It was just the queen and me. No. Not the queen. There was no crown, no backdrop of the royal chambers displayed for formal chats. It was justAunt Janeand me. Aunt Jane was sitting in bed, her long black hair in a messy braid, wearing a tank top and a sloppy sweater. She looked like a thirty-year-old human, older than the way she had looked when I was a child, when she had looked eighteen or so. She was nearly two hundred years old, but skinwalker genes and magic kept people young. Until they didn’t.
The war had aged everyone. Even her.
“Hey, Aunt Jane. I kept you up all night, didn’t I?”
“Crap on crackers with toe jam,” she swore. “Isthatwhat you’re worried about, Angie Baby? Keepingmeawake? Call your parents. They’re worried sick and ticked off. After that? Go. Have fun. Off the record, have fun with Villetti. Feel free to tell him anything and everything. Have a few glasses of the good stuff. Not that crap you were drinking in college.”
“You’ll never let me live that down.”
“You’re a hilarious drunk,” Aunt Jane said. “Sleep with him. Talk to him. He’s safe. And he’s madly in love with you. So, don’t walk away from this without thinking long and hard.
“Christmas is coming,” she added. “Will you be here? I miss you.”
My heart melted at her words. “I miss you too. So much. And of course I’ll be there. As yourniece,” I said, grinning insouciantly.
Aunt Jane looked to heaven as if calling on angelic help.
The screen went blank. Dark from one wall to the other.
It hit me hard. Aunt Jane said Leandro Villetti was safe. Was madly in love with me. There was only one way she could know that. Villetti had either beenbled and readby a vamp loyal to the queen, or he had been read by her personally, using her crown and some of his blood.
Either way, Leandro Villetti had offered his mind, his thoughts, his feelings,himself, to the queen. And she approved of him.Son of a witch…Why?
EJ
He watched the interviews on his wall screen, studying Villetti’s face as the cop questioned Angie and then himself. The detective chief—how had he not known about that title?—asked no hard questions. Either he hadn’t come prepared to interview, or he hadn’t expected Angie to lawyer up.
He tapped the paper version of Villetti’s military sleeve into a neat stack and set it aside, focusing on the wall screen. The paper version was for Walter when the vamp woke at dusk. Walter liked the feel of paper in his fingers, the smooth face, crisp, cutting edges. Paper made the writing real to him.
Large portions of text, entire pages of the military sleeve, were redacted, black marker streaking across the copies. Even with Alex’s expertise and his own contacts in the para groups, Villetti’s redacted record was all he could get.
The military had thoroughly washed Villetti’s full story. His list of commendations was imposing. His list of kills was impressive, though most names were blacked out. But the amount of data the covert operative had brought back from missions was frickin’ remarkable.
EJ magnified and read the details of a man, his name blacked out, whom Villetti had rescued from torture and returned to base, over a hundred kilometers, through the Alps, mostly on foot. In midwinter. The freed prisoner had been a friend since childhood. This rescue was personal, but EJ had no doubt that anyone Villetti rescued had been given the same care. This man had survived his injuries, the freezing temperatures, and the grueling trip, Villetti keeping him alive and all the while pumping him for intel he had picked up in the prison, including the identity and city where a Rus general was bivouacked.
Another sheet was more vague but offered a sketchy report of a woman he wooed and slept with to refine details about the location of a Rus general, not coincidentally the same Rus general he had identified on the rescue mission. The general was working with a Rus witch at a factory where demons were being pulled through a rift and stuffed into collection vessel bombs or into specially devised containment vessels for storage, vessels from which their energies could be drawn to power workings and curses. The allied forces had searched for that factory for two years, and Villetti had seduced its location from the unfaithful wife of the general.
He would never divulge this stuff to Angie. To EJ’s way of thinking, seducing women to get info had been part of the wareffort. As a brother, that felt sleazy, but at least one of the people Villetti had slept with had given him intel that had saved a lot of lives. Worth it. Villetti was skilled at getting what he wanted. He was also deadly. He defended what he loved.
On the surface, and even deeper, into the heart of the man, he was perfect for Angie and would provide another layer of safety for her. So why had the queen not pushed the two together until now? Was she waiting until Angie showed an interest? Until she fought again in her own colors? Until Karson Marrazzo did something to require Villetti’s help? Until some threat was big enough to warrant yanking Villetti back into Angie’s life?
His sister was still, tacitly, under the protection of the queen, but she wasn’t formally allied with the throne. If danger or violence forced Angie back to court, Villetti would have a harder job of wooing and winning her, unless he left human law enforcement and fully allied with the queen as well.
The timing was interesting.
She had been fucked over by Karson Marrazzo. She had been wounded again when she had been forced to kill to protect herself from him and then from bounty hunters. She wanted independence, but his sister was way more important as a political tool than he had recognized.
EJ scanned the contents of another folder. A year after Villetti returned from the war, he visited the queen. During the visit, he claimed he was…holy hell. He was in love with Angie and always had been. EJ read a carefully worded, restricted, and limited allegiance to the queen, signed by Villetti. The man had beenbled and read, voluntarily, by Koun, the queen’s personal bodyguard. Koun had verified Villetti’s desire to pursue the queen’s eldest goddaughter, without encouragement from the queen that might be construed by Angie as an order to accept him.
The man had been given the queen’s blessing, in secret.
No one had told Angie or him about Villetti’s request and the queen’s consent.
Did Walter know? Walter, the vamp who was responsible for their safety? Had to know.
After swearing to the queen, Villetti had rearranged his entire postwar career choices based upon Chat-town and proximity to Ange. That explained why he had shown up on so many cases, riding them hard, from a law enforcement standpoint.
Through The Firm cases, he had made sure he saw Angie frequently, and yet he’d been curt, distant, and superior. Until now. Had Villetti seen something in her that suggested to him she was ready for a lover again? The man was devious and patient. The warrior part of EJ liked that in a man, except that he could screw over his sister and that was unacceptable. Villetti had hurt her once, with no personal choice in the matter, and with the best of intentions—but still.
