Chapter 2
The office smelled of a mahogany fragrance with notes of teakwood.
Not a cologne. Augustine wasn’t wearing any.
Not a deodorant. She had caught a faint whiff of that in the elevator.
He was wearing Secret Outlast. His hair smelled like a synthetic fragrance blended with notes of aloe, argan oil, and camellia.
Herbal Essences Argan Oil Repair, a familiar profile, one of many from the scent catalog stored in her memory.
She collected scents the way some people accumulated vinyl records or crystals.
When she saw him on the street, he looked like a businesswoman.
He must’ve selected her preferred products to better impersonate her.
So thorough.
Not cologne, not deodorant, not shampoo… Ah. There it was. A scented candle in a tasteful jar of matte black glass on a small table in the corner. The lid was on, otherwise she would have pinpointed it sooner.
Diana raised her head from the contract. “I wish to add a stipulation.”
Augustine nodded, his stunning face a picture of businesslike politeness. He was inhumanly beautiful. A prince, with his blond hair perfectly styled to complement his flawless features, elegant, confident, barely short of absolute perfection. She saw it for exactly what it was—armor.
Why? What was hiding behind the facade? Curiosity scratched at her with its needle claws.
She had long ago come to terms with parallel streams of thought running through her head. Wrangling all of them to focus on only one thing required pressing danger, and right now she didn’t feel like her life was threatened.
“I need to accompany you in this investigation.”
“In what capacity?”
“A partner,” she said. “An employer. Backup. It doesn’t matter. I want to be there, every step of the way.”
He studied her. “The level of danger will be high. There may be times I cannot guarantee your safety.”
“I know. I suggest that we spell it out in the contract. In the event of injury, I will hold MII blameless.”
He leaned forward slightly.
There was something in his green eyes. Something… She couldn’t put her finger on it, but it felt familiar.
“Prime Harrison…”
“Diana,” she corrected. “As you said yourself, we might be in danger and yelling ‘Prime Harrison’ takes a lot longer.”
“Diana,” he said.
She liked his voice. It was smooth and rich. She liked the way he spoke, too, cultured, methodical, unhurried. More armor. He had been forthcoming and honest so far, but there was a distance there, as if they were having this conversation through a piece of transparent glass.
“This is unwise,” he warned.
“I know.”
“Can you tell me why? Is this a matter of trust?”
The rage shivered in her, spiking her hunting instincts into overdrive.
She struggled with it, hiding behind a serene smile.
He wouldn’t understand. Most humans didn’t understand.
Cornelius would and so would her other brother, but Cornelius was across the ocean, in Germany, following a case, and Blake…
Blake had very little interest in House matters.
They were human problems, and he had chosen to interact with that side of himself only when he had exhausted all other options.
“Do I have to explain?” she asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
He had told her about his sister and Arabella. She had to meet him halfway. That was fair, and fair was important.
“They took the cub from us. They took her, and Celeste is grieving. She cannot hunt the thief, so I must hunt in her stead.”
“Hunt?”
“Yes. I cannot delegate this. It must be me.” There was so much more there, but this would do for now.
Augustine sighed. “Very well.” His fingers flew over the keyboard.
She had an urge to cross the room and lick the candle.
Augustine tapped his laptop. Her phone chimed. She checked the new contract. Adequate.
“Would an electronic signature suffice?”
“Of course.”
She signed. He countersigned and sent the executed copy back to her. She opened her banking app to wire the retainer. MII was not cheap, even with their preferred friend status.
“Let’s wait on the payment,” he said. “There will always be time for that later, and I have no doubt that House Harrison pays their debts.”
She wondered why but decided not to ask.
“How did Kitty disappear?”
Diana flicked her fingers across her tablet. “I have a video.”
He pushed a card toward her with a password.
She paired her tablet to the system and tapped play.
The screen on the wall came to life, and the recording played across it, the sky awash with pink and lavender and a dense forest blanketing the ground, filmed from above.
The familiar pines, mixed with occasional oaks and maples.
“What is this?”
“The Den. Our private lands near Sam Houston National Forest.”
The woods parted, flowing around a circular clearing with a large stone building in its center.
