Page 8 of Battle for the Shadow Prince (A Bargain with the Shadow Prince #2)

8

Cold Reason

ELOISE

“ W ake up! Jesus Christ, Eloise, don’t do this to me! Wake the hell up!”

Maeve’s voice is shrill in my ears as I jolt awake and draw a deep, gasping inhale. “What are you doing? Put me back. Put me back in.”

I sit up on the green velvet sofa in my parlor and reach for the mason jar we used for the potion. It’s empty. I already drank it all. My head spins like I’m tipsy.

“No way!” Maeve grabs the jar from my hands. “All the blood’s drained from your face, and I couldn’t find your pulse a second ago. What the hell happened in there? I thought I was going to lose you!”

I shiver, registering for the first time that the room is icy cold. I grab the crocheted blanket I keep on the end of the couch and wrap it around me.

“Your teeth are chattering.” She presses her palm to my forehead. “God, you’re freezing.”

“Turn up the heat. We should start a fire.” My voice sounds weak, and I’m thirsty as hell.

“The temperature is just fine. It’s your body that isn’t working. Can you make it to the kitchen? You need to move and eat something hot.”

I grumble in protest but allow her to help me to my feet. “It feels like I have the flu.”

With her help, I hobble down the hall and into the kitchen, where she sits me down at the table and digs in my cupboard. “Chicken noodle or Italian wedding?”

“Italian wedding.”

She pulls down the jar and dumps it into a saucepan. “Now start talking.”

I hug myself, fighting the urge to lay my head on the table. “It worked. I saw him. We were together.”

“Did you see where she’s keeping him?”

“No. We were in his dream—a garden behind his castle in Stygarde.” I can’t hold my head up. I fold my arms on the table and rest my head on top.

“How did he look?”

“You mean does he look beat up or like they’re torturing him?”

She nods.

“Not in the dream. He looked the same as always. But…”

“But?”

I rub my face. “I think she’s starving him. He took my blood, and it was like the night we met. Like he would have kept drinking if the anchor hadn’t pulled me out of the dream. And now that I think about it, his voice sounded gritty, like his throat was dry.”

Maeve stops stirring and stares at me. “You let him take your blood on the astral plane? No wonder you looked so pale.”

“He was hungry. He said it would help strengthen him to face Valeska.”

“I get that, but listen, on the astral plane you don’t have actual blood. You exist there as energy. Magical energy. When he drinks from you, it might taste like blood to him, and it might nourish him, but he’s draining your energy and your magic. He could kill you if he takes too much.”

“Same as blood then.”

She rubs her eye behind her glasses. “No… No… When Damien drinks your blood in real life he can hear your heart slow and feel you struggle. Clues he’s learned to listen to over hundreds of years living among humans tell him when to stop. But in his dream, his reality is created by his mind. He might not recognize your cues of distress if you even have any on that plane.”

“Oh. That explains some things.” I close my eyes just for a second.

I wake to Maeve shaking me by the shoulder and sliding the hot soup in front of me. I wipe drool from the corner of my mouth. She watches me as I try to lift the spoon and my hand shakes so hard all the soup falls off it. With an exasperated sigh, she takes it from me. Carefully, she feeds me like a child. Our eyes meet through her glasses, and hers are unusually glossy.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” I say softly between bites. “You’ve been such a good friend to me through all this. Thank you. Thank you for everything. I don’t know what I’d do without you, really.”

She glances down at the soup. “You had no pulse.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nods. Smiles a little. “I forgive you. Magic can be a bitch. You’re new. You’ll learn.”

“I’ll be more careful next time.”

“Next time?” Her spine straightens and her chin tucks.

“Next time. If his plan doesn’t work, I have to go back in.”

Maeve feeds me another spoonful. “What exactly did he tell you? You were in his dream for over an hour.”

“He confirmed the vampire queen has him. He confirmed I can’t use the keyspell to come for him because he’s watched all the time and is being held in a cage of sunlight by witches. Oh, Maeve, he said it was the Kim family who captured him. They’re sun wielders. Have you heard of them?”

