Miss Frost Chills the Cheater

by Painter, Kristen

  At last a clear thought made it through. If Sin had really left, his things would be gone. I went back to his apartment and looked.

  His closet was empty.

  That struck me hard. Maybe…maybe he really had gone. I sat on his bed. The apartment still smelled of him. I wanted to cry. Instead, I swallowed that urge down and got back on my feet.

  The cats were milling about, tails swishing, but they must have sensed my mood because they were steering clear.

  I let the anger wash over me, stripping all other emotion out. It was cleansing in a way, but the one emotion that it couldn’t remove was love. I loved Sin. And I knew without a doubt that he loved me.

  That calmed me down a little.

  Sugar rubbed against my shins. “Lady lady lady.”

  Sin also loved his cat. There was no way he’d leave me with just a note, just like there was no way he’d leave Sugar with nothing more than an offhand request that I bring her home.

  I gathered the air in my lungs and hollered again. “Gregory.”

  He appeared in the doorway. “Yes, m’lady? Apologies for my delay. What can I do for you?”

  “Where is Sinclair?”

  His brow furrowed and he shook his head. “I don’t understand the question, Princess. I thought he was with you.”

  “When he came back to make the call to his shop, where did he go after that? Did you bring him a snow globe here to use?”

  Gregory’s brows lifted ever so slightly. “I wasn’t aware he’d returned to the palace.”

  Ice sluiced down my spine and a sob stuck in my throat. “He never came back?”

  Concern filled Gregory’s eyes. “Not that I am aware of. Did you drop him off?”

  “No, I told him to bring the crawler back then come pick me up when he was done with his call to Archie. You did call him at my uncle’s office, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  I pressed my hand to my head. If he hadn’t come back, how could he have left a note? I couldn’t process everything that was happening.

  All I could think about was that Sin might be hurt. Or worse. He wasn’t used to all this snow. And he liked to drive that crawler fast. “Please don’t let him have had an accident.”

  Gregory snapped to attention. “I will go to the south exit and talk to the transportation office immediately. I’ll get a search party sent out. In fact, I’ll personally go with them. We’ll find him, Your Highness.”

  I nodded, feeling sick. “Thank you.”

  Gregory nodded and disappeared, the soft whir of his Segway the only sound.

  I went back to my apartment, but as I stood there alone, I could feel my mental state on the verge of cracking. I couldn’t handle Sin being gone. I needed him in my life. I loved him.

  I wanted to marry him. To be with him for the rest of my life. Wherever that was, here or in Nocturne Falls. Location didn’t matter. Just that we were together.

  None of this was right. He wouldn’t do this to me. He loved me too much. This wasn’t his style.

  That note wasn’t his style either. Not only wasn’t he the kind to do something like that, but that note sounded way too stiff and formal.

  Someone had done this to him. The same someone who’d been playing us all along.

  I had to go back to his apartment and look for anything I might have missed. And hope in the process my head settled down enough for me to make sense of everything. The jumbled mess in there wasn’t doing me any good.

  I stepped into the hall and a familiar voice called out to me.

  “Princess, I found something.” Ezreal jogged toward me.

  I shook my head as my hand touched Sin’s door. “I don’t care about the investigation right now. Sin is missing.”

  He stopped short, a horrified expression overtaking his face. “What?”

  I nodded and pushed the door open. “Finding him is all I care about.”

  “Let me help.”

  “Start from the beginning,” Ezreal said as he followed me into Sin’s apartment.

  “I got a note from him saying he left, but that’s not his style. He didn’t write it. I know he didn’t.” I started opening kitchen drawers. I don’t know why. Searching everything just seemed like the thing to do. “And then Gregory said Sin never returned in the crawler.”

  I pulled out pots and pans, moving with an urgency I couldn’t control. “If he never returned, how could he have left the note?” I was going to cry. Or scream. I could feel it coming. “Nothing makes sense. I have to find him. I have to—”

  A sob bubbled up, choking off my ability to speak. I leaned against the fridge, closed my eyes, and let the fear and anxiety hit me.

