Page 48

We made it to the library with seconds to spare. I smiled for the cameras, used the over-sized scissors, and hoped no one had a sniper on a nearby roof. We were back at SPAR HQ shortly after lunch, my head still intact.

Kline left, happy with the footage, and I imagined her in a dark room, splicing frames and cackling to herself.

An hour later, sitting in my office, I got a call on my mobile from a withheld number.

“Hello?”

“Xan. Xan, Xan, Xan. Did you not understand the task I asked you to complete?”

Moreau’s disappointed tone put me in mind of some of my foster parents.

“I understood it just fine … Silas.”

Kara and Iyoni snapped their gazes to me, and I watched their faces as I listened.

“Did you? Currently airing is a perfectly charming news report of SPAR’s resident warlock being a good community citizen. Explain to me, if you will, how exactly that serves my aim of crippling SPAR’s reputation?”

I leaned back in my chair and put my feet up on my desk. “When you were kind enough to host us at your estate, you had four men in your library. Are you down to three?”

He was silent so long I had to pull the phone from my ear and check the call was still connected.

When he eventually spoke, his voice was ice-cold. “Do you think killing my men would go unpunished?”

“I didn’t kill him, Moreau,” I said with a perfectly clear conscience, my gaze finding the person who did. “But he tried to kill me. I assumed that meant you’d had a change of heart over our … agreement. This call is unexpected.”

“The task I set you still stands,” he ground out.

“Why would I do anything for you when you tried to kill me?”

“Two reasons,” he said with civility, like he was debating philosophy with me.

“First, you want your pretty little demon to live—Miss Hargrave, wasn’t it?

Second, I didn’t send that man. He was acting on his own.

So I’ll forgive you on this occasion.” His tone shifted, cold and abrupt. “Now, get the damn task done.”

“So hard to find good help, isn’t? And so gracious of you to forgive me when the fault was yours, and not mine.”

“Don’t push me. That man was blood.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said dryly. “You’ll excuse me if I decline a funeral invite.”

“I surround myself with kin,” he went on, almost like he was rambling, “and so few of them show any real promise.”

“Then I’m less sorry for your loss. Why are you telling me this?”

“To reiterate what’s at stake, Xan. Fail to do the task I set you, and I’ll kill your demon. Succeed, and the rewards I grant you will elevate you above all others.”

“Is that why he came after me? Jealousy? Trying to earn approval from a man who never cares?”

“Probably,” Moreau said dismissively. “Does it matter? He’s dead.”

“You know I’m sitting in SPAR HQ right now?” I said, changing tack. “Be fascinating to know if they record all incoming calls.”

“I called you on your mobile. Even if you’re sitting in Firth’s communications center with a bank of tracing equipment, I’ll save you the bother.

I’m in my study, on my estate, and I’m promising to kill Miss Hargrave if you don’t do what you’re told.

Feel free to let SPAR know. If I catch even a whiff of their incompetence coming my way, I’ll bury them for years in charges of harassment, defamation, and invasion of privacy.

Don’t fuck with me, Xan. I’ll destroy everything around you. ”

I couldn’t help the way my eyes turned to Kara as I heard his threat. She flinched at what she saw in my expression, then her chin came up and her jaw clenched. She touched her fingers to her lips and blew me a kiss, along with all the love and support in her eyes.

And it had the opposite effect from what she intended.

“Very well,” I told Moreau bitterly. “I get the message.”

“Not yet you don’t. I wasn’t calling to comment on your media popularity. I was calling to tell you there’s a bomb. A nice big, fat bomb, ready to go off in … three days, five hours, and eight minutes.” He paused to chuckle. “Well, what do you know. I’ve forgotten exactly where it’s been placed.

“You have a choice, Xan. You can tell SPAR, and spend the rest of the week hunting for it. If you take that option, you better make damn sure they don’t find it, because if they do, I’ll kill your demon. Or you can say nothing, and wake up Saturday morning to really interesting news reports.

“Now, did you record all that?”

The line went dead.

I sat in my chair, staring at Kara, the phone still pressed to my ear.

I set it down on the desk, careful and quiet. My jaw ached from clenching. I rose to my feet, needing to stand, to move, to … not be trapped.

