Page 6 of Blood Moon

Again, he snorted. “It’s not like you have a bus to catch. You literally control every moment.”

“Piss off and mind ya business,” I airily replied as I waved with a wiggle of my fingers and breezed out the door.

“You look beautiful, Tink!” he shouted after me with his tone full of laughter.

My lips twitched as I held my smile back.

I took the elevators down to the ground floor. My kitten heels clicked sharply on the marble floor in the foyer of our high-rise. Neverland Acquisitions owned the entire building, but we leased out a lot of it for office space, with apartments on the top three floors. The penthouse was Peter’s. I wasn’t as pretentious as he was. I had one of the two residences on the floor below.

As I approached the front doors, my attention was pulled to one of the seating areas in the lobby. A dark-haired man looked up from his phone and toward the desk as Thomas, one of our agents, approached him. They shook hands as my steps faltered for a split second. There was something incredibly familiar about those cheekbones and that smile. Yet, I was sure I’d never seen the man before. I’d certainly have remembered.

Shaking off the bizarre feeling, I wrapped the decadent fur stole around my shoulders and stepped out into the brisk Chicago afternoon. Two blocks down, I entered Millennium Park, then slipped into a copse of trees.

Not once did anyone in the crowd look twice at a small, blonde woman dressed in a long, shimmering gown disappearing into the shadows and stepping out of her shoes. Not even when I reached into my small black velvet bag for a pinch of fairy dust, flicked it into the air, and stepped through it. A myriad of sparkling colors swirled around me as an unseen force seemed to pull me in a million different directions at once. I concentrated on where I wanted to be, and eventually, the colors dimmed and muted. Then, I calmly walked through the dark hole that appeared before me.

The sounds of a party floated through the air, coming from the mansion ahead. All the windows were lit with a golden glow, and laughter rang out, followed by the tinkling of crystal.

Squaring my shoulders, my lips curved into a coy smile before I sauntered across the manicured lawn, pausing only long enough to slide my shoes back on before I entered through the back door.

* * *

“You got it?” Peter asked in way of greeting, to which I rolled my eyes.

“Hello to you too,” I muttered. I didn’t even bother telling him about the fact that I almost got caught this time. He’d freak out, and it would become a thing. What I needed to do was pull my head out of my ass and be more alert when I was traveling.

My brother sighed. “Sorry, my client is breathing down my neck. I don’t like feeling like I’m making promises I can’t keep.”

“Then don’t. Stop telling your clients you can acquire things until you have them in hand,” I huffed as I crossed my arms and cocked a hip.

“Now why would I do that? I have the ultimate procurer on my payroll,” he drawled as he leaned back in his chair and gave me the dashing grin that had always gotten him his way. Too bad it didn’t work on me—for the most part.

Growing up, my brother got me in more trouble than I could remember. He was always the adventurous one, and he dragged me along as his partner in crime. Usually, I was an unwitting partner to those crimes. Until my twenty-first birthday, that is.

With a flourish, I set the velvet-wrapped bundle on his desk.

He carefully folded back the top of the fabric, and a broad grin spread from cheek to cheek. “That’s my Tink. You never let me down,” he crooned as he unwrapped it to pull the small gold dog statue from the bag.

He set it on his desk, and the light from the floor-to-ceiling window caught the gems embedded in its collar. Little dots of light sparkled around the room.

“I still think that’s the ugliest thing I’ve seen in ages,” I grumbled as I curled my lip at the offensive little thing.

It looked like a five-year-old carved it and some dumbass used it as a mold. “You’re sure that thing is solid gold?” I skeptically questioned, eying the weird pattern etched into its coat.

“Oh yes. The details of the statue itself were well documented for years, but without any specific location ever mentioned, it was hard to track it down. At least until I found out about that party showcasing it.”

“You said it was in a random letter that turned up in a desk we auctioned?” I leaned back, resting my ass on the edge of his credenza as I studied the odd little thing.

“Yep. Crazy, huh?”

“Pretty much.”

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked me as he rewrapped the gold dog.

“Sitting in my hot bath with bubbles up to my ears,” I replied before kicking off my shoes and wiggling my toes in the plush carpet.

“You should go to a dinner party with me,” he said in a tone that seemed a bit too innocent.

My gaze narrowed as I studied him. “Why?”

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