“I think she has eyes for you, Seven,” I say, loading on maximum snark. “Did you take her measurements before hiring her as your assistant?”
He grunts in disgust. “That’s Eva, Sophia!”
I try to remember who Eva is and it comes to me in a flash. Instantly I feel like a humongous jackass. “Eva as in Evangeline? Your little sister?”
“That’s the one.”
“She’s changed since I last saw her.”
He heaves a sigh. “Tell me about it. My dad moved her office up here because she was too much of a distraction downstairs. Eva’s in charge of our social media presence and public relations—constantly in the public eye. It’s a full-time job trying to protect her from overzealous suitors.”
A flood of memories comes back to me of how we used to take Eva for honey and lavender ice cream at Twinkleberries. His family once accepted me, when they thought we were just friends. Well, everyone but his father, Chance. A lead ball forms in the pit of my chest just thinking about the man and how cruel he was to me.
I distract myself by taking in my surroundings. Other than a wall of windows with a bird’s-eye view of Dragonfly, Seven’s office is a much-needed sanctuary from the fishbowl effect of the rest of the casino. He has walls and a desk of warm mahogany that matches the bookshelves that line one entire wall. A muted blue Persian carpet anchors the decor. It looks expensive and imported, just like the furniture. If I had to describe Seven’s interior design style, it would be “things I can’t afford.”
Seven fits in here in his charcoal-gray suit that skims his body as if it was made for him and most certainly was. Gold clover cuff links glint at his cuffs, and a watch that’s probably worth as much as my parents’ house ticks on his wrist. He doesn’t walk back around the desk as I expect him to but returns to stand in front of me so that we’re toe-to-toe. He’s taller than me by almost a foot, and when he slants a wolfish smile in my direction, I hate the way my stomach flips.
“This dress is…” He takes the material between his fingers and pulls. Two inches of extra fabric come off my body.
“My mother’s,” I say. “I haven’t had a chance to buy more dresses. I had one that still fit me, but a five-year-old planted a sucker in it yesterday, so it’s at the cleaners.”
Amusement twinkles in his eyes. “How is Aurora doing? I trust that since you’re wearing her dress you’ve reconciled?” He knows about pixie garden rituals. I shared with him while we were dating, although he’s never actually been in my family’s garden.
“Yes. All is well. I won’t be sleeping in the street.”
His expression turns serious. “I’d never leave you to sleep in the street.”
“No, just alone in a sleigh surrounded by a pack of ravenous wolves,” I mumble. I wasn’t sleeping, and the wolves included his father and the rest of town, but he knows what I mean.
He scoffs, then moves around to his side of the desk. He opens his mouth as if he wants to say something else but closes it again and squares his shoulders. A professional persona chases away any remnants of the boy I once knew. “As much as I’d love to once again be berated by you about something that happened sixteen years ago, we have a job to do.”
Biting my tongue, I take a seat across from him. He opens a file folder on the desk in front of me. “It happened March 20.”
“The spring equinox?” I look down at the picture in the file in front of me. It looks a lot like the one Donovan showed me.
“Yes.”
“I can’t even tell if this is a man or a woman.” The body is a bloody, maimed mess.
“It’s a man, although the genitals were ripped out along with the teeth and a selection of bones.”
I glance up and meet Seven’s emerald eyes, thankful that the grisly picture in front of me is enough to make me temporarily immune to his charms. “I don’t understand. You found this in the square the night of the equinox? There’s always a huge party there to celebrate the coming spring. There would have been revelers until the wee hours of the morning.”
“It happened before the party. Godmother arrived at her tearoom around five a.m. to prepare for the day’s festivities. The body was already cold. She cast a concealment charm until we could remove it. Estimated time of death was three a.m.”
“Who was the human?” I page through the contents of the file, looking for details.
“Michael Murphy. Just a trucker who enjoyed visiting the Dragonfly Club. Had a thing for pixies. Other than that, nothing special about him.”
Included in the photos is one of Michael Murphy smiling at the photographer in front of the dragonfly topiary at the park entrance. He’s potbellied and mustached, dressed in a T-shirt that saysI Brake For Fairies. I flip to the next photo and have to swallow down bile at the sight of his mangled corpse.
“The similarity of this picture to the one Agent Donovan showed me in the rehabilitation center is uncanny,” I say. “I think what you said yesterday on the beach is right. Someone has gone through a lot of trouble to pin this on Yissevel. What I can’t figure out is who or why. The fact that one of the murders took place on US soil points to human involvement.”
“Humans don’t know about Yissevel.”
“No, they don’t.”
Seven studies me. “When you were on the outside, did you meet others like you?”
