Masked Desire Page 8

  His inner philosophical debate halted when Eric waved them to seats in front of the desk. When away from humans, arcana rarely shared touches such as handshakes that brought one close to a potential enemy. The chairs were comfortable and spoke to the depth of Eric’s calm confidence. This was not a man who needed to resort to childish dominance tricks. Quite a change from Queen Tismelda’s court, where her seat was on a high dais. Even walking around, the queen wore stupidly tall platforms decorated with bells that allowed her to tower among her people.

  Eric took off his glasses. “Good to see you again, Ambassador. You’re well, I hope?”

  “Thank you, yes. May I congratulate you on the elevation of your mate?” Caro Yeats had recently been declared consort, news that had ricocheted around the arcane gossip circuit. Half human and half masquerada, Caro was a lost daughter of the European ruling house, a masquerada said to be as powerful as the Hierarch himself.

  Eric’s face broke in a broad smile. “Caro should be here soon. She’s curious to meet you.”

  Cormac’s eyebrows rose. “She harbors no ill-will towards us?” A fey had been involved in Caro’s kidnapping by one of Eric’s rivals. Queen Tismelda had been quick to disown Julien D’Aurant, but masquerada could be unreasonable when it came to their mates’ safety. He respected that.

  “None at all, Ambassador.” A small woman wearing jeans and low brown boots strolled into the room. Her dark hair was held up in a messy topknot. “I don’t judge all fey by Julien, since the man was a complete and pathetic ass. I greatly respect the environmental conservation work many of your people do.”

  She gave Michaela a quick hello wink and went to stand beside Eric, who pulled her hand down to kiss the palm. For a second their shared gaze made Cormac uncomfortable, as though he was witnessing an intimacy that was meant to be private. Then Caro gave him a beaming smile. She was pretty, but more than that, Cormac could almost see the vitality of her life force. It illuminated her from within.

  No wonder Eric could barely keep his eyes off her. Caro was magnetic.

  Still, she was no Michaela. The thought came unbidden and, surprised, he turned his gaze towards her. Michaela’s perfect features were set in the same aloof expression that he realized was as much a masque as Yuri. She was the most intriguing woman he’d ever met. She caught his gaze and although she didn’t go as far as to smile at him, he thought he detected a slight softening of her lips.

  Good enough.

  Caro sat down and crossed her legs. “Not a social call, then, is it?”

  Michaela shook her head. “A human named Hiro Murakami was killed and there may be arcane involvement. That means it comes under masquerada jurisdiction.”

  Cormac had forgotten that little bit of arcana legislation. Any wrongdoing that involved a human and arcana was investigated by the closest geographic ruler. It helped delineate responsibility among rulers with multiple overlapping territories. If it had been further to the south, it would have been the vampires’ problem, since the vampire queen Wavena was currently living in Florida. Toronto meant Eric, and the masquerada.

  “Hiro.” Eric tented his fingers on the desk. “We saw him at a human technology event recently but had only the usual superficial social conversation.”

  “How did he seem to you?” Michaela had her notepad out, writing without taking her gaze from Eric.

  Eric didn’t hesitate. “Calm on the outside, but I sensed he was tense.” He gave his mate a teasing look. “Humans are very difficult to understand sometimes.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Luckily, masquerada are as transparent as water.”

  “Sorry I’m late.” A slender man, composed of wiry muscle and weapons, stood in the door. “Michaela.” He spoke with military precision but it was clear that he liked her.

  “Tom, this is Cormac Redoak. Cormac, Tom.” Cormac saw that like Stephan, Tom was a man to be reckoned with. His sharp eyes took in Cormac with a glance and slid back to Michaela, who had turned serious as she glanced down at the desk. “Good God, Eric, what are those?”

  What had been hidden from Cormac’s seated perspective was visible when he stood. It took him a moment to understand, but then he saw it.

  Images of human remains, rotted and horrifying.

  “Good question,” Eric said, moving aside a paper so they could see clearly. “We’ve found bodies in some of Iverson’s hidden cell locations. They all have strange punctures, some in the back of the neck near the head and sometimes on the arms.”

  “Torture?” Michaela picked up one of the photos and squinted at it.

  “No evidence,” Tom said. “Nothing on tox scans either. We’re still investigating.”

  She put her hands on her hips and stared Eric down. “I haven’t heard of this. You know you’re supposed to report this kind of thing to your council, sire.”

  “A lot of things seem to miss getting reported,” he said smoothly. “For instance, Hiro.”

  “I told you about Hiro.”

  “When did he die?”

  Michaela thinned her lips. “You know that we triage what you need to know.”

  “Is that the ‘we’ of my council? If I asked them, would they be familiar with Hiro’s death?”

  “It’s a security issue.” She cocked her head to the side. “So of course not everyone will know.”

  “Then it will be no surprise to you that I make sure my advisory council doesn’t get overwhelmed.” Eric grinned and a smile twitched the corners of Michaela’s lips. An old game between old friends.

  Eric glanced at Cormac. “Ambassador, would you mind stepping out for a moment? I assure you it’s only masquerada business.”

  “Sorry, no.” Cormac kept his tone pleasant.

