Deep Dark Secret (Secret McQueen #3) 3

Gregory sat forward, his forearms braced on his knees. His eyes shone like flat mirrors, the way a house cat’s would in the dark. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“A king desperate enough to find a queen that he’ll resort to kidnapping.”

He pinched his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and took a deep drag before settling back into the cushions of the couch. “I’m not desperate. She’s a fool. I could protect her people, what few there are left, and all she’d have to do is open her legs and give me an heir.”

“Was that your pitch? Because as proposals go, it could use some work.”

He snarled at me, and the sound was more cat than human. “What do you know about pack structures, girl?”

“More than I care to. Which is why I can tell you this. I am pack protector and king’s consort to the Eastern wolf pack,” I said. Gregory’s eyes widened, and the cigarette slipped from his fingers, singeing his black dress pants before he could swat it away. “So when I say I can rain a hellfire like no other on you and your little pack if you’ve done something to Lucy Renard, you know I’m not talking out my ass.”

“I-I didn’t know,” he stammered.

“Now you do. So I’ll ask you again. Where is Lucy?”

He jerked his head from side to side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Tell me the truth.” My hand grasped the handle of my katana, and Gregory clambered to his feet.

“I swear to God, I have nothing to do with it.”

Narrowing my eyes at him, I gave him a withering glare, and after a tense pause I released the weapon. “If I find out you’ve lied to me, Gregory…” I let the threat hang open-ended, and he nodded his understanding.

Sometimes the best threats are only heard in the imaginations of terrified men.

Chapter Six

I still had a few hours to kill before my dinner with Lucas, but I wanted to see Calliope before I met the werewolf king. In spite of the rush I’d gotten from besting Gregory without ever having to draw a weapon, I was still feeling queasy about what had happened the previous night. Surely the Oracle would be able to shed some light on the creepy development that had me craving snacks with a pulse. Or, at the very least, she’d be able to give me some bagged blood so I didn’t risk running out at an inopportune moment.

But—pathetic as it was—I wasn’t quite ready to hear her verdict.

If I was becoming more of a vampire because I was now one of the Tribunal, I wasn’t sure how I would deal with that news. The extra power that came with the position was awesome, but what if it was at the cost of my already tenuous hold on humanity?

It wasn’t like I could do anything about it. Ascending to Tribunal leader was a one-way trip. Unless I let another vampire off me in a fight, I was going to be sitting on a throne for the rest of my days, no matter how badly it chafed my ass.

My visit to Caligula had brought up another uncomfortable question I wanted an answer to. The two white-haired fae had said there was something wrong with my sword. I figured they were crazy, but at the same time I wanted to know for sure. Instead of going to Calliope’s, I found myself standing in front of a familiar storefront in Koreatown.

A plush Hello Kitty toy winked at me from the store window.

“Well, what do you know?” I gaped at the squat building, which glowed faintly red in the gaudy lights from the restaurant across the street.

It had been years since my first and only visit inside, but nothing had changed in all that time. This was the very place I’d bought the sword I now carried. A strange tingling sensation fanned down my back and urged me forward.

Fueled by a curiosity that almost burned me from the inside, I pushed the door open, and the bell jingled a familiar greeting. The store was thick with the smell of incense, but underneath it was a stench I remembered like the clinging remnants of a bad dream.

“Hello?” I called out.

Heavy footfalls thumped from the back of the store, and once again the feeling of an invisible hand pushed me farther into the store. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the sword itself was ushering me forward.

When the short, round Korean man stepped through the curtains at the back of the room, he blinked his oil-black eyes at me a few times, then his lips parted in a beaming, mostly toothless grin.

The smell of decay was more potent now that he was in the same room as me. I hadn’t gotten confirmation the last time we met, but based on the smell and his strong silent demeanor, I was betting he was an ogre.

“Do you remember me?” I asked, inching forward until I was standing across from him with a glass case filled with weapons between us.

He nodded and pointed excitedly to the sword slung over my shoulders. I could no longer ignore that the simmering tingle on my spine was definitely originating from the blade itself. Though I’d refused to let any of the fae at the club take my sword, I didn’t feel the need to deny his request. The sword had once been his, after all. I slipped the sheath over my head and placed it in his open palms.

