Page 23 of Hijack the Seas: Seismic

“In the Challenge, no. But anyone that rich is always a threat. He might have bribed his way to the throne had things gone differently, but now that he looks a fool, without even enough magic to counter some enchanted crabs—”

“Anyone who votes for him might as well be waving a banner saying ‘I was bought.’”

“Exactly. Someone just removed a threat for the price of a few minutes of spell-binding.”

I narrowed my eyes at him because the tone of that last comment had been verging on smug. “Or paid someone else to do it,” I said.

“Of course. They could have done that.”

Unless they were a war mage and an expert magic worker and didn’t have to, I thought, wondering if I’d underestimated my partner. Pritkin didn’t help me decide, being too busy smiling at the servant girl again, who had returned with a whopping platter of fish in some brown sauce. She smiled back, and she smiled big.

My eyes narrowed a bit more.

And then widened to roughly saucer-shape when I saw who was behind her and had just paused by the third chair at our table. “What the—”

“Hey, sweetheart. Mind if I join you?”

I just stared, my mouth hanging open in a way that probably didn’t help with the badass, but I didn’t care right then. “Alphonse?”

“The one and only.” He started to sit, but Pritkin put out a hand.

“No offense,” he said because Alphonse was a vampire, the approximate size of a small mountain, and mean with it. He was also ugly enough to have some of the fey currently staring at us start doing the look-slide thing that the flunkies had tried on the Horror Twins because he offended their delicate sensibilities. Several even looked like they might lose their expensive dinner.

It made me warm up to Alphonse, which was not an easy task.

“Offense taken,” Alphonse growled. “You got a problem with me, war mage?”

“No. But sitting here might be dangerous. You know what it means?”

“What does it mean?” I asked before Alphonse could.

“It means,” Alphonse said, removing Pritkin’s hand from his arm with the very deliberate motions of a man who could have just as easily ripped it off. “That I’m signing on. Which I am.”

His butt hit the seat, and he smiled at me, which did not help matters much. Alphonse was the guy normies envision when somebody says “vampire,” only not as suave. Or as sexy. Or as wealthy or influential or—

You get the idea. But the tall, dark, and brutal thing? He had that in spades and at least eighty pounds of added muscle that vamps didn’t need.

“Signing on to what?” I asked, thinking that maybe Pritkin and I should have done more than “take a shower” while we’d had the time.

“To team Cassie. And this guy,” he added, hiking a thumb at Pritkin when I opened my mouth to protest. “But mainly you.”

“Me?” My eyes tried narrowing again, but they were still too shocked. “Why me? And what are you doing here? You realize we’re in Faerie?”

“Yeah. All the pointy ears kinda gave it away.” He tucked a giant napkin into the front of his very Earthly tuxedo. With his oily, slicked-back, dark hair, his pockmarked face, and his cauliflower nose, he looked like a mafia don who had somehow wandered into the land of the fey, which wasn’t far off.

He had been second-in-command to the mafia don.

And, suddenly, something started to make sense.

“Hold it,” Alphonse’s huge hand covered mine and pressed down hard enough to keep me in place. But not to keep me from looking around wildly, trying to spot—

“Where is he?” I demanded.

“You need to calm down, okay?”

“You calm down!” I turned back to him, my eyes furious. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. That’s why I’m here. I tracked him to Faerie and—”

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