Chapter 21

Caspian

We left the bar . . . my fucking uncle ’s bar, to head for the car, and for once in our acquaintance, Kit was completely silent and seemed unamused. Frost kept a protective arm around me the whole way, hustling me into the backseat of the waiting SUV and then climbing in next to me.

I wasn’t usually one for taking advantage of anything, but in this case, my brain said fuck it. I deserved some fucking comfort.

Nothing was what I had thought.

Sure, Aunt Rachel and I had never gotten along, and I thought she worried about money far more than was reasonable, but this was . . . it was pure evil. She was hurting our people, the people we had sworn to use our power to protect. She was picking apart our homeland piece by piece like a Jenga tower, the whole place riddled with holes and on the verge of collapse. My father didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t matter. The Sunrunner name didn’t matter.

Our people were suffering, and it had to stop. If I had to challenge Aunt Rachel, then it was what I had to do.

Frankly, if I had to challenge my father, it was necessary.

There was just one problem with that.

Well, two problems if we were talking about both Aunt Rachel and my father. The first was a grizzly bear and the second was a dire wolf.

Me? I couldn’t shift into so much as a puppy.

I wondered if Frost and Kit could give me a crash course in how to use a sword. It wasn’t common in Sunrunner duels, but it was allowed. It was also unheard of for one of us not to have a shift form, especially when they were an adult bonded to a tiger’s eye, as I was. Hells, Mella was even a crimson tiger’s eye, a rare type of the stone commonly thought of as one of the more powerful varieties. Even Nausa was just a standard brown tiger’s eye.

Still, when we had bonded, she’d said that she would prefer to talk, to help me with the things that mattered, and she had. She’d taught me everything she could teach me about dealing with people. Sure, maybe we’d never managed to bring Aunt Rachel over to our side, but as it turned out, Aunt Rachel was an actual monster. Why would we want her on our side? In the end, I’d been more grateful for Mella as she was than I could have ever been for a dozen animal shifts. I wouldn’t give her back, or give up what she was in my life, for anything.

It just meant that I would have to find a different way to beat Aunt Rachel for control of the family.

Did it even have to be a duel? That was the standard way, of course. Challenging her for control of the family, because even if technically my father was the one in charge, she was the one who’d been doing the job. She had every reasonable right to challenge me if I didn’t challenge her.

Sure, I was technically my father’s heir, but it wasn’t written in stone. There had never been a question before. No test of the usual rules of ascension. The ruling of the Sunrunner family had simply passed from parent to child for hundreds of years. No one had even tested the notion of challenging anyone for the right before.

Frankly, we had been boring as fuck, and I wished us another boring, humdrum millennium after this mess. The people deserved to be confident in the Sunrunner family, or else we didn’t deserve to be in our position.

Frankly, at the moment, we didn’t deserve it, plain and simple.

“Where are we going?” Frost asked Kit as he drove.

I hadn’t realized the car was moving already. I’d been so wrapped up in my own head, my damned family melodrama, that I hadn’t noticed my surroundings at all.

“Victor gave me the address of the brothel, so we’re going to check it out.” As he spoke, he flipped on his turn indicator and headed into the part of Verisa known as old downtown.

The capital building and courthouse were still there, along with a huge number of the city’s older casinos and bars and, well, brothels. Some twenty years earlier, a few big companies had started building on what had then been the outskirts of the city, making enormous brightly lit resorts that were all-inclusive, with everything from theaters with shows to spas to casinos and restaurants on premises. Most of the tourists had been drawn in by the shiny lights and resort vacation packages, and it was the new center of the city, despite being nowhere near the actual center of the city. For the old downtown, the result had been a downward slide. Fewer tourists meant less money, so not only were they not able to compete with the new places, but sometimes, they were barely able to keep the buildings in functional working order, with the lights on and the doors open.

My father spending time there was a bit of a surprise, but I supposed if Aunt Rachel owned the place, maybe he’d thought it was safe. Or maybe she’d simply encouraged him to go there, and he didn’t even know who owned it.

Frankly, I found it a little horrible that my aunt was involved in the sex trade. We were supposed to be taking care of the people of the city. Our “trade” should be in hospitals and libraries and government offices. Not brothels and casinos and restaurants.

We collected taxes from the people and businesses. Wasn’t there a conflict of interests somewhere in there? Besides, running for-profit businesses seemed like a huge distraction from doing the important work we were supposed to be doing, using those taxes to make Sunrunner lands a place where people wanted to live. A place where they could be happy.

“Fuck me,” Kit whispered as he brought the SUV to a stop. “Seriously? Your father has sex here? I don’t even want to get out of the car for fear of catching a hepatitis.”

Next to me, Frost rolled his eyes as he unbuckled his seat belt. “Stop being prissy, Kit. You’re supposed to be a big bad assassin man, remember?”

