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“I need to talk to the other driver next. ” Kane finished taking my statement. As he tucked away his notebook, the tow truck rolled up.
After pointing out Eisha’s vehicle, we headed back to my car, but Eisha was nowhere in sight.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“She was right here a few minutes ago. ” I glanced around. She wasn’t standing in the middle of the street, nor was she near her own car. In fact, there was no sign of her at all.
“Well, fuck. I don’t know. She didn’t seem hurt—where would she wander off to?” A thought struck me. “Maybe she went back to the house—she barreled out of that driveway there. ”
I waited in my Jag, and Kane sent his partner up to see if she had returned to the dimly lit house at the top of the drive. A few minutes later, the officer was back. “Nobody there knows who you’re talking about. They said they never had company tonight, and they don’t know anyone by that name, nor anybody who owns an SUV like hers. ”
Confused, and more than a little suspicious, we hunted around the area for a while. Fifteen minutes later, we realized that she was nowhere in sight—she’d just vanished. Maybe she’d gone into the woods on the side of the road, but there was no sign of her whatsoever.
Kane finally shook his head. “I’ll get a search party out here. Maybe she was hurt… but something tells me she’s just vanished. Can you still drive your car?”
I tried the ignition and the Jag started up. “Yeah. I lucked out. I think most of my damage is superficial. And I’m not far from home so I’ll just head there and have my sisters take it to the mechanic in the morning. ”
“I’ll let you know if we find her. Meanwhile, call her insurance agent and file a claim, I suppose. From what you say, I’m writing it up that she was at fault. But be careful on the way home. We’re in a storm cycle, I think, and it’s supposed to rain like this for several days. ”
He motioned for the tow truck to haul Eisha’s SUV off, as I fastened my seat belt. After a moment’s hesitation, I found a knife in my glove compartment. I paused—could they even stuff the airbag back in? Would it ever work again or did they need to replace it? If I sliced through the bag, they’d have to reinstall it full. I frowned, staring at the material that was in the way of my pedals.
Fuck it. I didn’t know enough about cars to make a good guess, so I finally just sawed off the material and dumped it into the backseat. As I pulled out onto the street, my car rattled and clunked, but I wasn’t far from home and I made it safely.
Pulling into the driveway, I turned off the ignition and hoisted my purse over my shoulder. The three-story Victorian we called home loomed against the storm clouds, but it was a welcoming sight. A not-so-much haunted house, even though we were nearing Halloween and Samhain.
So much had changed in the past week… in the past few years… but this was my home. Here, I lived with my wife, my sisters, and their loves, and several of our friends. Come to think of it, I barely thought about life back in Otherworld anymore. I’d come to accept Seattle as home base, and I had the feeling that—given the chance to return to OW—it wouldn’t be such an easy choice.
The past week had been anything but easy.
First, we’d been asked to help out on a case for a couple friends of mine. Tad and Albert, two vampires who worked at Microsoft on the night shift, were worried about Violet, their friend and coworker who had disappeared. We’d started the investigation thinking she’d just skipped town, but had all too quickly figured out that she’d been abducted by a sex slave operation run by Lowestar Radcliffe—a daemon. It was complicated, and involved a lot of hidden factors still, but the upshot was, Grandmother Coyote wanted the daemons stopped and we were in charge of doing so.
Before we could immerse ourselves in the case, my bar had burned down, and we’d been caught in the siege of Elqaneve. The former was heartrending, the latter—traumatic beyond any scope we’d yet experienced. Tens of thousands died as the sentient storm attacked the city, pretty much decimating it. And we’d been there for the throw down. I’d lucked out and been rescued before I could see what was going down in the city proper, but Delilah and Camille had been forced to make their way through the attacks, and the destruction they’d witnessed seemed to have scarred them both heavily.
The storm had wreaked havoc on the Elfin lands of Kelvashan, and now it was on the move to Svartalfheim. All we knew at this point was that the Svartan sorcerers and mages were readying themselves in an attempt to repel the annihilation headed their way.
