A soft ping announced two inputs from baby brother. The Firm’s very expensive DGFR programs—deglamour and facial rec software—had been initiated to break through the glamour, though with a Richardson working, success was iffy at best. The other ping was for audio.
As I took the envelope, EJ said, “Chancy Bigelow is the stage name of an exotic dancer in Austin, Texas.” Amusement in his voice. My brother was enjoying this while I was growing more concerned.
Mytruth sensewasn’t working. Was “Chancy” also carrying an amulet that interfered with personal gifts? I didn’t know such a thing existed. Just how important was my curiosity?
The envelope crinkled as I opened it. Inside were several printed pages and a headshot of a beautiful woman.
“Interesting,” I said. “May I add the headshot to our file?” I asked Chancy. I still didn’tseetension in her, no tightening of the skin around her eyes, no uncertainty. But when she spoke, mytruth sensetweaked.
“Of course,” she said.
Why would agreeing make her worry?
I set the batch of papers on the scanner and they began to copy and sort into the Bigelow file.
I put up the pic of the gorgeous woman on the wall screen over the two chairs to the side, and nodded that she should look that way.
She said, “Ivyanna Holmes. I’ve known her for years, and she stopped taking my calls. No contact, no media updates. The last time she contacted me was just before she went to a big party over a week ago. Nothing since.”
True. All true.
Ivyanna Holmes was stunning, a mixed-race woman who Chancy said claimed Egyptian, South Asian, African, and Irish heritage. She had glossy hair in a dozen shades of red that made me think of exotic woods, from dark red oak to cherrywood, with paler highlights of cedar here and there. Her skin was a light tanned brown but with a creamy tint, and her blue eyes were the shade of the Mediterranean off the coast of Italy. The picture could have been heavily retouched, the blue could have been glamour or implants, but Ifeltthey were a gift of her heritage, not medical science or magic. Ivyanna’s lips were perfectly shaped, tinted a ruby shade. Her expression managed to be both mischievous and alluring at once. She was spectacular. She was the kind of woman any vampire, male or female, would desire.
The system dinged again. One of the pages Chancy hadbrought with the commercial headshot, was a printed personal history, like something off a dating app for vamps. I recognized the style of the info, which included her blood type and a description of her blood’s flavors: “a hint of vanilla aged in rum barrels, piquant and tangy, sensual on the tongue.” Vamp-bait-beautiful. That was how I had described the type of human, male or female, that vampires wanted, when I was twelve and began to see the world in a different way from the childhood, romanticized view I’d had before.
Sensual on the tongue. I bet.Her missing friend was a blood servant.
Chancy said, “Ivyanna had just ended her contract to a vampire and was looking for a new position with a higher-ranking vampire. Except she never went home, never called. Nothing. I think she was abducted by the Dark Queen’s people or kidnapped by someone in the European emperor’s vampire staff. Maybe Edmund the First himself when he went back to Europe last week.”
And there it was. The reality behind all Chancy’s…half-truths? Outright lies? How much magical mojo did she have on her person to deflecttruth sense? And did she have backup outside, waiting?
EJ, hidden under an obfuscation working, appeared at the door, a shadow moving in shadows. I didn’t look around; I didn’t have to. He would have come to the same conclusions I had. He’d be armed and dangerous, the way a lifetime of training and the war had made him. EJ moved soundlessly, like a predator, though he was not a vampire or a were-creature. He was a copper-penny redhead, with blue eyes that should have looked innocent and gullible, but he was deadly with weapons and magic, and he had lost all his innocence in the Witch War. After that horror, he was one of a dozen male witches left alive in the country. The rest had died badly.
Chancy had chosen The Firm because of our history with witches and with the Dark Queen, because of who we had been and still were. Royals. Godchildren of the Dark Queen, a princess and prince in our own rights, titles dumped on us.
Royalty came with expectations, honors, responsibilities, and limitations that I had fought against all of my adult life. I had—mostly—come to terms with being a royal. I’d had no choice. I had been a kid when my family’s relationship to the queen became public knowledge, and a teenager when the princess-ship-stupidity had been dumped on me. Fortunately, the press’s memory was short if one did nothing to remind it, and I seldom did. Then the war had come, and being royal had been the least of the newsworthy issues. I—and EJ and our baby-baby sister after us—had been forgotten somewhere along the way, except on certain witch and vamp sites on the various webs.
Unfortunately, my very public and nasty divorce from a local vampire two years ago had given me name recognition and brought up my past. I was running a business based on being an Everhart witch, while also trying to tap-dance around all those long-ago, and recent, vampire connections. People in the know made the associations, however, and this case struck far too close to home to be a random event, because we had been at the same party Ivyanna Holmes supposedly had been to.
Which meant this case also brushed against my ex.
I leaned back in my chair, openly studying Chancy as I considered the possibility that Chancy Bigelow was an ongoing part of last night’s fiasco at Kegs and Boots, but this appointment had been made prior, so it wasn’t likely.
“Cash to find Ivy,” she said, nudging the stack of well-used hundreds.
“Mmmm.” I eyed the cash on the desk. Most witches had toopen aseeingworking to look for traces of magic. I could see magic without using magic. There was no working on the money, no curse. But what if the working activated only when I touched it?
“I hope you don’t mind,” I said, not really caring if she did.
Opening my desk drawer, I trundled with a finger through the amulets in the small wood box I kept there. I pushed aside the silver amulet charm bracelet given to me by Aunt Jane, now the queen, and the odd rectangular silver thingy that had appeared on my pillow one night when I was a kid. It was powerful enough to send a shock wave through my finger and up my arm, but I had no idea what it did. I pulled out the labradorite duck, the one I had used last night in the bar, and placed it on the desk.
Nothing happened. Slowly I shoved it close to the stack of cash until it touched. Still nothing. No flash of color, no lights, no danger that it could detect.
So the woman’s cash wasn’t an overt attempt to kill me.
Next I pushed a malachite frog to the cash. It detected no explosives or electronics in or on the money.
I looked at Chancy. She was waiting patiently. No sign of distress, no confusion. She had expected me to protect myself. She knew exactly who and what I was as a former NOLA blood servant would. Yet, I didn’t kick her out. I didn’t ask EJ, hidden in the shadows under hisobfuscationworking, to haul her up by her collar and half carry her out.
