And they were done. “Okay then.” Forrest stood, Levi right behind him.
They exited the shop. Forrest pushed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. Dark had fully fallen, and the safety lights had come on, spaced evenly down the streets and along the walks that stretched above them. This area didn’t have much of a nightlife, but a few of the shops were still open, including Gordian’s. The pedestrians hurried to their waiting transports, each one sleek and built to hold no more than a few people.
Forrest groaned. “I walked from the closest public transit stop, but it’s too cold. Call a private transport?”
Levi stood straight in his armor. He didn’t even have gloves. “Yes. That would be appreciated. The lands around Lianka did not get this cold.”
“And you’re not even shivering.”
Levi didn’t respond. He was back to his usual silence. Forrest shrugged and pulled out his comm. “Looks like there’s a private transport stop a couple blocks away.”
They started off, Vivi pressing close to Forrest. As they turned right onto the next street, she stopped, growling low in her throat. There was something down this road she wanted them to stay away from.
“What is it?” Levi asked behind him, his gaze scanning the emptying street. The first few levels of catwalk above them were also bare, everyone either in their homes or hurrying on to the next destination for the night.
“Not sure. Let’s find another stop, though. There’s one back the other way, about four blocks south.” He didn’t know what instinct Vivi was operating off of, but she and Garfield had saved his ass too many times for him to ignore it because he wanted to avoid a few blocks of being cold.
Levi nodded and backed around the corner, keeping an eye on the shadows.
Vivi spun as a tufted dart appeared in Levi’s neck. The Prizzoli grunted and sank to one knee. Vivi spun again, looking for where the threat was. She would rip and tear and— A dart hit her ruff, then a second. A third appeared on her left flank.
It all happened in a mere fraction of a second—too fast for Forrest to react properly. He leapt toward a doorway, hoping the stone and shadows would protect him as he called for help. He didn’t make it. There was a sharp pinch in his upper neck, just above his scarf.
He didn’t even get a chance to pull his comm out as shadows crowded his vision and his limbs went limp. He didn’t get a chance to remember or regret or wish as consciousness fled.
Chapter 30
FELIX
“Where is he?” Blue paced over the rug in their living room, around the back of the sofa, through the kitchen, and back to the living room. “He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”
Garfield stuck to her side, his plaintive cries echoing through the apartment.
It had started fifteen minutes before. Mo’ata had returned with food. They’d relayed once more what that girl Sarah had said about her conversation with Petyr and what she had told her friend, Annaliese. They’d sent out the image of the girl to all active and sleeper agents of the Order with instructions to be on the lookout for her as a possible lead on the drug.
Other than scouring every inch of Tremmir, every street, walkway, transport, building, or tunnel, that was all they could do. And scouring a city that was a little over a thousand square miles and housed more than 9 million people? That would never be feasible.
The girl, Sarah, hadn’t liked that. She’d continued to shoot barbed comments at Blue, as if that would somehow make her friend appear. When he’d asked her to leave—politely he thought—she’d gone silent, something cold and savage in her gaze as it locked on him. Then she’d bitten out, “You all deserve each other,” and left.
Now, he watched the woman he was sure he loved do her best to stave off panic. “I’m sure he and Levi simply got caught up on their errand or ran into some delay with the transports. It is the night before a break-day, after all.” He wasn’t sure why he was offering platitudes. They were patently false, and neither he nor Blue believed them.
She glared in his direction but didn’t pause in her pacing.
He held up his hands. “Sorry.”
“Why aren’t we out there?”
“We will be. Soon. We just need to know where to start.” He hated seeing her like this. “And won’t you feel silly when it turns out you panicked again?” He knew the words were a mistake before they’d left his mouth.
She spun and stalked toward him. “You don’t understand. It’s wrong. They’re not where they should be. They’re not there.” Garfield yowled his agreement.
“Pet, just—”
She flew at him. “Don’t call me pet.” She smacked his chest. “Especially in that tone.” Another slap. “I know I’m half hysterical.” She curled her hand into a fist. “But no one gets to use that tone.” She pulled her fist back.
“Shopa.” Mo’ata’s voice cut through the room.
Blue spun away and headed for him. “Anything?”
“No.”
She deflated. That was the only way to describe it. As though everything that made Blue Blue just drained away. Garfield paced in front of her, his cries gaining in intensity until Felix scooped him up. Then the piquet burrowed against him, hiding his head in the crook of Felix’s neck. Felix gathered Blue under his other arm and steered her to the sofa, where she sat.
“I called the shop they were visiting. It’s in the north shopping district and a little farther away than the university, but I got confirmation that they left about fifteen minutes ago. So whatever happened, happened on the way from there to here.”
Fifteen minutes. It wasn’t very long, but Felix knew a lot could happen in fifteen minutes. In fifteen minutes a man could be bound and tied and beaten. He could be dragged to the tunnels under a city or to shielded rooms above it. Or he could simply become lost and out of touch, having taken the wrong transport and ended up on the opposite side of the city. Or a throat could be slashed.
But fifteen minutes wasn’t very long, not long enough to panic over.
Unless the person panicking was connected to a piquet, which panicked first.