She winces. “Unfortunately, I have. The Kims are mercenaries. They’re hired magic. They’re who you call when you have a dirty job to do and you don’t have a shade bound to a candle to do it for you.”

I squint at her. “Sun wielders? Really?” When I think of mercenaries, I think of weapons or explosives, not a warm sunny day.

“One Kim acting alone could give you second-degree burns over all your exposed skin in under three minutes. Two Kims working together could fry your skin completely off your body in that amount of time. With three or more, they could cut you in half with the strength of the beam they could produce.”

“Fuck.”

“The Kims are not good people. Even so, vampires and witches don’t normally work together. Rumor has it that the senior Kim has a terrible gambling problem. It could be as simple as money. Valeska must have something over them if they’re working for her.”

I swallow. “Do you think there’s anything we can do aboveground to influence them to abandon the project?”

She squirms. “I doubt it. I can’t imagine Valeska makes it easy for her allies to break their agreements.”

“But we could try right? I mean, what good is all this money I’m supposedly getting from Tony’s estate if I can’t use it? Can we try to buy them off?”

She frowns. “I think it would take more than you have, unfortunately. Valeska is quite wealthy. Not to mention, the amount you’ll end up inheriting from Tony’s estate is far from settled. The probate court is still working on dividing his assets. He had a will, but it was made years before he married you and didn’t include everything. I haven’t seen the proposed breakdown yet from our financial team. I suspect you’ll get something but not everything.”

“Fair enough. I wasn’t expecting anything.” I shrug. “Honestly, I’ll be relieved when it’s over. I don’t want any connection to Tony or his family.”

She nods. “That’s what I thought you’d say, and that’s how I plan to proceed on this. I’ll only involve you if we need a decision.” She stands. “Which reminds me, I have a stack of work at the office that desperately requires my attention.”

“Sorry.” I wince. “I’ve been taking up way too much of your time lately.”

She hugs me. “You’d do the same for me.”

Our eyes meet again. “I would.”

She starts for the door and I follow. “Um, Maeve, you will help me go back again if he’s not able to free himself, right?”

She stops at the door and squeezes the bridge of her nose. “One week. I want you to wait at least one full week before trying again. You should be completely recovered by then.”

I smile and nod. It feels like forever, but Damien looked strong in his dream. Remembering the feel of his arms around me causes some of the tension in my shoulders to drain away. Maybe all he needs is more time to free himself. “Thanks, Maeve.”

She gives me a supportive nod. “See you after work for magic lessons.”

I beam at her. “You’re still going to teach me?”

She laughs. “Yeah. Is it too much to hope it will keep you out of trouble? Just so you know, I never want to find myself in Morpheus’s office again.”

“I think it will help me take my mind off Damien while he’s finding a way home,” I say softly.

She smiles. “That’s the spirit.”

I let her out the front door and return to my soup.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rings. I rise to unlock it. “Did you forget some?—”

A man in a suit stands on my stoop. “Eloise Harcourt?”

I take another hard look at the guy. Short brown hair, a bit too much scruff, a suit that looks like it came off the rack at a warehouse store. I wonder what he’s selling. Must be desperate to travel all the way out here. “Can I help you?”

He pulls a wallet from his pocket and opens it to show me a badge. “Branson Fuller, FBI. Can I ask you a few questions about your late husband Tony Denardi?”

Not a salesman. Anxiety shoots through me, and I shift nervously on my feet. When it comes to Tony, there’s the truth and then there’s what the world thinks is the truth. If the FBI is involved, I can only guess that something somewhere isn’t adding up. I rummage through my exhausted mind for what’s safe to say to this man.

“Um, why?” I swallow and press a hand to my chest. “It’s still such a shock to me how they found him.”

He slides his badge back into his pocket. “Right. Shocking,” he mumbles. “That’s why I’m here. Just covering all my bases. Do you mind?” He gestures inside and gives me a warm smile. “It should only take a few minutes.”

I consider telling him to talk to my lawyer, but that sounds like something a guilty person would say. You’re innocent , I think. Act like it . “Sure. Come on in.”

