Chapter Nine
Angie
My stomach was a sour burn as I put it all together.
This case wasn’t just a missing woman. There were too many powerful players involved in what was an attack on the queen, on Walter, and on me.
It was a high-level conspiracy that EJ, Walter, and I couldn’t handle alone.
The only reason we knew about it was Tony Montgomery’s failure and Londyn’s jealousy.
If it came to a Sangre Duello, there was no way I could defeat Ravensport without my undependable battle magic. Battle magic was internal, not a working or a curse. It was something I was. If could access it. Without it, I would die. EJ and Walter would die.
I pressed my bad hand to my middle, swallowing down fear and acid.
I needed reinforcements, and though I knew it was necessary, it still stung. I had to make sure we all survived, and despite what our attackers might think or guess, I had weapons to put in play.
With my good hand, I sent a note to Alex on my unicom: There’s a gold and quartz medallion, one that is likely still in Asshat’s bedroom.
I’m getting ready to activate it. It will send you the accumulated video of everything it recorded in that room in the last 365 days.
It overwrites all older video, after that. No audio.
Instantly, I got a text in return: Da-yum. When did you plant that? Never mind. Gimme gimme.
I added: If anyone is in that room, they’ll know they had a watcher. They’ll know it was me, since I gave him that medallion on his birthday the year we married. I infused it with a passive working the day I left. There’s no way to reactivate it. Once I send, it’s done.
Understood, he replied. Send.
Walter turned to me and breathed in two quick sniffs. There were some things it was difficult to disguise from a vamp. Scent was one. “Angelina,” he said, going all mesmeric vampire. “What are you doing?”
When I didn’t reply he said, “We have used the standard of the queen, Angelina. We cannot interfere in politics.”
I punched a code into my unicom. Vengeance delayed. It wasn’t sweet. It was a musty bitterness caught in my throat.
Back at my apartment, a single tone sounded, the note a gift from my clueless brother.
The moment it sounded, Ojos would activate the amulet that had been masquerading within the gold and quartz wall ornament hanging in Asshat’s bedroom.
The medallion would initiate and glow, sending a year’s worth of naughty secrets to Ojos.
And unless I sent a trigger to the central system, which I wouldn’t, it would all also go to Alex.
Oddly, I had created the spy working on our honeymoon, so my husband could observe a man he had claimed was an enemy of the queen.
Nothing captured in the working had produced evidence as to the man’s disloyalty, but I had saved the working and infused it into my gift on my way out the door the bloody night I left.
And now it would be used against Karson.
That musty bitter taste spread through me and flared with shame, anger, and that burning betrayal from the night my marriage ended.
“I’m not interfering in the queen’s politics,” I said, my voice hard, my words precise.
The expression I sent Walter was cold and harsh as an arctic night.
“They attacked me and mine personally. This was a personal challenge.” I leaned into him, my scent surely spiked with anger as he leaned back, his eyes going wide in surprise as my battle magic flared along my skin.
“This is Asshat. Again. This is personal. And starting now, I’m getting back my own.”
EJ
The vehicle pulled slowly onto West Watkins Street.
On the unicom-net, the 3-D photos of the client’s home, from its previous sale, displayed a traditional, two-story brick, 3,600-square-foot home with an attached three-car garage.
The interior of Chancy Bigelow/Cennet A.
Campbell-Baines’s home had been painted in warm grays, staged with upscale fixtures and spare furnishings.
There was no way to know what changes had been made since the Realtor’s photos and videography, but there were no structural permits on file with the city.
In such an upscale locale, the neighborhood HOA would have made certain that all legalities were followed, so if something had been changed with the fundamental building, it would have been done in complete secret.
The three of them studied the Realtor photos, making note of the floor plan and entrances, along with the overhead and street front views on sat-maps.
Walter said, “There is a gate at the street. We’ll park just down from the house, and I will make a fast reconnoiter while you two study what you can magically from the vehicle.
If the grounds and residence sound and look safe, we’ll proceed.
Angelina, you are the most innocent, least dangerous-appearing one.
You will go to the front door and ring the bell.
EJ, you will go around from the garage side and I’ll—” He stopped as he took a breath.
