The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (16 page)

He had quite a few little cuts and bruises on him from the explosion. Fortunately for both him and Ophelia, they had stopped to talk about the fact that their informant hadn’t shown up. The bomb placed under the Sparrow had been on a timer, and went off as they were walking towards the motor carriage rather than sitting in it.

When I thought of how close he’d come to being seriously injured, probably killed… My stomach heaved.

“Xandra?” Rubbing the beige towel over his stomach, Vex took a step towards me. “What is it?”

Unexpected tears spilled down my cheeks. “You could have died!” Oh, fuck me. I was
sobbing
. Of all the weak-kneed, foolish things to do.

Warm, damp arms closed around me, and I didn’t care if I was an idiot. I leaned into an equally warm and damp chest and had a little cry. Vex said nothing, just held me.

When I was done, I lifted my head and swiped at my eyes with the back of my hand. “Sorry.”

“Don’t you ever apologise for caring. When Ophelia called me earlier and asked me to come and get her because you had just killed someone and Special Branch was there, I thought I might puke.”

I gazed up at him. “Really? I thought you were pissed off at me.”

He smiled. “That too. You’re a wee bit hard to stay annoyed with, you know.”

No, I didn’t. “Other people seem to have an easy enough
time doing just that.” Hell, I spent most of my time fed up to my eyebrows with myself.

He kissed me–a lingering and tingle-inspiring melding of mouths. “I’m not like other people.”

“No, you are not,” I agreed. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”

He didn’t say anything. He just kissed me again–until I was loose as a ribbon in the breeze–and carried me from the en suite into my bedroom. When cedrdth="2he was done with me, my muscles were heavy and relaxed, and my brain was a sleepy, sluggish thing.

We talked about the evening. I told him about the tourists–he shook his head at me. I also told him that Penny refused to stop working.

“That girl’s too stubborn for her own good,” he remarked. “I don’t want you hanging around there, not with the League being active and betties taking halvies from the premises. You’d be too tempting a target.”

I stiffened. Was this the point in our relationship when he stopped treating me like an equal and started treating me like a weakling? A fragile thing to be protected? Never mind that I’d already decided not to hang about the club.

“Don’t get like that now,” he admonished. “I’m not handing out orders. I just worry about you.”

And I was an idiot. “You know, for an alpha, you’re incredibly agreeable.”

He trailed his fingertips down my sternum. “Because I don’t thump my chest and drag you about by your hair?”

“That wouldn’t be the wording I’d use, but yes.”

Those lovely fingers traced a path to my navel. I shivered. “Do you honestly think I’d need to do that to get you to do what I want?”

“No.” He’d only have to ask.

Vex smiled–a tad smugly. “
That’s
why I’m alpha.”

Then his hand slid lower, and he demonstrated a particularly effective manner of getting me to do exactly what he wanted.

Shortly before dawn, as Vex and I prepared to go to bed to actually sleep after sharing an apple pie in front of the box, my rotary rang. I made a quick grab for it, hoping the shrill ring wouldn’t wake Penny, who had toddled off to bed an hour ago. Poor thing was exhausted.

Before I could even say hello, I heard Avery say, “It’s me. Am I calling too late?”

She knew she was, else she wouldn’t have asked. “Almost. It’s been a long freaking night. Did you get my note?”

“I did, thanks. I thought I’d fill you in on my evening.”

“What’s the news?”

“Sayuri didn’t know what Val was up to and Special Branch doesn’t have much.”

“And neither of those things could have waited until this afternoon?” Yes, it was bitchy of me, but she was my sister and it didn’t count.

“If you’d let me continue rather than cutting me off,” she shot back, “I could tell you.”

“All right, get on with it then.” Out of the corner of my eye I watched Vex gather up our dishes and leave the room, giving me a little privacy. Not like he couldn’t eavesdrop if he wanted.

“Like I said, it isn’t much, but I went through the history on
his rotary. There were several numbers that he called on a regular basis, one being his SI. You can imagine me trying to explain why I’d rung her without telling her the truth.”

I smiled a bit at that. Avery didn’t like to lie, but when the occasion called for it, she could spin a whopper without so much as a pause.

“Thing is,” she continued, “she called him several times as well, around his disappearance. The cpea>

“Interesting. Did you find anything else?”

“Val rang an unlisted number several times over the two days preceding his abduction. It was a number he’d never used before and wasn’t in his address book–which I checked after talking to his boss. I didn’t want to repeat that experience again.”

I watched Vex leave the room with the pie. I should have asked him to leave it. “What happened when you called it?”

“ ’Twas a recording with a bunch of nonsense on it.”

I frowned. “What sort of nonsense?”

“I wrote it down. W1G–7–C Square–zero eight–twenty-two.”

“W1G. C Square.” My mind reached for the connection. “Cavendish Square?” It was the most obvious choice.

I heard Avery clicking buttons in the background. She was in front of her logic engine. “I’m looking at postcodes for Westminster. Number 7 Cavendish Square begins W1G.”

I tried to remember what was at number 7, but I hadn’t been to Cavendish Square in ages. It was an aristo-friendly zone, home to many aristo retainers, and humans descended from
“good” families who hadn’t been changed by the plague but had aristo connections.

That took care of some of the numbers. “Zero eight–do you think that’s August? The twenty-second?” It was just three days from now.