  Tom stepped forward, his body relaxed but alert.

  “He’s right.” Michaela rubbed her temples. “There may be fey involvement as well, and we have an agreement that we stay together to keep it all transparent.”

  Eric’s and Caro’s eyebrows both shot up, giving them matching looks of astonishment. “Can he be trusted?” demanded Tom.

  Michaela turned to Cormac with a thin smile. “Can you?”

  “I swear on my tree,” he said promptly.

  Her chin jerked up, her eyes wide. “On your tree?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eric whisper to Caro, no doubt explaining that this was the fey equivalent of a blood vow. “For you. On my tree.”

  There was a charged moment between them. She dropped her eyes. “He can be trusted,” she said.

  “I can’t tell the council, Michaela, and neither can you.” Eric stood, then paced around the room. “Only you and Baptiste will know.”

  “Know what?” she asked.

  “These remains were found in Iverson’s combat cells. We’ve been finding similar atrocities since the defie with Iverson.”

  The reason dawned on Cormac. “You have divisions in your council. You don’t know who to trust.”

  The Hierarch laughed without humor. “The rumors are that bad?”

  “Not at all, but it’s a reasonable assumption.”

  Eric paused at a bookshelf and picked up a carving, a little songbird in wood. “Reasonable and accurate.”

  “I know who to trust,” Michaela said. “The problem is I don’t trust who they trust.”

  “Which is why I want to investigate from here. I don’t like it. We don’t know what they were doing to these humans, but it can’t be good.”

  “Evil,” put in Caro quietly. “I went to one of the sites. It was wrong in a way I can’t understand.”

  Michaela caught Cormac’s eye and glanced down at one of the photos. The woman in the photo was well-preserved, perhaps dead only a day or two. On her arms were two large punctures, in precisely the same spots as where Hiro had been skinned.

  A connection.

&
nbsp; Michaela shuffled through the rest of the photos and Cormac saw that the stomach-turning level of decomposition had erased any similar clues on the other bodies.

  “Tell me if you need help.” She put the photos back down.

  “It gets worse.” Eric paused and faced Cormac. “On your tree?”

  Cormac spoke the formal vow in his native tongue, then translated: “I swear my truth to you. Let the breaking of my word be as the breaking of my tree in a storm.”

  “We heard an Ancient is back.”

  Michaela and Cormac shared an incredulous look. Cormac found his voice first. “Sorry. What did you say?”

  “An Ancient is back. One of the original masquerada.”

  Michaela sucked in her breath. “Yangzei?”

  Eric put the bird back down. “We think so. You can see, if that’s true...” He turned around. “Well. We have a problem.”

  “Especially because one of ours would have had to find him. He wouldn’t have come for any other than a masquerada.”

  “He’s bad?” Cormac asked. He’d never heard of Yangzei.

  They all laughed and Stephan was the one who took pity on him. “Yeah, fey. He’s bad. Real bad.”

  “He’s also supposed to be dead,” Michaela said.

  Eric snorted. “Do you think a small thing like death would stop Yangzei if he wanted to cause trouble?”

  “No.” She sighed. “Shit.”

  The silence in the room seems to say she’s summed it up well, thought Cormac.

  Great.

  Chapter 11

  Michaela didn’t even wait until they reached the car to speak. They finally had a clue. “The arms of the woman in the photo.”

  “Same location as on Hiro, but it doesn’t help until we know why those humans were killed.”

  “Or why they were there in the first place.” She opened the car and slid in. “What was Hiro up to? He didn’t even like masquerada.”

  “At least we know whoever killed Hiro is also involved in what Eric showed us.”

  She shook her head morosely. “Unless Hiro was already dead when they came in.” Michaela pulled out into traffic. Although it didn’t answer why Hiro was in her office, the marks on his arms provided a connection as to why he might have been killed. It was a selfish relief to know she might have been wrong about being the target. “We need to know more about Hiro.”

  “Agreed.”

  Michaela looked at him out of the corner of her eye. This was a side of Cormac she hadn’t seen before, serious and resolute. She’d heard that he’d been a military leader back in the Queendom, but assumed it was rumor. Perhaps it wasn’t. This was a man she could picture in command.

  It was attractive. Extremely attractive.

  Since she didn’t want to linger on this and also had zero desire to talk about Yangzei and to air masquerada dirty laundry, she asked, “What did you think of Caro?”

  “I liked her.” He said it casually. “Do they know you’re Pharos?”

  Michaela grinned, thinking of the little traps Eric had laid for her over the years. It was a game they both enjoyed and he had never won. “He suspects, and likes to try to catch me out.”

  “What about the security man and the deputy? Tom. Stephan.”

  Was there a pause before Stephan’s name? Surely he couldn’t dislike Stephan. Tom, she could see—Eric’s chief of security wasn’t the friendliest man in the world and his default mode was distrust. People liked Stephan.

  “Incredible men. Eric’s lucky to have them. Stephan in particular is smart, charming, and extraordinarily effective.”

  “Have you known him long?”

  “Perhaps a century or so,” she said, thinking back. “He and Eric were already a team to be reckoned with when I came to Canada in the 1800s.”

