“Hi there, Penny, it’s Darla Tell,” said the voice on the other end.
“Hi,” I said, sitting up straighter in my seat.
“How are you?”
“Doing all right,” I said.
“No morning sickness?”
My entire body tensed. “How do you know about that?”
“What?” Lachlan said from the other side of the car, noticing my change in demeanor.
Darla let out an easy laugh. “Oh, well, it’s a bit of a funny thing. So, I happen to know Esther Caine from ages ago, and when I came to this area, I thought I’d look her up so that we could catch up. Anyway, she was telling me that she had a puzzle for me, that one of the women in her order, Ophelia Diaz, had been asking about dragon-vampire hybrids, whether it was possible, that kind of thing. And I remembered that we went to that charming restaurant the Pink Flamingo Cafe, and that she was the owner, and I thought, well, could that be Penny? So, I wasn’t sure, but I’d just ask you about it. So, it’s you, then. You and that police detective?”
My mouth was dry. I didn’t know how to respond to that. Here was Darla, acting completely casual about the entire thing, but I couldn’t trust that. I’d been so worried that she was going after me because of the blood blond, and now she was talking about the baby.
“Penny? You still there? Did I lose you?”
“I’m here,” I said in a hoarse voice.
“Oh, good,” she said. “Listen, I think the entire concept is intriguing. I’ve never heard of such a thing before, and I’ve heard of quite a lot.”
“I’m sure you have,” I said.
“Why don’t you come by the Order’s headquarters?”
“Come… come by?” Was she going to take me captive now?
“Sure,” she said. “What are you doing right now?”
“Right now?” I licked my lips. “Listen, I don’t know if it’s really a good time.”
“When would be a good time, then?”
“I…” My throat was constricting. “I’ll get back to you.” I hung up the phone. I could hardly breathe. I rolled the window down, gulping at the outside air. But it was hot and humid, and it only made it worse. I rolled the window back up.
“Penny?” said Lachlan. “What’s wrong?”
“We may have trouble,” I said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Oh, you’re here.” Darla clapped her hands together. She was standing in the foyer of the Order’s headquarters. “And you brought along your police detective.”
Lachlan had his hand on the small of my back. Ever since we’d gotten out of the car, he hadn’t stopped touching me. I might have found it annoying a few days ago, but now it was only comforting. The two of us together were strong, and touching each other gave us access to our power if we needed it.
I had explained the situation to him, told him that I thought I might have to go and talk to Darla, because there was a chance that all of this was benign, and if so, I didn’t want to make an enemy of her.
Given the possible danger, however, he hadn’t wanted me to come alone.
“This is Lachlan,” I said, plastering a smile on my face.
Lachlan offered her his hand.
Darla took it, shaking his hand vigorously. “My, my, isn’t Penny the lucky woman.”
“Thank you,” said Lachlan, raising his eyebrows and grinning mischievously at her. He had turned his charm on, way on. He seemed completely at ease.
I wished my own smile looked as genuine.
Darla let go of Lachlan and turned back to me. “And how are you really, Penny?”
“I’m really fine.”
“Are you sure, because pregnancy can be quite trying even under normal circumstances. I want you to know that whatever you might need, any time of the day or night, you can call me. My schedule’s rather flexible here, you see, and I can usually get away if necessary. And I do mean anything, even silly things like shopping for maternity clothes.” She grinned, rubbing her hands together. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch recently. I did mean it when I said I wanted to be friends.”
I could not figure this woman out. Was she on the up and up, or was this all an elaborate attempt to manipulate me? If she wanted to lock me up, why hadn’t she done it already?
“How nice of you,” said Lachlan. “We appreciate it, really.”
Darla turned on him, her eyes narrowing. “Not a problem at all.” There was a hint of something in her tone when she was talking to Lachlan… but maybe that was only because she really did have some kind of crush on me and saw him as competition or something. She went back to me. “What are you eating?”
“Why do you ask?” I said.
“It’s only that pregnant women should be very careful about what they eat. So many times, women think it’s an excuse to overeat, and nothing could be further from the truth.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I don’t overeat.” It reminded me of what Alastair used to say to me when I was pregnant. He was more concerned that I’d gain too much weight than he was about our babies. He would always control my diet, but when I was pregnant, it was even worse. He made sure that I ate healthy foods, full of nutrients, but he would limit my portion size and cut me off from carbohydrates.
“Oh, of course you don’t.” Darla cringed. “That came out wrong, it really did. You are a beautiful woman, Penny, and you are positively glowing, and—”
“Maybe she means the blood,” said Lachlan.
“Blood?” said Darla.
“I’ve been drinking blood,” I said. “Craving it. That’s what made us think the baby was possibly a vampire hybrid.”
“Oh?” said Darla. “Before, you thought something else?”
“Well, we wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that Lachlan was the father,” I said. “He’s a vampire, after all.”
“So, then what? You thought that it was immaculate conception?” said Darla.
I swallowed. “Of course not.”
Lachlan laughed in his charming, casual way. “You don’t want to hear all our dirty laundry, now do you, Darla? Let’s say that there was another contender and leave it at that? Penny and I are happy together now, and that’s all that matters.”
