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  “Just turn custody of Cat over to me and I’ll leave you to your business, Valdez.”

  “This again? The will you have is a fake, Findlay. My sister would never have given you power of attorney, not without consulting me. I was her sister for twenty-four years. You were her fiancé for what, two?”

  “Three,” he hissed.

  “And the lawyers came down on my side. So hell no, I’m not giving you control of what happens to her. Get lost. I’m not breaking any laws by being here.”

  “You were associating with a demi-human—”

  “It’s frowned upon, not illegal. So try again.”

  “You are not allowed to travel—”

  “To the homes of any of my old associates,” I finished for him. “And the closest person to the Alps is probably Finch, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to be meeting up with him. So you’re O for two now, Findlay. Care to make it three?”

  His gaze flicked down to the backpack I clutched in white-knuckled fingers. “Empty the bag.”

  I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. Instead, I yanked the zipper so hard it nearly broke and dumped the contents out for his perusal. He knelt and sifted through it.

  He held up a pair of eyeglasses. “What are these for?”

  They were enchanted to act in place of a scope, in case I needed them.

  “Reading,” I said. “I am getting older, Findlay.”

  He picked up a flask and unscrewed the cap. His nose scrunched up. “Is that ginger?”

  “Yep. Patented hangover cure. But potions aren’t magic. So next.”

  He screwed the cap back on and then reached for my Sig – a reliable and highly accurate handgun. Every part of me yearned to snatch my weapon out of his hands, but I held myself in check. Findlay studied it from every conceivable angle, searching for my signature spellwork on either the magazine or the slide. When he found none he pursed his lips.

  “Carrying weapons across borders is illegal, you know.”

  “So what, you’re upholding mortal law now too? I thought such petty distinctions were beneath the Trust.”

  Findlay set the gun back in the pack and I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t the only piece I had on me, but it was one of the larger caliber guns I owned. I was reasonably confident that he’d miss me if he shot, but best not to take the chance if I didn’t have to.

  He gathered up a slew of faux gold-wrapped chocolate candies and studied them.

  “What are these for?”

  “The baby dragon that lives in my laundry room,” I quipped. “What do you think they’re for, Findlay?”

  He picked up the last item left and it was a struggle not to tense. This was the real test. I’d done my damndest to make my makeshift wand unobtrusive. My official wand had been purloined by the council. So I’d carved my great-grandfather’s wand down into something that wasn’t likely to attract attention from mortal or magical security. All the runes were hidden by the bristles and the mahogany handle looked as smooth and innocent as I’d intended it to be.

  Findlay inspected the toothbrush skeptically. “Where’s the toothpaste?”

  “Stolen by TSA, those bastards.”

  Findlay snorted and shoved the wand back into my bag before tossing the thing to me. I breathed a barely audible sigh of relief and slung it onto my back where it belonged.

  There was a tense couple of seconds where I was sure he was going to attack me without provocation. I could spot the gears turning behind his black eyes. We were in an isolated mountain range and there probably wasn’t anyone willing to step in on my behalf if he decided to start something.

  He finally slumped, body sinking into a defeated slouch. Good call. I didn’t need guns or magic to end Findlay. I could pop his head off like a cork with the strength of my thighs alone. He spun on one heel, drawing a green river stone from his pocket. He tossed it lightly in the air and a portal blossomed in midair, forming what looked like a stone archway through Monte Rosa. On the other side was a rain-slicked London street. A double-decker bus trundled past as Findlay dithered between the two points in reality.

  Findlay reached into his pocket once more and pulled out a scrap of paper. He flicked it at me. The cold air caught it before it could flutter to the ground, but it was a simple matter to snatch it before the breeze blew it further down the mountain.

  It was a flight from Lyon-Saint Exupéry to JFK International. I squinted at him, even as he turned his back on me.

  “What trick is this, Findlay? I’m in no mood today.”

