For a moment, I just sat there, eyes wide, mouth gaping open, arms and legs splayed out at awkward angles, knife dangling from my fingertips, as though someone had just shot me in the heart and let my body drop wherever it might. My mind struggled to process Rivera’s words, as if I were trying to translate some foreign language that I’d never heard before.
Hugh Tucker and my mother?
No—no, no, no, no, no.
As soon as the horrible thought formed in my mind, I forced it away. There was no way that Tucker had loved my mother. Not when he’d stood by and let Mab Monroe kill her. But my mind kept churning, and another equally horrible thought popped into my head.
My mother couldn’t have possibly loved Tucker in return . . . could she?
No—no, no, no, no, no.
Bile rose in my throat, and I thought that I was going to vomit all over the roof—
Soft scuffs sounded, penetrating my sick shock, and I noticed a shadow growing larger and larger next to me, as though someone was walking toward the window and blocking the light from inside the office. I hadn’t made a lot of noise falling on my ass, but Tucker was a vampire, and the blood he drank was more than enough to give him enhanced senses, including supersharp hearing.
Years of Fletcher’s training took over, cutting through the last of my shock, and I scrambled to my feet, lunged forward, and pressed myself up against the side of the mansion, leaning my head forward just enough so that I could still see in through the glass.
Not a moment too soon.
Tucker appeared in the window. The vampire pushed the white velvet bow out of the way and stepped forward, his nose almost pressed up against the glass, peering out into the darkness beyond. No doubt his sight was as sharp as his hearing, and I didn’t dare move a muscle for fear that he would notice me out of the corner of his eye. Even though my heart was pounding, I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths through my nose and exhale the same way, not making any more noise than absolutely necessary.
After several long, tense seconds, Tucker relaxed and drew back, although his gaze dropped to the window, which was still cracked open. His eyebrows drew together, as though he was puzzled about why the window would be open at all on such a cold night.
“Well?” Rivera called out, his voice still snide. “You didn’t answer my question about Eira. Still missing your little lovebird? From what I’ve been told, the two of you made quite the handsome couple back in the day.”
Couple?
No—no, no, no, no, no.
The denial rose up in me again, along with that bile in my throat, but I forced myself to swallow it all down. Now was not the time to let my emotions get the best of me.
Tucker’s face twisted at Rivera’s mocking tone, and his black eyes practically glowed with murderous rage. Whatever had happened between him and my mother, whatever feelings he might have had for her, it was a chink in his armor, and Rivera had scored another bull’s-eye.
Once again, I thought that Tucker might give in to his rage, whirl around, and attack the other man, but instead he tilted his head to the side, studying the open window again, as though it held some great secret. A second later, his face smoothed out, and his lips lifted into a faint smile, as though he was pleased by something. I stayed anchored in place, scarcely daring to breathe, thinking that the vampire had spotted me after all and expecting him to yell out that there was an intruder on the roof.
But Tucker left the window open, turned around, and strode out of my line of sight. “I didn’t come here tonight to talk about the past. Only your future, Damian. Which will be decidedly short and unpleasant if you don’t take care of things the way that he wants you to.”
Rivera scoffed, and the ice tinkle-tinkled in his glass again as he downed the rest of his Scotch.
I waited several seconds, giving Tucker plenty of time to move away from the window, then sidled forward and peered through the glass again. The vampire was back standing beside the fireplace, his arms crossed over his chest, staring at Rivera, who had set aside his empty glass and was now yanking off his tie, completely unconcerned by Tucker’s threats.
Tap-tap-tap.
A soft knock sounded on the door, and a third man stepped into the office: Bruce Porter, Rivera’s head of security.
Porter was a dwarf, five feet tall with a compact, muscled body that looked even harder than the stones that made up the fireplace. He too wore a suit, although it wasn’t nearly as expensive as his boss’s. His eyes were a pale blue, while his gunmetal-gray hair had been buzz-cut so short that it was barely more than bristle covering his head. His fifty-something face bore the deep lines and perpetual ruddy skin of someone who’d spent years standing in the sun waiting for other people to tell him what to do.