“Oh,” said Darla. “Well, that’s wonderful that you were exploring your options, Penny.”
I shot a glance at Lachlan, annoyed. I got that he was trying to spare me from having to discuss being assaulted, but he had just made me sound like a big ho.
He winced and then gave me an apologetic shrug.
Oh, well. What did I care about Darla anyway? She could think what she liked. She only seemed happy that I wasn’t as committed to Lachlan as she might have thought. Maybe she thought she’d still have a chance with me.
“So…” Darla tapped her chin. “Drinking blood. How peculiar.”
“This is quite a place you’ve got here,” said Lachlan, looking around the foyer, which was a large, open area with an enormous, intricate antique rug on the floor. The walls were decorated with large portraits of people in stiff suits and flowing dresses. The ceiling was arched and elaborate, and there was a gigantic, hanging chandelier overhead.
“Thank you,” said Darla, barely looking at him.
“I have to admit I’m curious about the Order as well,” I said. “Where do you keep the magical prisoners?”
“Oh, that’s up another level,” said Darla, smiling at me.
“And, um, what’s your criteria for locking someone up?”
“Well,” she said. “They must be quite dangerous. Planning to use magic to hurt a number of people or give themselves undue power, that sort of thing.”
“So you lock them up before they do whatever it is that they’re planning?” I said.
“If possible, yes,” she said. “But sometimes we’re simply not quick enough. Then we have to do damage control and get them before they cause any more mayhem.”
“How do you find out what they’re planning?”
“
Oh, it’s generally fairly obvious,” she said. “Usually, they’re making very public threats by the time we step in. For instance, imagine that, oh, I don’t know, Stalin had been magical. If so, we would have stepped in and locked him up and that would have been that.”
I nodded slowly. “So, it’s always that caliber of bad guy you lock up.”
“Usually,” she said.
“Very interesting,” said Lachlan.
She shot him a cold look.
His charm was clearly not working on her.
Generally, it did, which was strange. But maybe she wasn’t actually bisexual at all. Maybe she was a closeted lesbian who only pretended to be attracted to men. Why she’d keep it a secret, I didn’t know, but maybe she was just old-fashioned. She’d said that she knew Esther, who was a very ancient mage. It was possible that Darla used magic to extend her lifespan as well. Maybe she simply didn’t realize that she could be open about her sexual preferences.
“Would you like to see the wing where we keep the prisoners?” said Darla.
My hackles went up again. Was this when she’d shove us into a cell?
“We’d love to,” said Lachlan, speaking before I had a chance.
* * *
“These are all magically reinforced,” said Darla, gesturing to the iron bars that went from the ceiling to the floor in front of a large-ish cell. Inside, it was an odd mix of medieval dungeon and modern fixtures, like the toilet, sink, and bed. The place didn’t look comfortable, but it didn’t look inhumane either. It was bigger than the cell that I’d been in at Roxbone. “There’s a special spell inside the cell that sucks the magic from the prisoner and redirects it elsewhere, and no one could get out of here.”
“I thought you said there was an escape,” I said.
She sighed. “Well, theoretically, no one could. That’s actually why this cell is empty. The prisoner who was in here got out and while we were hunting him down, he got himself killed. This city isn’t a safe place for dragons, really. I don’t know why so many of them seem to want to vacation here.”
“Who was the prisoner?” I said. “What did he do?”
“He was a mass murderer. Wanted to rule the world, that kind of thing.” She shrugged, as if to say that was typical. “That was a case where we had intervened just in time to stop his megalomaniac rise to infamy.”
There was a snicker, echoing off the ceiling.
I turned, looking. Where had that come from?
“Oh,” said Darla. “Well, they can’t all be conveniently killed off, unfortunately.” She stalked past the empty cell to the next one down. “How are we today, Caleb?”
I edged after her, along with Lachlan.
The next cell looked quite like the empty one except for the fact that there was a man sitting in this one. He had a desk shoved up against the stone wall, and he was sitting at it. The desk was covered in books and papers. The man was unassuming with brown hair and brown eyes. He was neither overly attractive nor ugly. He was… there, somewhat unoffensive and unnoticeable.
“We?” said the man. “That would require that I speak for you as well? Am I privy to your moods?”
“This is Caleb Kinnan,” said Darla. “It’s best to ignore him.”
“Perhaps you meant the royal we,” he said. “In that case, allow me to answer. We are quite put out, and our ennobled person is rather uncomfortable. We would like to be served roast pork by scantily clad men if you please.” He noticed Lachlan. “Him. He’d do nicely as a manservant.”
Lachlan folded his arms over his chest but didn’t respond.
I decided not to either. Hadn’t Darla just said to ignore him?
“Now, now,” said Darla. “You know that someone like you isn’t about to be given any kind of comforts. You don’t deserve them, you know.” Her voice was light, almost teasing.
Caleb made a sour face. “Whereas you, stealing power from poor sods like me, are as pure as the driven snow.”
“Now, now, Caleb,” she said. “You’re hardly a poor sod.”