  Strong arms pulled me close. “Princess, we’ll find him. He wouldn’t have left you with a note. He loves you.”

  I nodded and sobbed against Ezreal’s shoulder. Not very queenly, but my world was collapsing. “I love him too.”

  “Of course you do.” Ezreal took me by the shoulders and held me at arm’s length. “Show me the note.”

  I took one long sniff, pulled myself together and squeaked out, “Okay.”

  I led him back to my apartment and pointed to the wretched thing.

  He read it, shaking his head. “Doesn’t sound like Mr. Crowe.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” My anger was returning. That was good. I functioned better angry than sobbing.

  Spider and Sugar raced through the door to stand in front of me. I knew they wanted food, but Sin came first. “Not now, guys.”

  Spider bit me on the leg.

  “Ow.” I glared at him. “That is not cool. I know you’re hungry, but—”

  “Mama Mama Mama. Bad man came in. The bad man made Sin leave. Spider and Sugar hide in the closet.”

  Ezreal’s brows went up. “Your cat can talk?”

  “Yeah, long story.” I crouched down. “What bad man, Spider?”

  “Bad man.”

  So descriptive. “What did the bad man look like?”

  Spider licked his foot before answering. “Bad man have blue hair.”

  Pretty much everyone in the NP had blue hair, unless they’d gone gray already. “How did the bad man make Sin leave?”

  “Cold,” Spider said. “Bad man made Sin cold. Chicken Party now?”

  Someone had used their power against Sin. I kissed Spider’s head. “Yes, Chicken Party now. Is that what you were trying to tell me before? I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.”

  I glanced at Ezreal as I got to my feet. “That confirms that Sin didn’t leave on his own.”

  Ezreal nodded, but he was watching the cats. He still seemed a bit flabbergasted by Spider’s vocal talents. “Uh huh.”

  I opened a can of Chicken Party and divided it into two bowls, then put them on the floor for the cats. “We also know a winter elf took Sin. If he had blue hair and used cold to get him to go with him, there’s no other explanation. Not that it narrows down the suspect pool much.”

  Ezreal snapped out of it. “Well, someone in the palace had to see Mr. Crowe with whoever it was. We’ll call the staff together. We need Steward Gregory.”

  “He’s already gone to transportation. After he told me Sin never came back with the crawler, he said he was going to transportation to get a search party to find him. He said he was going with them to look too.”

  “Okay.” Ezreal thought a second. “If Mr. Crowe never came back in the crawler, he could have been picked up by the kidnapper somewhere in town, then brought back here and forced to leave you that note. They’d have to have gotten through the gates, which implies someone the guards are familiar with. But they might have hidden Mr. Crowe to keep him from alerting the guards to his situation. Maybe put him in something that wasn’t suspicious.”

  “Like the back of a truck. Someone in receiving could have seen something.”

  Ezreal nodded. “We need more help. Your parents, your aunt and uncle, we need everyone. Whoever took him can’t have gone far.”

&
nbsp; “They might not have needed to get far if their goal was to…” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. I grabbed the kitchen counter to keep myself from collapsing. The thought that someone might be trying to permanently take Sin from me was more than I could take.

  “Don’t think that, Princess. Mr. Crowe is a fighter and a necromancer. He won’t let himself be taken from you without a lot of noise and struggle and the exhaustive use of his powers. We’re going to find him.”

  “Right,” I whispered, staring at the counter. “I hope so.”

  “Princess, look at me.”

  I raised my head and made eye contact.

  Ezreal seemed to radiate confidence. I wondered if that’s what he looked like going into the ring. “Mr. Crowe is going to be okay. We’re not going to let anything happen to him, are we?”

  “No.”

  “And no one would dare hurt him, because that would mean they’d be hunted for the rest of their lives. No one goes against the Winter Throne and comes out a winner, do they?”