Porter moved with stiff, military precision as he strode over and snapped to attention at Rivera’s elbow. “Sir,” he said in a deep, soft voice. “As requested, I escorted your lady friend to the estate. She’s waiting in your bedroom.”
Rivera bared his teeth in a predatory grin. “Good man, Porter.”
The dwarf nodded at Rivera, then politely tipped his head to Tucker too. For a moment, the vampire’s gaze flitted from Porter over to the photos on the mantel. Then Tucker looked at the dwarf and returned his nod before focusing on Rivera again.
“You have exactly one week to take care of your problem,” Tucker said. “And not a second longer.”
Rivera chuckled, squirmed even deeper into the couch cushions, and laced his fingers behind his head. “I might actually be frightened if it were anyone but you threatening me. Face it, Hugh. We both know that you’re just a barking dog on a chain. There’s no real bite to you at all.”
Once again, that thin, pleased smile played across Tucker’s lips, as if the other man’s sneering dismissal was exactly what he wanted to hear. “Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.”
His final threat delivered, Tucker strode out of the office.
3
For a mad, mad moment, I thought about chasing after Tucker.
Leaping off the roof, running around to the front of the mansion, and attacking the vampire before he got into his car and drove away. Or at least following him back to his lair so that I could decide what to do next. Maybe even capture, question, and kill him, if the circumstances were right.
Damian Rivera wasn’t going anywhere, but I still had no clue where Tucker hung his hat when he wasn’t skulking around Ashland threatening people. Plus, if I got my hands on the vampire, I could make him tell me what was going on with Rivera and who the leader of the Circle was.
And what, if any, relationship he’d had with my mother.
Hugh Tucker and my mother. Together. A couple.
The thought had never occurred to me before tonight. Never. But Rivera’s mocking words had made it sound like the two of them had been involved in some sort of romantic relationship. So had Tucker’s reactions to Rivera’s taunts. There had to be some other explanation—please, please, let there be some other explanation—but try as I might, I couldn’t come up with one. Neither man had had any reason to lie about something like that.
Hugh Tucker and my mother.
The words kept running through my head like a really bad song lyric that I couldn’t forget no matter how hard I tried. The mere idea of them together boggled my mind. No, it was worse than that. It was like an elemental Fire bomb had exploded in my heart, obliterating everything that I thought I knew, burning away all of the clues, puzzle pieces, and broken threads that I’d spent so much time, energy, and effort uncovering, arranging, and stringing into some kind of order. Every time I got some answers about the Circle, they only raised more questions about the shadowy group members, their twisted motives, and why they had killed my mother.
But as much as I wanted answers, as much as I needed them for my own sanity, I couldn’t go after Tucker. More gu
ards were stationed at the front of the mansion, and attacking him here would tell the Circle that I’d identified Rivera as one of the group’s members. It would destroy my slim advantage.
So I had to let Tucker go.
Unfortunately.
Dammit.
“What was that about?” Porter asked, still standing by his boss’s elbow.
Rivera eyed the dwarf, a bit of annoyance flashing in his dark gaze, and waved his hand. “Nothing. Just Hugh trying to exert what little power he thinks he has. I’ve already forgotten all about him.”
He got to his feet, grabbed his empty glass, and shoved it at Porter, like a child asking his father to put away his favorite toy. The dwarf stepped forward and whisked the glass away from Rivera with a smooth, practiced motion, as though he’d done the same thing a hundred times before. No doubt he had.
“Send the usual bottles of champagne to my bedroom,” Rivera commanded, heading toward the door, his body listing from side to side like a ship bobbing along on the waves.
I couldn’t see how he was still standing, given all the Scotch he’d drunk in the office, in addition to whatever other liquor he must have downed earlier. But I supposed that he’d built up a considerable tolerance. Damian Rivera could probably drink ten men under the table and still be thirsty for more.
