Evie hid her grin as she walked toward her car, where she’d stashed the gun. Nelson turned to me. “What did you find?”
I filled him in about the contact Martin had given Ilayda so she could learn how to handle her new gun.
“Have you talked to the contact yet?”
Evie stepped up to us and held the gun out to Nelson. She’d wrapped it in plastic bubble wrap. “Nope,” she said. “He’s not answering my calls. I’m going to get hold of him, though.”
I rolled my shoulders as we walked to our cars. “Hold up,” Evie said. “I just got a message from Nereus. He had files and schedules from the bodyguards sent to our office.”
“I’ll follow you over there,” I said, hope fluttering in my chest.
Danica, Evie, and Kyla’s office was located just off East Main Street, in a strip mall. The ballet class next door was ending, and the parking lot was overrun by kids, most of them wearing pink.
I finally managed to grab a spot as a minivan pulled out, and a few minutes later, I was wandering inside.
“Wow, this place is gorgeous,” I murmured.
“Evie designed and decorated it for Danica,” Kyla said. “Danica got to enjoy it for approximately thirty seconds before she was kidnapped.”
I surveyed the family tree Evie had started on the whiteboard. Ilayda was distantly related to the seelie king through her mother’s side. Taraghlan’s uncle had married Ilayda’s great-great-great-great-grandmother.
Just staring at the family tree made my eyes blur. Shit got complicated when people were living for hundreds of years. I talked it out. “So, Taraghlan’s uncle married Ilayda’s many-times great-grandmother, and then she had two boys.”
Kyla nodded. “One of those boys had four kids. Something of a scandal for a fae couple to be that fertile, although it was celebrated. The other kid had a son, who had a son, who had Ilayda.”
I ran my eyes over Ilayda’s however many great-uncle’s kids. Tenorina, Gwynasis, Ceallach, and Brandubh.
They’d had six kids between them—Carmag, Donnach, Earnan, Yorise, Aellone, and Tyverre.
“What do we have for these guys so far?”
“Tenorina works for the king. Gwynasis disappeared centuries ago, and it’s rumored that she ran away with her lover. Her parents disapproved, and most people figure Gwynasis is somewhere in the middleground. Ceallach invested in a tech company in our world, and he lives in Durham.”
“You reckon he was friendly with Ilayda?”
She shrugged. “Potentially. Brandubh died in the battle in the underworld. Fighting on our side.”
We were all silent at that.
Evie strolled over to the larger desk and dumped a cardboard box on top of it. “I haven’t had a look into their kids yet. We need to stalk—I mean research—the hell out of them, along with Ilayda’s schedule. Everyone take a file,” she said. “Mere, when do you need to be back at the bar?”
I checked my phone. “I’ve got a couple hours.”
“Okay. Let’s do it.”
Evie had a calendar hanging on the wall. “Can we use that?”
She nodded, and I sat on the comfy sofa, reading through my file. I made notes of where Ilayda had been on particular days and added them to the calendar leading up to her disappearance.
Pilates every day at seven a.m.
Meeting her light fae friend Mariam every Friday at noon.
Dinner at various upscale restaurants with Nereus twice a week.
Some kind of pregnancy class which Nereus made it to approximately half the time.
The notes were detailed, and we began to put together a picture of Ilayda’s schedule. She was busy enough that my introverted heart wanted to hide in my apartment for a week at the thought of living her life.
