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“Done. Eat well at lunch, dear Risa. You’re going to need the energy.”
I laughed again and hung up, my body humming with expectation as I jogged back to my bike. I sped through the traffic and quickly reached Brunswick Street, but by the time I found parking, I was still twenty minutes late.
“About time,” Mom said, her expression critical as I walked through the tables to one they’d marked as their own. She was, as always, dressed simply but elegantly, and her dark blue suit made the blue of her eyes seem even brighter. Her silvery white hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and it oddly gave her face a sharpness that I hadn’t noticed before. “Where have you been?”
“I got delayed by a hot man with an even hotter body,” I said with a grin, and gave her a hug and quick kiss.
“About time,” Riley said. “I was beginning to think I’d have to drag you down to one of the clubs myself.”
I laughed as I perched beside her. She smelled of soap and sunshine, and the vivid orange nail polish had been replaced by a more subtle red. “I always have other options. I just don’t always take them,” I said.
“Franklin’s isn’t really an option when it comes to a relationship.” Mom crossed her arms on the table—a none-too-subtle warning I was about to get interrogated. “So, is this hot man the Aedh I warned you about?”
“Yes.” I reached past Riley, swiped my credit card, ordered a Coke, a burger, and a piece of banana cake, then glanced at Mom again. There were shadows under her bright eyes, and concern slithered through me. She obviously wasn’t getting much sleep, but I bit back the need to ask why. She’d just wave away my concern, like she had the other few times I’d asked what was worrying her. “What did you see abou
t Lucian?”
“Nothing. He may exist, but the universe is giving me very little about him.”
I couldn’t help feeling a little more secure about the fledgling relationship. Although Mom wasn’t infallible. She’d never seen the havoc Jak could cause, although she had warned me that the relationship wouldn’t last. “Maybe you’re getting zip simply because there’s nothing much to tell. Maybe he is what he says he is, nothing more.”
“Maybe.” She shrugged and gave me a rueful smile. “I’m too used to grabbing bits of information about people from the cosmos. It always disturbs me when nothing is forthcoming.”
“Well, the cosmos might not be forthcoming,” Riley said, “but I’ll bet the Directorate’s computers could cough up something. Give me the juicy details, and we’ll run a check.”
I doubted she’d get much more than Stane, but just in case I filled them both in on how’d we’d met and what he’d told me about himself.
My cake, burger, and Coke arrived, so I ate that while they fired yet more questions my way—some of Riley’s explicit enough to have me choking. She laughed and thumped me on the back.
“A man can be as hot as he likes out of the bedroom,” she said philosophically, “but if he can’t perform in it, he’s not worth keeping.”
“Trust me,” I wheezed, “he can perform.”
“Good,” she said. “Now on to more serious stuff. Rhoan’s been questioning the dog shifter who attacked you, and he hasn’t given us much at all. Interestingly, DNA tests show he is fully human. Whatever has given him the skill to partially change, it’s not nature or science.”
I wrinkled my nose and glanced at my mom. “Is magic capable of something like that?”
She shrugged—an elegant movement, like everything else she did. “I’m no expert, but I doubt whoever is bringing the soul stealer into this world would be powerful enough to alter the basic nature of life. It would have to be someone far more powerful.”
“But this Charna is practicing blood magic—”
“I doubt even that would be enough,” she commented, “but as I said, I am no expert.”
Meaning I’d have to ask Ilianna to ask her mom. Again. At this rate, she’d be meeting stallions over dinner at her mom’s for the next month. I met Riley’s gaze again. “Rhoan ran a background check on him.”
It wasn’t a question—running a background check was pretty much standard procedure, even for the police.
Riley nodded. “It didn’t come up with much. Apparently Graham Turner popped into existence a year ago. As yet, we haven’t tracked down who he was before that.”
“Might be worth trying the cached files at the Criminal Records Bureau in Britain. That’s where we found Handberry—or rather, Gordon March, as he was born.”
Amusement wrinkled the corners of Riley’s gray eyes. “I told Rhoan you were more resourceful than he thought. Although he’s going to be miffed you got the information before him.”
“God, he’s mad enough at me as it is.”
She laughed and patted my hand. “Let me handle Rhoan. You just promise me to keep calling one of us if things start getting hairy.”
“Deal.”
