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She nodded.
“Is it actually missing?”
“Hart!” Doc’s voice was sharper.
“Yes!” Izar replied, sounding genuinely upset. “I—I didn’t know it was missing when I sent the… first email. I thought—I’d convinced myself that I’d just mislaid it. Put it somewhere for safekeeping and then forgot where.”
“You emailed me two weeks ago,” I pointed out.
She nodded. “Yes. That’s what made me go looking for it.” She was quiet a moment, and it took a good deal of self-control for me not to blurt out one of the seven different rude, insulting, or demanding things that were running through my head, but—for once—I didn’t. “I—I don’t know for certain that they’re involved. Celestina and Maritza. Or Julian.”
“Celestina is your mother-in-law?” I clarified.
Izar nodded.
“Izar,” Doc’s voice was gentle, kind. I had no idea why he wasn’t spitting mad, but he had a fuck-ton more patience than I had, that’s for damn sure.
The faun looked up at him with wet eyes.
“You know your family better than we do. If one of them were going to take it—who would it be?”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I—I don’t know.”
Something about the way she said it told me that she probably did know. Or at least seriously suspected. You see it sometimes with family members of murderers—they don’t want their brother or their husband or whoever to be guilty, so they try very hard to convince themselves of it… but they know.
Izar Pelayo knew who took the pendant.
“It was your brother, wasn’t it?” I asked her, trying not to sound like as much of a dick as I normally did.
Her goat-eyes were wide and scared and sad. She bit her lip. She didn’t deny it. “I can’t believe he’d do this,” she whispered.
But part of her definitely could, or she wouldn’t suspect it.
“Do what?” I pressed.
“Kill those shifters,” she whispered.
I waited. Ward fidgeted a little in his chair, but kept quiet. Doc watched Izar, his expression still surprisingly kind. Doc is one of those people who makes you feel like you need to be a better person, because he’s a gigantic orc with protruding fangs who is just about the gentlest person I’ve ever met. Taavi is like that, too—not the giant orc part, obviously, but gentle and kind.
I am not.
Sometimes, when I spend time around them and notice that I’m a raging dick and they really, really aren’t, I try a little harder.
So I didn’t push Izar. Because Doc wasn’t and because I knew Taavi wouldn’t.
Instead, I curled my toes in my shoes, impatient.
“Julian… isn’t a bad person,” she said, finally, speaking to a spot on the table between her hands. “He’s… caught up. He wants to make a difference. For the better. It’s just…” She let out a long sigh. “It’s hard to do that without power.”
And it was hard to get power without having your hands in the right pockets or, apparently, without the support of some secret fucked-up magical cabal—Ordo or Culhua, take your fucking pick.
I was trying to formulate a question that wasn’t going to make me sound like a total asshole when Izar started speaking again.
“Julian wanted to run for something smaller. City Council. But the others thought he should aim bigger. He needed support, financial backing. Antonio was helping him to make business deals, find donors, that sort of thing. And Antonio… introduced him to…” She trailed off, her eyes desperate.
“The Culhua,” I filled in for her.
She nodded, her expression a mix of sadness and relief. “Yes.” She began to toy with one of the rings on her left hand. “Antonio believed in Julian’s mission. And Celestina seemed to think that…” She shook her head. “I can’t actually say that I know what Celestina was thinking,” she murmured. “Shesaidthat she wanted to support Julian’s career because he was part of the family. But…”
