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The window glass was wavy and bubbled, and I figured that was an artistic choice to better match the medieval feel of the place. They looked over the courtyard, and I watched Theo’s flashlight bob here and there as he searched it.
The doors were open to small bedrooms that weren’t unlike the dorms at Cadogan House. More gorgeous wooden furniture, including several beds with posts carved into climbing vines and flowers. Fairies might have been assholes, but they had really good taste in home decor.
The passageway curved again, and after a stretch of twenty or thirty feet, dead-ended in another arched wooden door. This one was nearly as tall as the gatehouse doors, which made me think I’d reached the queen’s room.
I listened for a moment, trying to ignore the thud of my heartbeat. And when I confirmed the room was silent, I opened the door.
The other rooms had been mostly empty, but orderly. This one was chaos.
The ceilings were higher than in the other bedrooms, two stories of stone that soared to a grid of wooden beams, with golden flowers painted between them. There were two tall windows, once covered by thick curtains. But the velvet, in deep and shimmering blue, lay in piles on the floor.
One of the bed’s carved posts was broken, silk sheets and thick blankets tossed aside. An armoire stood in the corner, the doors open, the contents torn out and spilled onto the floor, including a white dress that shimmered with jewels.
The dress Claudia had worn to the opening-night session.
I needed to find Theo.
• • •
I took photographs of the room, and made it back to the courtyard with only seconds to spare in my twenty-minute allotment.
“No fairies,” I said. “I didn’t have time to search the entire keep, but I found this.” I showed him the pictures I’d taken of Claudia’s room. “Someone trashed it.”
Theo studied them, brow furrowed. “Why would someone do that?”
“Maybe she had a tantrum. Or maybe she didn’t want to leave and fought back against it, and this was the result.”
Theo nodded. “Maybe they were angry at her.” He looked back at me. “You said you didn’t see her last night? That Ruadan was playing at being in charge?”
“Yeah. You’re thinking he wasn’t just playing?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t get why they’d have left all this. The castle is basically new, and they built it to their own specifications. It’s theirs and it’s fortified. There’s no reason for them to leave.”
“They could have been afraid Cadogan would retaliate.”
“Because they’re suddenly afraid of a fight?” Theo asked, and he had a point.
“They don’t make decisions based on fear,” he said. “They’re smart and calculating narcissists. They’re sociopaths that hold grudges. That’s what drives them.”
They hadn’t looked like they’d planned to pack up last night, which meant they’d made the move after we left. And probably because of us.
“They left this place because they wanted to be—physically—somewhere else,” he said. “We need to find that location and figure out what they wanted with it.”
“Do the fairies have other residences in town?”
Theo shook his head. “Other than the tower, which they abandoned, not that we know of. But they’ve gone somewhere, so we’ll start scanning the satellite feed, try to nail down their new home.”
He looked around. “Still a lot to go through here, but I’ll get CPD officers to sweep the rest of it. Let’s go back to the car. I want to update Yuen. Then we can decide what to do next.”
“Get me coffee,” I said, “and you can call whomever you want.”
• • •
The scent of roasting beans poured through the skinny drive-through window at Leo’s, and I thought it was possibly the best thing I’d ever smelled.
“Chicago dogs. Pizza. Hot beefs. You have an entire city at your disposal, and you want cheap, drive-through coffee?”
“It’s not cheap, and it’s the best coffee in Chicago,” I said, closing my eyes at the first sip of sweet and hot and sharp.