  I straightened. “No.”

  He nodded. “You are Jayne Frost, daughter of the Winter King. Heir to the Winter Throne. Owner of a talking cat. You are one of the most powerful women to have ever been born in this kingdom. Your magic is second to no one’s but your father’s. Only a fool would want you as an enemy.”

  I smiled. I knew what he was doing. And it was working. “Thank you, Ezreal.”

  He smiled back. “You’re welcome, Princess. Now let’s go find your fiancé.”

  “We need to figure out who the bad man was. If someone was in Sin’s apartment—” I whipped around and looked at Spider, who was now sitting on the windowsill in the living room. “Spider, did the man who took Sinclair come into the apartment with Sinclair? Or did the bad man come in by himself?”

  Spider looked at me, head tilted. “Himself.”

  I glanced back at Ezreal. “That narrows it down a little. Only someone with a key could have come in on his own. Sin’s door was locked when I got here.”

  Ezreal shifted his gaze across the hall at the open door. “Did you have a key?”

  “No, I—snowballs. I guess they could have picked the lock like I did.”

  “True. But it’s a start.”

  A new thought occurred to me. “What were you coming to tell me?”

  “That I found something that might be important, but I don’t think it matters now.”

  “Tell me.” I was grasping, but anything could be significant right now. “There’s no way Sin’s disappearance and the mess with the Tinkers’ Tourney is unrelated.”

  “Agreed. I went back through my daily log, and on March second, one of your father’s magic bracelets went missing.”

  “Like the ones he gave Sin and me to change our appearance?”

  “Yes. I found the bracelet on March fifth. It was under a stack of papers on my desk. I assumed it had just been misplaced, which isn’t something I or your father would ever really do, but it was the most logical explanation. Now, after what you told me—”

  “Someone took it and used it to impersonate Dora Frigit at Sweet Acres.”

  He nodded. “I think so.”

  I grabbed the file he’d given me and opened it to read the list of names. Beside each person, he’d put their occupation. “These people that have access to my father’s office. Which of them do you trust the least? Or think might be capable of something like this?”

  He read over my shoulder. “I’m not really sure. The two housekeepers are some of the newest hires. I don’t know them as well.” He pointed to another name. A maintenance man. “Junger Glace. He was upset that his son didn’t get hired as a Zamboni driver.”

  “That seems like a thin reason to cause a problem of this scale.”

  “Agreed.” He frowned. “We need to ask Gregory. He knows everyone who works in the palace. He could look at this list and tell us immediately who we should be going after.”

  “Then we’re leaving for transportation right now. If there’s a crawler left, we’ll go after them.”

  Ezreal hesitated. “Maybe you should go there and I should gather your family.”

  I closed the file. “No, please come with me. I don’t want to be alone right now.”

  He smiled. “Let’s go.”

  We ran to the south exit. Perhaps not the most royal behavior on my part, but I wasn’t interested in being royal while Sin was in trouble.

  I expected the place to be deserted, but two valets were standing by the transportation office shooting the breeze. The snow was coming down in fat, wet flakes now. The younger valet hurried over when I came through the door, the other snapped out of his relaxed slouch to stand straighter.

  The younger valet bowed. “Would you like a crawler, Princess?”

  “I want to know how the search is going.”

  He started to scratch his head, realized who he was standing in front of, and stopped. “The search for what, Your Highness?”

  I’d never throttled a member of the palace staff, but I was thinking about it. “The search for my boyfriend, Sinclair Crowe.”

  Apparently, my tone was a little more strident than I’d intended as the young man’s eyes widened. “I—I’m very sorry. I did not know he was missing, Your Highness.”

  “What are you talking about? Gregory came down here to organize the search. Did you just come on duty? Doesn’t anyone—”

  Ezreal put his hand on my arm. “Princess, if I may.”

  I nodded and tried to breathe.

  Ezreal waved the other valet over. “What time did your shift start?”

  The older man hustled toward us. “I’ve been here since midmorning.”

