“I’ve informed Cornelius,” he said, dropping into the chair beside me. “I also spoke with Portia, Finnic, and Wendall individually. The Tremaines and Tatiana are out of town right now.”
I hesitated. “What about Melody?”
Samuel’s silence was answer enough. Melody was officially on the suspect list.
“How did Cornelius take it?”
“About as well as you’d expect from a fae who’s always stressed about property taxes.” Samuel rubbed the back of his neck. “He’s concerned, of course. He admitted that the Lincoln sisters’ absence has been nagging at him. With Daria on the West Coast, he thought it best for her to deal with the matter once she returned, since it concerned witch business. He’s authorized a formal investigation under the Alliance’s oversight.”
I felt his tension spike across the mate bond. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“It means whoever is behind this will know we’re looking.” Samuel met my eyes, a muscle twitching in his cheek. “The Alliance isn’t known for its discretion. Once they start digging, wordwill travel.”
A chill crept through me. My wolf growled softly.
“You think we’re putting a target on our backs,” I said.
“I think we already have one.” His hand found mine under the table, his grip warm and steady. “Which is why I don’t want to let you out of my sight from here on out.”
The mate bond pulsed with an intensity that made parts of me tingle. I glanced in the direction of his office.
Samuel’s mouth twitched when he picked up on my illicit thoughts.
Bo’s head popped up between us.
“I really don’t think humping should be at the top of your to-do list right now,” my dog observed solemnly. “You have bigger fish to fry.” He licked his chops. “Speaking of fish, how about we order sushi from that place up the road?”
“No,” Samuel and I said as one.
Bo sighed dramatically.
Didi returned late in the afternoon.
I knew something was wrong before she opened her mouth. The witch’s face was tight with the kind of controlled fury that preceded someone getting turned into a frog.
She called an urgent meeting and dropped into a chair in the conference room where we’d reconvened. “The Ashgrove coven has gone dark.”
Samuel’s attention sharpened. “Define ‘dark.’”
“As in nobody has seen or heard from them in weeks. They’ve stopped attending inter-covengatherings. They pulled their children from the shared coven school last month. Two of my contacts tried to visit them recently and were turned away at the door.” Didi’s fingers curled on the table. “One of them said the woman who answered didn’t even look like herself. That her eyes were… wrong.”
A chill danced down my spine. Bo’s ears flattened.
“That’s not all,” Didi continued, her tone hardening. “I did a bit of digging into the Ashgrove witches’ history. The property where their coven sits has a complicated past. It changed hands under circumstances that didn’t sit well with the coven registry at the time. There are notes about an irregular land transfer that was never formally resolved.”
The accountant in me reared her head. I furrowed my brow.
“That’s the kind of thing that could be used as leverage if somebody wanted to exert pressure.”
“So, blackmail material,” Samuel stated flatly.
Didi dipped her head curtly. “Possibly.”
Gavin’s horns started smoking.
My mind raced, the pieces coming together like a ledger that balanced in all the wrong ways. “Maybe someone decided to exploit that vulnerability to force the coven to assist them in making sure the Lincoln sisters vanish for good.”
Didi shifted in her chair. “There’s something else.” The witch hesitated.
