Mr. Maplethorpe’s face was getting redder and redder. “Because it’s tradition,” he mumbled. “It’s the law. Which some of us actually respect.”
As he spoke, Mr. Maplethorpe was backing towards the door.
Gabriel heard voices inside the house, a man’s and a woman’s, getting closer to the front door, and Mr. Maplethorpe turned around and screamed frantically, “Get back! Get back inside the house! Be quiet!” The voices fell silent.
One of the voices had sounded weirdly familiar. “Is that Marvin?” Gabriel said. “Is our former employee at your house?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mr. Maplethorpe blustered. “You’re trespassing. Get off our property.”
“Gee, I don’t know how you’d expect me to marry into your family if I’m not even allowed to visit my in-laws.” Gabriel smirked, and he sauntered off and climbed into his car.
Curiouser and curiouser,Gabriel mused as he drove back home. Marvin could certainly visit the Maplethorpes if he wanted to – but why would he? They didn’t own a jewelry business. Marvin didn’t have any inside info that they could use against him – at least, not that Gabriel knew of, and when it came to security the Kingsley family was pretty tight.
* * * * *
When he got back to the castle, Gabriel went to the south tower and climbed into the elevator. Once he got to the metal door in the hallway, he paused to steel himself mentally for what he’d see on the other side.
He leaned forward in front of the retinal scanner and opened his eyes wide. The door slid open for him.
Alexandra was sitting with her back to him, staring at the wall with a vacant expression and muttering to herself.
“Hey, Princess Alex,” he said, using his childhood nickname for her. She barely bothered to glance at him, and then turned away again.
She’d been beautiful once – a slender, laughing girl with glossy black ringlets of hair that shimmered and bounced. She was a shadow of her former self now, heavily medicated, wearing copper anklets so she couldn’t shift into her dragon form.
The madness was getting stronger. The medication should have kept her under control, but it was losing effectiveness. Without the medication, she’d be raving one minute, quiet the next…and then she’d attack without warning, whether in human or dragon form.
She’d been wearing bracelets rather than anklets up until the other day. Then she’d managed to slip out of her bracelets and shift while he and Kelly had been up on the roof. She had hurled herself against the walls so hard, she’d cracked them. There hadn’t been enough room for all the guards to shift, since she’d already been in dragon form and filling up most of the enormous chamber that was now her prison.
One guard had shifted and protected the others as best he could while she’d blasted them with her flame. The nurse had shot her with several heavy-duty tranquilizer darts before she’d finally settled down. She’d burned several of the guards quite badly.
If they didn’t find a cure soon, they’d lose her forever. Evangeline’s mother would descend into a dark world of insanity from which she’d never come back.
They’d had high hopes for the Dragonsblood Ruby, but it hadn’t worked. They’d looped it around her neck and waited for days, and nothing had happened.
And now it turned out that Marvin wasn’t trustworthy, they’d need to find a new gem empath. Gabriel knew he couldn’t ask Kelly to help with this, and he doubted that they could get Christopher to come back.
Gabriel’s father, Emerson, was in the room, holding a book. He came every day and read to her, just as he had when she’d been a little girl. Evangeline had been there earlier. She visited almost every day, as painful as it was for her.
Emerson glanced up when Gabriel walked in. Then he looked at his daughter, and his normally cheery smile faded. “She’s getting worse. She’ll be past the point of no return soon.”
Gabriel nodded somberly. “I know, believe me.”
Emerson looked him straight in the eye. “I know that you don’t want to involve Kelly in this, and I know that trusting her would be a risk, but she might be our only hope.”
