Jennifer Estep - By a Thread

The stones’ mutters grew louder as I flashed my press credentials at the giants working the front door and stepped inside the mansion, but I pushed the sound to the back of my mind. The stones’ warning wasn’t unexpected or unwelcome, but I’d see for myself exactly what kind of man Dekes was soon enough.

The inside of the mansion was just as perfect, polished, and lavish as the outside. Crystal chandeliers, antique furniture, expensive paintings, exquisite statues, delicate carvings. Dekes had the very best of everything, just like I’d thought he would, and he seemed to embrace the location of his island home. Many of the furnishings were suggestive of the beach or sea, from the paintings of famous shipwrecks to the gold doubloons that glimmered in glass cases on the walls.

I followed the flow of traffic deeper into the mansion, stepped through a wide archway, and found myself back outside. The south lawn was dominated by an enormous pool that had the same distinctive palm tree shape as the one at the Blue Sands hotel. According to Finn, Dekes used the palm tree as his own personal rune, since so many of his business interests were located on the coast. A variety of colorful orchids and roses floated in the pool, their sweet scents mixing with the spicy colognes and cloying perfumes of the businessmen and businesswomen in attendance, along with the sweat of the news crews hauling around their cameras and other equipment.

I could also see the Blue Sands hotel from here, glimmering like an oversize opal in the distance. The back nine of the hotel’s golf course ran right up to the edge of Dekes’s property, which was cordoned off by a low stone wall. With a pair of binoculars, you’d be able to clearly see the hotel pool and the beach with its sunbathing beauties beyond. I imagined Dekes was the kind of man who enjoyed looking out over his little empire.

Roughly two hundred people were gathered around the pool already, while dozens more giant waiters moved through the crowd bearing trays of food and neon-colored drinks topped with tiny umbrellas and skewers of fresh lemons, limes, oranges, and pineapples. Despite the fact that this was officially a press conference, Dekes was still offering refreshments. Why, how very considerate of him. Or perhaps boozy journalists just led to more flattering coverage.

I grabbed a glass of gin mixed with grapefruit juice from one of the waiters and strolled around the pool, looking for my friends and enemy for the afternoon.

Owen, Finn, and Bria stood in a ring of people, sipping champagne. As usual, my foster brother was in the middle of the group, regaling the onlookers with one bawdy, boisterous story after another. Bria slouched next to him, looking a little bored, while Owen stood next to her, scanning the crowd just like I was.

Our eyes met, violet on gray. Heat shimmered in Owen’s gaze, along with concern. Despite my breezy assurances to Callie that I could handle Dekes, Owen and I both knew how dangerous the vampire was. You didn’t amass as big a fortune and survive in the underworld as long as Dekes had without having a few aces up your sleeve. As always, my lover’s worry touched me, as did his willingness to let me do what needed to be done. Donovan had never looked at me the way Owen did, and he certainly would never understand me like Owen did. After our confrontation in Callie’s office, I knew that more than ever.

I winked at Owen, telling him that I was ready for whatever might come up, and moved on.

Besides the pool, the other thing that caught my eye was a scale model of what the casino would look like when it was built, complete with trees, sand, and even real water in the pseudo swimming pools and fake ocean. The far side of the miniature landscape started with the Blue Sands hotel and showed how the original structure would stretch out and eventually meld into the new casino, just about where the Sea Breeze stood. Shots of the proposed interiors stood on easels behind the model, showing just how lavish the new, improved resort would be.

Callie had been right—her restaurant was in the middle of the main gaming hall, which meant that Dekes couldn’t build his casino without her land. That knowledge only made me more determined to get the vampire to back off—or else.

Finally, I spotted the man of the hour himself—Randall Dekes. The vampire was just as handsome in real life as he was in the headshot Finn had shown me. His sable brown hair and matching mustache gleamed in the sunlight, his skin just a shade lighter, while laugh lines crept out from the corners of his pale green eyes. His trim body was further set off by a smoke gray suit, and a large palm- tree-shaped diamond glimmered in the middle of his matching silk tie. He was easily one of the most striking men here. I wasn’t the only one who thought so, judging from the longing looks that the other women and even a few men shot his way.

But what the photo hadn’t quite captured was the constant crackle of magic that emanated off Dekes. I stood there, sipped my fruity gin, and tried to puzzle out what kind of power it was. Even when they weren’t actively using their power, many elementals constantly gave off waves of magic, like heat radiating from the sun even when it was behind the clouds. Since I was an elemental too, I could sense that excess energy. Most of the sensations followed a pattern. Magic from a Fire elemental would feel hot, like sparks or fiery needles stabbing at my skin, while power from an Ice elemental would be cold, like snowflakes swirling through the sky. An Air elemental’s power might feel thick and stuffy like fog creeping over the landscape, while a Stone elemental’s magic could seem as hard as a concrete shell covering his or her body.

The sensation rolling off the vampire slid across my skin like water, but I couldn’t quite figure out which specific elemental area Dekes was gifted in—Air, Fire, Ice, or Stone. Somehow, the magic trickling off him felt like all of those things at once. Hot and cold, soft and hard.

I frowned. Everyone knew that Dekes was a vampire, but Finn hadn’t been able to determine whether he had any elemental magic as well. The vampire might have the power flowing through his veins as an elemental himself or he might simply be absorbing it from the blood of his victims. Either way, what worried me was how strong the sensation was. Unless I was seriously mistaken, Dekes had just as much elemental juice as Mab had had, which meant that I had to be even more careful with him than I’d originally planned to be.

As I watched the vampire, a tall, slender woman stepped out of the crowd and headed toward Dekes. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, then looped her arm through his. I recognized her from another photo that had been in Finn’s file. Vanessa Suarez, the vampire’s wife. Finn hadn’t spent as much time looking into her background, but he’d learned that she came from a prominent Fire elemental family in Charleston, South Carolina. Her father had gotten involved in one of Dekes’s real estate deals, and she’d married the vampire about a year ago. Finn didn’t know whether the marriage was a love match, a political alliance, or something else, but it didn’t much matter. If she got in my way, then I’d deal with her the same way that I would her husband—in a brutal, bloody, permanent fashion.

Vanessa was as beautiful as Dekes was handsome, with cinnamon-colored skin and ink black hair and eyes. She was a bit overdressed for a press conference, but her black evening gown hugged her body in all the right places, and a wide choker embedded with diamonds and pearls gleamed around her slender neck. For some reason, the necklace reminded me of one of the collars that Sophia wore. Matching cuffs that were just as wide adorned Vanessa’s wrists.

I eyed the jewelry. Even with all the other, more subtle and understated jewels being worn by the various men and women, I could still hear the gemstones’ whispers. But instead of proudly murmuring of their own beauty like the others were, Vanessa’s diamonds and pearls wailed with high-pitched, angry, hurt notes—almost like they were screaming. Interesting—and more than a little disturbing.