“Hi. Where did you keep the amulet?”
She gave me a look, but I didn’t exactly have time to be polite. Today, I needed to go talk to the kids, follow up with Steve, and go to the stupid ball with Samael. I also needed to go through Gary’s schedule in the weeks leading up to his attack.
Mariam got to her feet. She wore a white dress that I would’ve spilled something on within five minutes, and her feet were clad in gold stilettos that perfectly matched the gold accents in the wallpaper.
She crossed the office, opening a cupboard next to the wall with the floor-to-ceiling windows. In the cupboard was a safe.
I cracked my shields down and stared at the fae.
“Where’s the ward?”
A muscle twitched next to her eye before she could hide it. She must beveryupset if she’d let her glamor slip. “This safe wasn’t warded.”
“I’m sorry, I must’ve misheard you. You can’t have told me that you had no ward on the ancient fae artifact which was created by agod.”
She glowered at me and turned away. After a few moments of pacing back and forth, she threw up her hands. “I should’ve warded it,” she admitted. “But this is one of the most secure buildings in Durham. No one knew the amulet was here. And this office is monitored at all times.”
All signs were pointing towards her assistant being involved. The only problem? Fae couldn’t lie, and I’d made sure to ask her yes or no questions. Adelina hadn’t expected the amulet to go missing.
I turned to the safe. I could crack it in about fifteen minutes, and my safe-breaking skills were rusty as hell. If someone knew the amulet was here, they could’ve snuck in at any time.
Half an hour later, I stalked out of Mariam’s office. Then I paused, my gaze going to the pixies who were sitting on one of the tables in the seating area, their tiny legs hanging over the edge.
I crouched in front of them. “Hi.”
The pixie closest to me flapped incandescent wings, her magenta eyes taking me in. “You’re investigating the missing amulet.”
“I am. Can you guys tell me anything?”
They all shook their heads. A sudden thought occurred to me and I smiled at them. “Do you work here?”
They nodded. “I am the pixie queen’s assistant,” the first pixie said. “She has me bring her requests and petitions to Mariam, who takes them to our king.”
“So, you must be here a lot, right?”
She nodded and her friend let out a laugh that sounded like tiny bells ringing. “Most days. Our queen has many petitions for the king.”
“Have you noticed anyone going into Mariam’s office over the past few weeks?”
“Just Mariam and her guests. And the humans who use their tools.”
I went still. “The cleaners?”
“Yes.”
I ground my teeth and scanned the list of names Mariam had given me. They were divided into groups, and there were no humans amongst them.
“Are there many cleaners in this building?”
One of the other pixies, a tiny male dressed in green pants and a white shirt nodded, his wings fluttering as he rose into the air. “There are many humans here. They don’t like us.”
His dark frown said he didn’t like them either.
My curiosity was piqued. “How do you know they don’t like you?”
“They call us rude names. And one of them attempts to use their sucking machine to make us disappear.”
Sudden fury ripped through me. “The vacuum?”