Porter nodded. “Of course.”
Rivera staggered out the open door without a backward glance.
Porter moved around the office, putting away the glass, grabbing Rivera’s discarded wing tips, and tidying up. The only mildly interesting thing he did was go over to the fireplace, walk down the row of photos on the mantel, and nudge each one a few centimeters to the left and right, even though they were already as straight as could be. Someone was a little obsessive about having everything perfectly in place. Or perhaps Porter knew that Damian would take his wrath out on him if anything in the office was the slightest bit askew.
Porter frowned when he came to the family photo of the Riveras, the one that Tucker had nudged out of place, and he spent the better part of a minute fussing with it, sliding the frame back and forth until it was just where he wanted it.
Finally satisfied, Porter nodded to himself and glanced around the office, as if checking to make sure that there was nothing else he needed to do in here tonight. His gaze slid past the window, and he did a double take and looked back at the frame, as if he’d finally noticed that the window was cracked open.
Time to go.
Even as Porter walked toward the window, I moved away from it, slid my knife back up my sleeve, and darted across the roof. I lowered myself onto the trellis and quickly climbed down to the ground.
The guard patrolling the back side of the mansion was still engrossed in his video game, making it easy for me to sneak across the lawn and back into the woods, where Finn was waiting. Judging from the faint path he’d worn in the leaves, it looked as though he’d spent the last several minutes pacing back and forth.
“What took you so long?” Finn groused, holstering his gun. “I was getting worried.”
I arched my eyebrows. “You? Worried about me? Aw, I’m touched.”
“Well, you should be,” he groused again, pushing his black toboggan out of the way so he could reach up and massage his forehead. “You just gave me a whole new set of wrinkles.”
“Poor baby,” I crooned. “Then again, you aren’t getting any younger. Maybe you should let Jo-Jo give you some Air elemental facials. Before all those wrinkles and nasty crow’s-feet get any worse than they already are.”
“Crow’s-feet!” Finn hissed in an indignant tone, slapping his hands on his hips. “I do not have crow’s-feet!”
I just smiled and walked away, knowing that this time I’d gotten the last word in.
• • •
Finn and I left Damian Rivera’s mansion and hiked through the woods, our breath steaming out around us in eerie white vapor trails. When the lights of the mansion faded away, we pulled small flashlights out of our pockets and clicked them on. We were the only things moving in the night, besides the sluggish water. The back side of the Rivera estate butted up against the Aneirin River, and the woods ended in a series of high, rocky cliffs that overlooked the water far, far below.
Finn stopped, shone his flashlight over the side of the cliffs, and let out a low whistle. “Wouldn’t want to fall off here.”
I had started to snipe that if he didn’t want to fall, then he should probably get away from the edge when a series of low, harsh mutters drifted over to my ears. For a moment, I thought that someone was at the bottom of the steep cliffs, moaning for help, but then I noticed a glint of glass out of the corner of my eye. I turned in its direction, shining my flashlight into the darkness, and spotted the faint outlines of a small, crumbling stone cottage off in the distance.
The cottage was hidden back in the trees and covered with thick strands of dead kudzu, camouflaging it almost entirely. I studied the structure, wondering if some homeless person might have set up camp inside, but no lights or lanterns flickered in the windows, and no smoke drifted up out of the kudzu-covered chimney.
Despite the fact that the cottage was obviously abandoned and had been for quite some time, the stones still muttered with notes of blood, violence, pain, and death. Odd. I wouldn’t think that enough people would be around way out here to leave any emotional vibrations behind in the rocks. But I supposed that more than one unwary hiker had slipped off the cliffs and fallen to their death on the rocky riverbank below. Perhaps those sounds had drifted over to the cottage and slowly permeated the stones over the years.