Something snapped.

I grabbed the desk in both hands, not knowing what I meant to do until it was already happening. With a cry of inarticulate rage, I flung it away. It smashed through the glass wall of my office, showering the hallway outside with shards.

“He dared ,” I said. Not to anyone but myself. “He dared to threaten her, to make this a choice.”

I was vaguely aware of people all over the office standing up and whispering.

Kara, rising from her chair, gripping the edge of her desk with one hand, an unconscious reaching for support.

Iyoni, anger in her eyes that was a pale reflection of my own rage.

Someone nearby, a hand over their mouth as they stared at the destruction I’d wrought.

Some small part of me registered that Kara had been right; my strength was greater, not fueled by only fury, but by our bond and her magic.

“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I said. “And I’m going to take my time. He’s going to reap this pain.”

“Xan?” Kara asked in a small voice. She glanced to the hallway outside as the sound of hurrying feet marked the arrival of Natalie, who gasped at the ruin of my office.

“He wanted a warlock,” I said. “He’s about to get one.”

I walked out, glass crunching beneath my shoes, passing Natalie who stood frozen, eyes wide.

“Come with me,” I growled, and she flinched, then hurried along behind me. No one said anything or got in my way, and I led them to an elevator, pressing the button for the fifth floor.

“What is it?” Kara asked, she and Iyoni slipping in as the doors closed. “What’s happened?”

“You’ll find out.”

We walked down the hallway to Marlow’s office, and her always-present PA looked up in alarm. “Please wait, Assistant Director, you can’t go—”

I opened Marlow’s door to find her in a meeting, sitting around her conference table with four staff, none of whom I recognized.

“Get out. All of you.”

Marlow’s lips thinned. Then she nodded once and the others left, giving me curious and offended glances as they passed.

Like I cared.

I sat down in one of the chairs they’d vacated, waiting as Iyoni and Kara did the same. Natalie tentatively took a seat, as if expecting to be told to leave. I ignored her, and focused on Marlow.

I let the silence build, staring at the woman who ran SPAR, and who ‘went way back’ with Moreau. Marlow’s eyes flicked from Kara, to Iyoni, and back to me, before narrowing. “Well?”

“I had a call from our mutual acquaintance, Silas.”

She stiffened. “And?”

“And before I go any further, let’s lay it all out on the table. I know damn well he has you in his pocket. The question I have for you is who do you put first—your own safety and reputation, or the lives of countless New Providence innocents?”

Her eyes flicked to Natalie, betraying her consternation. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“What I’m talking about is a bomb, Madeline . A big, fat bomb—to quote Moreau—that’s due to go off at eight o’clock Friday night.”

Natalie gasped, covering her mouth with one hand. Kara twitched in her seat. Iyoni clenched her jaw. Marlow blanched, the blood rushing from her face.

“Where?” she whispered.

“An excellent question, but Moreau didn’t feel like sharing.”

She stood abruptly, pacing across her office. “He’d do it, I know he would,” she said, almost to herself.

It was confirmation of what I already knew—having heard him on the phone, I’d never had a doubt. Moreau was a psychopath, and he didn’t care how many people he left shattered and dying to achieve his goals.

“How do we stop him?”

Kara froze, staring at me, then nodded once in resignation, as if accepting that she was the sacrificial lamb to slaughter, the price to pay for what needed to be done.

Iyoni reached out to her, and Kara clasped the offered hand.

I gave her a slight shake of the head, an unspoken promise that whatever happened, I wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

Marlow spun on her heel. “Nothing else? No hints, no gloating, no clues whatsoever?”

“No.” She didn’t need to know about his threats against Kara.

“There’s hundreds of venues across the city,” Marlow said. “Restaurants, theatres, nightclubs, concert halls … there’s no way we can search them all.”

“I assume he’d want something visible that made the maximum mess.”

She closed her eyes, wincing. “God damn nightmare.”

“Has Firth made any progress on finding the mole that leaked the patrol route?”

Her eyes snapped open. “Let’s focus on one thing at a time, Xan.”

“Moreau has men inside SPAR, he told me himself.”

