Page 5 of Anarchy
There wasn’t much we could do until Dorian’s flight landed, and I was stressing out because I still hadn’t heard from Bram. I sent him another text letting him know we were trying to round up Dorian and Reyson’s offer about their sun. He still hadn’t responded, and that worried me. The guys had thrown out several theories why, but I was guessing the one about him only using his phone to talk to Talvath, and he wasn’t checking now because we had never messaged before was the most accurate.
I was on librarian duty, and everyone else was on Dorian duty. We still didn’t have a plan to snatch him. Kaine was going to have a surveillance team watching him, and he always had an entourage. The only time he didn’t was when he came to my library. So we all knew when he came back here, it was going to be a fight.
I adored Balthazar. I loved his personality and when he poked at Felix. I loved when he gave me makeup tutorials. I would have wanted him here even if he wasn’t deathly effective with his laptop. He’d already hacked into the security cameras at Dorian’s condo, and he even managed to get into the hidden cameras he had all over his apartment.
I wassoglad that horrible fuck session was at my place because I didn’t have cameras hidden in my bedroom, like some creepy fuck bag. I only agreed to it for bragging rights and because I thought if he had been alive that fucking long, it was going to be an amazing fuck.
Now that I knew about the cameras in his bedroom, I knew he wouldn’t tell me they were in there before making a sex tape.
I regretted everything about that encounter even before I realized how depraved Dorian Gray was. Before Reyson, I thought he was annoying, a shit lay, and a thief. Man, I used to have shitty taste in men.
Reyson and Gabriel were glued to Balthazar’s laptop. I glanced at it, but there were two clans of vampires in the library on an ancestry kick that kept asking questions. I pulled all the books they needed and sent them on their way, but they kept coming to me to have things translated. Since I was thirteen, I knew I wanted to be the librarian here, so I took my language studies seriously because I thought it would look good on my resume. They didn’t require it for the job, but it came in handy quite often.
Right now, I wished some bitches would break out Google Translate, or we all might die.
“He has things in there he shouldn’t,” Gabriel said. “His walls are covered in art, and I’m certain that’s how he trapped Talvath. They are all reproductions, but excellent reproductions. Dorian has expensive tastes and a lot of money. So if he’s going to buy art, it’s going to be an original unless he was using it for something else.”
“Can you take screenshots and send them to Ravyn?” Felix asked. “Some of those items look like relics that should be with her at the museum.”
“That bastard,” I growled, moving my chair to look at the camera feed.
Ravyn and I had different jobs, but sometimes, we’d sit on the couch pigging out on delivery and talk about work. I knew about most of the objects in her museum and the stories of how they came to her. I also knew about things The Museum of the Profane desperately wanted but hadn’t been able to find yet.
“That looks suspiciously like Beatrix Halliwell’s lost pendulum that Ravyn has been desperate to find,” I growled. “He’s using it as a pull on his ceiling fan! It was said Beatrix used it in her meteoric rise to fame in the witching world. Her estate went to the museum way before Ravyn, and I were born, but the pendulum has always been missing.”
“It’s hard to see everything in the room, but it wouldn’t shock me if he had more magical relics hidden in plain sight,” Felix said. “He can’t even use them. They belong to the magical community. You’d better not tell Ravyn he’s got that pendulum until this is over.”
I definitely knew that. There was an entire wing of the museum dedicated to Beatrix Halliwell. She came from a poor witch family ages ago, so no one paid her any attention. They even overlooked her for scholarships at any magical university because she was too poor to travel for any in-person interviews, and cell phones didn’t exist back then.
That didn’t deter her. She did independent study with every witch or warlock she could find in her travels. Beatrix started making a name for herself as a problem solver. It was almost unheard of for a woman back then, but she got elected mayor. She did such a good job at that, she went for governor next. Her state thought she would make an amazing job representing them in the supernatural government, even if there were no other women there.
A few of the men didn’t like it at first, but they soon realized she had some damned good ideas. Salem used to be considered cursed. This is because there were so many spirits on the grounds, and they considered it dangerous to travel there. Still, it was a large portion of land that was quite beautiful, despite what happened there.
Some were greedy and wanted to parcel it off to sell for a profit. Others thought it would be great farming land and bring in revenue by taxing the farmers. Beatrix was the only one with a solution to make the land usable. Unfortunately, there was no way to do the rites after the massacre because few people were left alive who could recognize those that weren’t burnt.
Time had passed by the time the government was formed, and all that was left in those mass graves were bones. There was certainly no way to do them when Beatrix got elected. That land was never getting used unless the spirits could be placated and given purpose.
Beatrix suggested putting them to work at three magical buildings so the rest of the city could be used. She was the one that renamed it to Profane. Ravyn and I had atonof respect for Beatrix Halliwell because we spent four years at the university she championed, and now each of us was running one of the other buildings.
There were all these legends that she was so wise and made all these brilliant decisions because of her trusty pendulum that was given to her by her grandmother. Everyone knew that story. It was part of history class when they were teaching about her.
Ravyn loved giving tours in the Beatrix Halliwell section of the museum. She knew way more trivia about that witch than I did. The only part of that tour she absolutely loathed was when someone asked to see the pendulum. And they always did.
My sister took her relics seriously, even if they weren’t cursed. She’d been putting out feelers for that pendulum as soon as she got hired and found out it was missing. If Ravyn found out Dorian Gray was using it on his ceiling fan, she was going to march past Kaine’s men straight up to his front door, ring the bell, and punch him right in the face to get it.
Honestly, calling Ravyn didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“Don’t even think about it, Ripley,” Felix warned. “Itwouldbe fun, but it would mess so much shit up.”
Felix just got me. He was my familiar for a reason. He knew damned well we’d all get satisfaction over unleashing my twin sister on Dorian and letting her ransack his stupid apartment for things that should have been with her at the museum.
“We had the best fight instructor in the country at the academy. Ravyn takes boxing lessons to blow off steam since she’s sworn off men after Valentine. Although you have to admit, it would be beautiful to watch her break his nose as soon as he opens the door.”
“It would, but I doubt she’d get that far,” Gabriel said. “The building has a lot of security, and I doubt Dorian is the type of guy who can tell you apart, even though it’s quite easy once you’ve met you two. So she could be in danger if she goes there.”
“Well, we still don’t have a plan to grab him,” I sulked.
“There’s nowein this equation,” Reyson said. “If Balthazar can watch the cameras and make sure he’s in his apartment alone, I can just manifest myself there and grab the bastard.”
