Page 71 of Pining for the Prince
Gwil didn’t like being played but Flume had rewarded them well. “But why send us there for Hyax to find out what was going on.”
“There had to be some serious magic at play to have been behind the changes to the Stardust batches—and coupled with a few of the rumours buzzing around, I rightly surmised it was the stone. Goya had been called in, but the fae royal family hadn’t thought he’d assume it was one of their most valuable assets. I just moved it along a little.”
“But why would you care about the Stardust or my family getting the stone back?” Hyax said, taking the words out of Gwil’s mouth. “If you wanted my help, you could have just told me and saved you the price of our new house.”
“Firstly, the Stardust situation was getting out of control. There were many more cases than were publicly known and the severity of the reactions was escalating. We needed to stop it but didn’t want it known how much we knew. We couldn’t just say, look, I think the stone we don’t officially know you’ve lost is mostlikely somewhere in the British Museum, so by getting Hyax in place and casting, it should’ve given you a hint. But you were a bit slow.”
Hyax had felt something but had not jumped to the conclusion Flume had expected him to. To be fair at that point he was not aware the stone was missing. But it still didn’t add up, and he didn’t understand why Flume cared about the Stardust.
“Who’swe?” Gwil asked.
“The Paranormal Division of the Metropolitan Police.”
“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Gwil said. “You’re part of the Met?”
“I founded the division,” he said with a smug smile. “Built it up side-by-side with the regular lot.”
Gwil sagged in his chair, barely able to believe what he’d heard. “But there’s no vampires in the Met.”
“There’s one. Me.”
“Vampires aren’t exactly known for their civic duty,” Hyax said, sounding dubious.
“It wasn’t done for altruistic purposes. I could see that sooner or later law enforcement would be needed and it was better to be shaping it in the direction I wanted than to be forced under its boot.”
“But I asked several times to join, and I was always refused.” It had hurt more than it should before, and now it was even worse, given Flume was in charge. “A snide comment about me being a vamp part of it.”
“No your drug habits as a human were sufficient for your application to be denied but it wasn’t because you wouldn’t have been good at it, but that you’d be wasted as a police officer.”
“What’s that meant to mean?”
Flume raised an eyebrow. “Goya is a perfect enforcer, follows the rules, but that’s not you. You’d have been fired withinmonths because you disagreed with the policy or refused to toe the line.”
Flume had a point. “Might have been nice to have been told. I would have stopped asking.”
“You stopped asking decades ago, and your detective business has an impressive reputation.” He pointed to Hyax. “Let’s not forget the other benefits, as I hear congratulations are in order. I can count on one hand the number of sanctioned vampire/fae relationships I’ve encountered.”
Hyax snorted. “That’s more than I can.”
“Not from your tribe, Your Highness, but there’s one very powerful family in vampire society who are a vampire/fae couple.”
He saw Hyax stiffen knowing the Calanti were a touchy subject, but Gwil didn’t want to end up further down this rabbit hole, as Flume was an expert at derailing a conversation. “Back to the Met. I get why I wasn’t recruited, fair enough in retrospect.”
“This way you’re almost like a vampire consulting detective.”
“Without being on the payroll, I see.”
Flume rolled his eyes. “You have always been well-compensated for the work you’ve been engaged in, and admittedly while you might not have known the Met was the ultimate customer, you can’t complain. Put it this way, Gwil, you have the best of both worlds and will never have to answer to Goya. I honestly thought you two would just fuck the animosity out of your systems and move on, but it seems I’m wrong on that one.”
Gwil felt a little queasy at the thought. “Never,ever, mention that as a possibility again. There is not enough laudanum in the world to forget that if it were to ever happen.”
“You’re hardly going to be interested in Goya when you have a fae prince as a betrothed.” Flume grinned at Hyax. “I betQueen Talia took some persuasion. But you should know the Vampire Council are delighted.”
“Not sure that will be a positive for my mother.”
“It should be. We will be happy to help with your elf problem because of it.”
Gwil wasn’t sure Flume had the right to say anything on behalf of the Vampire Council, but then again he’d not known him to be head of the Paranormal Division of the Met Police until a few minutes ago so he wasn’t in the best position to make the call.
