Chapter Two #4
“So screwed,” EJ said solemnly, standing. He moved like a well-oiled steel trap, springs stretching and contracting with lethal capability.
From the time we were children, the queen’s staff, her brothers, and our own family had made sure we all were capable of deadly self-defense, both mundane and magical.
Back then, in the simplicity and inexperience of childhood, outside protection had been provided and assumed.
Now, with our bid for freedom, it wasn’t. We were on our own. Us and Walter.
“If this is a targeted case,” EJ said soberly, “and you have to go into Protocol Bolt-Hole, don’t forget you can call your Dark Knight.”
The use of the title Dark Knight, instead of the Emperor of Europe, was deliberate.
When I was eight years old, long before Edmund had ascended to the vampire throne of Europe, I had been in danger.
To keep me safe, Edmund had sworn a blood vow to protect me forever.
I had dubbed him my Dark Knight, and then, embarrassingly, had professed my desire to be his wife and announced myself as his fiancée.
The childhood romance was long past, but the fealty had never been rescinded.
It was still in place, a bolt-hole, a last-ditch protection if I ever needed it.
The only way I would need Protocol Bolt-Hole was if EJ and Walter were dead or disabled. I frowned at my brother and reached out with all my gifts. Nothing pinged on my awareness. “You better stay alive, or I’ll bring you back from the dead and turn you into a toad.”
EJ grinned at the childhood taunt.
“I guess we need to run a scan of the reception for her,” I said.
“I already sent a request for the soirée’s security video. It’s in process.” EJ tucked his hands into the front pockets of his Agric khakis, a bit of body language that was supposed to say, I’m cute and harmless, but never worked on me. “Uncle Alex is informed and currently working.”
“Ties,” I said on a soft breath. “So many ties to us.”
Our “uncle,” the queen’s adopted brother, Alex Younger, oversaw the finances and the electronic security team for the queen, and he was freaky good with electronics and AI.
Every event at the Dark Queen’s Winter Residence was always caught on dozens of cameras.
If he agreed to help us, we would soon have reams of video in all the spectrums, including the magical spectrum.
Alex had created and patented a sensor that detected magic in almost the same way that a seeing working could, and with those sensors, every magical incident and every magical person at the reception would be detected at every moment.
There was no privacy in the public areas of the queen’s home.
If Ivyanna Holmes had been removed from the queen’s premises by a paranormal, we would know soon enough.
EJ said, “Assessing the more likely probabilities for the subject’s whereabouts.
One: Ivyanna left her vampire, Karson Marrazzo, your ex-husband, aka Asshat, and willingly took off for Europe with a new vamp, perhaps even Edmund himself.
Two: she’s still in Asheville, willingly, with another vampire.
Three: she was abducted by a vampire in a clan unrelated to Yellowrock—or the emperor’s—clans. ”
“Four,” I said. “She’s dead at the hand of Karson Marrazzo and will never be found. May I suggest that you ask Alex to call Edmund’s security people?” I asked.
“Done.”
I didn’t look up at that, swiping through the office stills of Chancy Bigelow.
The war had changed EJ, leaving him always thinking worst-case scenarios.
Protocol Bolt-Hole had been his baby, to be initiated if one of his potential horrific scenarios ever came to pass.
He had enemies, magical, vampiric, and mundane, left over from the war, just as I had my own adversaries and a bounty on my head left over from a duel in my past. “You don’t have to hover,” I said gently, tilting my eyes up at him, still standing in the doorway.
EJ grinned, a rare and fleeting expression on his freckled face. “I never hover. I hound. I entreat. Occasionally, I nag. More often, I kill people. I never hover. I like Edmund. He should come visit. He could sleep on a couch somewhere. Pizza for lunch, sis?”
Ignoring that laughable comment about royalty sleeping on a couch, I asked, “You offering real pizza? With meat? Not that imitation cauliflower-crust, veggie-topped, healthy stuff you usually force me to eat?”
“Real pizza. With Coke.”
Pizza and Coke was what we ate when a case turned out to be more than we expected. I knew, with that sixth sense, that this case was far more than we bargained for, but we couldn’t turn it away either. The results of that would be even worse. “Deal,” I said.
EJ didn’t ask what the “deal” was. He turned and left the office, engaging the security system on his way out.
“I don’t remember Ivyanna,” I said to myself, “and that’s odd too.
” I pushed the photo across the desk. The woman was so gorgeous, it seemed impossible to have missed her, even among the hundreds present at the event.
I looked back at the door, worrying about EJ—always worrying about EJ and Cassey, our younger sister.
EJ was born an old soul. At age twenty-three, after the years in Europe in the war, where his only companions had been ancient library books, like Chaucer, Eliot, and Dickens, and ancient vampires for conversation, he acted old, formal, and stilted.
I put the five thousand dollars in the safe, checked my concealed weapons, and looped my defensive amulet necklace around my neck. I went to work on the case.