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“So this was for old time’s sake? You’re helping the CEB out of nostalgia?”
Levi smirked. “No.”
“Then, as I said before, what the hell?”
“I did it for your mother.”
Derrick looked stunned and after a moment Levi explained.
“Janice King is my cousin. Which makes your impetuous hide my second cousin.”
“You’re helping me because I’m family?”
“Nothing’s thicker than blood, boy,” Levi said with a glint of warning in his eye. “What happened to Janice was tragic and I have long suspected foul play involved, but I have been unable to prove it.”
“So you’re here conducting an investigation of your own?”
“No, I’m retired from the CEB. I was only hired to record the grand wedding and tell stories. The Maker seemed to have other ideas, though.” Levi nodded to me. “I tried to warn Miss Grayson away. Allegany has a history of losing warlocks and I sensed she was in danger. As proven tonight.”
“You’re also a warlock,” I pointed out.
Levi flashed a toothy smile, his sallow face lighting for a moment. “Yes, but I haven’t earned the ire of clan Leslie. That’s offered me protection.”
“And even retired, the CEB watches its own,” Derrick said.
I thought of Cade still racing through the forest, trying to lead the pack away from us. But we were safe now and he wouldn’t know to seek safety for himself. I prayed he had some sort of plan in place. Worry churned through me and after a moment I realized my head was swimming. But after voicing these concerns, Derrick told me there was nothing to be done. We had to sit tight and wait out the pack.
Frowning, I made to argue further, but Derrick and Levi were talking again, and exhaustion pulled at every fiber of my being. Without meaning to, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.
Chapter Nineteen
I woke to the sound of Derrick’s voice. He was speaking in low tones and when I managed to get my grainy eyes open, I found him facing the opposite wall where an ornate oval mirror hung. It had a twisting brass frame with a cherub face at the top, its cheeks puffed out in a hard blow so that the rest of the frame swirled and whorled like wind to complete its circle. The center of the mirror did not reflect like glass, instead there was a black void with a single face poised center that was most certainly not Derrick King.
Still groggy, I blinked a few times, but the scene did not change.
The face in the mirror was that of a woman with sharp cheekbones slanting in dramatic fashion so that her too-large eyes lifted at the corners. Her nose came to a needle-fine point above an unsmiling, full mouth, and her ears flared back like wings with not one elven peak, but three. Opaline piercings dotted her ears, connected by thin silver chains, making them look like dragon wings, and her skin was beautiful and smooth, the color of polished bronze.
I stared at the mirror, my heart leaping. I had never met a dracken.
The offspring of a dragon and a sidhe were rare to the point of myth. They stayed out of Earthside because they found glamor magic offensive, and humans could not fail to notice them in their true forms, or so Nana Bess said. I almost would have said they didn’t exist except that I was staring at one now. Legend said that it was the dragons and sidhe who formed Fairy after humankind began hunting Bright creatures for their magic. The sidhe were Fae nobility, pureblooded magic creatures, and the one known as Yellene was the most powerful of their kind.
When Yellene and the dragon Gregorn combined their magic to create a haven for all Bright creatures, the ritual was so powerful it cracked the earth. In the cataclysm of magic, Yellene was thrust into Fairy, forever torn from Gregorn, who remained Earthside and mundane, incapable of making the crossing to see her.
Their children were the first dracken.
“You will be the first to know when Constable Cade checks in,” the woman in the mirror was saying to Derrick.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.”
“You say the warlock went missing early in the morning?”
Derrick’s shoulders straightened and he nodded. “Before nine in the morning. Meredith informed me she was meeting with Delilah and Brock for their first counseling session, but I spotted the two leaving in a carriage several minutes before. I couldn’t see inside the carriage, but I suspected the warlock was not with them when they departed.”
“Why did you suspect that?”
I frowned. Did he have to call me the warlock instead of by name?
“It was a gut feeling,” Derrick said.