  “Miss Vogel sent me with a warning,” he called over his shoulder. “Don’t come to Europe again, Valdez. You won’t like where she sends you if you do.”

  And with that last parting shot he stepped through the archway. It popped out of existence, as though it had never been. Which was pretty much how transportation spells worked. You bent space like it was a flat plane and folded two places together so that they touched.

  The little bastard could have shoved me through right back to Queens if he’d had the mind. But he hadn’t. He’d left me in the middle of the Swiss Alps, watching one of the last hopes I had for restoring my sister crumble into ash. And after the perceived betrayal, I doubted Volkar would assist me again.

  Oh, and I only had about ten hours to make it out of the Alps and reach Lyon before my connecting flight took off without me.

  Just freaking peachy.

  chapter

  2

  RIDING COACH ON THE FLIGHT from Lyon to JFK was only made bearable by the fact that I had access to an endless supply of scotch. I was pretty sure that sliding around in the hold would have been more comfortable, in the end.

  I kept the screaming fury at the forefront of my mind, imagining all the horrible things I’d do to Findlay if I ever got my hands on him again. If I didn’t, I was sure that I’d have gone to pieces right there in my stiff, slightly smelly seat.

  I’d been searching for a cure to Cat’s condition for close to two years, after my neighbor Mrs. Jones had hauled my sorry ass out of a suicidal depression right after the whole flustercluck had gone down. I just wished that I’d been able to pull my head out before so many people had gotten hurt.

  Findlay was to blame for the lion’s share of my misery and it chaffed like a son of a bitch that I couldn’t touch him without bringing the wrath of the whole organization down on my head. It was Findlay who’d accused me of using my own sister in a dark ritual to summon demons. Findlay, who’d dug up my unsavory connections to a group of mercenaries and aired my dirty laundry before the Trust. Findlay, who’d almost succeeded in having me killed for crimes I hadn’t committed. And finally, it was Findlay who was doing his damnedest to make sure I couldn’t take care of my sister. First, by contesting the authenticity of the will that Cat had drawn up six months before the incident. And secondly, by hounding me day and night, preventing me from doing the magic that usually brought in enough cash flow to fund the expeditions I needed to find a cure.

  Years ago, I’d been one of the wealthiest under twenty-fives in the world. Now I had only about ten thousand to my name, and half of that would go to Cat’s caretakers at Fallen Oak by the end of the week.

  I kicked the bag return in frustration as I waited for my backpack to cycle through into terminal four.

  A few minutes later the conveyor belt spat out my luggage and I stalked toward the exit. My ‘76 Gremlin was sure to be the biggest eyesore in the parking lot, but I didn’t care. It had been my father’s once, and it still ran. That was good enough for me. I passed a line of people waiting with signs for their loved ones. The only happy reunion I was looking forward to was probably years away now, thanks to Findlay.

  But something caught my eye, even as I tried to stubbornly ignore them. Someone was holding a sign with the name Valdez on it. My steps stuttered for a second. It wasn’t as if Valdez was an uncommon last name. I couldn’t throw a stone in my home neighborhood without hitti
ng someone who shared the same surname as me. But Natalia? That was a lot less common. Our mother had wanted to make us stand out from a crowd of Marias and Penelopes. Cat and I had searched statistics one day when we’d had the free time. There were only a handful of people in the U.S. with the name Natalia Valdez. And what were the odds that there was another Natalia in terminal four, disembarking at the same evening I was?

  I stopped in my tracks and pivoted to get a better look at the man holding the sign. He was a man of considerable height, dwarfing my five foot five frame by at least seven inches.

  Even from this distance, it was obvious that he was good-looking enough to distract any red-blooded woman within thirty paces. Even the women in line who were wearing wedding rings or sporting children glanced in his direction every few seconds. He’d done his best to emphasize his figure, choosing a pair of dark wash jeans to pair with a crisp button-down. A bespoke sports jacket was stretched tight and buttoned over a broad chest. His auburn hair was pulled back away from his face in a short ponytail that brushed the edge of his collar.

