Vanderpoel could’ve taken the EVP with barely any effort at all.
“Yes, but that’s notallhe meant,” Petra argued. “Silas, the thing that brought him to San Francisco— It wasn’t just the m-generator. It was anevent.Look at that order there. He planned to have his soldiers in the cathedral on the one day a year that… Good gods.”
He arched a brow. “What day?”
“The solstice,” she breathed. “The biggest festival of the year. The one that brings Margot and Theodore to the Templeeveryyear without fail. They always make a speech and give an offering. Always.”
It was no wonder he didn’t realize what the date meant. Demons weren’t exactly known for celebrating the day dedicated to Glory. The solstice was celebrated in small ways, usually with a picnic and bonfires, but elsewhere it was a grand event with complicated ceremonies, feasting, and fireworks.
Silas drummed his claws on the desk. “If he wanted to plan a successful coup, his best opportunity to take out the Solbournes would be when they’re in the cathedral, surrounded by the soldiers no one even knows he has. But he’d still have to think about the Tower. That’s the seat of power, with or without the sovereign inside.”
“The solstice is tomorrow.” She paused, checked the time and date on the monitor, and blanched. “Gods, not even tomorrow. It’s in a fewhours.Everyone will be out in the streets or visiting family. The Tower will be a ghost town.” Petra found his hand and gripped it hard. Her breathing went quick and shallow. “Silas, we left his soldiers in the cathedral. I thought they mightjust leave to hunt me, but if they’re taking orders from someone else, too, they might still be there. Oh, gods, thestaff.What’s been happening to the staff?”
A look of stark horror drained all the life from her face. “Margot and the sovereign might be walking into an execution.”
Silas wished he could tell her no. He wanted to be able to reassure her, inept as he might be at it, but he couldn’t. He stared at the screen, his gaze bouncing from one incriminating document to another. There weren’t many messages between Antonin and Red. Silas suspected they did most of their communication in person, which was smart, or on another server he didn’t have access to.
But what hedidhave was enough.
A message from Red asked,Do you have enough soldiers? We’re spread thin, but I can send a few more. Don’t want you to miss your chance to put a crown on your queen’s head.
And below that, Vanderpoel’s answer:The elf has the rest handled. You have fun.
He stared hard at the message.Fingers moving unconsciously over the projected keyboard, he did another shallow search for the wordelf.
Hundreds of results sprang up, so he sorted them by most recent. Eying an order to funnel money to an elf in Las Vegas for“the retrieval”, he asked, “Which elvish family hates the Solbournes the most?”
Petra shook her head. “I don’t know. Several of them had issues with Theodore taking over for his sister, and Mad Thad did so much damage to everyone… But I thought things settled after he lifted the ban on taking mates and married Margot. I was at the Summit when it was announced. Most of the crowd was ecstatic, and I always got the impression that he was popular.”
“In my experience, the more popular a ruler, the more determined their enemies are.” Pulling up yet another window, he searched for anything else on the dates of the most relevant messages. Amongst all the useless hits, an m-jet manifest came up.
“Who’s in Las Vegas?” Petra whispered.
Silas sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. “The Luz family.”
He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but Petra managed to go even whiter. “Don’t they have a lot of money?”
“Yes,” he answered, claws drumming on the desktop. “Elio Luz owns most of Las Vegas and he’s a mean, petty sonofabitch. His son is worse.”
“How so?”
“He’ssmart.”
“Do you think they’d help Antonin?”
Silas pursed his lips as he considered the possibility. He’d never bothered working with Elio because he seemed like too much of a pain in the ass. His son Epifanio had never reached out to Silas for a job, mostly because he was very smart and even more paranoid. Despite never working for them, Silas heard enough to make an educated guess.
“Epifanio? No,” he finally answered. “He’s too smart and he’s been planning on deposing his father for too long to blow everything up with a half-baked coup. His dad, on the other hand… Yeah, I can see him doing it. I doubt his people couldn’t get free access to the m-generator, but they could get into the Tower. With enough firepower, that’d be enough.”
Silas hated to do it, but he had to explain the reality of what they were dealing with. Placing a hand on her knee, he said, “Listen, baby. I know you think you have friends in the Tower, but that ends right now. If you see one traitor, that means there are a dozen more just out of sight. We don’t know who Elio orVanderpoel or Red might’ve slipped into the inner circle, the staff, the guards.No onecan be trusted.”
Petra looked like she was going to be sick. If it had been all Vanderpoel, he might’ve been able to ease some of her worries, but with an unknown player and an unseen snake in Theodore Solbourne’s court, he couldn’t lie and say that the threat died along with the man.
While it waspossiblethat Vanderpoel’s death might’ve derailed any plans, Silas doubted it. There were too many players, too many moves already made. If the Ardeo soldiers were still in the cathedral, then there wouldn’t be any real reason to call it off. It seemed likely that Red was calling the shots now. If their plot hinged on taking the EVP, as it appeared to, then there was a very real possibility that the sovereign couple would walk into St. Emaine’s and never leave.
Bracing himself, he asked, “What do you want to do?”
Petra boggled at him. “I want to stop whatever it is that might be happening! We need to tell someone or— or go to Patrol or?—”
