Twiceborn Endgame (The Proving Book 3) (4 page)

“You could have chosen to stay out of the proving altogether.”

His green gaze was direct. “So people say, but in practice it’s almost impossible for the stronger shifters. Dragons want allies and they don’t like taking no for an answer.”

Well, that was certainly true. Time to wrap this up. I could feel my concentration wavering already.

“And how do you feel about working for me?”

“To be honest, I’d rather go home and leave you dragons to fight it out, but that wasn’t an option. I’m certainly not leaving Oceania. My roots are here. So it looks like I’m stuck with you.”

Not exactly the ringing endorsement I’d been hoping for. “Will you follow me loyally?”

“That madman Thorne will send the place to hell in a hand basket if he gets his way. You are the best chance we have of finding peace again.”

That was slightly better news for my bruised ego. I released him with relief and sat back, trying not to let my dizziness show. Two more shifters and eight humans to go. I might have to pace myself.

The next leshy, Carter, turned out to be the brother of Adam, the leshy who’d saved Ben and me during the battle at Alicia’s house. He was more enthusiastic in his support, knowing that I was an enemy both of Alicia, who’d put Adam in harm’s way, and of Jason, who’d killed him.

That left the selkie woman, Corinne. Hopefully she’d prove weaker than the two leshies, as my head was pounding from the strain of holding them to my will. I probably shouldn’t even be trying to do something like this after the injuries I’d sustained yesterday. I rubbed at my chest where the scar still showed. It ached, but dully, like a wound that was three weeks healed.

“Corinne.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were huge and brown, and her aura roiled like a storm at sea, the rich deep green of the troubled ocean.

“There’s still time to change your mind,” I reminded her. The internal confusion her aura betrayed made me question her commitment, but she shook her head.

I took a firm grip on her will and she relaxed like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Her mind felt as alien as the leshies’, but where theirs had thrummed with earth energy and the joy of growing things, entering hers felt like sliding under a dark wave, cool and enveloping.

“Will you support me loyally and wholeheartedly, following every command I give you?”

Best to keep this short. I could feel my will slipping away into the mysterious depths of her mind, dissipating like foam on the ocean.

She nodded dreamily. “Yes, mistress.”

That was good enough for me. I pulled myself together and got out of there before I drowned. What an intriguing mind. I’d never even met a selkie before, much less compelled one.

I wondered what a kitsune’s mind would feel like. If I’d tested Kasumi’s loyalty like this when she’d turned up on my doorstep offering to join me, Lachie might still be here. Perhaps her mind would have been as slippery as her body, changing form and hiding the truth of what she was. But I’d been too human then to even think of such a thing, and with wolves as the only shifters on my team, no one else had thought of it either. Luce would probably have suggested it, but Luce had been trapped with Alicia.

No use beating myself up about it now. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kasumi had been able to fool me anyway. She was a consummate trickster. She’d had me convinced she was the best thing since sliced bread, right up until the moment she’d put a dagger in my heart and taken off with my son. Now getting him back depended on me not stuffing things up again. To be a ruthless and suspicious dragon, not a trusting human.

I needed a break—or at least a cup of coffee. Even dragons liked coffee. I turned to Garth and was about to suggest he take a quick trip to the kitchen when the double doors opened again and a familiar figure strode in.

“Ben!” Okay, it turned out that relief beat anger after all. Just. Knowing that the stupid, pig-headed man was still in one piece was better than a cup of coffee any day.

He gave me a quick one-armed hug. Stubble scraped my lips when he kissed me. He looked tired and he held his bad arm against his body as if it were hurting him.

“Where the hell have you been?”

His grin widened. His eyes were the same rich brown as the selkie woman’s, but he was one hundred per cent human. I knew. I’d checked every inch.

“I brought you a present.”

“Roses? Chocolates? Gideon Thorne’s head on a stick, perhaps?”

He shook his head, making his dark curls bounce. If he didn’t get a haircut soon he’d start looking like Michael Jackson in his
Thriller
period.

