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Being around someone who had that effect on you might make you think you loved them. It was the same effect Desmond had on me, and at various times in my life, so had Holden and Lucas. Love makes the hard times feel a little bit easier.
In Sig’s case, he just did it naturally.
Without him here, I wasn’t feeling particularly calm or peaceful, especially not with Juan Carlos standing in biting range. I took a few steps back to widen the gap between us.
“I’d say it was a pleasure to see you, Juan Carlos, but it really isn’t.”
“The feeling is mutual. My only solace in life is knowing now that you’re mortal, you’re bound to do something to get yourself killed soon, and then your blight will be wiped from the face of the earth.”
“You old sweet-talker.”
“Before the two of you start scratching at each other’s eyes, could we get to business, please? Secret was gracious enough to leave her duties on the West Coast to help us, so the least we can do is offer her some hospitality.”
“You say that like she isn’t here every other week sticking her nose in our business in the name of government safety or some such nonsense. This is hardly a rare visit.”
“Wish they were rarer.” We glared at each other in mutual distaste.
Where Tyler and I playfully sniped at each other out of friendship, this was
more of a hatred that would have led to one of us making an attempt on the other’s life if we were given the opportunity.
Honestly, of all the Tribunal Leaders to go bad—Arturo, Daria, many more before them—couldn’t Juan Carlos have been a rogue too? I would have taken that hit on for free.
Hell, I would have paid them to let me take Juan Carlos down.
The cold, dead look in his eyes told me he was thinking similarly unkind things about taking my life.
“When was the last time you saw Sig?” I asked him, deciding it might be in my best efforts to just switch to professional-investigator mode so I could get out of here faster.
“On Monday we had our weekly meeting with the middling bounty hunter you left us, gave him the appropriate warrants, and discussed Tribunal business. We were not planning to meet again until Wednesday, and when Holden and I arrived, Sig was nowhere to be found.”
It was now Friday, which meant Sig could have been gone for five days.
“Did anyone see him after Monday?”
“We’ve asked everyone we could reach, and it seems like the last person to speak with Sig directly was Shane Hewitt,” Holden said.
Shane was the middling bounty hunter Juan Carlos had referred to, and to the man’s credit, he had been serving as the council’s hunter longer than I’d held the job. I had helped train him to replace me when I’d taken on the role of Tribunal Leader, and he’d done a decent job and even early in his career had shown the promise of getting better.
He got a lot better when he’d met Siobhan O’Malley, a druid, whose life he had managed to save. The pair was now happily married and had a tiny future bounty hunter of their own, a three-year-old boy named Caleb.
This was dangerous work for a human, and a human with a family at home at that, but Shane made it work, and with Siobhan and her insane skills with a bow and arrow to back him up, I felt reasonably secure they’d both live a lot longer than the typical life expectancy for someone in this job.
“When did Shane speak to him?”
“They had a private meeting on Tuesday, according to Shane,” Holden told me. “They met to discuss the warrant we had issued, and apparently Sig asked Shane not to act on it for the time being.”
Oh, now we were getting somewhere.
“So out of the blue Sig asks for a death warrant to be retracted and then goes missing.” I looked meaningfully from Holden to Juan Carlos and back again. “I’m assuming you’ve investigated the vamp the warrant was for?”
“Believe it or not, Secret, the vampires we issue warrants for aren’t usually too keen on coming to visit us so we can ask them questions. Most likely because they know we want them dead.” Juan Carlos was apparently sick of standing and trailed over to his throne, taking a seat so he was several inches above me.
Petty.
Holden could have done the same, but instead he wandered across the room to collect an envelope. It was made of a familiar heavy cardstock, and when he handed it to me, my pulse kicked up a few notches. I glanced at him warily. These were the official death warrants for vampires issued by the Tribunal.
“Don’t worry,” he said with a smile. “My name isn’t in it.”
