by Chloe Neill
Page 30
Jeff and Fallon stood in front of the closest screen, on which two horses and riders in full armor galloped across a plain toward a huge stone tower.
This was Jakob’s Quest, Jeff’s favorite video game. And it seemed he’d found a partner in Fallon.
“Having fun?” Nick asked.
Jeff and Fallon turned back to us, both wearing headsets.
“Oh, hey,” Jeff said with a smile. “Figured you’d make your way in here eventually. Thought we’d kill some time while you did. ”
I smiled at Fallon. “He’s convinced you to join him?”
She grinned. “Other way around, I’m afraid. I introduced him to Jakob’s Quest. ”
“She did,” Jeff said with a smile, pulling off his headset.
I bobbed my head toward the screen. “I assume Jakob’s the male rider. Who’s the chick?”
The female character was impressively dressed in a jointed suit of armor much like Jakob’s, but shaped for her curvier and more petite form. Her hair was long and golden, pulled into a complicated braid down her back, and her eyes were blue. A tattoo on her left cheek looked like a Celtic knot.
“That’s Adriel,” Fallon said. “She’s the kingdom’s crown princess, but she gave the throne to her twin brother and sister so she could keep the land safe. ”
Jeff reached out his hand and she took it, and they shared a look of such intimacy and love that I turned away, not wanting to intrude on it.
Ethan touched the back of my neck, acknowledging the love that swirled in the room.
“Now that we’ve covered the software,” Ethan said lightly, “the hardware looks equally impressive. ”
“That’s what she said,” Jeff muttered. Love or not, he was still Jeff. I bit back a smile at Fallon’s eye roll.
“We put it in a few months ago,” Nick said. “After the incident involving Jamie. ”
The incident had been an unfortunate attempt at blackmail that Papa Breck believed was our fault. That was at least some of the reason for the strained relationship between us.
Nick walked to a freestanding screen, swirled a hand across the glass and, when a keyboard prompt filled the screen, typed in a password. The screen shifted, throwing up images of the house, the grounds on the right side. The left side showed news channels, newspaper headlines.
“It’s impressive,” Ethan said. “Have you had much cause to use it?”
“Not until this weekend,” Nick said. “And unfortunately, not until after the fact. ”
I heard the guilt in his voice, the regret they hadn’t been able to stop the harpies or elves ahead of time.
“Security cameras do not afford the gift of premonition,” Ethan kindly said, hands behind his back as he stepped forward to review the screen. “You’ve heard about Scott Grey?”
“We have,” Nick said. “The mayor doesn’t seem eager to let up on you. ”
“No,” Ethan agreed, sliding his hands into his pockets. “She does not, although I suppose that’s not entirely surprising considering her past actions. ”
Jeff swiped the screen again, and Jakob and his trusty steed disappeared, replaced by a mock-up of the dry-erase board from the House’s Ops Room.
“You made a whiteboard for us?” I asked with a grin.
Jeff shrugged adorably. “We’ve kind of become a team. It seemed like the thing to do. ”
“And with that,” Nick said, moving toward the door, “I’ll let you get to work. ”
He disappeared, closing the door behind him.
“The Brecks have a house of pissed-off Pack members,” Jeff explained. “They’ll be packing up, heading out, and he wants to make sure they remain calm until they do. ”
“Entirely understandable,” I said. “Let’s talk business. ”
Maybe I was becoming a private eye. I really needed to learn more of the lingo.
“The receipt,” Jeff said, enlarging it on the screen. “Showing a flight to Anchorage. I talked to Luc, who talked to his connection at the airlines. ”
“Ex-girlfriend,” I murmured, and Ethan whistled low, apparently recognizing the potential drama that would cause.
“Yeah. So she confirmed Aline was on the passenger manifest for the Anchorage flight, but she didn’t show up or call to cancel. ”
“The ticket could have been a plant,” Mallory suggested, but Jeff shook his head.
“Damien called the Meadows,” Jeff said. “She reserved a room but didn’t show. ”
“The Meadows is where shifters stay when they’re in Aurora,” I explained. “So she didn’t get on her flight. And, more important, she didn’t actually arrive. ”
“So she changed her plans?” Ethan asked.
