There was nothing to be done for memories. They simplyhad to be endured. Except…He trotted upstairs hoping for a fight. One of the guards had to be looking for a little fun.
Angie
A cat nose shoved into my open mouth, waking me. Another cat yowled in irritation. I coughed up cat hair, raked it off my tongue, and pushed Borealis away. Rolling out of bed, I stumbled to the kitchen, where I fed them. “That’s all,” I warned, my voice grinding from sleep and what felt like a cat hair stuck partway down. “You’re lazy, annoying, and demanding. And really fluffy.” I coughed again.
Warming a cup of cold tea, I noted that I’d slept six hours, vamp lifestyle. My sleep cycle would be screwed. It was after two p.m. and snow still fell in a heavy curtain, blanketing my yoga porch. There would be no travel or working away from the house today.
I brushed my teeth, ate a small bowl of yogurt mixed with thawed blueberries, and curled on the couch with an afghan. I needed to organize this case. Too much had happened and I needed to start at the beginning.
On my tablet, I swiped the name of every person Ivyanna Holmes had spoken to at the queen’s party onto the wall screen. I added the moving scan of the numbered guests, and put names, faces, magical talents, and political histories up with the vamp-socio-political dance playing out on the screen. On a blank screen I began to draw lines from names and faces where connections existed between the queen, the emperor, Asshat, EJ, and me. Konstantin and Ravensport weren’t on the list, of course, but I wanted to see where ties pointed to them.
After an hour of watching, Iknewthere was somethinghere, something my brain recognized as a pattern, something my precogknew, but I couldn’t consciously recognize or classify. Frustrated, I backed up the scan and watched the first hour again, this time at twice the speed. Then at three times the speed. Then at four times. I followed the next hour at the faster speed, and the third hour.
I watched Ivyanna glide through the crowd. I watched her neatly (accidently?) avoid EJ and me, while managing to speak with Edmund and the Consort multiple times, her lustrous multi-red hair like a beacon. I should have seen her, noted her, even from a distance. Instead I’d been too focused on my ex.
Then I watched the vid that was simply the energy patterns as everyone moved from place to place. Witches identified as one color. Vamps, humans, Onorios, each with their own colors. All at the faster speed, searching for…whatever felt so important.
Prismed light glinted, flashed. If I had blinked, I would have missed it. A faint hint of light in one corner that never moved. On the other scans, no one appeared to be standing or sitting there. I hadn’t noticed the pale signature that night. Maybe a glitch in the system? Maybe the signature was created by one camera reflecting from the other magical energies? Tech and magic were still not meshed, despite wartime R&D.
I backed up the video, tiny hops of movement. At normal speeds, it wasn’t there. I played it forward again at four times normal and saw it.Right there.A hint of red, an emerald sparkle, like a fractured rainbow in a niche, tucked in a small corner. Around it was a trace of something brownish, narrow and lined. Something other than a glitch in energy recording. Something made of matter, cloaked in energies, far more sophisticated than anobfuscationworking.
Had there been an unannounced visitor, a spy, at the queen’s reception?
I remembered the colors of the energies cloaking Nyoka and the working that had blasted through my ownblood gauntlet hedge of thornsworking. Nyoka was a powerful witch. She might even be an XX-gened witch, like me, but with centuries of experience creating workings. Was this Nyoka?
If not Nyoka, could the glint of energies on the magic-scanning video mean an arcenciel had been hiding there? Arcenciels—the rainbow dragons of lore—had disappeared from Earth around theChange, the dragons created of pure energy not interested in a planet where dangerous humans ruled. With no notice, they had abandoned the humans and witches, as if there had never been an alliance, taking their magic and their power with them through a rift in space-time. The location of the rift now led only to an underground river flowing through limestone caverns. Yet, the sparkle of power at the queen’s party reminded me of the gemlike energy of the light dragons I had seen as a child.
The glint of energies could also be an artifact, a red herring. A waste of time. That was more likely than any other possibility.
The queen’s gala had been under such heavy security that it might as well have been a UN meeting. Only someone with extra heavy shielding could have gotten in and hidden. Like an arcenciel.
Or a different kind of magic user.
I marked the spot and sent a message to the team upstairs.If Grizz is up, I would like to see her in my rooms for an opinion on a video.I added the last part so the woman would know she didn’t need to dress out or gear up.
On the way, Grizz messaged back.
Seconds later the guard was at my door, and I tapped an icon on my wristband to let her in. “Grizz,” I said. “You don’t look like you got frostbite up on the roof.”
Grizz glanced at my own frostbite but didn’t comment. “I love playing in the snow and working with you people. You got the best toys. That drone your brother built stayed aloft fifteen minutes in the heavy snow. As good as the queen’s flying arsenal and better than the military’s when I was active, which, admittedly, was decades ago. What’s up?”
“Take a look at this.” I patted the couch, pointed to the wall screen, and the paused vid. “See the place circled in red?”
Grizz sat and studied the screen, leaning forward with elbows on her knees, her sleeves pushed up to reveal the traditional Hawaiian tataus on both forearms, the honu—turtle—on one arm, and the mano—hammerhead shark—on the other. The set had been done in the traditional way, with thorns: the left side was for strength and protection, the right for Earth and mankind. They had been done before Grizz came to work for the queen, by Dr. Tricia Allen, a cultural anthropologist in the Pacific Islands who inked Native people according to the old ways and for the old purposes, helping them keep alive the ancient traditions.
I had no tattoos. They might come one day. When I had a life that seemed stable and safe and, maybe, survivable.
“I see a circle around nothing. Can you remove the line around it?” she asked.
I tapped a spot on the virtual keyboard and the circle disappeared. “Here it is at twice normal speed.”
Grizz leaned forward again, focusing on the spot. She was dressed in oversized gray sweats with a thin black underlayer, and thick socks with indoor-outdoor pull-on booties. The outline of a weapon in a spine holster was at her back. There would be at least two knives on her too, likely one at her hip, under thelarge sweatshirt, and the other one strapped on her shin. Grizz never actually went off duty, and in the military, she had learned to never go unarmed.
“Maybe some blue-green in that area? A lighter version of the color of the witch energies in the shot?” She pointed to a spot that correlated to EJ and another that correlated to our father.
I asked, “Is there camera placement in that corner that detects energy signatures?”
“No. Not that night.”
