Page 9 of Royal Ransom

The problem was, I wasn’t sure Icouldslap Mav in cuffs. On the practical side, I had no proof he’d done anything. All I had to go on was the ground-in blood under his fingernails and cuticles. That could have come from almost any source, and no lab was going to run it on my hunch that it was human or supernatural. Even if I managed to force the issue, what then? I was sure that whatever had happened, it hadn’t been Mav’s fault. Not directly, at any rate. If I didn’t blame Wanda for what she’d done to my brother under demonic influence, could I really do the same to Maverick under similar circumstances? Yes, someone needed to pay for this, but not here. Not now. Certainly not with the threat of Janara hanging over our heads.

I’d sample the blood, I decided, nodding to myself as I navigated the streets of the Hollow. They were nearly empty, just a few drunks staggering home after last call. I’d rescue Fox, and he’d owe me one. I could handle the situation privately. When I had answers, I could freak out then.

It chafed against my every instinct not to pursue this thing with Mav. Someone was dead—I was sure of it. It didn’t matter who they were or who was technically at fault. I should have followed up on it. But I wasn’t going to. Not now, at any rate. Did that make me a bad cop, letting Maverick go free just becauseI needed him for the mission ahead? Yeah, maybe. But I wasn’t letting him escape consequences. I just had to... delay them for the time being. Until I neutralized the threat from Janara and Winter.

Yes, I’d go with that.

My hands flexed around the steering wheel. It was taking all of my concentration not to spiral into a doomsday scenario. I’d dealt with supernatural problems like this before. Granted, none quite as grim as kidnapping and murder, but still.

“He’s not a murderer,” I repeated to myself for the umpteenth time. “And he didn’t do any of this maliciously.”

As he’d explained it, the options available to him had been either to cut a deal with Knox or let Morgana finish what Janara and her people had started. And Janara had intended to kill us all in our sleep. Mav had bartered his body for our safety. I should have been thanking him for that sacrifice, not picking apart his motives. But the part of me that was Chief of Police, Taliyah Morgan, couldn’t let it go. I doubted I’d feel better when I knew the identity of the person Knox had targeted, but it would at least be an answer—a step in the right direction. The doubt would eat me alive otherwise.

Maverick had looked wounded when I insisted on checking in on Darla without him. He hadn’t even protested when I told him to meet me at the Bar and Grill for the Council meeting. It wasn’t his fault, but he expected me to blame him anyway. Every other woman in his life had. I hadn’t been sure what to say to the questions in his eyes. I didn’t have a comforting lie to tell him. Whatever was going on had changed something between us, but I wasn’t sure what that something was or if it could be repaired.

Darla was supposed to meet me in my driveway, give me a report about the boys, and then hitch a ride home with me. However, with the weather turning worse, I figured she’d used her spare key to my house to allow herself inside. The wind hadbeen buffeting the sides of my car the entire way home, forcing me to take turns at less than half the speed limit or risk going up on two wheels. Dark storm clouds loomed overhead, heavy with their burden. Rain, sleet, or even snow was going to slam the town in an hour. Maybe less. I could see the first flakes landing like soft, white confetti on my windshield, melting on contact with the warm surface. I’d cranked the heater as high as I could stand, trying to thaw the ice in my stomach. So far, it hadn’t worked.

“We’ll find a way out of this,” I said, speaking aloud for my own benefit. The only other person who regularly gave me pep talks was trudging through the chilly gusts of wind toward the Council meeting I desperately wanted to avoid.

I felt like a child hiding in a closet. If I didn’t acknowledge the monster, it would go away. Except that had never worked in my mundane life, and it didn’t work well as a faerie princess, either. I’d feel steadier once I had a workable plan—some grand scheme that would somehow keep me and the people I’d sworn to protect safe from Janara and her evil machinations.

A lecture from Cain would light a fire under my ass; I just knew it. My brother and I hadn’t always seen eye-to-eye, but he’d been one of my best friends. He’d know how to keep me from exploding into anxious fractals of ice all over my kitchen counters.

That thought was almost comforting… until the wind let out a fresh howl. It sounded almost human—a scream of anguish that stretched and softened as it battered my car. I recognized winter magic when it began to spiderweb across the windshield as I turned onto my street. Frost first, then a leaden sheet of ice that made the window groan in protest.

“Oh fuck,” I muttered under my breath, scrambling for my seatbelt.

