A youthful, musical voice answered the phone. Elven.
All too aware of the keen gold gaze focused with relentless patience on her, Pia said, “I’m calling from a beach house on Folly Beach.” She rattled off the address. “Will you service this area?”
“Of course we will,” said the voice. “We know the address well.”
“We would like a dozen porterhouse steaks,” she said. She looked at her captor. “Dragos, do you want them raw or cooked?”
“Just seared,” he said.
The person on the other end of the connection drew in a swift breath. “We will be with you soon as we can,” he said. “It may take a little while. Delivery in about an hour.”
“Soon as you can will be fine,” she said.
She deleted the number from the cell phone’s memory, clicked the off button and placed it on the counter. She didn’t think Dragos had looked away once since they had entered the beach house. It was just one more thing to add to a growing list of things that felt unreal.
Then she stood, staring at her hands. An hour, she thought. God, it felt like forever. Her shoulders sagged. She didn’t think she had any more adrenaline left to pump into her system. “They’ll be here soon. Now what?”
He pushed himself away from the wall. “Now,” Dragos said, “you tell me why you stole from me. And how. Most especially we will discuss how.”
FIVE
Pia kept her gaze down. She touched one abraded palm with a finger. “My ex-boyfriend blackmailed me into doing it.”
“Keith Hollins,” he said.
Startled, her head jerked up. “You know who he is?”
His black eyebrows rose. “I know a lot of things.”
His sentinels had worked fast that morning before he left New York. While the witch had cast the tracking spell for him, Aryal and several others had run a background check on Pia Giovanni. They winnowed through other possibilities until they found the right one. A team had been dispatched to search her apartment and follow any leads they found. Soon after the spell was in place and he had collected preliminary information, Dragos had taken flight, arrowing south for his prey.
“Your boyfriend is dead,” he told her.
Just like that, she had had too much. Her vision grayed and the world tilted.
Dragos leaped forward, hard arms snaking around her before she could collapse. He eased her onto a bar stool and pushed her head down. Her ponytail was a mess, he noted with disapproval as it spilled toward the floor. He kept one hand at the back of her neck. With the other, he worked the puffy elastic thing out of her hair until it fell free, if still somewhat tangled. He slipped the puffy thing into his pocket.
She asked, muffled, “Did you kill him?”
“No. Nor did my people.” The skin at the back of her neck was chilled. He felt the shiver ripple through her. “They found him earlier today. Bad death.”
“Damn that poor idiot. I tried to warn him.” She covered her face with her hands.
Jealousy spiked. His lip lifted in a silent snarl. She was his thief, nobody else’s. “You loved him.”
“No,” she said, wretchedness in her voice. “Yes. I don’t know. I thought I did once, but he wasn’t who I thought he was. After I broke things off with him, the bastard blackmailed me. I knew he was going to get himself killed. I even tried to warn him but he wouldn’t listen to me. He got what he deserved, but it’s still hard to hear about someone I used to care about.” She clenched her fists. “Let me up. I’m not going to faint.”
He released the pressure he had been putting on her neck. She sat upright in the bar stool. She looked composed but her skin was ashen. There were goose bumps along her bare arms and shoulders.
“You are too cold,” he said. “That means shock, I think. We will change that.” He noted the bottle of scotch on the counter by the sink. He retrieved the bottle along with a coffee mug from the cupboard. He poured a drink and shoved it into her hands. “Drink that while I find a blanket.”
She looked at him askance as her fingers curled around the mug.
“Yes, I know,” he said, impatient. “I am going to rend you from limb to limb. Someday. When I feel like it. In the meantime, you will not faint, you will get warm and you will stop being distressed.” His nostrils pinched. “I don’t like how it smells.”
Her pretty mouth fell open. “You don’t . . . like . . .” A hysterical giggle bubbled out and turned to outright laughter. She listed on the bar stool, the coffee mug tilting.
He covered her hands with one of his own, steadying the mug, and pressed a finger against her lips. “Stop that.”
“Sure.” She hooted. “Whatever you say.”
He wasn’t by any stretch of imagination an expert on emotions, let alone female emotions. Scowling, he tapped her lips.
“I’ll just, I don’t know, be happy until you decide to start rending.” She hiccupped. “How will that do, Your Majesty?”