She froze, then deliberately placed her hands on her desk and leaned over it, staring at me. “You didn’t think to mention this before?”

I held her gaze. “Don’t play dumb, Madeline, it doesn’t suit you. You and Moreau ‘go way back’, as he’s so keen to remind me. You can’t seriously believe he hasn’t infiltrated SPAR.” I waved a hand like it didn’t matter. “The point is, if we can find one of his men, maybe they’ll know something.”

She straightened slowly. “We’ll need Dr. Firth involved anyway.”

Natalie rose from her seat. “I’ll fetch him at once, Director.”

Marlow held up her hand, and Natalie sank back down again. “We can’t tell Firth that Moreau is behind this. That information can’t leave this room.”

“Clearly,” I said. “We don’t have the time to waste on vendettas. I’ll deal with Moreau when this is over.”

Marlow gave me a strange look, then turned to Natalie. “Am I clear, Miss Carr? What we discuss in this room is confidential— all of it.”

Especially the bit where I’d accused Marlow of being Moreau’s stooge, but tempting though it was to point that out, it was a distraction we couldn’t afford.

“Absolutely, Director.” Natalie nodded fervently.

“You’ll have to tell them something,” Kara said calmly. “Firth isn’t the kind of man to mobilize the whole of SPAR on a blind scramble, even with your say-so, Director.”

“You’re right,” Marlow said, thinking. “We’d have to frame it as an anonymous tip.”

I shook my head. “I already thought of that. It wouldn’t work. Firth would never believe that it came directly to you, and not through our usual comms routes.”

“I suppose not.” She frowned. “What about linking it to the patrol incident? That way, we could draw a connection to the mole, and—”

“No,” I said, cutting that one off early. “Firth is owning that investigation. He’d immediately query why he wasn’t the first to hear about it.”

She gave me a look of irritation. “If you already have all the answers, don’t keep me guessing.”

“I don’t,” I said frankly. “I’m great at picking holes in others’ ideas, but I don’t know the way SPAR works as well as you do.”

“Very supportive,” she said sarcastically.

“So you want me to come up with an idea that will compel Firth to play ball while being a perfectly plausible reason why I’d know first and he wouldn’t, presumably with a nice little paper trail that supports it for full authenticity, all without having nothing but one telephone call and not being able to reference Moreau. ”

I shrugged. “Yep.”

Natalie deferentially cleared her throat.

“Um … what about Federal SPAR Oversight, Director? If we claimed it came from there, it would go straight to you.” Her eyes widened.

“No … even better. Xan is Assistant Director of Oversight. We could claim they have an admin SNAFU, sent it to him, and he brought it straight up here.” She glanced at me. “It would explain his office, too.”

Marlow raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean it would explain his office?”

“Xan had an accident with his desk,” Iyoni offered helpfully. “It fell through a wall.”

Marlow did a double take and stared at Iyoni like she was trying to decide if she was serious.

“I could fabricate an alert that looked like it came from FSO,” Natalie went on, “claim I brought it to Xan, and … well, it would work so long as Dr. Firth didn’t go fishing.” She looked nervously at Marlow. “If he does, we’ll all be fired … at best.”

“Natalie, you’re a godsend,” Marlow said. “That would work, especially if the celestials had a hand in it too. That could help explain why it was routed to Xan.” She paused, her gaze on Iyoni. “This may be indelicate, but can you lie? A lot depends on it.”

“I’m a celestial, Director, not an angel. Of course I can lie.”

“Oh … good.” Marlow’s eyes flicked up, mouth quirking in a look that said, figures.

“Then I think we have a plan. We need to move fast. Natalie, would you please ask Dr. Firth to come in here, then go back to your office and”—she grimaced, like she couldn’t quite bring herself to say it—“fabricate a federal tier-one alert.”

“Yes, Director.” Natalie rose from her seat and headed for the door.

“Natalie?” I said, before she reached it.

“Sir?”

“You’re saving lives.”

She took a breath and gave me a nod, and when she spoke, her voice was stronger. “Yes, sir.”

The door closed behind her, and we looked at each other.

Now all we had to do was convince the man who hated my guts.