“Yeah, but it’s . . . aren’t you worried we’re going to get shanked just stepping out of the car? It doesn’t help that Ember bought a giant expensive freaking glow-in-the dark glitter-white car.” Kit waved around us at all the cars parked on the street.

I hadn’t thought all that much about it, even when Kit had rolled his eyes at her choice, but that was an excellent point. The car stood out in our surroundings. It was the only white car on the block, most of them black, blending in with the darkness around us. Black was definitely the most common car color in Verisa, and I’d never given much thought as to why before. It wasn’t even a great choice, since black absorbed the desert heat worse than other colors.

“Where is Ember, anyway?” I asked, trying not to focus on the cars. It was weird, but being surrounded by them made it so much more real. We were at home, in Verisa. In one of the worst parts of Verisa, looking for my father. At best, I might have to challenge the man to a vicious, violent duel if we found him.

“She’s been checking the hospitals and morgues,” Kit said, waving his phone in front of him. “She’s hit all of the ones who’ve found anyone in the last week, and I told her she doesn’t need to do the private clinics, since Victor said he’s already been tracking that.”

Frost cocked his head, confused. “You think he runs all the private clinics in town?”

“All the ones someone might turn a body over to,” Kit answered, and I had to hold back a shudder.

Victor Berents, criminal mastermind. My uncle. Possibly the most decent person in this disaster drama of my life and family. It was like one of those ancient plays where everything that happened was a bigger disaster than the last and at the end the hero realized he was married to his own mother and had killed his father.

Fortunately, I wasn’t married, and Frost was only five or six years older than me. He’d have had to be really precocious to get started that young, and maybe he did that, with math. Sex? I was pretty sure Kit had been right and he was a virgin.

That thought carried me all the way into the brothel, eyeing my surroundings with almost as much distrust as Kit. At least I was armed. I was sure Kit had knives secreted about his body, but he didn’t have his sword or a gun. He had to be ready to crawl out of his skin.

The brothel was . . . shabby chic wasn’t the right term. It was just shabby, mostly. It looked old-fashioned, like it had once housed a noble family, the colors all mahogany and burgundy, rich and dark. And the colors weren’t terribly faded, since all the windows were shut tight . . . but that was the extent of what was in good repair. The enormous grandfather clock in the main hall wasn’t wound—in fact, one of the weights seemed to be missing, so there was just a tarnished brass chain hanging in the middle of the thing. The carpet had been worn so thin with tromping feet that you could see the base weave of it, white squares showing through the previously deep red pattern.

A man came out, and he immediately struck me as matching the house. Probably in his fifties, he’d almost certainly once been incredibly handsome, but time had taken a toll. Time and either liquor or drugs, likely, because people didn’t get sallow skin and enormous dark circles like that just from being over fifty. His salt-and-pepper hair could have been attractive, and it was well-styled. The outfit was . . . well, it hadn’t been in style for a hundred years, but it had once been nice. It looked almost like a horse-riding costume, with tight beige pants and a red vest. But it was well worn, the shirt cuffs fraying and embroidery on the vest coming up in unruly loops that had come loose. But the look in his eyes was all that mattered.

There was nobody home. He almost looked right past us, even as he gave an absent smile. “What can I do for you fine gentlemen this evening?”

Kit lowered his head, staring into the man’s soul for a moment, then shook it. “We want to talk to the girl Dane Sunrunner sees when he comes here.”

Interesting that he assumed it was a woman, but apparently he was right, because a moment later, the man scoffed. “Well that makes four of us. Janelle disappeared on me a week ago. Hasn’t been home or even called since then. Tuesday is trash day, so I’m planning on throwing her stuff out and renting the room to someone else.”

For a moment, silence fell. The man looked more awake than he had when we arrived, arms crossed over his chest and lips drawn into a tight moue.

Then Kit pulled out his wallet. He reached in and pulled out a few bills, holding them in front of the man. “This, if you let us go look through the room before you do it.”

The guy’s frown tipped to one side, inspecting the cash, considering. “I shouldn’t. It’s her stuff.”

“You said yourself you’re going to throw it away tomorrow. What harm? We both know she’s not coming back if she’s been gone a week.” There was no charm there, no wheedling. Just matter-of-fact common sense, and the man seemed to react to that. To Kit.

He nodded, reaching out to snatch the cash. “Fine. Come on, I’ll let you in.”

He led us up to the second floor, to a hallway with almost a dozen doors, straight up to the third on the left, and unlocked it, opening it for Kit. “Don’t take the furniture,” was all he said as he left us alone with someone else’s worldly goods.

We all slid inside, though frankly, it was a tight fit to have three people in the room. Mostly, the room had enough space for the enormous king size bed, a single nightstand, and a tiny vanity covered with makeup and skincare products. Well, and a few pieces of cheap costume jewelry.

The closet across from the end of the bed held only a few dozen hangers with clothes on them, most of those costumes or lingerie of various kinds.

Immediately, Kit set to rifling everything. The drawers in the vanity and nightstand, the tiny jewelry box, under the bed—he didn’t leave a single surface to chance. Then, he started knocking on the floorboards.