While we had recovered Amber and Luke, and their spirit seals—along with a spare one—two of the spirit seals were still missing. Venus and Ben, two of the Keraastar Knights wielding them, had not been found. That’s why Smoky and Trillian—Camille’s other husbands—were in OW searching for them right now.
And our father’s body still had not been recovered. He was missing, his soul statue back home had been shattered, and that pretty much spelled out that he was dead. All in all, the past week had been one big clusterfuck.
Nerissa was waiting up for me. She took one look at my face and jumped up from the table where she’d been eating cold fried chicken. Camille and Morio were nowhere to be seen, but Delilah was helping my wife polish off the leftover KFC. I didn’t see the guys anywhere but that didn’t mean they weren’t around.
“Love, what the hell happened? You look shaken up. ” Nerissa was an Amazon of a woman. Aphrodite incarnate, she was five-ten, with a tawny mane that shook out wild and shaggy when she took it down from the chignon she usually wore. Curvy, she was voluptuous and ripe, and every time I saw her, all I could think was how wonderful it was that this woman was mine.
My lover, my wife, my companion. I played her body like a rock star’s guitar—wild, passionate, and with a grip that wouldn’t quit. And Nerissa gave as good as she got… she took me to heights no one else could. Roman, I could roughhouse with. With Nerissa, I soared.
I leaned into her arms, resting my head on her chest. “I had an accident. ”
“You what? Oh, my gods!” Nerissa pushed me back, staring at me. “Are you all right?” She immediately began to pat me down, looking for broken bones. Delilah took off out of the kitchen and I heard her calling for Camille and Morio. I snorted. That told me what those two had been up to. They never went to bed this early unless they were up for a little action.
“I’m all right. I was shaken, but not hurt. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for my Jag. ”
Vanzir headed outside to check on the car despite the fact that he had even less of a clue on how they worked than I did.
Nerissa shoved me toward the table and made me sit down. “What on earth happened?”
“Rain-slicked road. I skidded and went hydroplaning. The other driver was going too fast, too. But it was very odd… and I have no idea what to make of it all. ” I dropped into one of the chairs, leaning on the table with my elbows. “An OW Fae hit me. But… she vanished before the cops could talk to her. ”
“Whose fault was it?” Nerissa pulled a bottle of blood out of the refrigerator—one that Morio had enchanted, so it would taste like something other than type O negative. She popped it in the microwave for a moment.
I shook my head. “Hers. I was going under the speed limit and she pulled out from that driveway like a bat out of hell. I told the cops that, too. I’m not taking the heat for it. I tried to stop but skidded into her. If I hadn’t hit her just right, my Jag would have been mincemeat. She was driving a big old SUV. ”
By that time, Camille and Morio had come running down the stairs, dressed in their robes. Camille was flushed and I had no doubt what they’d been up to. Delilah also had Shade in tow. As Nerissa handed me my warmed blood—which tasted like chicken soup—Vanzir popped back inside.
“The Jag looks like it hit the wrong side of a dubbatroll. I doubt if you’re going to get out for under a couple grand on
damages, but it’s still drivable. ” He shrugged. “At least you were able to make it home. ”
I groaned. “Yeah. Would one of you take it to Jason’s tomorrow, to see what he says?” I looked around. “Is Trillian still here?” Trillian had returned home through the portals, escorting Amber and Luke, two friends who had also been caught in the destruction of Elqaneve. Shadow Wing would love to get his hands on them, since they both possessed spirit seals. Now that Queen Asteria was dead and Elqaneve in ruins, it was up to us to hide them and keep them safe.
“No. He went back to OW this evening. They need him there. ” Camille’s eyes flickered, and her voice betrayed her worry. “Amber and Luke are sleeping. The spirit seals put high demands on their energy. ”
“Damn fine thing. You do realize that, whatever plans Queen Asteria had for the Keraastar Knights, they’ve gone the way of the buffalo? Unless Aeval or Titania knows what her agenda was, we have no clue what she was up to. The knights are bound to their spirit seals—they’ll die if we try to separate them. ”
There was no good answer to that one.