I walk him into the parlor without thinking. He frowns at the thick path of dust and the fallen vent screen that I still haven’t screwed back into the wall.

“Ignore that. Haven’t had a chance to fix it.” I take a seat in the lion’s-head rocker and gesture toward the couch.

He sits. “Tell me about your relationship with Tony.”

I huff. That doesn’t sound like covering his bases. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“How long were you married?”

“Two years.”

“But you recently filed for divorce.”

“No. He filed. But I’d recently left him after he hit me.”

Agent Fuller shifts in his seat. “He hit you?”

“Yes. Tony was physically abusive. I moved out to escape the abuse, and he filed for divorce when I wouldn’t move back in with him. It was his way of punishing me.”

“But the divorce was never finalized.”

“No.” I tuck my hair behind my ears. “My lawyer told me they found him dead on a boat with some other men. That’s how I found out.” I shake my head.

“What does Gold Weaver mean to you?”

I shrug, adding a few blank blinks. “Nothing.”

“Genesis Corp?”

I shake my head. “Never heard of it.” I’ve never enjoyed lying, but I’m capable of it. It saved my life with Tony.

“Hmm.” He pulls out a small notebook and jots something down. “Are you aware that Tony was involved in a money-laundering operation?”

I don’t have to feign surprise. It comes naturally at his bluntness about the crime. “No! What kind of money laundering?”

“Strange you weren’t aware considering a key part of his operation happened under this house.”

My jaw drops. And now I’m regretting not calling Maeve before letting this guy inside. “Under my house?” I laugh in a way that sounds a little unhinged. “You’re mistaken. I’ll take you down to the basement right now, Agent Fuller. There’s nothing down there but old furniture and canning jars.”

He sits up straighter. “Not in your basement, Ms. Harcourt. Under the house.”

We stare at each other for a beat. I make my face as blank as possible.

“Are you aware that there are caverns under your home?” he asks, sounding a bit frustrated now.

I shrug a shoulder. “There are caverns everywhere in these cliffs. I can only assume.”

“Do you know they are accessible from the river?”

“I wasn’t aware.”

“Did you have anything to do with Tony’s death?”

I snort. The secret to a good lie is believing, however momentarily, that what you’re saying is true. My mind flashes back to my mom’s sculpture. Technically, I was not the thing that caused his death. “No. I didn’t kill Tony. Why would I? We were separated. I was days away from a divorce settlement. I didn’t want Tony dead. I just wanted my life back.”

“Hmm.” He toys with the edge of his cuff. “Can you explain why you were the named beneficiary on the operational accounts of Gold Weaver, Inc.?”

I blink at him. “Sorry? What are you talking about?”

“You are the named beneficiary on the Gold Weaver accounts.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t know it existed until now.”

His eyes crinkle, and he slants me a skeptical, cynical smile. “That’s weird, because we found a man who identified you as someone he’s seen poking around an old warehouse in Richmond that used to be a Gold Weaver printing operation just weeks before Tony was murdered on the river very close to here.”

Fuck. The homeless man? How? He never knew my name, which means Fuller must have shown him a picture. He must’ve already suspected me. Of course he suspected me. My name was listed as a beneficiary on the Gold Weaver account! My fingers ache, and I realize I have the arms of the rocker in a death grip. I stretch them, then rub my sweaty palms on my thighs. “Agent Fuller, I don’t know anything about any of this. I think I’d better call my lawyer before we go any further. I feel like there are things you know that I don’t.”

With a throaty grunt, he stands. “I think that’s a good idea, Ms. Harcourt. It seems that Tony had an unusual connection to accounts in the Caymans and a printing operation here. Interesting, don’t you think? I have to believe that those closest to Tony are disappointed that so much of his wealth and capital will be transferred to you, considering you were so close to breaking ties before he died. Stay safe, Ms. Harcourt.”

With a slight tip of his head in lieu of goodbye, he rises and lets himself out. As soon as he’s gone, I pick up the phone and call Maeve.