“What is it?” Finn asked, scanning the woods with his flashlight, his hand dropping to the gun holstered at his waist. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head to clear the disturbing mutterings out of my mind. “Nothing. Let’s go.”
We walked on and left the cliffs, the cottage, and the river behind. While we hiked back to the car, I told Finn everything that Tucker had said, including his threats to Rivera about cleaning up whatever mess he’d made. The only thing I left out was Rivera’s mocking words about Tucker’s supposed relationship with my mother. I still needed some time to process that bombshell before I shared it with anyone else.
“What do you think Damian’s done that has the rest of the Circle so worried?” Finn mused. “From your surveillance and all the info that Silvio and I have dug up, Damian Rivera seems perfectly content to spend his mama’s money and drink himself to death. I wouldn’t think him sober or ambitious enough to stir up any kind of trouble. At least, not the kind of trouble that would bring a guy like Hugh Tucker to his door to tell him to knock it off—or else.”
I shrugged. “Who knows? Probably something to do with money. That seems to be a major concern of the Circle. The group has probably been hurting for cash ever since Deirdre Shaw lost a good chunk of their resources. Rivera’s fortune is still intact, though, and he seems to have more money than any of the other members we’ve identified so far. Maybe he’s not paying his dues or helping them build their reserves back up. I just wish the two of them had dropped the big boss’s name. I still haven’t been able to figure out who he is, despite all the photos Fletcher left in those safety-deposit boxes.”
Finn gave me a sympathetic look. He knew how important it was to me to track down the man who’d ordered my mother’s murder, and he, Silvio, and the rest of our friends had been working right alongside me the past few weeks to uncover the information. Thanks to Fletcher’s photos, we’d managed to identify who we thought were the major players in the Circle—at least the ones who were still alive—but I wanted more.
I wanted the ringleader, the man who was in charge of this monstrous hydra. I wanted to know exactly what my mother’s role in the group had been. What they had made her do and why. What my mother had been plotting, what move she’d made against the Circle that was such a
threat that the ringleader had ordered Mab Monroe to burn her to death.
But most of all, I wanted to confront—and then kill—the source of so many nightmares in my life.
“Don’t worry, Gin. We’ll find the bastard sooner or later, and then you can carve him up to your heart’s delight.” Finn slung his arm around my shoulder in a reassuring hug. “But in the meantime, don’t frown. It makes your face scrunch up.”
“Worried about my wrinkles now?” I teased.
He flashed me a charming, devilish grin, his green eyes as bright as holiday lights in the darkness. “Got to keep my deadliest girl looking young and beautiful.”
I snorted and elbowed him in the ribs. “I am not your girl. I am my own girl.”
“Damn skippy you are.”
Finn hugged me again, silently offering his brotherly love and support the way he had since this whole mess with the Circle had started. I hugged him back, and we walked on.
Thirty minutes later, we reached the edge of the woods and stepped out into a ritzy subdivision, one of many in Northtown, the part of Ashland where the social, magical, and monetary elite lived. Cookie-cutter mansions dotted the gently rolling lawns in front of us. Finn and I headed over to the curb where his Aston Martin sat in front of a mansion that was currently under construction. The expensive car seamlessly blended in with all the Audis, BMWs, and Mercedes that were parked in the spacious driveways up and down the street.
Finn and I slid into the vehicle, and he cranked the engine and blasted the heat. We both sat there in silence for a few minutes, slowly thawing out after our long, cold trek through the woods.
“Where to?” Finn asked. “Our supersecret hideout?”
He was referring to our current base of operations, a battered old metal container that was parked in a shipping yard several miles down the river from our current location. Lorelei Parker, one of Ashland’s many underworld bosses, ran the shipping yard, but she’d given me a container, and I’d made it my own personal safety-deposit box, storing all the information I had about the Circle inside it. Hugh Tucker already knew far too much about me and my friends, but he hadn’t sniffed out the hideout yet or the fact that I’d identified several members of the Circle—and I wanted to keep it that way.