Page 9 of Fated by Fire (Dragonblood Dynasty #1)
Chapter 9
E lena
I stand at the window of my loft, looking out into the street below, clasping a steaming mug of coffee in both hands. This has got to have been the most unnerving case I’ve ever been involved in. I don’t know how I managed to get through the day after that kiss in Caleb’s office. I kept waiting for another summons. For him to materialize out of nowhere demanding more answers. Or to kiss me again.
God! That kiss…
But there’s more to it than that. The photo I saw at Craven Industries burns in my mind, impossible yet undeniable.
“So let me get this straight,” Mara says from her sprawl on my velvet couch, her electric blue hair spilling over the armrest. There’s a pink streak in it today. “You found a hundred-year-old photo of your mom looking exactly like she did when you were a kid?”
Turning to her, I set the mug on my desk and reach over to the corkboard, yanking the Polaroid of Mom off. My hands tremble slightly. The familiar image—Mom in her favorite sundress, smiling that secretive smile of hers—matches perfectly with the woman I saw in that sepia-toned photograph. Same high cheekbones. Same graceful neck. Same knowing look in her eyes.
“It’s her, Mara. I know how crazy it sounds, but it’s her.” I pinch my lips together as I frown down at the picture. I’d recognize my mom anywhere. It was her.
“Crazy is kind of my specialty.” Mara winks. “It’s probably why we’re best friends.”
“Nice. Keep that up, and you might be in the market for a new one.” I reach for my coffee, taking a mouthful as I keep staring down at the photo. As always, I’m struck by the resemblance between Mom and me. Same stubborn jawline, same pale gray eyes. Except she wore her dark hair really long, while I cut mine just below my shoulders.
“Maybe it was a relative,” I muse, looking up at Mara and holding the photo toward her. “See how much we look alike? What if my gran looked just like us, too? Maybe all of the women in my family had similar features, and the photo I saw was of some long-lost family member.”
“Who happened to work for Craven Industries?” Mara raises an eyebrow. “Nah. I’m going with your mom being immortal.”
“Don’t be nuts, Mara.” I shake my head. “No one is immortal. And I’m not saying she actually worked for them. It could simply have been a coincidence.”
“Nope. There’s no such thing as coincidences.” Mara sits up, her eyes gleaming with conspiracy-theory excitement. “You know what this reminds me of? My latest TikTok about shape-shifters. Did you know there are documented cases of beings that can maintain the same appearance across centuries? Some theorists think they’re actually—”
“Please don’t say aliens.” I scowl at her. “My mother was not an alien, Mara.”
I bite my lip, hating the fact that I just referred to her in the past tense.
“I was going to say interdimensional travelers, but now that you mention it…”
I collapse into the patchwork loveseat, pressing my palms against my eyes until I see stars. “I can’t deal with your supernatural theories right now. I’ve got bigger problems.”
“Like getting caught making out with your crazy hot boss?” Mara turns to face me, propping her boots up on the battered chest that doubles as my coffee table. An empty mug topples onto a copy of Wired . “I can’t believe you went back for more.”
“I did not go back for more, dammit!”
“Of course not. He called you in to chew you out, and you ended up sucking face instead.”
Heat floods my cheeks. My fingers find my mother’s locket, fidgeting with the clasp. “That’s not how it happened.” Actually, that’s exactly how it happened, but I’m not going to admit it.
“Oh honey, your face says otherwise.” Mara wiggles her eyebrows suggestively. “Come on, spill. How was it? On a scale of wet fish to earth-shattering?”
“Can we focus on the actual problem? Like how I’m supposed to investigate anything with Caleb watching my every move?”
“Oh, I bet he’s watching your every move, alright.”
“Mara!” I fling my hands in the air. “You’re not helping. I’m in shit here.”
“Fine, fine.” She holds up her palms in surrender. “Let’s talk about the investigation, then. You said you’d been feeding details back to Blackthorn, but they want more.”