Blue’s unease when Sarah had recognized Mika was understandable, a moment that had come and gone as soon as she’d been able to talk to Forrest. When Garfield had begun to fuss, though, she’d insisted on calling him again. There’d been no answer. She’d called Levi. No answer there either.
Mo’ata had slipped away, fingers flying over his comm as he left Felix to deal with Blue.
He’d frozen. He didn’t know how to deal with a girl near the edge of hysterics. He never had. He wasn’t the kind to offer comfort. He could laugh, and he had always enjoyed a good fight, but soft words? Mo’ata, Forrest… even Zeynar was better with those than Felix. Responding to a call of “teapot” or teasing a smile from a slightly anxious girl were much, much different from this.
And now Mo’ata left him to it again. “Um, you can hit me if you like, if it makes you feel better.” The offer was the only thing he could think to give her. He shot a pleading look at the clansman, who shook his head, waved his hand, and turned away.
“What about the trackers? You still have those on all our comms, right? You found me in the alley that way.” Blue trained wide and shining eyes on Mo’ata, ignoring Felix’s attempt to comfort her.
“They are still on there.” Mo’ata turned back, a deep frown carved into his face. “But they have either been disabled somehow or they are in a shielded space.”
“Oh God. That means I’m right. They’re gone, they’re gone.” She started to rock back and forth over the cushions a little, her arm rubbing against Felix’s. Garfield pressed closer to the mercenary, a faint and constant whine coming from him.
The cub. If he could get the cub settled, maybe that would help Blue. He didn’t understand the connection, but it only made sense. And then a job, something to do. Calm the cub, give Blue something to do. These were things he understood.
“Once you have the footage of the
area, send it to our tablets,” Felix told Mo’ata before standing and tugging Blue up, holding the piquet close to his chest. “Come with me,” he told her. She barely paid him attention, lost somewhere in her thoughts, her gaze vacant.
He led her to Forrest’s room and didn’t bother to turn on the light. There was enough filtering in from the hall. He pulled her to the bed, where the scent of both Forrest and Vivi would be strongest, and laid down beside her, careful to keep Garfield steady in his hold.
“I don’t know what to do to fix this, Blue. But we need you back.” He sucked in a breath and told her a truth he knew. “Sometimes you lose people. Sometimes you can get them back, sometimes you can’t. Sometimes they’re already gone.” She shuddered a little at that. “But you never get them back if you act as though it is already time for mourning.”
She shuddered again. Felix didn’t say anything else. Seconds later she burrowed into him, much as Garfield had. And then gradually, much slower than he would have liked but faster than he’d feared, she came back to herself. Her hand came up to bury itself in Garfield’s ruff, fingers close to Felix’s. The cub’s whimpers faded, and low snores started.
He waited another minute. “Ready, pet?” He deliberately used the name for her that she seemed to dislike so much, though he kept the words soft. And he didn’t mean anything derogatory by it—he never had. She quite simply was so small with these big eyes that looked too innocent. Maybe he should think of a new name.
She pulled her face away from the hollow of his shoulder and curled her lip at him.
Or maybe he would never change it.
“There you are,” he whispered.
She sucked in a breath, pushed away from him, and scrubbed her hands over her face.
“Shit. I need to stop with this damsel-in-distress crap.”
Felix carefully lifted the cub from where he lay in the crook of his arm and set him on the mattress beside them, then rolled off the side of the bed opposite Blue. “I think you had some help.”
She ran her hand down the cub’s side, then stood. “We’ll let him sleep. And… it was confusing. His fear was… overwhelming.” She focused on Felix. “You helped. It was a good idea bringing him in here where the scents would comfort him. Thank you.”
Felix swallowed and nodded. He couldn’t bring himself to smile, and his face fell into the familiar lines he wore when he concentrated on a job or when he had to spend time around his family. “Let’s go find our boy.”
That got a smile. It was there and gone and all to brief, but he got one out of her. She patted her sides, making sure her blades were still there, then nodded once, the motion determined.
When they returned to the living room, he found that Zeynar had shown up and now sat at the dining table with Mo’ata. Felix suppressed the instinctive surge of resentment the sight of the man stirred and steered Blue to join them. Duri and Prin hovered behind their boss, Prin stoic as always, but Duri stirred with signs of the same restless need to act that gripped Felix. Though not truly part of the family, Duri had spent enough time with them, and with Blue, to unbend, just a bit.
“I have the footage. I’ll send it to everyone’s tablets in a moment. But first, Zeynar has some more information for us.” Mo’ata nudged a glass of aipin juice toward Blue. Felix noted it was the only glass at the table and it had been waiting in front of the chair Blue usually occupied.
Felix held his words. He wanted to brush aside whatever Zeynar might say and dive into those videos. The longer they waited, the farther away his…his brothers were. But now was not the time to argue or defy the clansman. As the not-quite-elected leader of their family and team, he deserved Felix’s respect and, if not obedience, Felix’s deference.
Blue opened her mouth, no doubt to protest just as Felix had wanted to, and he covered her hand with his, giving a small shake of his head. Not now, he wanted to say. Not now, it wastes less time to listen than to argue.
