Chapter Two #3
Yeah. That. I focused on Chancy.
She didn’t reply at once, but she didn’t seem flustered by the question. Instead, she seemed mildly surprised that EJ brought it up.
“Because,” she said, “according to the ‘Witch Web,’ you were there. At the party. You know everyone there. You were there with Ivyanna. With her former vampire partner. Who better to take my case?” As she spoke, her mild surprise became genuinely perplexed. “Right?”
Vampire partner…Karson Asshat Marrazzo. Who, along with the princess and prince—EJ and me—had been at the party where Ivyanna had disappeared. Also present had been the hostess—the queen—her entire cabinet, family and friends, our parents, and Edmund the First of Europe. My childhood crush.
“Good point,” I murmured. The Witch Web was on one of the dark internets for vamps and witches only, and was something a well-placed former blood servant might have access to.
It didn’t make her lies less valid. But it did show us why we had no choice but to take her case, even if it had been pro bono. Well, damn.
Parts of my own personal history sucked, but my ex-husband, Karson’s betrayal was years ago.
And as for the other vampire who had once been part of my life, I had gotten over the childhood crush on Edmund decades ago.
Eddie the Great’s first reappearance in the U.S.
in decades hadn’t sparked a recurrence of the passions from my eight-year-old self.
We had met, done the air-kiss thing, and then been quite comfortable together at the queen’s reception, as much as the three-hundred-plus-year-old vampire emperor of Europe and a covenless witch could be.
We had laughed, shared a memory or two, and generally carried on like old friends.
Unfortunately, that budding friendship and the queen’s party where Eddie the Great had visited, now slid in adjacent to this case in ways that would embroil the family, the coven we had left behind, our vampire bodyguard currently sleeping by day, and possibly the Dark Queen herself.
That.
That was why it was important.
“Your thoughts?” EJ asked, from the chair he had taken when Chancy left. “Due to our tangled relationships, any of them would land this case in our laps whether we want it or not.”
“Family, coven, and clan connections were the major reasons I agreed to the case, but it’s a case so perfect for The Firm, that it’s almost as if it was manufactured for us,” I said.
“Mmmm,” he said, thoughtful, his tone too soft, too unemotional for a twenty-three-year-old.
I said, “Ojos, place under file list, ‘Reasons to take the case.’ One: the local vampires are part of a blood clan under the jurisdiction of the Master of the City of Asheville, Lincoln Shaddock, our grandfather. Two: there is a possible connection to Edmund the First, Emperor of Europe, impinging on the bond and fealty between Eddie the Great and me. Three: the presence of my ex-husband near the time of Ivyanna’s disappearance.
Four: Ivyanna’s last known location was at the reception for Edmund the First of Europe, at the Official Residence of the Dark Queen”—I took a slow breath—“our godmother.”
“Five,” EJ said. “A party where we were present by royal summons. Family. Politics. Ojos, end dictation.”
“Yeah,” I said. “This whole thing feels like an arrow pointed right at us.”
“Feels or feels?” EJ asked, accenting the second word.
“Both,” I said reluctantly. “I wish Walter were awake to bounce things off of.”
I didn’t wish for Walter often. I kept a wall between us, because he was the price of our independence, and I would never make payment for my freedom easy on anyone again.
And Walter didn’t like us much, for reasons I had never known or understood, so keeping my distance was easy, if annoying. I mean, why didn’t he like us?
“Why did Edmund come to the U.S. last week?” EJ asked, his eyes moving over the wall of screens with the client’s and the subject’s info. “He hasn’t traveled in years until the supposed ‘quick stopover’ last week to visit the queen and Consort.”
“And our grampa,” I said, my voice echoing the problematic relationship we had learned of long after we were born.
Grampa wasn’t the fuzzy-happy-snuggly grandfather figure some kids had.
Instead he was the fanged vampire Master of the City of Asheville, NC, and associated hunting grounds, including Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we lived.
“Let’s say it wasn’t a ‘wild hair’ visit, which we never believed anyway,” EJ said, “and that Eddie was here for an important political reason. And because there was a reception, the kind where invitations are fought over, Ivyanna got in.”
For relatives and clan members of the queen, like us and our baby sister, who was still in university, attendance at the party had not been optional. Ours had been a command performance, one that even being on our own, living in the mundane world, had not been one we could avoid.
