By this point, it was almost two thirty, and the last of the lunch-rush customers were gone, with only a few stragglers still chowing down on their burgers, barbecue sandwiches, and side dishes. As soon as the last customer had eaten, paid up, and left, I flipped the sign on the front door over to Closed and taped up a piece of paper saying that we would reopen in an hour. Sophia and Catalina herded the waitstaff into the back so they could all take an extended break, leaving me alone out front with Jade and Silvio.
The vampire perched on his stool at the counter, his fingers tapping on his tablet, already trying to find out everything he could about Elissa Daniels. Jade sat in the booth, her shoulders slumped, staring out the storefront windows with a blank expression on her face, as though she wasn’t actually seeing anything on the street outside. I worked behind the counter, making a grilled cheese sandwich just like the ones I’d had for lunch. I also dished up a bowl of steaming chili, along with some chocolate chip cookies and a sweet iced tea, put everything on a tray, and took it over to Jade. After setting the tray on her side of the table, I slid into the booth across from her. Silvio pulled a chair up to my side of the booth, propped his tablet on the table, and hooked a small keyboard to it so he could type faster and take better, more detailed notes.
Jade stared at the food, then shook her head and pushed the tray away. “That looks and smells great, but I can’t eat anything right now. I’m sorry.”
I leaned forward and pushed the tray right back where it had been before. “Just have a few bites. You need to keep your strength up. How long has it been since you’ve eaten anything?”
“I don’t know. Maybe dinner last night? That’s how long Elissa has been missing.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Tell me everything.”
Jade drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. Her hand crept forward, and she picked up the spoon from the tray. She dug the utensil into the chili and started moving it from one side of the bowl to the other, not because she had any intention of eating it but just to have something to do with all her nervous worry and energy.
“Elissa and I are half sisters. Same mother, different fathers. Kelsey, our mother . . .” Her voice trailed off for a few seconds. “Well, let’s just say that she never won any Mother of the Year awards. She was a society broad who flitted from man to man, always looking to trade one guy in for a newer, richer model. She and my dad got divorced when I was five. She took him to the cleaner’s.”
“Where’s your dad now?”
“He lives in Arizona with some yoga instructor.” Jade scoffed. “She’s younger than I am.”
She stirred the chili again. “Anyway, after that, my mom moved from man to man, until she got pregnant with Elissa. Stephen, Elissa’s dad, actually married my mom. He was a great guy, and he deserved much better than my mother. I was thirteen when Elissa was born, and I loved her from the moment I saw her. Despite the age difference, the two of us were always close . . .”
She trailed off again and put down her spoon. She reached out, grabbed the glass, and took a sip of iced tea. Then she put the glass down and started sliding it back and forth on the tray, making the ice inside tinkle-tinkle together. After several seconds, Jade’s hand stilled, and her fingers curled around the glass.
“Stephen and my mom died in a boating accident when Elissa was ten, so I finished raising her. Luckily, Elissa took after her dad. She’s a great kid. Smart, polite, thoughtful, always wanting to help other people.” Jade’s face softened. “She’s everything to me. Surely you can understand that, Gin.”
I did understand that, far more than she realized. For years I’d thought that my younger sister, Detective Bria Coolidge, was gone forever, crushed to death in the falling rubble of our mansion the night Mab Monroe murdered our mother and our other sister. I’d used my Stone magic to collapse our house to try to save Bria, and I’d thought that I’d killed her in the process. That burden, grief, and guilt had weighed down my heart for years, until Bria came back to Ashland looking for me. So I knew exactly how Jade felt when she talked about how precious her sister was to her.
“What happened when Elissa went missing?” I asked. “Was she out on a job?”
Jade shook her head. “No, not exactly. Elissa went to meet one of her regular clients at a charity event in Northtown last night. She loves getting dressed up and going out and meeting people. It’s one of the reasons she works for me, and she says it’s good practice for her marketing degree.”
I nodded. “And the event?”
“Dinner, dancing, speeches, the usual. Nothing out of the ordinary and absolutely nothing dangerous.”
“So what happened?”
“The client came down with the flu, so he called and canceled at the last minute. Elissa was already at the dinner, though, so he told her to stay and have a good time and put everything on his tab. She texted me from the party to let me know what was going on. That was about seven o’clock last night.” Jade paused. “And that’s the last that I heard from her.”
Her fingers curled a little tighter around the glass still in her hand, and she started twisting it around and around on the tray. I could tell that something else was bothering her, so I kept quiet and let her work up to telling me what it was.
“Elissa asked if I wanted to come and have a drink. She even sent me a photo of her champagne glass, trying to convince me. But I had work to do, so I texted her back, told her to have a good time, and went right back to work.” Jade’s lips pressed together, and anguish pinched her face. “This . . . this is all my fault. If I’d just told her yes, if I’d just met her for one lousy drink, she would be here, she would be safe—” Her voice choked off, and she blinked back tears.
I shook my head. “Don’t—don’t go there. You can’t let yourself think like that. It’s not your fault, Jade.”
“Yes, it is,” she whispered. “Yes, it is.”
I knew exactly what she was feeling—the guilt, the shame, the sickening self-loathing. I also knew that nothing I said would change her mind, so I focused on the one thing that would help her right now: finding her sister.
“Tell me the rest of it. When did you first realize that Elissa was missing?”
“When I woke up this morning and she wasn’t home,” Jade said. “I called her, but she didn’t answer. That’s when I started to get worried. I kept calling and texting. I tried all of her friends, including her boyfriend, thinking that maybe she’d crashed with one of them. But no one’s seen or heard from her since last night. She’s finishing up her marketing degree at the community college, so I even went over there this morning, checking to see if she was in class and had just turned her phone off. But she wasn’t there. She never misses class—never.”
More anguish glinted in Jade’s eyes, as bright and sharp as shards of glass. “I can’t find her anywhere. She’s gone. She’s just—gone.” She blinked and blinked, but this time she couldn’t stop the tears from streaking down her face.