Yasmine Galenorn - Crimson Veil

Hanna headed over toward the sink. “I don’t know about these fires, but the Fae woman you crashed into? She’s trouble. There has to be some reason she vanished. My guess is she was waiting for you. She was parked in the driveway of someone she didn’t know, and pulled out at the very moment you passed by? Too much of a coincidence.” As she put on the kettle, Hanna glanced over her shoulder. “I might as well bake a batch of cookies since you’re all up. I made the dough earlier so all I have to do is fire up the oven.”

I frowned. “Too much about the accident doesn’t add up. At first, I thought she’d just been careless, but yeah. Too many questions. And as to her disappearing? There has to be a reason she didn’t want to talk to the cops. She seemed unsettled when I told her I’d called them.”

“I’d think it was insurance fraud, but you have to stick around to file a claim. Have you called her agency yet?”

“Fraud? Seems more up an FBH’s alley than Fae.” I pulled out my phone, along with the information Eisha had given me, and punched in the 24-hour emergency number. I didn’t have to wait long—miracle of miracles.

The operator who came on the line took my information and asked me to hold, but when he returned, he sounded puzzled. “I’m sorry, Ms. D’Artigo, but we don’t have a record of having anyone by that name as a client, or the SUV in question. I checked our records for the license plate to be certain. Are you sure you have the correct information?”

I knew I hadn’t written anything down wrong. “Yeah, I’m sure. I guess she lied to me. Are you sure, though? You don’t even have a lapsed policy under that name or license?”

Another moment and then, “No, I’m sorry. Nothing. I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

I hung up. “Great, the insurance information? A fraud. Want to bet she’s using a fake name, too? That caps it. For some reason, she tried to run me down and when she didn’t manage to get the results she wanted, she vanished. Which means…”

“She was probably trying to kill you. You said yourself that, had she been a fraction more on-target, your car would have been history. That could change the whole face of the game.” Camille glared at the table. “So what about… could Lowestar be behind this attack, too? We know he’s got to be the one behind burning down the Wayfarer. So was he sending another message this time, or was he trying to kill you in the bar’s fire, as well? Catch you in the blaze?”

“Maybe they were trying to kill me and this was a reprisal attack given I survived the fire. But if that’s true, then Shikra is in danger. Because she got the exact same letter and phone calls I did. And she ignored the threats and refused to sell them her club. I told her to keep watch, to get security.”

“Are you going to call Roman and tell him about tonight?” Nerissa leaned forward. “As his consort, don’t you have to?”

“I suppose I should, but we’re getting dangerously close to spilling the beans to him about Lowestar. And if he finds out what’s really going on… a vampire as powerful as he is? Far worse than a testosterone-laden lover. He’d tear the Farantino Building down brick by brick and just make things worse.”

“That may not be a bad idea, really.” Camille glanced over at Hanna. “Chocolate chip?”

“Peanut butter chocolate chip.” Hanna gave her a friendly grin as she slid the first batch into the oven.

I snorted. “I’m beginning to think we need a secretary to take care of all this crap. So we’ll just add keeping an eye on the Utopia—at least on what’s going down there—to our to-do list. Because chances are, Lowestar isn’t going to take her refusal with good spirits.”

Delilah sighed. “Speaking of our to-do list…”

“Please don’t and say we did.” Camille laughed, but there was a raw edge to her voice. We were all nerve-racked.

I cleared my throat. “You know, with all the chaos, I guess we should start having daily meetings to figure out where the hell we are in all of this. We can’t afford to slip up on anything.”

“Right.” Morio motioned to Hanna. “Fuel us with tea and cookies. We’re about to have a brainstorming session.”

“More like a bull session,” Camille grumbled. But she let out a long sigh. “Delilah, do you have our notes?”

Delilah jumped up. “I’ll get them. Meanwhile, fill up my plate with cookies and pour me a glass of milk.” She ran off into the living room, to retrieve her laptop.

“So where does this leave us?” Camille frowned at her cookie. It was piping hot and I could tell she was trying to decide how quickly she could dig into it without burning her mouth.

Delilah didn’t exercise as much restraint. She took a huge bite and immediately began fanning her mouth. “Hot! Hot!”

I snorted. “If you weren’t so impatient, you wouldn’t burn yourself.” I stared at the laptop’s screen, frowning. “You know, we are having one hell of a time prying information out of the cracks about Lowestar Radcliffe. We know he’s a daemon, we know he bought the Farantino Building, and we know he’s been involved with the Farantino family for a couple of hundred years, it looks like. But it’s not like we can just waltz in there and say, Excuse me, would you have a moment to answer some of our questions? Oh—and by the way, fucking get your ass out of Seattle, please. ”

“So we need to go in under the radar.” Camille handed Delilah a napkin and began eating her own cookie, which had cooled down enough now so that it didn’t seem to leave a lasting impression.

“Right. And what’s the best way to find out about an organization? From the inside.” I glanced up at her.

Camille shook her head. “Oh no, not again! I was the guinea pig to ferret out Gulakah and I ended up locking heads with him in the Netherworld. I don’t want to go through that again.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it be you.” I frowned, looking over the list of facts we’d managed to accrue. “Violet used the Supernatural Matchups website, didn’t she?”

Delilah nodded, wiping her mouth and taking another cookie. “Right.”

“Then… suppose we create a fake persona? We go on there, see if we can get Lowestar’s notice, and then we… well… when he wants to meet, or his crony—the one who looks like they nabbed Violet—we send someone in undercover. We can worry about who that will be later.” The idea made sense to me. When you wanted to go fishing, you had to use bait, and if you were after a particular kind of fish, you used the bait they liked best.

Delilah and Camille stared at me. At first, I thought they were entertaining the idea.

But then Camille sputtered. “That’s fucking insane. He’d recognize us and no fucking way are we using anybody else for bait. And he’d know you , since we’re pretty sure he tried to buy you out and then kill you.”

Nerissa bit her lip. “I’ll do it.”

Horrified, I jumped up, hands on my hips. “Oh no you fucking won’t . You’re my wife and I won’t put you in danger like that.” I was deadly serious. There was no way I was going to allow Nerissa to get near that goddamn place.

She let out a snort. “Vampire or not, you’re not telling me what to do. I love you, but I want to contribute, and this, this I can do. All you’re going to do is use my picture, right? And I might have to go meet somebody, in which case, you’d be following me—I know that without a doubt. I have the condo still, and nobody’s living there right now. I can use that address so it won’t lead them back here. I will use a fake name. Still going to argue with me?”

Everybody was staring at us. We didn’t argue often, and when we did, it was usually in private. And it was usually Nerissa reading me the riot act for some stupid stunt I’d pulled or attitude I’d copped. Frankly, I was amazed the woman loved me enough to marry me.