“I have to tell Em.”

“No!” I barked.

“Why not?” my sister demanded.

“Avery, if she tells her brother, the peelers will be all over the place.” Emma’s brother was also a copper. “ Worse, word might leak out that the Yard’s going to show up and they’ll scarper out of there. We don’t know what this is, but it’s our one freaking lead on Val and I’m not going to fuck that up. Can I trust you with this?”

There was a moment of silence. I was asking a lot of her to keep this information from Emma, from the authorities. It meant she had to trust me.

“He could already be dead, Xandy.”

“He’s not dead,” I replied with certainty. “I was right about Dede, wasn’t I?” Wrong of me to bring it up, raw as it was, but it was true, and I had been the only one convinced she was still alive.

“How do you know?” she asked, ignoring the mention of our little sister altogether. There was an edge to her voice–she didn’t want to think the worst, but she couldn’t help it.

“Because he’s one of us. There’s something freaky about our family, Av. I’m a goblin. Dede had a fully plagued kid. Who knows what’s up with you and Val?”

“We don’t know that Ainsley’s child—”

“I’ve seen him. There’s no denying who his mother is. He has the Vardan eyes.” All of my father’s children had the same
green eyes, though mine had taken on a ring of amber, and Dede’s son had them too.

More silence, then, “Fang me.” I understood. None of us had believed Dede when she said that her baby had survived. She’d been told it had died. In reality, Ainsley and his wife had raised the boy as their own. If we’d only believed her, things might have gone so differen ce sWrong otly for her. “Are you sure we’re all freaky?”

I chuckled. “No. If it weren’t for Dede, I’d blame what happened to me on my mother’s transformation, but I think it’s all on Father’s side. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you, or with Val, but if he’s been investigating people who like to experiment on halvies, and they’ve caught him, they’ll want to fully examine him first.” That was all I was going to say. There were any number of awful things that could be happening to my brother at that moment, and I refused to think of any of them.

“I want to come with you.”

She did? “That’s not a good idea. If you come with me, Emma will know you lied to her. I’m not putting you in that position, Avery. I’m not fucking up your life by dragging you into mine.”

“He’s my brother too.”

“Yes, and he’s going to need you when I bring him home.” It hurt to say it, but Val might still be angry with me. “Please. I’ll take Vex if I need backup, but I can’t save him if I’m worrying about you too.” It was a cheap shot–and an insult to her abilities–but it was true. I would worry about her.

“Fine,” came her petulant response.

“There is something you can do for me.”

“What?” Her suspicion practically slipped through the aether and smacked me in the ear.

“You’re still on vacation, yeah?”

“For another week, until Lord and Lady Maplethrope return from the country.” As Peerage Protectorate, Avery was assigned to an aristo family. Lord Maplethrope employed her for London protection, and for some travel, and had another PP at his country estate who knew everyone and every inch of the village in which they spent their time away from the city.

“Great. How do you feel about shadowing Penny while she’s at work?” It was the perfect solution.

“Yeah, all right.” I would have been surprised if she’d said no–she adored Penny as much as I did. “But why can’t you do it?”

I sighed. She was going to find out anyway. It would probably be in the papers tomorrow. “Because I killed a betty outside the club tonight.”

There was silence. I counted to five. “You what?”

I chuckled. No, it wasn’t funny, but it was so bloody absurd I couldn’t help myself. “I interrupted three betties trying to abduct Penny. One of them bit me. He was on his way out anyway, but the toxicity of my blood sent him on to his maker straight away.” I intentionally didn’t mention Ophelia. I didn’t want Avery to think I was including my other sister in matters but not her.

“You’re serious.”

“Afraid so, yes. So if I go back to Freak Show and start hanging about, the betties won’t come back.”

“The rags are going to have a ball with this–you know that, right?”

“Indubitably. I just hope they mention my heroics as well. I did stop a kidnapping, after all.”

“How can you be so flippant?”

“Because I refuse to be the alternative. So, you’ll watch Penny?”

“Of course. Send me her schedule.”

“Will do. While I’m at it, be careful, okay? A tour of Americans went by the house earlier, talking about calk

Silence. And then, “Oh my sweet baby Albert! Was he hurt?”

“No, but he could have been. Just be on guard, all right? Carry your gun when you go out.” Once upon a time, people in security and law enforcement didn’t have weapons, but that, like so many other things, all changed after 1932.

“I will. You have a care as well.”

Vex came back into the room–perfect timing. “I will. I’ll call you later, all right?” She said something, but I was already hanging up.

“News on Val?” Vex asked, sitting down on the sofa beside me once more.

“Maybe. He rang a number before he was taken. It was a recording with a jumbled-up address and date.”

Vex went very still. “Are you certain?”

“As I can be. Avery and I pieced it together. It’s an address in Cavendish Square and the date is the twenty-second of this month. Why?”

“You’re not going there. Not alone.”

This was so much the opposite of what he’d said being an alpha was all about that I waited for him to thump his chest. But there was something in his eyes… “Vex, what is it? Do you know what this is?”

He nodded. “I’ve heard of these recordings. I’m not telling you anything until you give me your word you will not go alone.”

Okay, so the demanding, protective thing was a little attractive in a primal sort of way, but really…