Seven straightens, looking livid. “This is the first I’m hearing of it.”
“Let me know what you find out.” The tone of her voice has the hair on my arms standing at attention. Something ancient has crept in. Ancient and deadly.
The nod Seven gives her is the most deferential I’ve ever seen him give anyone. He extends his hand and gestures for me to come. I do, relieved when we are through the concealment spell and I can no longer smell the blood. “That was intense,” I say.
He says nothing, doesn’t even look at me. His entire demeanor has turned icy.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I ask in my usual irreverent way. I’m not going to bend to this man’s moods.
He continues to ignore me, until we’re around the corner and out of sight of the crime scene. When he finally does turn, his expression is hard, his spine stiff, and his lip is curled in disapproval. “Is there any other information about this case you’d like to share with me? Now would be a good time. Now rather than later, when we’re with Godmother.”
I recoil. Fuck. His poker face is gone, and the full force of his anger plows into me. I force myself to stand a little straighter. “I just found out myself! It was important information.”
“So you thought it would be a good idea to make a fool of me in front of Godmother? I’m head of security, Sophia, and a Delaney leprechaun. How exactly did you think your reveal was going to go over?”
The turn of events shakes me. Not an hour ago, this man had his tongue down my throat, and now my skin buzzes with his anger. His luck coils around him like a defensive, pissed-off dragon.
I try to take a step toward him and find that my heel is caught in the cobblestones. I glance down at my shoe, but it refuses to give. My nostrils flare. “Real mature.”
He scowls like someone kicked his kitten.
Stepping out of my shoes, I flex my own luck and she rises like a tiger at my side. It’s all bravado. His dragon could eat my tiger in one bite.
“My reveal? I didn’trevealanything. I recognized the victim and told both of you in the moment. It’s not my fault no one had informed Godmother about Phoebe. How was I even supposed to know that?”
“Bullshit, Sophia. You kept this to yourself. You said the pixie at Dragonfly Club told you about her. You’ve known for hours and didn’t share it?”
I raise a hand. “I didn’t have a chance! I was too busy being whisked away to your apartment to revisit the past. Besides, since when do you care what anyone else thinks?” My poker face snaps into place to conceal how shaken I am by the emotional whiplash of the night. “Gods, Seven, you just finished telling me that you didn’t care what your father thought about pixies, but suddenly you’re swelling with some hypermasculine need to know everything first and be in total control?”
Emerald eyes blazing, he juts a finger in my direction. “Wanting to appear competent in front of the most powerful creature in both our lives isn’t hypermasculine, Sophia, but thanks for letting me know exactly how you feel about me.”
He turns to continue toward his car. I bend over and use both hands to pry my shoe from the sidewalk, then follow after him.
Whirling on me, he makes a sound like a laugh. “Go home, Sophia.”
“What? Why? I thought we were going to go look at the security recording.”
His eyes turn cold as ice. “Oh, I see. You don’t get it because you’ve never managed anything but yourself.” That barb slides between my ribs and almost breaks the impassive expression I’ve been holding in place. “Here’s what happens now. I have to go back to the office and start the process of figuring out why my people didn’t flag Phoebe Willowbark as a missing person. If there’s some sort of bias involved, I’ll have to fire the people responsible on the spot, people with families, who need their jobs.”
He slams me with a disdainful look, and I realize he’s echoing what I asked him when he fired Brandon. Ouch. “While that’s all happening, I’ll have to spend a gods-awful amount of luck to gain access to the recording of Phoebe’s murder without drawing attention to it. No one else can see it. No one else can know what happened here tonight. If any of my guys have already seen it, I’ll need to make damn sure they don’t say a word, one way or another, because if this got out to the human population, Dragonfly could lose millions in lost park revenue until PR got things under control.”
“Don’t forget the Delaney empire,” I say flatly. “Your bank account might shrink from the size of Jupiter to the size of Uranus, and that’s also exactly where you can shove this guilt trip.” Beside me, my luck tiger growls. “I know these murders are high stakes for us, but don’t act like I don’t have just as much on the line. My freedom hangs in the balance—my life if Godmother kicks me out of here. There’s a reason she put me on this case, and it’s not just to feed you information so that you can play the hero and take credit for every chip of progress that comes our way.”
He recoils at that, a scowl marring his face.
“But since we’re on the topic, six pixies who frequented the Dragonfly Club have gone missing over the past decade, and none of them have been investigated as potential victims. Phoebe was just the most recent one. Your people always assume they left for the human world like I did, but their families disagree. I sent word to my family. Most people would if they weren’t in trouble. When an otherwise normal person vanishes without a trace, there’s probably foul play involved. So maybe it’s time you talked to that team of yours, and maybe it’s right that a few of them are fired. I’m not going to apologize for telling the truth or for doing exactly what you brought me on this case to do.”
He grunts. “Fine. But I’m still leading this investigation, and you’re officially off duty.” He slashes a hand through the air dismissively and turns coolly away from me. I watch him stride toward the parking lot, the press of his luck going with him. The tingle of his power slides from my skin and then vanishes.
I head for home feeling oddly cold.
ChapterTwenty
Luck always favors the brave. And you must remember that brave are the people who follow their heart; brave are the people who take chances in life. — Preity Zinta
“Mom, what do you think of my new uniform?” Arden rushes into my room the following morning wearing the plaid skirt, emblemed blazer, blouse, and tights that I recognize as the uniform for Bailiwick’s Academy. I blink at the clock, wondering if I’ve overslept again, even though I was home at a reasonable hour and I hadn’t had anything to drink. It’s only seven fifteen. My alarm was set for seven thirty.
“Where’d you get that?” I ask her. “I promise I’ll call the school on Monday. I just haven’t had a chance.”