“I don’t remember seeing our subject,” I said, and then added wryly, “but then, I was busy putting out fires, trying to not have to behead anyone and bloody up the queen’s nice floors.”
At the reception, there had been a few minor contretemps, as there always were, but one had been more problematic than others.
I reached for the desk and slapped my unicom, found the date and event I had videoed, and swiped it to the wall screen.
My ex appeared mid-screen, so pretty he took my breath away.
Even now. Even knowing he was a sleazeball lying son of a bitch.
When we married, Karson had been a small-time vampire blood clan leader, and he had expected our marriage to speed him on the way to becoming the Master of the City of Chattanooga.
That hadn’t happened. Our extremely nasty divorce had made his chances even less likely, so when he scrounged an invitation to the reception, Karson had thought, in his pea-sized brain, to take advantage of the event.
Karson was far more pretty and weaselly than he was smart.
On the wall screen, I watched the event that had been Karson’s undoing. I had missed the first bit but caught the good parts. A tight smile pulled on my face.
Karson, dressed in a black tux that fit his swimmer’s body to perfection, his blond hair flowing over his shoulders, was in the reception line, standing in front of the emperor.
Loudly, he said, “I beseech you, Edmund the First of Europe, to award me the city of Chattanooga and its hunting territories as my own. I will serve you well and with honor.”
The room, noisy only a moment ago, was suddenly so silent my own breath had been picked up by the audio mic.
Karson dropped to one knee. Bent his head, so that the golden hair fell forward like a veil. He still held the emperor’s hand. “I was wed to your charge. I was treated poorly by the queen in the divorce. Recompense me, I beg you.”
Caught on the screen, Edmund had slowly, so very slowly, vamped out. His jaw opened and his fangs dropped down with a tiny click. His eyes bled scarlet.
“You dare. You dare to overlook your own master? You dare to appeal to me?”
Power had crackled across the room, powerful as any vampire gather I had ever seen, as the emperor drew from the undeath of every vampire within miles.
Karson crumpled.
A human guard reached out and peeled Karson’s hand away as he fell. And then the guard broke Karson’s wrist, resounding cracks in the silent room.
Then and now, I grinned. It was petty, but that had been so satisfying.
Sitting beside me, EJ laughed. “Highlight of the event.”
“It was, wasn’t it,” I said. “It was the only thing I videoed that night. I don’t see our subject in the crowd.”
Humor draining from his tone, EJ said, “No. But I remember her. Sadly, I saw her only once. Her eyes brushed across mine for maybe a quarter second and she moved on.” He gusted a sigh. “Likely, she wasn’t into gingers.” He was talking about his red hair.
“Her loss,” I said, staring at my ex on the wall screen.
If only he had been smarter. And kinder.
And not such an asshat. “Okay, if you saw Ivyanna, that establishes her presence. We’ll need to see all the recordings of the reception to see who she left with.
This forces our concerns and our attention back to the queen.
And will force her attention onto us,” I grouched.
It wasn’t that I didn’t love my Aunt Jane.
I loved her completely. But dealing with the queen, politics, power plays, and nonstop protection details was different.
“Agreed,” EJ said. “How do you think Chancy discovered we were at the event where Ivyanna was last seen alive?”
“No idea. Except she didn’t get that off the Witch Web.”
“Someone is being set up,” EJ said, watching the replay on the screen.
“Us, or one of the particulars. It isn’t coincidence on top of coincidence that she came to us.
Someone helped her, gave her information.
My guess is Ivyanna is an excuse to pull us into something.
‘Chancy’ may not even know the blood servant.
For multiple reasons, including royalty and your ex-fanghead, we have no choice but to take a low-paying, sure-to-be-a-pain-in-the-ass case. Someone boxed us in nicely.”
It was good we were on the same page about this not being happenstance. About it being a danger to us and possibly to others.
On one hand, it was great to be the godchild of Jane Yellowrock—though she wasn’t a fairy-tale godmother with sparkles and glitter, but more like a sword-bearing, shotgun-carrying, Cherokee skinwalker with attitude and a not-so-small vampire and human army.
On the other hand, involving her persona as the Dark Queen was something neither of us wanted.
I had spent my whole adult life establishing independence from my role as part of the royal entourage and household.
That life had been stifling. EJ and I wanted freedom. We’d had some. Until now.
“I’m screwed,” I muttered.