Vamp-fast, he swiveled his seat. Punched off auto-drive.
Manually, he turned the car into the driveway of their client’s home.
EJ spun his car seat around to see the privacy gate was open. The house was dark. No landscaping lights or security lights were on. Sleet was piled at least two inches deep.
Walter lowered the driver’s-side window. Ice sliced in, turning the car’s interior frigid, clattering onto the car and the earth beyond them like a thousand snare drums.
Walter drew in a slow breath. “Vampire blood. Human blood. Not fresh, but not rotted either,” he said. He held up a hand for them to wait. “If I hadn’t been speaking, and therefore breathing, I might not have smelled it through the vehicle’s ventilation system.”
EJ began checking amulets and weapons. He handed one headset to his sister. Tested his palillos. There was power still in them, but not much. They needed recharging, but some was better than none.
Angie touched her tiara and repositioned one of the ever-living rosemary sprigs.
He caught sight of Walter’s face. Their bodyguard was fighting to keep his fangs snapped up in the roof of his mouth. The stench of blood must be intense to cause him to want to vamp out, but when he spoke it was with complete control.
“We will not proceed until I speak with the queen’s security.”
When EJ tried to disagree, Walter stated, “Once I used the queen’s banner, I became far more than bodyguard and martial arts teacher. I now report to the queen.”
One side of Angie’s mouth was turned down. From her expression, she had already figured that out.
Walter was the reason for their freedom from royal restrictions and from their coven. That autonomous lifestyle was in jeopardy.
Drawing up the royal formality drummed into him during the first sixteen years of his life, EJ said, “I see.”
“You will wait in the vehicle while I reconnoiter,” Walter said, ignoring the stiffness in EJ’s tone. “Angelina, Evan Junior. Do you see or hear anything magical that concerns you?”
“No.” Angie stared up the drive, her eyes moving systematically across the dark ahead. “No light show of psionic energies.”
“No,” EJ said. “No music, no broken bells. Nothing. Here.” EJ removed a key from an old flute and extended it to Walter. “If there’s a magical trap within two feet of you, a tone will sound. Quiet, but with your vamp hearing you’ll hear it. Back away slowly and get out.”
“Thank you, Evan Junior. You may follow my progress on your headsets.”
“Like we weren’t going to do that anyway,” Angie said.
Walter raised his window and slipped from the car into the falling sleet. He moved with the predatory grace of his kind, but without speed, and disappeared, silently, into the dark.
EJ set his headset to see what Walter saw, hear what Walter heard.
The vampire sniffed carefully with each unneeded breath.
Softly he said, “Blood, sickly sweet, hours old, human and vampire. Whatever happened here likely occurred just at dusk, which means this massacre began before the demon bomb attack at the apartment.”
He moved to the side of the house. “A more recent scent,” Walter said, “far more recent. Two vampires…” His voice trailed away. The only sound was the shush of sleet to the ground around him.
“Enemy or friend?” EJ asked.
“Neither.” Walter moved around the property.
He said, “There is a fresh puddle of oil on the drive, indicating a combustion-engine vehicle was parked here and is now gone.”
EJ didn’t see that on the headpiece, but vampires had better low-light vision than tech offered.
“Two guard dogs are lying unmoving in the grass beneath a layer of sleet. They have been there long enough to cool, for sleet to cover them. A male vampire’s body lies at the back door.” Walter approached and EJ saw the vamp’s now-frozen blood had run over the back steps and down to the ground.
“There is no scent of ballistic weapons. The musical key in my hand has made no tones.”
“No police were called,” EJ said, checking police reports on his unicom. “No alarms were triggered, or if they were, the company was called off.”
Walter worked his way to the garage and driveway. His feet should have crunched the snow, but vamp stealth made no sound over the falling sleet.
One garage door was open, showing utter darkness, no sign of warmth on the infrared lenses. The door had been open a long time. Walter approached, stepped inside, out of the sleet. He shook his head and ice floated away from his hair and shoulders, picked up by the cam.
A body lay on the concrete, almost beneath a car, her blood in a frozen puddle. Walter’s cam focused on it. The body of their client, Cennet A. Campbell-Baines, was cold, her glamour gone. She appeared a decade or two older now.