“Better. I found Blue Munroe.” He turned, sweeping his good arm through an extravagant arc like a magician unveiling his trick, and two thralls marched Blue Munroe, goblin mage extraordinaire, through the door behind him.

Maybe “marched” wasn’t the right word. The goblin reeked of alcohol, and one whiskery cheek rested uncomfortably on the shoulder of the thrall to his left. His whole body listed that way, as if caught in an invisible wind, and he seemed to be having trouble focusing. The wind was probably called Johnnie Walker, judging by the smell.

Bright orange hair hung in a tangled mat across his face. Blue blinked owlishly in a futile effort to clear it out of the way.

“Hello, Kate,” he slurred.

I sighed. Sober, Blue might be a good find. If he could be persuaded to co-operate, a little goblin magic could be handy. Drunk, however—and Blue was almost always drunk—he was no use to anyone.

“Where on earth did you find him?” Ben was looking a little grubbier than usual himself, though on his handsome face stubble was a much more attractive addition than on the bleary-eyed goblin.

“It was more
under
earth,” he said. “I had to pull a few strings, or I’d still be searching.”

Blue’s eyes had sagged closed while we talked. He now appeared to be asleep on his feet, his weight resting on the thrall who held him. The poor man stared straight ahead, trying to pretend a stinking and none-too-clean goblin was not, in fact, drooling on his shoulder.

“What are we going to do with him?” I could hardly drag my eyes from the damp spot spreading on the thrall’s crisp white shirt.

“Step one is get him sober. Step two—who knows? He’s a goblin mage. Use your imagination.”

An hour later the police were knocking on my door—just another one of the fabulous bonuses of my new lifestyle. My old friends Detectives Hartley and Franks had managed to track me to my new home, probably courtesy of another anonymous tip-off to the police hotline. There was no shortage of shifters eager to cause trouble for me. I could practically smell the suspicion coming off them as they entered.

“Nice place.” Detective Hartley’s sharp eyes swept over the antique furniture, the high decorative ceilings, the luxurious swags of velvet draped over the floor-to-ceiling windows, then came to rest on me. She had a way of looking at you that would have made even the most innocent person feel guilty, as if she had assessed you and found you wanting. “You been here long?”

She knew I hadn’t, but that was her style, always trying to catch you out with seemingly innocuous questions. Last time she’d interviewed me, I’d been living at Arcadia on one of Leandra’s properties, a large house set on several hectares. Elizabeth’s house left it for dead, grandiose enough to qualify for the name “palace”. Only someone seriously wealthy could afford to live in a place like this.

“Just got here,” I said. “My aunt died unexpectedly, and I’ve come to settle her affairs.”

“Who’s your aunt?” Detective Franks asked. His eyes were small and close together, which gave him a shifty look. “She must be rich.”

“She is. Or was, rather.” I looked down at the carpet. I wasn’t going to pretend to be heartbroken at the loss, but a little sadness was probably expected. Especially if the story was going to be that we were so close she’d left all her wealth to me. I had people drawing up the relevant documents even as we spoke: fake birth certificates and other ID, as well as a comprehensive will. “You might have heard of her. Elizabeth Appleby.”

Detective Hartley nodded. “Sorry for your loss. I don’t like to intrude at such a sad time, but we have some more questions for you.”

“Have you found my husband?”

I’d set her on Jason’s trail last time we spoke, with a light compulsion that would have long since worn off. Messing with people’s minds was never a great idea, particularly if those people were police officers. Others tended to notice if detectives suddenly developed weird obsessions, or started acting in illogical ways. It could ruin careers, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that. Sure, they were a pain in my arse with their questions, but they were only trying to do their job.

“No. Not yet.”

Did she realise she frowned every time she looked at me? I felt a twinge of guilt. In other circumstances I would have liked Detective Hartley. She was thorough and dedicated, with a healthy cynicism, the kind of person who makes a good friend but a bad enemy. Not an easy person to fool. The poor woman was probably still wondering why her memories of certain recent events flat-out contradicted the notes she’d made on them. For an orderly mind like hers it must be particularly galling not to be able to trust your own recall. I wish I could have come up with some other way of dealing with the problems my own stupidity had created, but I’d been caught between a rock and a hard place, with no time for finesse.