“What are you doing?” Frost asked.

“Nothing personal,” he answered. “No identification, no purse, no wallet, no phone. No stash of important things. She lived in this room. If it’s not in an obvious place, it’s got to be in a non-obvious place.”

I reopened the closet and checked the dark recesses, but there were no boxes there. Though . . . as I was about to close it again, I realized one of the floorboards was more worn than the others. I knelt down next to it, pressing on it. When it didn’t come up, I pulled out my pocket knife and used that to pry up the edge. It came up easily, revealing a pile of cash, a pile of the documents Kit had been referring to, a phone, and a little green book. “Found it,” I said aloud.

Kit came over, taking only the book from me, and started to flip through it. “She was working for Rachel. Reporting to her on everything your father did when he was here. That’s . . . a little gross.”

Frost took the pile of money and fanned the edges of the stack.

I was barely paying attention, because I’d opened her passport, and I couldn’t tear my eyes off it. She looked just like my mother. Ink-black hair and pale blue eyes. Creamy, unblemished skin. A dreamy expression on her face that said she was somewhere else entirely—one that oftentimes mostly said she was on something.

A decade after my mother’s death, and my father’s only female companionship was a prostitute who looked like his dead mistress.

“This . . . is too much money,” Frost said, dragging both of our attentions away from what we’d been doing. He looked up and met first my eye, then Kit’s. “I don’t care who she was working for on the side, this is too much money for someone to have socked away and be willing to stay in this place. This is enough money to buy a small house.”

I looked at the cash, and Frost wasn’t wrong. A lot of those bills were big ones.

“How much?” Kit asked.

Without missing a beat, Frost answered, “A hundred thousand, three hundred and twelve.”

“Twelve,” was all Kit said, and Frost cocked his head in confusion. After a moment, Kit rolled his eyes. “The hundred is all fresh? Looks like it’s straight from the bank?”

“Oh,” Frost looked back down at the money, then seemed to have a realization. “Yes. The three hundred and twelve is all different bills. Ones and fives and tens and twenties. The hundred thousand is crisp. No bank wrappers, but all the same bill over and over, all hundreds.”

“Somebody got a payoff,” Kit said, singsong, then he winced. “Unfortunately, I doubt she lived to use it. That explains why her drawers were a mess. Someone else already went through her stuff looking for the money, they just didn’t find it like you did.”

“You . . .” Frost looked like a literal kicked puppy, clutching the cash against his stomach. “You think they killed her?”

Kit came over to Frost, taking the money and stuffing most of it into a pocket on the inside of his jacket, then heading for the door. Without another word, he marched down the stairs. We found the same man standing in the front hallway, listless and miserable, head down like he was counting the threads on the carpet.

Kit held a hundred up in front of him. “Something happened last Sunday night.”

The man looked at the hundred, and his pupils dilated. He swallowed hard. “Lord Sunrunner was here.”

“And then?”

“Some . . . some men came to get him. They all went out through the back.”

Kit nodded and pushed the hundred toward the man. Then he pulled out another. “Was Janelle still here after he left?”

Slowly, the man nodded. “She . . . she was. She said she had a headache. Didn’t see any more customers that night.”

“Except when Rachel Sunrunner came to see her.”

The man took a step back. “A hundred’s not worth my job.”

Kit pulled out two more, adding them to the first.

“She talked to Rachel for maybe five minutes,” the man whispered. “Then Rachel left, and she was still in her room.”

Kit let him take the cash and pulled out another bill. “When did she disappear?”

“The next day. She went out in the morning, on her own, right out the front door. She was smiling. Said . . . said she might be getting a new job. Might be leaving Verisa altogether. Offered to buy one of the other girls breakfast. They left together. The other girl—Molly, she said Janelle left to go shopping when she got back. She didn’t know what was going on either. Then—” he shrugged.

“Janelle just never returned from shopping.”

The man nodded, and Kit handed him the bill. “I’d say you should take the money and get out of town, but I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of time at this point. This is going to be over soon one way or another, and if she lives, your boss is going to kill you. All of you. Not for talking to us, but for knowing what you know.”

The man swallowed hard but nodded. Not like it was news, but like he’d already suspected as much.

“So if anyone asks, you play up what a fucking pain it is that she ran off, okay? If someone asks you about that cash, tell them she owed you money and gave it to you to pay you back.”

The man glanced down at the bills, then nodded again. He was getting progressively paler, but he was still standing, so I was kinda impressed.

“B—but what can you do?” the man finally asked, his voice nearly a whisper.

“With luck?” Kit asked, and he shot the guy a strangely happy-go-lucky smile. “Someone’s going to kill Rachel Sunrunner in the next week. If not, you might consider disappearing. If she doesn’t kill you first.”

As he turned and motioned for us to follow him out, the man continued staring at the five hundred dollars in his hands, like it might hold the answers to the universe.