“Yeah.” I huff a breath. “They seemed happy with the initial stuff. Corporate structure. Accounting systems. The usual drill. But now they keep pushing, and I have a feeling that what they want is going to be hard to get my hands on.”
“Any idea what it is?”
“Nope. But I’m pretty sure that it’s in the company vault in the basement.” I gnaw on my lip as I think back to what I saw there.
“Oh my God, they have a vault in the basement!” Mara lets out a wild laugh. “Because every corrupt corporation needs to have one.”
“Actually, I haven’t found anything dodgy yet.” I reach for my coffee and take another mouthful. It’s growing tepid.
“You’re kidding,” says Mara. “Cagey Craven is clean?”
“So far, yes.” I nod. “Everything I’ve dug up is totally above board.”
“Well, that… sucks.” Mara scowls. “How am I supposed to run an expose on them if they’re clean?”
“Easy. You don’t.” I set my mug down. “This is my gig, Mara. It’s confidential.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” She waves a hand. “I’m just fucking with you. Tell me about the vault, then. What do you know about it?”
“Only that it’s locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”
“Which is definitely a sign that there’s something compromising in there.”
“Exactly,” I agree. “Plus, it gave off a really weird vibe.”
“Weird vibe?”
I hesitate, trying to find words for that strange sensation. “It was… different down there. Like static electricity under my skin. And this weird humming that wasn’t exactly a sound—”
“Holy shit!” Mara practically bounces off the couch, grabbing her phone. “That’s exactly what people report around supernatural hotspots. Look at this.” She shoves her phone in my face, showing me a website covered in neon text and blurry photos. “There are these things called ley lines—channels of mystical energy that—”
“Mara, please.” But unease crawls up my spine as I remember that otherworldly feeling. “I do not work in an office above a ley line,” I go on. “This is something else. It felt a bit like electricity. Maybe there was a short circuit somewhere.”
My fingers drift to my lips without conscious thought, remembering a different kind of electricity. Caleb’s kiss, demanding and desperate and—
“Ha! Caught you!” Mara’s triumphant cry makes me snatch my hand away. “You were thinking about him just now, weren’t you?”
“I need to focus on getting into that vault,” I say firmly, ignoring her knowing smirk. I move to the coffee table, sweeping aside empty mugs to spread out my case notes. “There has to be a way—”
“Oh! Oh! I know!” Mara leaps up, striking an exaggerated pose. “We go full Mission: Impossible . I’m talking black catsuits, rappelling ropes…” She mimes scaling a wall and nearly takes out my desk lamp in the process.
“Be serious.”
“I am serious! Well, about the breaking in part, anyway. We just need to figure out the security system and—”
“Mara, there is no we in this equation,” I say firmly. “I’m bouncing ideas off you in the hope of coming up with something logical.”
She lifts her eyebrow at me. The silver ring through it glints in the lamplight.
“Oh, right. Look who I’m talking to.” I shake my head. “Logic isn’t part of the equation.”
“Logic is overrated,” she says. “It stops you from thinking out of the box.”
“Now, there’s the problem. Because right now, I’m trying to figure out how to get into the box. The vault-shaped box.”
“Well, you’re not going to get that right while the Fabulous Mr. Craven is watching your every move.”
“Dammit. You’re right.” I sigh, rubbing the back of my neck.
“Of course I am. Which is why you should be listening to me. Ski mask. Lock-picking equipment, glass cutters…”
As Mara rambles on wildly about all the ways I could break into the place, my gaze drifts to my desk drawer where Mom’s journal sits. The glowing word “craven” haunts me, a breadcrumb leading down a path I’m not sure I want to follow. But after twenty years of questions, of wondering why she left, of searching for any trace…
The neon signs outside cast shifting shadows through my windows as dusk settles over the city. I rub my thumb over the heart-shaped tattoo on my wrist—a reminder of the promise I made to never stop looking for her.
“You know what’s crazy?” I say slowly, watching Mara freeze mid-cat-burglar-pose. “Your ridiculous break-in idea might actually work.”