The Thief (Black Dagger Brotherhood #16)(114)

“What—how…why are you here?”

Jane shrugged. “I fell in love with one. And he fell in love with me.” And then I died and his mother brought me back to life—it’s great to have demigods as in-laws. “I live here now.”

Sola put her hands to her face, as if she were trying to reassure herself that she hadn’t lost her mind. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t understand how…”

“It’s a hard transition, I’m not going to lie. It was hard on me. But I’m not the only human here—Manny’s one.”

“Dr. Manello?”

“Mmm-hmm. He’s my brother-in-law, actually. Mated to Vishous’s sister, Payne. Manny’s just as human as you and I. And then Rhage’s mate, Mary—”

“Rhage. The big blond man.”

“Male. They go by the word ‘male,’ not man.” Jane glanced at the closed door they were in front of. “Look, let me make sure your grandmother is stable. And then how would you like to go for a little stroll with me. We can just talk.” She put her hands up. “You can trust me. I took the Hippocratic oath—I am sworn to do no harm, okay?”

It was a long, long while before Sola answered. And when the woman did, it was with a short nod of the head.

“Stay right here.” Jane took her phone out of her white coat pocket. “I’m going to text Manny and tell him we’ll be back in a bit—assuming your grandmother is all right. Then I’m going to break protocol and try to tell you what’s going on down here.”





FIFTY-TWO


“No,” Phury was saying up in Wrath’s study, “I don’t know the book’s origins. I’ve spoken to Amalya and she told me she would look into it further. Now, what is clear is that…”

As Phury continued to talk about the missing tome, Vishous went to get a hand-rolled and cursed as he patted his muscle shirt. And then the heating came on and he caught a cold draft on his ass cheeks that turned him into a grower, not a shower. Just as he was eyeing the exit, and wondering if he maybe could go grab a throw rug from the hall and use it as a kilt, Butch sidled over and took off his fleece.

“Here, my man. Use this.”

“Thanks, true.”

The cop nodded and leaned back against the pale blue wall. “Welcome.”

V tied it around his waist, using the body to cover his cheeks, and the long sleeves to hang in front of his hey-nannies.

“So we find the book,” Wrath announced. Like that was going to be as easy as locating a can of franks and beans in a supermarket’s Shit-Through-a-Goose aisle. “If it tells you how to manifest these things, it probably has a way to get rid of them, right.”

Not a question. More as if the King had decided how this was going to go. And Vishous liked that in a leader. He just had a feeling they weren’t going to get lucky on this one.

Then again, he was the only asshole without pants on in the room, so…

“Last item,” Wrath announced. “Turns out there was a complication with that civilian who was killed last night.”

“Other than the fact that he woke the fuck up after he died and tried to eat Vishous?” someone piped in.

“Is that where your bottoms went—”

“Not the complication I’m talking about,” Wrath said sharply. “Saxton, how about you tell the group what’s doing.”

The King’s solicitor stepped out of the crowd. Saxton was dressed not in the garb of the sword, but that of the pen, the male’s trim figure sporting a tweed suit the color of the Highland moors, a cravat at his throat.

Given that everyone else, except for V, was in black leather and weapons, he was like a GQ model walking into an MMA fight.

“Thank you, my Lord.” Saxton bowed to the assembled, his blond head dropping low. “The civilian who died last evening was named Whinnig, son of Stanalas. He and his bloodlines, on both sides, are members of the glymera, his mahmen having passed at his birth, may she rest unto the Fade. Although the attack was clearly random, it has created a trusts-and-estates issue. Whinnig had been recently named the sole heir of Groshe, his mahmen’s brother. I was in the process of settling things, having run into conflict with Groshe’s second mate, Naasha.”

“The one who had the blood slave,” Wrath interjected. “Who died.”

Saxton cleared his throat. “The house, as you recall, was burned down that evening.”

As the solicitor quieted so that the others could fill in the blanks—namely that Assail and Zsadist had gone in there and not just lit the fire, but settled the score with that female for what she had done to Markcus, the poor kid—V wondered why the hell this mattered.

They were talking about the war here, not domestic issues among the upper classes.

“The estate is very sizable,” Saxton continued. “And again, Groshe had provided for Whinnig in favor of his mate, Naasha. She had been prepared to contest the will given her long association with the deceased.”

V cracked his neck and decided if the damn attorney didn’t get to the point, he was going to have to sneak out for a cig. And pants.

“She was aided in this endeavor by her paramour at the time, Throe.” Muttered curses paused the solicitor. “Her own death, however, superseded these ambitions—”