I managed to get the belt off and my door opened before thesafety glass gave up the ghost and buckled inward, showering my seats with small chunks of ice and slivers of glass. The scream was louder when I landed painfully on the ground and watched my cruiser continue for a few feet before landing in a ditch.

I could make the sound out with painful clarity. The voice sounded almost female and… familiar.

Darla.

Chapter Six

Maverick

It isn’t every day you see a vampire blush.

Most of the time, they don’t have the blood to waste on it. Vampires who have been alive for more than a century were pretty much masters of the poker face, using their biology as an asset rather than a drawback. But Charlotte Rose wasn’t a century old. She wasn’t even ayearold, according to her friend, which meant she’d usurped Astrid’s position as the youngest and most inexperienced bloodsucker in Haven Hollow. I was sure my sister would be thrilled. It wasn’t every day she got to play wise sage to a new kid.

Charlotte Rose looked around forty, judging from the subtle lines on her face. She was definitely pretty—in a librarian, secretary sort of way. She reminded me a bit of Tally, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. Physically, they were nearly total opposites. Charlotte, or Charlie, as she insisted on being called, was a blonde. With her human glamour in place, Taliyah’s hair was darker. As a faerie, her hair was almost completely bleached of color, each strand as pristine and glittering as freshly fallen snow. I always wanted to run my hands through her hair when it was loose, half expecting to feel the powdery stuff slip through my fingers instead of the silken strands.

It was the strength in Charlie’s eyes and the set of her shoulders that reminded me of Tally, I decided. It was quiet resolve, buried beneath the layers of embarrassment as Angelo ribbed her about lingerie, while another woman I didn’t know, presumably a distant succubus cousin of his, did the same, flipping through a month-old fashion magazine Roy kept by the door for people waiting for takeout.

Angelo was a punchably smug prick on a good day. He’d mellowed some since meeting his girlfriend, Lydia, but notthatmuch. If there were a pair of ripe breasts around, he’d leer at least once. Charlie wasn’t stacked the way my cousin and Fifi were, but she wasn’t hurting in that department either. She was girl-next-door pretty. In fact, I thought the beauty of herwasin her simplicity. A daisy didn’t need to be bright or smell intoxicating to make a statement.

My lips twisted into a hollow smile. I was spending too much time with faeries these days. My metaphors were becoming more and more nature-based with every passing year. Though, I wasn’t entirely sure it was their fault. It was in me, too. The magic of the fae ran through my veins, courtesy of my father. Maybe I was destined to manifest a portion of his power and sensibilities at some point. We all turned into our parents in the end. Better Fennec than Mom, I figured.

The other new girl was... well, ‘voluptuous’ didn’t quite cover it. Everything about her was big and bright, almost too gaudy to look at. Scarlet hair, plum lips, creamy skin, and a few tattoos peeking out from beneath her hemlines. She was set to burst the seams of the sports bra and short-short combination she’d gotten from Wanda’s sale rack. She’d passed the warmer articles on to others in her group, according to Tally.

She called herself Anarchy Brimstone, but I doubted that was truly her name. She claimed the weather didn’t bother her species, though she’d been vague about justwhatthat species was. The energy that struck me was demonic—larger and darker than the succubus she was pretending to be. A part of me wanted to interrogate her, to figure out why she was acting like an oversexed member of Angelo’s species when she wasn’t. In the end, I kept quiet. It wasn’t my business why she was putting on an act. It fell to me to rescue Charlie from the pair before she melted down into a pile of vampire goo. I was good at magic, but that was one situation I couldn’t easily repair.

I scooped the stammering blonde vampire from the littlehuddle they’d formed around her, tucking her under one arm easily. She felt like a waif against my side. Most women did. It was rare to find one tall or strong enough to not feel like a porcelain doll in my hands. I thought I knew Fox well enough to guess that was part of the appeal. He liked to protect rather than be protected. It might be worth going in to drag him out of Janara’s clutches, just to see the look on his face when he realized who he owed a debt to.

“Tell Angelo to piss off,” I said. “It usually works. He’s a piece of work, but he won’t flirt too much if you give him a direct no.”

Charlie looked shaky. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t due to incubus pheromones. People usually looked a little drunk after having their energy fed on. I’d caught glances of post-coital succubi and their victims before. It wasn’t pheromones making her tremble. It was fear. To my horror, I saw the beginnings of tears on her lashes.

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