  “You came from China?”

  With a shock, she realized how rare it was to speak about her past. The people she knew were either human, and to them she was a data analyst from San Diego, or had known her background for decades. “Guangdong before I moved to Malaysia. Melaka.”

  Cormac nodded. “I’ve been there. Gorgeous city.”

  “When?” she demanded. “Why?”

  “To see a tree.”

  He has to be kidding, she thought suspiciously. “A tree? Is that what fey do in their time off?”

  “This one does.” He twisted to face her. “It was a very special tree. I was curious about it.”

  “A tree?”

  “Why do you sound so surprised? A fey would go to the end of the earth to see a special tree.”

  “Why? What can a tree tell you?” Cormac had a golden ring in his ear, she noticed, high up and tucked so tight to the skin that it was hard to see until the sun hit it. She restrained an urge to touch it.

  “For a fey, a tree is more real than many of the people they met. Trees have personality, hopes and desires.” His voice deepened. “Anger and rage.”

  “I never thought of it like that.” To her, trees were, well, trees. She looked at the line of maples along the road, wondering what they were thinking.

  “Imagine a living being who never moved from a single spot, for hundreds of years. A tree can tell me about the changes in the earth from its roots, and in the air from its leaves. It bears witness to the world.”

  She nodded and considered this. Arcana also lived for centuries, but to see the changes from only one spot would be an intriguing perspective. “This tree was special?”

  “Yes.” Then he turned away. “Tell me about Yangzei.”

  Damn. Well, she knew he would ask. “I don’t even know where to start,” she admitted.

  “He’s a negative force?”

  “Very negative.” Yangzei was the dark monster behind all their fears—what they could become. There were myths about the Ancients, primeval beings who were part of the ancestral rootstock of all arcana. They hadn’t been heard of in so long that many arcana had decided they were simply stories. Not all Ancients were out-and-out evil. They were simply vampires, masquerada, and the rest in all their complexity, and much, much more powerful. The stories said current arcana were a faded shadow of what earlier ones were capable of.

  Before they went insane and started to kill each other.

  “I haven’t heard of him before.”

  “We don’t trumpet it to other groups.”

  “Like a black sheep?”

  “Like a very strong, mean, and selfish black sheep who is happy to kill.”

  Cormac pulled out his phone and looked up a moment later. “His name means Eye Thief.”

  She pulled into the garage and stopped the car. “That’s a literal translation. He doesn’t steal eyes.”

  “Good news.”

  “Not really. He apparently stole souls. Or personalities. He’s masquerada, after all.” She got out of the car.

  Cormac slid out and caught up to her. “Wait, what? You don’t steal souls.”

  “According to one of the stories, masquerada used to steal a little of a person’s life force whenever they took on their masque. It’s not true, obviously.” There was enough fear and trepidation about the masquerada that when you added soul-stealing to the mix, it made for a potentially explosive situation.

  He caught her arm before they reached the door. “You said that a little too fast, Councilor Chui.”

  “We don’t steal souls.”

  “Don’t steal souls, or don’t steal souls now?” His hand slid up her arm.

  “We take on masques, Ambassador Redoak.” No need to go into the debates she’d had with Stephan about whether or not it was true. Cormac didn’t need to know that. He was an outsider, after all, and she owed him no answers.

  “Still not an answer.” He pulled her a little closer and she shrugged him off. She was starting to like it when he touched
her. That was something she didn’t like at all.

  “This is not the time and has nothing to do with Hiro.”

  He smiled, a wicked glint in his eyes as he bent over her. “Then later. At your place.”

  There was no answer to give, so she gave none. Instead she held her wrist up and looked at her watch. “Time for lunch.”

  “At an intimate little bistro?”

  “If by intimate bistro you mean at work. My team won’t have eaten.”

  “With wine?” he asked hopefully.

  “Tea. Lots of tea.”

  He groaned but followed her outside.

  * * * *

  Once out on the street, they automatically moved to topics that were safe for humans to overhear. Movies, the weather. Of necessity, it mimicked the boring small chat of acquaintances.

  Cormac didn’t care. Here in the sunlight, Michaela’s skin was a creamy pearl tinted a perfect faint rose and extraordinary against the blue-black of her hair. The gazes of human men and women lingered on her as they passed.

  Michaela seemed utterly oblivious to the attention, but Cormac made a point of looking each of the humans in the eye.

  His threat was no less serious for being silent. Don’t even think of it.

  They got it.

  They turned into a bento place and cleared out most of the trays. Michaela muttered under her breath as she matched her team with likes and dislikes. “Anjali likes the sashimi. No rice. Dev will want glass noodles. Get him a diet Coke. Says the real stuff is too sweet.”

  In seconds, Cormac’s arms were piled high. She grabbed him a seaweed salad and a few avocado rolls without even asking. Fey were vegetarian, and he was impressed she remembered.

  Back at Pharos headquarters, Michaela laid out the food and called in her team. “Working lunch,” she declared. “What do you have?”

  Anjali cracked her wooden chopsticks open enthusiastically. “Not much, ma’am. We confirmed there were no strangers in the building.”