Page 75 of Golden Eagle

“He had to leave. Wasn’t feeling well.”

“That sketchy-looking hotdog stand, right?” He patted his own stomach with a grimace. “Been there.” He headed off. “Next time you see him, tell him to answer my texts. Wanna see if he’s down for poker night next week.”

“Sure,” she said, over her shoulder.Poker?she thought savagely.He won’t even go see his own mother.

She glanced at her computer screen, touched the mouse to wake it up. Their most recent case was pulled up, the one she’d thought as ordinary and dull. The one that had seemed like a roadblock to the mystery of the feral werewolves savaging pedestrians. A man haddied, and she’d gone to investigate, and she’d decided it wasboring.

Disgusted with herself, she shoved thoughts of Lanny aside, pulled up the list of calls she needed to make, and got back to work.

She lost herself in it, the way she tended to, running leads down until she could cross them off with definite marks in red pen, arranging with Harvey to come see the autopsy the next day; looked back through her other open cases, searching for important tidbits she might have missed earlier, following up with witnesses. She was aware of other detectives coming and going, lifted a hand when they spoke to her. But when someone said, “Trina?” and she lifted her head, she realized hours had passed. It was nighttime out beyond the tall, pre-war windows, and she was one of only three detectives still at work.

Jamie stood at the end of her desk, working his hands together, expression worried.

“Hey,” she said, easing back in her chair, suddenly aware that her back ached and that her eyestrain was making him blurry at the edges. “What’s up?”

“I…” He took a deep breath and linked his fingers; squeezed his hands until his knuckles went white. “Okay,” he said on a gusty exhale. “I didn’t want to do this. It feels wrong.”

“Jamie,” she said, worry needling past her fatigue. “What is it?”

“It’s Lanny. It’s what he’s been doing. I think you need to come see.”

~*~

They ended up spreading the books out on the floor when they ran out of room at the desk. A few dense history texts, but mostly the leather-bound scrapbooks that Dante himself had put together back when he’d been Basil. Old photos pasted in carefully, little triangles of paper pinning down the corners, and his own elegant, loopy cursive notes about them. There were pages of just writing; detailed lists of meetings with the photographs’ subjects, and the anecdotes they’d relayed about other relatives.

Dante let Alexei turn the pages, his long, pale fingers twitching in his lap like a parent who’d handed their baby over to someone less careful.

“I can’t believe this,” Alexei said for the fifth time, turning another page and confronting his own nine-year-old face. He was wearing a miniature sailor’s costume, aboard theStandartwith his tutor Monsieur Gilliard. “Would you have ever told me? If today hadn’t happened like it did?”

When he checked, Dante had bitten his lip. “I wanted to tell you.”

“But you decided to play a greasy playboy instead.”

“Hey,” he huffed, affronted. “I have an image to maintain.”

Alexei stared at him.

“An immortal who was only turned twenty years ago, who uses his powers to fuck and day drink, isn’t nearly as interesting to higher authorities as one with an erudite memory who was once employed by the Queen of England.”

“You have a point.”

“Besides.” He drew his robe tighter around his throat, as if warding off a chill. “I think Gustav is beginning to suspect that I know things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“He asked me about you.”

“What did you tell him?” Alexei asked, and heard the imperious note in his voice. It was automatic, a reflex, something of which he’d had possession since birth. A person could live however he liked, but being born into monarchy wasn’t something he could ever shake.

“Only that you had quite the appetite, in more ways than one.” Dante lifted his head to a self-defensive angle. “He lost interest when I went into details about our orgies.”

“Orgies?” Alexei choked a little. “I don’t think us and a few girls counts as an orgy.”

Dante lifted a brow.

Less certain: “Does it?”

“Well, it doesn’t count asboring, unless you’re a wily bar owner looking for a different kind of juicy gossip.”

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