Илона Эндрюс - Emerald Blaze (Hidden Legacy)

“Oh?” I asked. “How is he doing?”

“He’s fine. He said to say hello.”

To the side, out of Mom’s peripheral vision, Arabella wagged her eyebrows.

I loaded another taco onto my plate. I was starving.

“So, how’s Linus?” Grandma Frida asked.

Subtlety was Grandma Frida’s middle name.

“Good.”

“Is that the family we are now?” Leon asked dramatically. “The family where nobody talks about their things? Where everything is just ‘good’ and ‘fine’?”

Bern reached over and tapped the back of Leon’s head. “She isn’t going to tell you about Linus. Stop already.”

“How’s the fire tank coming along?” I asked.

Grandma Frida grunted.

One of the local Houses had bought a custom firefighting tank from the Russian Imperium. Vodoley 03 was a marvel of Russian engineering. It carried about 25,000 liters of various liquids and could spray them in different patterns. It could also take a hit from a high-explosive 155 mm artillery shell and self-deploy two hundred and fifty km on a single tank of gas, but something had gone bonkers with its custom-built filtering system. Grandma Frida had been trying to coax it back to life for the last three days with no success.

“That good, huh?” Mom said.

Grandma Frida bristled. “Eat your food, Penelope.”

“We have a new case,” I said.

I told them about Felix’s murder, omitting anything that had to do with Wardens or the serum.

Mom bit her lower lip. “There is a lot of money involved. This makes me nervous.”

“That’s why we’ll stay on lockdown,” I said.

Arabella groaned. I ignored her.

“Let’s divide and conquer. I have four suspects. Everybody gets one.” I pointed at Arabella, Leon, and Bern in turn. “You get a Prime, you get a Prime, everybody gets a Prime, and we all run an in-depth background check. Is that agreeable to everyone?”

“Yes,” Bern told me.

Leon nodded.

Arabella rolled her eyes. “Work, work, work . . .”

I tapped my phone, sending out the mass email I had written on the drive home. “Pick whoever you want except Tatyana Pierce. Cornelius wants that one.”

Nevada frowned. “I bet he does.”

Arabella looked at her phone, jumped up, and ran out of the room.

Grandma Frida blinked. “Like what is even going on with that child?”

My sister sprinted back into the kitchen, carrying a tablet. Her eyes were the size of saucers. “Hua Ling!”

“What?” Mom asked.

“He’s the royal physician! The assassin! Hua Ling!”

No way.

Leon pivoted to her, his face concerned. “Is it drugs? You can tell me.”

“It’s not drugs,” I told him.

“It’s The Legend of Han Min ,” Grandma Frida said.

Mom gave her an odd look.

“What?” Grandma Frida asked her. “I watched a few episodes with them. There is action and the actors are very pretty. You should see the costumes.”

“It’s a Chinese xianxia drama,” I explained. “It’s high fantasy, set in a mystical land, a lot of martial arts and Chinese mythology. Han Min is a martial arts heroine who ends up in the imperial palace and Hua Ling is a mystical alchemist who can cure any illness but is secretly an assassin trying to murder the emperor.”

“That explains everything,” Leon said.

Arabella marched over and stuck a tablet under his nose. “This is Hua Ling.”

On the tablet a startlingly beautiful man with a waterfall of dark hair sailed through the air swinging a sword.

She flicked her fingers across the tablet. “This is Stephen Jiang.”

A picture from Augustine’s files showed Stephen in a suit.

“See? Same person.”

It did kind of look like Stephen.

Leon flicked his finger back and forth, switching between the pictures, once, twice. Bern took the tablet away from him, set the portraits side by side, and handed it back.

Arabella tapped the tablet. “It’s him. It’s Cheng Feng.”

“I thought you said his name is Hua Ling,” Nevada said.

“The character’s name is Hua Ling. The actor’s name is Cheng Feng!” Arabella waved her arms in exasperation. “How are you not understanding this?”

“Do you understand this?” Nevada asked me.

“I do but I watch the show.”

“I’m telling you.” Arabella pounded her fist on the table for emphasis. “It’s the same guy!”

“Even if he is, how is it relevant?” Leon asked.

“Because of this.” Arabella tapped her tablet.

Hua Ling appeared on the screen, dressed in black and wearing a matching hooded cowl and a mask across the lower part of his face. He dashed across the double-eave hip roof through the rain, leaped impossibly high, and flung raindrops at the soldiers in ancient Chinese armor below. The raindrops turned into blades and sliced through the soldiers like razor-sharp needles.

“That’s special effects,” Leon said.

“What if it isn’t?” Arabella asked. “What if Catalina goes to see him and he turns her face into a pincushion?”

“You don’t even know it’s him. His face is covered. What you have here is some sort of Chinese ninja on a wire and lots of CGI . . .”

Arabella grabbed a spoon and threw it at Leon. He caught it.

“No violence,” Bern rumbled.

I glanced at Nevada. “Could an aquakinetic do this?”

“In theory,” she said. “I never came across one who did.”

That’s what I thought too. Most of the aquakinetics killed by drowning. It was faster and more efficient.

“I’m taking Stephen Jiang,” Arabella announced.

“Marat Kazarian,” Leon said.

“Cheryl Castellano.” Bern raised his finger.

“Okay,” I said. “My first interview is tomorrow at ten with Kazarian.”

“Do you need backup?” Leon crunched his knuckles.

“I already have it.”

“Who?” Leon asked.

Do it quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. “Alessandro Sagredo.”

The room exploded.

I dragged myself from my small bathroom to my bed, crawled into it, and sprawled on my back. Shadow jumped up, turned three times, and settled on the blankets by my feet.

Once I mentioned Alessandro, the family had ganged up on me. Arabella screamed like a pterodactyl and demanded to know where Alessandro was staying, while punching her palm with her fist. Bern swore, which had happened exactly six times since he came to live with us. Grandma Frida promised to hit Alessandro with a wrench when he came over. Leon produced a gun, and then Mom asked him what the rule was about guns at the dinner table, and then he said that this was a special case and he had a bullet with Alessandro’s name on it. Then she told him that writing names on bullets was no way to go through life. And Nevada just sat there, in the middle of the chaos, and listened to me lie through my teeth about how Alessandro was no longer an emotional factor for me.

It was over now. Everyone had calmed down.

I was so tired. Reaching over to turn off the lamp on the night table seemed way too hard. I could probably fall asleep with it on, but it would bug me.

A quiet knock echoed through the room. Now what . . .

“Yes?”

The door swung open. Nevada walked in and shut the door behind her. “Hey, you.”

“Hey.”

My sister crossed the room and perched on the side of my bed. She’d switched to a flowing maxi dress in pale blue and green and abandoned her shoes somewhere. Her feet were swollen again. I’d bought her maternity support stockings that went up to her waist, but it was too hot to wear them.

“How are you holding up?” she asked.

Living with a truthseeker older sister had its advantages, but sometimes I wished I could lie to her. I sat up. “I’ve been better.”