“Or she met with foul play on the way to the airport,” Jeff said. “But I haven’t seen anything in the news along those lines. The receipts in the storage box were dated up to three days before Lupercalia,” Jeff said, showing a spreadsheet that itemized each and every one of them. He’d been busy. “And since we didn’t find anything else in the locker, I’m thinking it’s a red herring. She buys the storage locker because, literally, she’s running out of space in her house. ”
“It was that bad?” Mallory wondered.
“It was that bad,” Jeff and I simultaneously agreed.
“It’s also possible she was never going to get onto that plane, and someone went to a lot of trouble to fake us out,” Ethan said.
“That’s a lot of trouble to go to for a Pack outcast,” Catcher said, crossing his arms with a frown.
“Or it’s exactly the right kind of trouble,” Mallory said. “If you’re gonna take out a shifter, why not make it a troublemaker no one’s likely to miss?”
“Or both,” I said. “She’s a troublemaker. She planned to defect back to Alaska. But she didn’t make it to the airport because someone intercepted her. ”
“But if you’re going to intercept her, why do it with harpies and a full-on attack? Why not just grab her at home?” Mallory asked.
I shrugged. “For fun and profit?”
“She’s still a shifter,” Jeff said quietly. “She may be a pain in the ass, but she’s still a shifter. She’d put up a fight if she knew they were coming. And if they don’t have power of their own—if they’re using magic and other species to do the fighting for them—maybe they thought the fight was necessary. ”
“The elves managed to grab you and Damien,” Catcher pointed out.
“An army of elves,” Jeff said. “With threats and promises to kill Merit if we didn’t cooperate. ”
Ethan nodded. “So the harpies were a cover, or a way to completely throw the Pack off balance and sneak Aline away. We talked to her right before the ceremony began, so she didn’t leave long before the attack. ” He glanced at Jeff. “I don’t suppose there are cameras in the woods?”
“There are not,” Jeff said. “Just around the house. I’ve run facial recognition, but there’s no footage of her returning from the woods to the house. ”
Catcher nodded. “So she didn’t sneak back in when the fight was under way, grab a bag, leave. ”
“Let’s play this out from the beginning,” I said, walking closer to the screen and glancing at the timeline. “She was living in her house, running errands, saving stuff. She comes to the Brecks’ house. We meet her in the woods; the ceremony begins. The harpies attack. ” I glanced back at the group. “Does anybody remember seeing her during the attack or afterward?”
There was only telling silence.
“Truthfully,” Jeff said, rubbing the back of his neck, “I wasn’t looking for her. But no, I didn’t see her. ”
Ethan stepped behind me, pressed his lips to my neck. “I love it when you play detective. ”
“I’m working,” I said, but I said it with a smile.
“What’s next?” Jeff asked.
“Niera,” I said. “An elf and a mother. She was taken
during or after the glamoury magic was used on the elves. And that attack happened during the day after the harpy attack. ”
“If we’re assuming these are kidnappings, what could Aline and Niera possibly have in common? What’s the motivation for taking them both?”
“They’re both sups,” Mallory pointed out. “There are plenty of people out there who hate us. Maybe the motivation’s political. ”
But Catcher shook his head. “Political means proving a point. There’s no evidence of murder here, nobody claiming responsibility. By all accounts, the attacks were by two completely different groups. ”
“Which we’ve decided is technically impossible, since vampires were the second group. If one group was doing this—or one person—who could it be?” I glanced at Catcher, Mallory. “This is old-fashioned magic, right? The kind you do, or make. So that’s sorcerer territory. ”
“Yeah,” Catcher said, shifting uncomfortably. “But it couldn’t be anyone we actually know. Baumgartner, Mallory, Simon, Paige, me. That’s the entire crew within the tristate area. And you’d have to be closer than that. ”
“Then we’re missing someone, or ignoring them. Are there any other sups who could do this, who may or may not be extinct, or who we think are just mythological creatures?”
No one answered, so I took that as a no. Frustration building, I looked back at Catcher and Mallory. “Okay. So you guys can funnel the power of the universe, right?”
They shared a glance that was intimate enough to make me uncomfortable.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Are there sups who can, I don’t know, work spells or magic that might seem like the good sorcerer stuff?”
“They’d be sorcerers,” Catcher flatly said.
