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The powder was glowing faintly, clearly of magical origin. He didn’t know to which of them it belonged, but he strongly suspected it was Saskia’s. The look of anger she gave him in response to his scowl told him that he had been wrong. It wasn’t hers. But she didn’t deny it. She wasn’t about to drop her friend in it.
“So what?” she snapped, snatching the plastic bag away from him, and in doing so spilling all of the powder over the carpet. Jenny gave a cry of dismay.
How look what you’ve done!” Saskia said.
“You didn’t think I was going to let you keep it?” he said, trying not to snap.
“What were you going to do?” sneered Saskia. “Flush it down the toilet? You can’t do that to our things. We are not children. You can’t tell us what to do!”
The two girls stood next to each other side-by-side, like a wall of sisterly solidarity, both of them glowering at him. Saskia and Jenny looked more like sisters than Saskia and Evie ever had. His own little sister was as golden haired as their famous father had been to the point it sometimes hurt to look at her. Though Jenny’s hair was a kind of darker chestnut plum, the two girls looked as alike as twins. And right now they were making him feel like a brute. That was until Jenny smirked and said to Saskia, “Your brother’s so hot when he’s mad.”
But Saskia was in no mood to back down. “You’re such a hypocrite,” she said, her voice high with anger. “Don’t tell me you never did SoulGlow. I bet you did worse!”
Storm couldn’t even deny it. But he had been a different person back then when, between the ages of fifteen and twenty, haunted by the darkness of his memories, he had thrown himself into many different forms of nihilism, and done far worse than SoulGlow. But he had no intention of speaking about that. Not to Saskia. He could never explain to her his reasons.
Saskia waited, a fleeting expression of hope crossing her face which swiftly turned to bitterness. “I thought so,” she said. “You and Evie and your secrets! I am sick of them. You think you’re both so much better than me! You can go to hell! I don’t need you!”
“Saskia, it’s not like that,” Storm tried to reason.
But she wasn’t having any of it. “You never tell me anything!” she shrieked. She grabbed Jenny and started dragging her towards the door. “Come on Jenny. Let’s get out of here.”
Storm moved swiftly towards the door to intercept them. “No,” he said. “You can stay. I’ll go.”
He had to go to work anyway, and he would much rather that they stayed here to rest after a whole night out on the town. Maybe Saskia would have calmed down by the time he got home this evening. He doubted it, but he could hope. Maybe then he could talk some sense into her. Tell her to go back to university and not throw away the good things that she had in this life.
He went to his bedroom to get dressed for work and found that his phone was ringing. He went to answer it and caught a glimpse of the time on the screen. It was already 8:30 am. He was thirty minutes late, and his boss was calling him. Damn it!
He answered, intending to tell the chief that he would be in within thirty minutes, but the chief did not give him a chance to speak.
“Storm, see me at my office as soon as you get in. We have a situation.”
The chief sounded eerily calm. Storm could tell it was bad.
Chapter 14
DIANA
I’d been unable to sleep all night, far too excited at the prospect of going to Joshua Ashbeck’s former address and seeing if his neighbors could help me track down any family members that I could speak to. Someone had to know where Constance Ashbeck had gone. And I also intended to go back to the Petrichor bar with Finch, but first I had to head into the office to speak to Storm and keep him off my scent. If I didn’t turn up, he would know that I was avoiding seeing him because I had something to hide.
And that was why I was in the office early, sitting at a hot desk and tapping away at the computer, trying to find any electronic records of the missing parts of the Ronin case file, when Remi tracked me down and warned me of trouble. Some heavies from the Otherworld embassy and the vampire council had arrived to find me, and had been in the chief’s office with the door closed and blinds shut, meeting with him for the past hour. That smelled like trouble. But I kept a carefree smile on my face to keep Remi from being worried.
“They want to see us,” she said.
My heart sank. Why us? Why not just to me? I was the one who had gone to the Ronin house. The team had nothing to do with it. I had no doubt the heavies being here was Rodrigge Ronin’s doing.
“It’s fine,” I told Remi. “I’ve got this.” After all, Audriett Ronin had been perfectly cooperative. Just because her son was being a little bitch trying to stir up trouble, didn’t mean that he was going to succeed.
I bounced ahead of Remi into the chief’s office, sure that everything was going to be fine. The four heavies in the chiefs office were all standing, having refused to take seat, which wasn’t a good sign. Leo and Monroe were already there, the latter looking nervous and making his best efforts not to tap his toe against the ground. I shot him a grin. The chief indicated for me and Remi to sit down. The heavies remained standing, looming over us.
The two from the Otherworld embassy were shiny prim looking folk doing a very good job of blending in with humanity in their charcoal colored three-piece suits with twin waistcoats. The vampire council representatives were clearly not vampires themselves, it being daylight, but were doing a good job of emulating them in their in their black outfits and their black cloaks. I smirked. Cloaks in summertime. A bit over much. It might have been scarier if they had sent real vampires.
Storm was missing, so we all waited in a silence in which one could hear a pin drop. The chief had given me a single look that said, ‘You’ve really dropped yourself in it this time.’ He was seriously unhappy with me. But I felt like this whole meeting was ridiculous. A bit like being called into the principal’s office. After all, tt was only me who had been naughty. Not anyone else. I saw no need for the rest of the team to be told off.
Storm arrived a few minutes later, his face a bland professional mask, but his whole body language and the psychic music that tumbled off him radiated all sorts of angst. He had not had a good morning. I wondered what was going on. He was never in late, and clearly he was peeved at being late on this morning of all mornings. He stuck out his hand towards the Otherworld embassy representatives to introduce himself, and they automatically shook his, and then looked a little annoyed at themselves as if this had not been part of their plan.
What followed was a swift recounting from the vampire council representatives of my meeting at the Ronin house yesterday. All told from Rodrigge’s point of view, of course. Apparently I had launched an unprovoked attack on his wife, leaving her injured, and Rodrigge was insisting that my weapon, a black sword, be disposed of immediately. Ha! Good luck with that. Even I had no idea where the sword was right now, though I had my suspicions.
Storm and Leo and the chief, and the rest of the team in fact, did not look like they were receiving this news is lightly as I was. I mean, what exactly had I done wrong? All I had done was visit someone’s home! It was not like this fact in itself was illegal.