“Actually we wanted to talk to you about something completely different,” Detective Franks said.

“Where were you last night between ten and eleven p.m.?” Detective Hartley asked.

My first instinct was to insist I’d been home all night, with the whole household to back me up, but instinct was what had got me into such a mess last time. They wouldn’t be asking for no reason.

Her voice was mild, as if she only had a vague interest in my answer, but I wasn’t fooled. They were already suspicious of me over Valeria’s death, and then there were the infamous “dragon wars” outside my old house at The Rocks that the Internet was still buzzing about. Denials weren’t going to wash with them.

“Why?” I hedged. “Am I under suspicion for something else now?”

“Answer the question, please.” Hartley was too old a hand at this to give me any clues.

“I was out with a group of friends.”

“And where did you go with this group?”

Damn it, I’d probably hesitated too long already. An innocent person would be gushing about the scary explosion at the hotel they’d visited, not prevaricating about whether or not to answer. If they were here asking, they already had something that placed me at the scene. Maybe Jason had tipped them off, trying to cause trouble for me. Tit for tat, I guess, since I’d set him up with the cops too.

“We were going to go to a nightclub, but we stopped at the Park Hyatt on the way. Did you hear about the explosion there?”

They exchanged glances. Did I sound too eager now?

“You were going clubbing right after your aunt died?” Detective Franks sounded as if he found the idea offensive.

Shit. Why was I such a bad liar? “Well, I wasn’t really in the mood, of course, but my friends thought it might cheer me up.”

“I see.” Detective Hartley wrote something in her notebook. “Yes, we did hear about the explosion. We were hoping you might be able to tell us more about that.”

“Why would you think I’d know anything about it?” I let indignation colour my tone. It would be so much easier if I could just compel this all away, but I resisted the urge. I had too much respect for Hartley to screw her over again if I could possibly avoid it.

“I don’t know, Ms O’Connor, let me think.” Detective Hartley held up her fingers and ticked her points off on them. “One, you lied to us about your movements on New Year’s Eve, and the fact that you did know the murdered woman, despite initially denying it.”

“I told you, that was all my husband’s fault.”

She ignored me. “Two, there’s some kind of shoot-out at your home in The Rocks, plus footage of a dragon and some other weird creatures being involved. Three dead bodies there, to add to the one we fished out of the Harbour on New Year’s Eve. And three, last night there’s a mysterious explosion at the Park Hyatt, with another death, and we have CCTV footage placing you at the scene just a few minutes before the explosion.”

“You’ve got to admit that looks suspicious.” Detective Franks glared at me out of his little piggy eyes. Guess he was playing bad cop today. Must be a nice change for Detective Hartley; that was usually her role. “And now your aunt’s dead too.”

I didn’t have to admit anything of the sort. “Are you suggesting I killed my aunt?”

“Not at all,” said Detective Hartley, with an impatient glance at Franks. “But you’re obviously very rich. Even richer now your aunt’s dead. This place, the terrace at The Rocks, that big property out at Arcadia. You must be one of the wealthiest people in Australia.”

The
wealthiest, more likely. Not that I was going to tell her that. “What of it? Is it a crime to have money?”

“Rich people think differently,” said Detective Franks. Bad cop time again. “Act differently. As long as they’re achieving their goals, they don’t tend to notice the fallout. They don’t care what happens to the little people.” He was describing dragons to a tee. Ironic, really, considering how hard I was trying
not
to act like a dragon. The urge to swat him like the insect he was was becoming harder to resist. “We’re just wondering what your goals might be, and why you keep turning up in connection with these incidents.”

Okay, I needed to turn this around. I had too much to do to spend time squirming on their hook.

“It doesn’t matter how rich I am, Detective Franks, I don’t go around blowing up hotels. I’m not a terrorist.” I took a deep breath. “My goal is to get my son back. My husband has kidnapped him.”

The big detective’s hairy eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise. “This is the son you told us about last time, that your husband faked his death?”

“Yes. I only have one son. An associate of my husband’s snatched him last night.”