Page 39 of Nightmares and Numerology

And then I ran.

I ran because I couldn’t let him near Poppy.

I ran because protecting her from this guy was going to be nearly impossible without backup.

And thirdly, I ran because he scared me.

I didn’t make it far.

A moment later, a hand seized me roughly by the wrist, dragging me into the nearest ladies’ room. The door handle made a protesting shriek as he twisted the metal into an almost unrecognizable shape, trapping me inside with him.

“Ah,” Vin purred, his voice hitting my libido like an erotic slap. “Alone at last.”

Chapter Seventeen

Angelo

“Why did you bring in the mundane?” I muttered under my breath. “Are you trying to make this more difficult than it already is?”

Taliyah didn’t say anything, but her displeasure with my tone was clear. Frost began to spread across the desk, crackling into existence seemingly without cause. To her deputies outside, it would look like a magic trick. And it was, in a way. Taliyah Morgan was the queen regent of the Winter Court, and she could be downright scary when she unleashed her faerie powers. Thankfully, she had better control than that. I could see her toying with the idea of locking me in icy manacles or gagging me with snowballs.

“Erm... boss?” the mundane asked, watching in alarm as the ice spread rapidly across the desk. At least he wasn’t screaming and shouting, “Burn the witch!” That was better than most of them could manage, even on a good day.

Taliyah glanced at her fingers, swore viciously, and yanked her palms away from the wood grain of her desk. The frost almost immediately evaporated, leaving the desk chilly but otherwise unharmed.

“Sorry, Roland,” she said, offering the mundane police officer a weary smile. “I’m usually better than this. Priss has been keeping me up. She’s breaking curfew left and right. Scares me to death.”

Priss. I’d heard about her from Fifi. Apparently, it was short for Apricity, Queen Olwen’s illegitimate older sister. By all rights, the crown should never have been hers, but Taliyah’s unwillingness to take up the mantle meant alternate plans had to be made. Through legislation and harsh measures, Taliyah had laid down her laws to ensure no one like Janara could everperform a violent overthrow again. So far, there hadn’t been much dissent. The faeries I’d heard from (though there were admittedly few who lived nearby) seemed to approve of the move. Taliyah hadn’t been born and raised among them. She was the faerie with the mind of a mundane, and the consensus was that she wasn’t fit to rule for at least a lifetime, which suited Taliyah just fine. Molding her teenage-presenting half-sister into a leader was much better over the long term.

Roland pulled a sympathetic face. “I get it. My oldest keeps sneaking off to see boys. It’s annoying, but we can’t stop them from living their lives.”

“I can,” Taliyah said darkly. “I can form a wall of ice so thick she won’t be able to chisel her way out of her bedroom.”

“I think that’s unlawful imprisonment, Chief,” Roland said, though the grin on his face softened the words. He was a bland man in his forties or fifties with thinning hair and round cheeks.

And peering closer, he was also the source of sexual frustration in the room. I’d caught him looking at me more than once. It wasn’t overt, but I knew when I was being checked out. It was an incubus thing, which meant someone wasn’t out of the closet yet. Ah, lovely. A repressed bisexual cop.

Roland’s cheeks flushed an interesting shade of pink when I caught him looking at me. He dutifully looked elsewhere in the room, pretending not to notice. But he had noticed. In fact, his interest was almost painful. He needed to find a man, and soon. Maybe I’d send him Ty’s way. Ty was one of the few completely gay incubi I’d ever met. He’d rock Roland’s world if the man was interested in experimenting.

“While I’m sure your day-to-day lives are fascinating,” I said, speaking louder for the human’s benefit, “it’s not really the point of the meeting, is it? You said you had something to show me. And I still want to know why he’s in the room with us. I thought mundanes were supposed to stay out of Council politics.”

“He’s not in politics,” Taliyah argued. “But he needs to be in the know. Astrid was right when she came to me, saying we needed more infrastructure. If we’re going to keep the secret in this age of technology, we need people outside our circles who can go to bat for us. I’m planning to get most of my deputies on board. Roland is the first to be in the know.”

I thought about telling her that she ought to inform him about the supernatural encounters he’d forgotten. Roland’s face would be quite a bit ruddier if he knew that I knew he’d been seduced by an incubus. Even if they hadn’t gone all the way, he’d been nearly naked by the time Taliyah intervened. I decided it wasn’t my problem—neither the mundane nor the secrets being kept from him. My purpose in coming here wasn’t to tell Taliyah Morgan how to run her department. I’d come for answers.

“Fine, can we just move this along? I want to get a good look at the bastard who hit me.”

Roland winced. He’d been the one to drag my whiskey-soaked ass to jail last time. “Sorry, I didn’t know you weren’t...”

“Drunk and hurt?” I finished. “Well, I was. Here’s a tip for living in a Hollow: Don’t attribute to alcohol what can be explained away by monsters.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Taliyah said, giving me an arch look. “It can and often is both. You wouldn’t believe the amount of drunk or high shapeshifters I’ve had to drag out of tight spots. Sometimes it’s a monster acting maliciously, sometimes it’s an accident, and sometimes it’s not even one of our people doing it.”

I waved at the computer screen. The grainy image hadn’t shifted since I entered the room. All I had to do was jab the start button, but they’d rather talk about teenagers and curfews. Honestly, it was a wonder anything got done in this Hollow without busybodies kicking our asses into gear.

“In this case, it was done maliciously,” I said. “I obviouslydidn’t bash myself over the head with a whiskey bottle or cut open my own stomach. I’d like to see what I’m dealing with, if you don’t mind.”

Taliyah leaned forward with a sigh and pressed the keys more gently than I would have. The still image blurred into motion. At first, I could only make out the parking lot. Not every car was visible, but I made it a point to park far away from Fifi most days. There was a spot close enough to a streetlight to be seen in the dark, but not so bright that I couldn’t use shadows to conceal what I was up to. It was helpful when you were with a woman in the backseat and didn’t want anyone to see. In this case, it just made locating the attacker harder.

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