Caleb smiled now, and it was ugly. “Now, that’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Darla leaned close, gripping the bars of the cell. “And to think, after everything you tried to achieve, you’ve ended up under my power. Trapped here.”
Caleb got up from his chair and sauntered across the cell. “Careful, Darla,” he said softly. “Your ego is showing.”
She just laughed.
Personally, I didn’t get it. She had told us that we should ignore Caleb, but now, here she was, taunting him.
He kept coming closer.
“You shouldn’t touch the bars, you know,” Darla said, and her voice had dropped lower, so that it was almost chummy.
“Going to jolt me again?” said Caleb, stopping just a foot behind the bars.
Darla raised her voice. “Sid? You listening?”
“I hear you, Ms. Tell,” came a voice from down the hall, thick with a British accent that was different than Darla’s. Hers was crisp, BBC. His was muddled, urban, drawling.
Darla raised her eyebrows at Caleb. “Just one word from me, and I’ll have him send the jolt through the bars.”
Caleb parted his lips. “Do you have any idea what that jolt feels like? How painful it is? It makes my teeth ache.”
“Then you’d better step back, hadn’t you?”
Caleb took a small step backward. He spread his hands.
“Best not to wind him up too much, Ms. Tell,” called Sid.
Darla sighed, looking disappointed. She turned back to us. “Sid’s right, of course. He really is quite good with the prisoners.” She started walking back the way we’d come. “Off we go, then.”
* * *
“Well, she let us go,” I said. I was standing over the stove, browning ground turkey to have with some penne pasta and tomato sauce.
Lachlan was next to me, chopping vegetables for a salad. “Yeah, I don’t think she sees us as a threat. Otherwise, she would have either captured us or made sure to threaten us.”
“You don’t think that bit in the prison wing with Caleb wasn’t a threat? I thought she was trying to show us what would happen if she locked us up in there.”
“No way,” said Lachlan, as he finished mincing the onion. “That was her showing off for you. I think you’re right. She has a crush on you.”
“Showing off? What?”
“Yeah, she wanted to impress you,” he said.
“Whatever,” I said. “You have your interpretation, I have mine.”
“Whole place is pretty weird,” said Lachlan. “I can see why you’re creeped out by it. But I think we’re okay. I mean, as long as we don’t try to impose our megalomaniac will on the world.”
I rolled my eyes at him. I set down the wooden spoon I’d been using to stir the meat. “I hope you’re right.”
“I wouldn’t worry about her,” said Lachlan. “I’d be… wary of her, of course. There’s something about her that’s a little… off.”
“You feel that too?”
“Yeah, I don’t trust her or anything,” he said. “But I don’t think she means us any ill will. And I think you made the right call going to see her, because she’s the kind of crazy that you don’t want to piss off.”
“But I get the feeling it would be easier to piss her off than anyone might expect.”
“Well, there’s that,” he said. “But seriously, we’ve got bigger issues than the Order of Rasmossen and Wolffe.”
“You mean the case,” I said. “How we’re a whole lot of nowhere with that.”
“Well, maybe this girlfriend is the answer,” said Lachlan. “Or maybe it really is Elizabeth. I mean, she was laying it on pretty thick, don’t you think? All that sobbing and going on about how her brother was good deep down?”
“I think she meant all of that,” I said.
“Maybe she did,” said Lachlan. “Which was why it was all the more devastating to find out her brother wasn’t the man she thought he was. Th
at he was actually a horrible person who was going to bring shame to her and to her family.”
“And so then she what? Ran out, got a bow and arrows and shot him while he was flying over her house? And then arranged for a dealer to come and take away his body to cover her tracks?”
Lachlan furrowed his brow. “Yeah, maybe we’re grasping at straws here.”
I turned away from the stove. “Did you know that if I deliver the baby at Roxbone, they’ll take it away from me?”
He set down the knife and came over to me. “That’s not going to happen.”
“When I was locked up there, my roommate said that there was another pregnant woman there, and that a week after she delivered, she committed suicide because she couldn’t handle losing her child.”
“Jesus.” Lachlan put his arms around me, pulling me against his chest. “Penny, that’s not going to happen to you.”
I looked up at him. “It’s awful there. It’s so cold and horrible. It’s like being trapped. If they try to take me away again, I’m going to burn them all to the ground. I won’t let them take me.”
“Listen to me, a good lawyer can stall the trial out far past your due date. You won’t be pregnant in that jail, even worst case scenario and we never find Alastair’s killer.”
“You don’t think we’re going to find out who did it either, huh?”
“I’m not saying that.”
I extricated myself from his arms and went back to the stove. “But you’re thinking it. You’ve thought about the possibility.”
He hesitated. Then he went back to the vegetables and started chopping again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sonia Meader laughed. She was a tiny blond woman with bright blue eyes and huge boobs. She wore a lot of makeup. “I had no idea that Alastair had ever mated. You were his mate? But then, where were you? I thought dragons mated for life.”
Lachlan and I were at Andy’s, the bar where Sonia worked. Alastair apparently liked to hang out at this place. It was where he’d met Fletcher Remington before taking him home to sacrifice his body for magic. I guess he’d also picked up chicks here.
city of dragons 03 - fire magic Page 15