“When are the dragons coming for them?” Delilah asked.
Smoky had contacted the Dragon Reaches, and his mother and the Wing Liege had agreed to hide the knights for us. They owed Camille big-time, and this fell directly into the help they’d promised to give her.
“Within a couple of days. They are preparing for them now. ” Camille turned as Hanna wandered into the room.
“I heard voices. ” She rubbed her eyes. She’d obviously been in bed. So I launched into recounting the evening’s activities again. They needed to know about the Utopia, as well.
“I think we may have a serial arsonist targeting vampire bars. We’re going to have to take action before anybody else gets hurt. ”
Hanna headed over toward the sink. “I don’t know about these fires, but the Fae woman you crashed into? She’s trouble. There has to be some reason she vanished. My guess is she was waiting for you. She was parked in the driveway of someone she didn’t know, and pulled out at the very moment you passed by? Too much of a coincidence. ” As she put on the kettle, Hanna glanced over her shoulder. “I might as well bake a batch of cookies since you’re all up. I made the dough earlier so all I have to do is fire up the oven. ”
I frowned. “Too much about the accident doesn’t add up. At first, I thought she’d just been careless, but yeah. Too many questions. And as to her disappearing? There has to be a reason she didn’t want to talk to the cops. She seemed unsettled when I told her I’d called them. ”
“I’d think it was insurance fraud, but you have to stick around to file a claim. Have you called her agency yet?”
“Fraud? Seems more up an FBH’s alley than Fae. ” I pulled out my phone, along with the information Eisha had given me, and punched in the 24-hour emergency number. I didn’t have to wait long—miracle of miracles.
The operator who came on the line took my information and asked me to hold, but when he returned, he sounded puzzled. “I’m sorry, Ms. D’Artigo, but we don’t have a record of having anyone by that name as a client, or the SUV in question. I checked our records for the license plate to be certain. Are you sure you have the correct information?”
I knew I hadn’t written anything down wrong. “Yeah, I’m sure. I guess she lied to me. Are you sure, though? You don’t even have a lapsed policy under that name or license?”
Another moment and then, “No, I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m afraid I can’t help you. ”
I hung up. “Great, the insurance information? A fraud. Want to bet she’s using a fake name, too? That caps it. For some reason, she tried to run me down and when she didn’t manage to get the results she wanted, she vanished. Which means…”
“She was probably trying to kill you. You said yourself that, had she been a fraction more on-target, your car would have been history. That could change the whole face of the game. ” Camille glared at the table. “So what about… could Lowestar be behind this attack, too? We know he’s got to be the one behind burning down the Wayfarer. So was he sending another message this time, or was he trying to kill you in the bar’s fire, as well? Catch you in the blaze?”
“Maybe they were trying to kill me and this was a reprisal attack given I survived the fire. But if that’s true, then Shikra is in danger. Because she got the exact same letter and phone calls I did. And she ignored the threats and refused to sell them her club. I told her to keep watch, to get security. ”
“Are you going to call Roman and tell him about tonight?” Nerissa leaned forward. “As his consort, don’t you have to?”
“I suppose I should, but we’re getting dangerously close to spilling the beans to him about Lowestar. And if he finds out what’s really going on… a vampire as powerful as he is? Far worse than a testosterone-laden lover. He’d tear the Farantino Building down brick by brick and just make things worse. ”
“That may not be a bad idea, really. ” Camille glanced over at Hanna. “Chocolate chip?”
“Peanut butter chocolate chip. ” Hanna gave her a friendly grin as she slid the first batch into the oven.
I snorted. “I’m beginning to think we need a secretary to take care of all this crap. So we’ll just add keeping an eye on the Utopia—at least on what’s going down there—to our to-do list. Because chances are, Lowestar isn’t going to take her refusal with good spirits. ”