As soon as the sword was out of my hands the tingling stopped, as if an electric current had been running through me and the moment I let go of the wire, I stopped being shocked.

Weird didn’t even start to cover it.

His toothless grin widened, and he bobbed his head excitedly. “You bonded,” he said. His voice was soft and in glaring opposition to what I imagined an ogre should sound like.

“Excuse me?”

“You. The sword. You have spilled much blood with it.” Up and down went his head like a robin digging for worms after rain. “It sings your name now.”

“What?” I wished someone was hearing this with me. Maybe it would make more sense to them.

“You brought it back to life.”

“It’s a sword.”

He shook his head. “So much more.” He caressed the weapon with time-worn hands, the skin tissue-paper thin but his fingers still deft and strong. “So much more.”

I reached out for the blade, but when I touched it the whole katana crackled with energy. The ogre dropped it on the glass counter, and we both took a step back. His eyes were wide as he looked from the weapon to me. My own fingers were trembling from the shock.

“What was that?”

The ogre narrowed his black eyes at me. “Has the blood of the dead touched the blade?”

“Uh, yeah. Vampire assassin.” I pointed at myself.

“You have tainted fae metal with the blood of the dead?”

“Well the sword didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual.”

“Foolish girl.”

I grabbed the sword, but with only me touching it there was no reaction this time. “What happens to it now that it’s touched undead blood?” Hugging the weapon to my chest, I watched his reaction and didn’t like the darkness that bloomed across his features. “Is it bad?” Judging by how the two fae at the bar had reacted, and the look the ogre was giving me now, I was willing to bed bad didn’t start to cover it.

“You have taken something light and fed it with darkness.”

“And?”

“Very unpredictable.”

“Dangerous unpredictable?”

The ogre took a step back from the counter and turned away. “Always danger in darkness, girl.”

Between the white-haired fae at the club, and the ogre’s dark pronouncement, I didn’t exactly feel like hauling the katana around the city with me for the rest of the night. If the fae of New York were all up in arms over my favorite weapon, it was probably for the best I just let the sword sit this one out.

After dropping the sword at home, I still wasn’t ready to face Calliope. The excitement of the evening was thrumming through me, and I needed to clear my head before I let the Oracle bombard me with any dark visions she might have had of my future with the vampires.

I found myself well out of my way for the second time that evening, wandering into Central Park, which was a favorite place for me to clear my mind. If I happened to stumble across a wayward creepy-crawly while I was here, well…Sig couldn’t really get mad at me if trouble found me, could he? I wasn’t exactly going looking for it if I was just taking a nighttime stroll. Holden thought I was spending the evening working with Keaty, so I was free to wander without my vampire shadow. Truthfully, my former warden was a little slack on his bodyguard duties. He knew I could take care of myself.

It was only nine o’clock, but the park was empty and deathly still in the frigid February air. We’d finally gotten snow on Christmas Day, and now a crystalline fog of ice clung to everything that held still too long. The towering giant of the Museum of Natural History looked like it had been dusted with sugar, glittering benignly in the light of the half moon.

The sound of shattering glass, however, was not part of the winter ambiance I’d set out to find.

I stopped walking and looked around. Considering I’d just been thinking about trouble finding me, it felt like Sig might pop out at any second and shout A-ha! I knew you were up to no good. It was hard not to feel like this was some kind of test.

There was more glass breaking, but no alarms sounded. I didn’t think that was possible in a museum as highly protected as the AMNH. Where were the guards? The alarm bells? I surveyed the back entrance of the museum like an invitation I was afraid to accept.

If the entire night staff of a museum were murdered by monsters, it probably wouldn’t bode too well for the reputation of paranormal creatures everywhere. Really, I was doing the council a giant favor by preemptively putting a stopper on what might be a huge scandal.

At least that was what I told myself as I traipsed down the steps to the recessed doors most commonly used for school field trips and tour groups. I pressed my face to the glass, my breath fogging up the space closest to my mouth. Inside, the giant Native American canoe loomed overhead, but the heavy wooden doors leading into the hall of the Pacific Coast Peoples were closed.

All the glass doors at this entrance were still locked, and none were shattered, so the breaking glass had either come from inside the museum—as I suspected—or overhead. Jogging back up the stairs, I surveyed the rows of windows on the upper floors of the museum.