cared about. He selected three new teas from Sri Lanka and had eight ounces of each overnighted to the queen’s official winter residence.
While he was prattling inconsequential things, his mind pulled up the humming tones of Chancy’s glamour, a passive working. Not something that would have sent him into the office, primed to end a threat. But one that had sent him to observe up close and personal.
“Dinner tonight?” Londyn asked.
EJ consciously considered their conversation over the last minutes and his attention to the case halted, as if he’d put a finger in a paper book and opened another.