And then he caught it. There was a new pinch to Mo’ata’s eyes, a stiffness in his shoulders that had not been there before Felix had taken Blue to Forrest’s room.
The clansman had already looked at the footage. And whatever he’d seen had told him that a few minutes would not make a difference one way or the other.
Felix pulled in a breath. It did not mean Forrest—the young man with an artist’s soul—or Levi—someone he had come to rely on for his steadying influence and unique view of the world—were gone from them forever.
Just for now.
He caught Zeynar’s gaze, the blue remarkably close to Forrest’s. “Speak.”
Zeynar nodded. Mo’ata nudged the juice in front of Blue again as Trevon tapped his comm. Blue sipped, and the Family man spoke. “I’ve found out who Miyari is. Or I should say, who I think Miyari is. There was no one in the public records by that name.”
“The boss ran his own search as well. Nothing under Miyari,” Mo’ata confirmed.
“Nya had an apprentice about twenty years or so ago, when she was a member of the chemist branch of the Science Guild.”
Felix hummed. “The move to aromachist would not be all that strange. Many of those who are looking to move out of academic fields find something similar to what they specialized in.”
Zeynar shrugged and kept his gaze on the screen of his comm. “You were correct about the family connection. The apprentice was named Yorik Skit. He was a distant cousin of Nya Dorago. And ambitious. Before the apprenticeship was complete, he began experiments of his own, testing subjects who had not agreed to the testing before his compounds were approved for trial.”
Felix sucked in a breath. Twenty years ago. He had been too young to understand the implications, but there was one time his parents fought… His mother wanted “none of that scandal connected to my house” and his father insisted “the breakthroughs would benefit Cularna and the Alliance.” Then nothing. His mother had won that argument, whatever it had been about.
He hoped it was not connected with this newest case, for many reasons.
“He disappeared after that,” Zeynar continued. “But my man found an old image of the mark the apprentice used, and it matches that of the one on the vial exactly.” He set up his comm in the middle of the table and enabled the projector function. Two images appeared, one a young man, his hair parted in the middle in the fashion of the youth of a couple decades ago, and the second a winged serpent that matched what Felix had already seen. The man’s picture changed, the hair fading to gray at the temples, the skin a loosening, the bone structure becoming more pronounced. “And this is an approximation of Yorik today. I have already sent it to your boss. I also scanned it through my own database and got one hit.” He tapped a few more keys. It was grainy, and the man may or may not have been the one in the earlier image. “A meeting here on Karran, three years ago. It was just beyond my territory but close enough that the cameras captured some of it. And it was a meeting with Yvan Eteru, Reynaul’s current second.”
“This tells us what? Three years is a long time.” Felix asked, keeping his tone even.
“It’s an eighty-percent match to the age projection. And it’s simply another confirmation that the man we’re looking for is operating out of Falass, since if you are going to do anything in Falass, you do it with the permission of the Eteru Family.”
“The meeting could have been for any number of reasons,” Felix interjected.
Zeynar focused on him. For once, the mocking smile and head tilt were gone. “True. And it may not even be our man in this shot. But there are too many things pointing to this conclusion for me to dismiss it. And while I will keep an open mind, there is no longer an option to delay.” Zeynar sucked in a breath. “I will attempt to deal with Eteru for the location of Yorik and any other information I can glean. Though I gained permission to send a man of my own to Falass, that was all I got from him previously. It won’t be easy, but I at least now have something more concrete to begin with than suppositions.”
Felix nodd
ed, carefully. He didn’t know if Blue or Mo’ata knew the significance of those words. Zeynar—Trevon—would essentially be acting as a supplicant to the other family head, which would put him at a distinct disadvantage. And because of this, he would have to offer something of great value to get Eteru to deal. Gaining permission to send someone into another’s territory was no easy matter, but asking them to essentially give up a previous alliance—however small—was something else entirely.
“Will the Faust name hold any weight?” Blue asked. Her eyes were a little clearer. He could almost see the thoughts as they zipped through her mind, taking her to the conclusions she needed. Maybe she did know the significance of Zeynar’s words, or maybe she’d picked something up from Mo’ata.
Or maybe she simply understood more than any of them about the situation the missing half of the prida found themselves in and would do anything she could to ensure their safe return. Her earlier, panicked words came back to him. They’re not where they should be.
“Possibly. I will let you know if the negotiations swing in that direction.” A pleased smile pulled up the corners of Zeynar’s lips. Still, it lacked the edge of wild glee that normally lived there. This was more… proud.
“Okay,” Blue said after a brief hesitation. “Thank you. I feel like I should give you a bucketful of pennies—”
He held up a hand. “No. The pennies are for apologies. Maybe, when we know exactly what’s happened, there will need to be apologies offered. Until then, this is what Family does.”
Felix’s chest tightened at those words. Say what he would about the way the Families operated, once loyalty was offered, it took a massive act of betrayal to sever the connection. Like what happened with Mother. That had been a betrayal, he realized, seeing how Trevon dealt with Blue and with the rest of them in this dire situation.
A Blue Star Rising Page 29