The screen blinked and switched to a stationary security camera mounted in a tree, with the back of the structure firmly in focus, showing a reinforced gate in the center of the rear wall and a steel door next to it. The time stamp said 19:34. Dusk, just before the sun set.
The door swung open, and two people emerged.
“Aleah and Kayson,” Diana said. “Our best guards.”
Both of her people carried Ruger semi-auto rifles. They looked around. Aleah punched a code into the lock on the wall. Kayson took a key from his pocket, inserted it into the center bar of the gate, and turned.
“Double lock?” Augustine said. “One guard has the combination, and the other carries the key?”
She nodded.
Metal clanged. The gate swung open, and Celeste emerged onto the grass. The tigrionex moved like water. She raised her gorgeous head, her periwinkle fur rippling, and inhaled, tasting the dusk air.
The guards stood still.
The muscles of Celeste’s frame contracted. She ran into the woods, bounding through the undergrowth like a teenage kitten. A moment and she vanished into the gloom pooling between the tree trunks.
“If you keep a tiger in an enclosure and feed her meat, the tiger will survive,” Diana said.
“She will not be happy. She may suffer from boredom and develop unchecked aggression. She could become restless and irritable. But she will live. If you confine a tigrionex and feed her the best meat in the world, she will die.”
“Why?” Augustine asked.
“They must hunt. I suspect that it has to do with their digestive systems. Certain enzymes that only activate after a chase or perhaps after the hormonal burst that precedes the kill. We do not fully understand it. We supplement their diet, but primary nutrition must come from hunting. We maintain both deer and buffalo herds on our land for that purpose.”
“What if she stumbles across a person?” Augustine asked.
“The property is fenced in and well protected. Cameras, alarms, guard towers. Besides, Celeste is very intelligent. She is aware of what her prey is. If a child were to blunder into her path as she is charging after a deer, she would jump over them and stay locked on her dinner.”
The camera zoomed in on the two guards. They waited. Moments ticked by.
Kayson checked his watch and went back to the metal door, opened it, went inside, and reappeared with a black janitorial cart, a platform on wheels with a large metal cabinet and a trash bin attached to it. He wheeled it through the gates. Aleah looked at the woods one last time and followed him.
The view switched to the interior camera.
A cozy habitat occupied a room the size of a small warehouse, grass, moss, big rocks, and fallen tree trunks under a large skylight.
Two oaks spread their branches over the grass.
They had built the habitat around the trees.
A stream ran into a shallow pond, kept at barely a third full.
Kitty could swim, enjoyed it even, and yet Diana couldn’t help but worry about an accidental drowning.
A shallow man-made cave rose in the corner, layered with straw.
On it, a soft blue clump curled, about the size of an adult female beagle.
Kayson wheeled the cart forward and pulled a pitchfork from the rack by the wall. Aleah walked up behind him. Her arm snapped up.
Diana had watched the recording over and over. She’d nearly memorized it by now, but even so, she could barely make out the outline of the knife in the woman’s hand. The blade was so small. Three inches, if that.
Aleah clamped one hand over Kayson’s mouth and slit his throat. He thrashed in her grip. She let him go. Kayson stumbled forward, careened to the side, and collapsed.
She felt that cut across her own neck, like a searing wire that sliced her carotid. Diana clamped her rage and grief into an iron fist and held herself still.
On the screen, Aleah walked to the cave, picked up Kitty, slid her into a bag, lowered the bag into the metal cabinet, and wheeled the cart away.
“An illusion mage,” Augustine said. “Likely a low-range Significant, possibly an upper-level Notable. Probably a woman.”
Diana blinked. “How did you know?”
On the screen, the assassin pushed the cart out of the enclosure. The view blinked, switching to the outer camera. As she turned the corner, her face blurred for the briefest of moments. She kept walking out, receding from view.
“Ah. So that’s what prompted you to come to me,” Augustine said. “She gave herself away.”
“How did you know?” Diana repeated.
That direct stare again. How interesting. He wasn’t in the habit of revealing secrets of his brand of magic, but he wanted to know her reaction.
“Most people don’t realize how often they subconsciously touch their face. We scratch our chins, brush our lips, rub our eyes… The murder victim touched his face four times. The killer didn’t touch her face once. She didn’t smile or raise her eyebrows. She didn’t emote at all.”
The industry term was “dead face.” It was a sure giveaway.