  As much as I’d have appreciated a handsome man dropping into my life for a little old-fashioned stress relief, I knew that fate was rarely that kind to me. I reached out my aura very cautiously, spanning it across the crowded airport terminal so that I could brush it against his. Call me paranoid but it would have been just like Findlay to arrange to trap me after I’d arrived back in the States.

  Using one’s aura to get a feel for things could be dangerous. It was a field of energy that surrounded just about every living being. Vanilla humans had muted auras that consisted mostly of their emotions. Wizards or witches like myself exuded magic on an unconscious level, and it supercharged our auras. Touch a wizard’s aura without permission and you might get the mystical equivalent of a bloodied nose for your rudeness. But I didn’t see what choice I had. The best way to come away from a fight was to avoid it altogether. As the head of my special ops unit had liked to remind me, it wasn’t cowardly to avoid a confrontation. Sometimes it was the smartest thing a person could do.

  My magic brushed along about a dozen people before it reached the mysterious stranger. Stress, sorrow, giddy anticipation, lust, and boredom all flashed through my mind in vivid snippets of feeling as I brushed the humans nearest the man. Then I made contact and I nearly rocked back into a security guard with the strength of my recoil.

  Touching him was like trying to dip a toe into a black hole. The gravitational pull of the nothingness that lay beneath his skin was staggering. Nothing that crossed the event horizon was going to survive in any form that a human would be familiar with. I knew what he must be and the fact that he was here, waiting for me signaled that this was indeed a trap. I could probably console myself with the fact that at least this one hadn’t been orchestrated by Findlay. Even in his desperation to sever my sister’s last remaining connections to life, he wouldn’t stoop this low. None of us willingly associated with vampires.

  The man’s head whipped toward me as if I’d called his name. He smiled when he caught sight of my frozen crouch, ignoring the angry reprimand of the security guard. The overhead lights of the terminal glinted off dazzlingly white teeth, throwing his fangs into sharp relief. Shit. He’d felt my probe.

  I had to get out of here and fast.

  I hoisted the backpack higher on my shoulder, and my mind turned over a dozen different plans even as I shoved my way through the crowd, trying to put as much distance between me and the bloodsucker as humanly possible in a space this crowded. I didn’t relish the thought of putting so many vanilla humans in danger if the thing tried to pursue me. They were the sort of people that I’d sworn to protect when I’d joined the Trust’s special ops team. But I didn’t see that I had much choice. Shouting fire or something equally as inflammatory was sure to cause mass confusion, making it easy for the vampire to pick someone out of the crowd and use them as a human juice box if he chose.

  No, better that I be the only focus. He might hurt a few of them to get to me, but the ultimate goal right now was probably my death. I’d killed enough of his fellows to have earned the wrath of any of the seven vampire houses.

  The lounge, I finally decided. It would be isolated and it would have fewer people than the terminals. I could toss any well-to-do businessmen out on their asses and barricade the doors as soon as the vampire or vampires made my position. The confined space had plenty of furniture to shelter behind in the case of a firefight, and it would keep the damage and body count to a minimum.

  There was only one person waiting in the Wingtip’s lounge and the sight of him casually flicking through a newspaper sent my blood pressure spiking high enough to rouse Horst from his jet-lagged sleep. He grumbled a few German swear words into my ear. I ignored him.

  “Freaking hell, Landon! What the hell are you doing here?” I shook my head hard at my former employer. “Never mind that. You need to go. There’s a vampire out there. Possibly a lot of them. It’s not safe.”

  “Yes, I know,” Landon said, folding his newspaper into crisp squares before setting it onto the brown leather armchair next to him. He steepled his fingers and looked up at me, faint amusement dancing in his tawny eyes. “I invited him here. We needed to speak to you, and this seemed like the best place. You should get back in the game, Valdez. If you’re predictable enough that I can figure you out, it won’t be hard for someone with a grudge to do it either.”