  “Then you tell us,” Ezreal said. “How’s the search going? Has there been any news?”

  He looked at the other valet before answering. “What search?”

  My hands clenched, and the air around me crackled like thin ice giving way. “What in the bloody Christmas is going on?”

  Both valets retreated a few inches.

  Ezreal stepped toward them, narrowing the gap. “Are you telling me there’s no search happening right now? What happened when Steward Gregory came down here?”

  The valets looked at each other again, perhaps deciding which one was going to answer. The older one cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, but Steward Gregory hasn’t been here today. There’s no search of any kind going on that I’m aware of.”

  Shards of ice pricked my heart. I was on the verge of going full-blown blizzard. I found my voice and decided to confirm what Spider had told me. “Did Mr. Crowe return in the crawler earlier today?”

  Both valets nodded, but again the older one spoke. “Yes, Your Highness. He returned about two hours ago.”

  So Sin had come back. Gregory knew everything that went on in the palace. How did he not know that?

  Because Gregory was a liar.

  The gut-punch feeling returned, turning my knees to liquid. I reached for Ezreal. He caught my arm and held me up. “Ezreal…”

  He nodded. “I know, Princess.” He held my arm tightly to his side, turned me around and marched me back into the palace.

  I was livid and trembling, and snow had begun falling around us, which wouldn’t have been odd except we were inside. “Gregory did this, didn’t he?”

  Ezreal nodded. “It seems that way. He’s at least involved.”

  “Gregory. Gregory. That lying piece of garbage. We trusted him. For years. It has to be him. He has the access, he has the connections, and he knew the moment Sin and I were planning on coming to the North Pole.”

  “He must have worked very hard to set this all up. He wanted to discredit Mr. Crowe. But why?”

  “We’ll figure that out when we find him. If I let him live long enough.” I sucked in a breath, suddenly unable to get enough air in my lungs with the weight of betrayal pressing down on me. “Sin.” It was the only word I could manage.

  Ezreal held on to me. “We’re going to
find Mr. Crowe. We know where Gregory lives. His apartment isn’t exactly hard to find in the staff wing.”

  I shook my head. The snow came down harder. Big, blinding clumps. “He won’t be there. He’s too smart for that. He’s already outsmarted us every step of the way. He knew we wouldn’t suspect him until it was too late.”

  “Good thing it’s not too late,” Ezreal said.

  I stared at him. “How do you know? How are we going to find him?”

  A glint came into Ezreal’s eyes. It was as sharp and bright as a newly honed blade. “I believe I can help with that.”

  I thought I knew a lot about Ezreal. About his past and what he’d done before coming to work for my father. And I did. It was his ice troll side that had always remained a bit of a mystery to me.

  Sure, I knew a little about them, but not that they were exceptional trackers thanks to a sense of smell that rivaled the ones my shifter friends in Nocturne Falls had. Of course, there wasn’t much call for Ezreal to do any tracking as the king’s office manager.

  Until now.

  We made a quick trip to my dad’s office, where Ezreal grabbed something from his desk, then we went straight to Gregory’s apartment.

  At the door, Ezreal produced a key that opened the lock.

  “You have a key to the steward’s apartment?”

  He shook his head as he turned the knob. “Not just his apartment. It’s a master key. Opens all the suites, rooms, and apartments. No one but your parents and I know it exists. And now you, obviously.”

  “Well, I’m glad it does.”

  “Me too. I’d hate to have to break this door down and cost the palace the repair.” He pushed the door wide and we went in. I’d never been in Gregory’s apartment. It was smaller than mine, obviously, but not by much and still very luxurious and well appointed. Probably twice the size of Ezreal’s, but then, the man held the highest position in the palace, after all, and had been here for decades.

  Knowing what I knew about him now made being in his personal space a very uncomfortable feeling. My skin itched. “What do you need to track him?”

  “Not much. Just give me a minute to stand here and imprint on his scent.”