  It had been a long time since I’d seen the mercenary, and I paused to look him over. He’d swapped green army fatigues for a three-piece suit, and his sidearm for a short length of ebony. He’d grown out the buzzcut and his dark, wavy hair curled over his ears. It looked good on him, even if I’d never admit it.

  The door closed behind me and I turned on my heel. Landon was dangerous. Possibly more dangerous than the vampire who was leaning casually against the door. But if a fight was going to break out, I trusted Landon to have enough integrity to fight me head on like an equal. I was sure this bloodsucker would have no compunctions about draining me dry while my back was turned.

  “My, you’re twitchy aren’t you?” he all but purred the question at me. His voice was smooth and alluring. After years of dealing with them, the seductive draw that came from all vampires barely had any effect on me. This man must have been very powerful if his voice could stir anything inside of me.

  “Landon, who the hell is this?” I growled.

  Landon’s broad face twitched once. It was the only outward indication I had that he was enjoying my discomfort. The bastard had probably done this on purpose to get back at me for all the trouble he’d gotten in with the Trust for allowing me to moonlight as one of his assassins. But that was years ago.

  “This is Ashby Lamonia, third in the line of succession to head House Lamonia. He contacted me a few days ago with a business proposition for you to consider. I told him I’d attempt to make contact. That proved a mite difficult when we found out you’d skipped town and gone to Europe, of all places.”

  Landon quirked a brow at me. “Were you trying to get yourself killed, or are you really so contrary that you planned to give the Trust the finger on their own front lawn?”

  “I had a lead,” I muttered. “Sue me for wanting to wake my sister up, okay?”

  “Actually, we think we might be able to help you with that,” Ashby said, reaching into his sport’s jacket. I tensed, reaching for the backpack. I’d been forced to leave the Sig with one of the few reliable contacts I had in France to avoid airport security. If Ashby was drawing on me, I had about two seconds to free my wand from the bag before he riddled me with enough metal to set off every detector in this place.

  His lips twitched into an amused grin and he withdrew a photocopied page in a protective plastic sleeve. He waggled it at me. “Just a sample for you to peruse, Iron Heart. We believe we may have the cure you seek.”

  Not even the hated nickname could keep me irritated for too long. I leaned across th
e space between us eagerly and snatched it from his hands. He could have fought me for it but didn’t. He released his hold and watched with a smirk as I sank into a chair near Landon’s to study the document.

  I sighed, and furrowed my brow. The original document had been written in a language that I wasn’t familiar with. It was utterly incomprehensible.

  “What’s this written in?”

  “Nahuatl, we believe. But accounting for linguistic drift, you’ll need an expert to translate it. This is just the introductory material, so even if you found someone to translate it for you, it won’t do you much good. We have the full text under lock and key. If you accept the offer that House Lamonia is extending, we can give you the spell you seek translated into English on the completion of the job.”

  My first, instinctive thought was to walk away. It was way too convenient that a sworn enemy of me and mine would turn up under a flag of truce and offer me everything that I’d been searching for. But the fact that Landon was here gave me pause. Landon hated vampires as much as the next wizard. They were abominations. The antithesis of life and magic and they consumed the one thing that we mages held more sacred than anything else – blood. There were some mages that were so staunchly pacifistic that they’d lay down their own lives rather than shed the blood of another. Thankfully, there were those of us who were a bit less squeamish about it and could face unpleasantness when it cropped up. Still, many of the other warriors of the Trust had found ways to kill without spilling a single drop of the stuff. I wasn’t so picky.

  But Landon was on board with this guy, which meant that to my erstwhile boss’s knowledge, Ashby was on the level. I trusted Landon’s judgment. He’d never knowingly sent me into a situation that I couldn’t handle. His presence here told me something else, and it was another reason that I was pretty sure I should just walk away. Ashby had hired Landon to be here, which could mean only one thing.