Jade by Rose Montague Read Free Book Online Page A

not taken the implied vamp insult well and just didn’t anticipate the possible consequences.” Some of everything, basically,” I said. “Vamp, fae, Witch, Shifter and who knows what else. I am really sorry.”
    “Well,” Sarah said, “I apologize for what I said as well. Guess I can’t blame you, but you could have just told me.”
    Chris thought the whole thing was amusing. “We will find a drive thru,” he said.
    I didn’t say anything about my special dietary needs, I had caused enough trouble already. At that point both Chris and Rolfe got a call on their cell phones, a discordant harmony of ring tones.
    While they talked, Sarah asked, “I am still curious, Smith, even if I didn’t say it the right way.”
    “My vamp side finds him very interesting,” I answered, glancing at Rolfe out of the corner of my eye. He was ignoring me, although I was certain he had heard what I said.
    “Looks like food is on hold, for now,” he said. “If we want to see Kaosium we need to go now. He’s got some event in Faerie he has to attend in an hour.”
    Chris had finished his call as well and they both filled us in on the news. “Another crime scene,” Chris said. “A family of five sitting down for dinner and vamps rushed in and grabbed four of them, leaving behind a ten-year-old boy.”
    “This sounds like the same pattern,” Sarah said. “Leave a witness behind to point out that vamps were involved.”
    “The people of the city are getting tired of it,” Rolfe added. “I got news that one of the youth gangs just broke into a vamp home an hour ago and dragged one of the more prominent and peaceful vamps out into the daylight. It took twenty minutes for her to turn to ash, screaming most of that time. A pretty good sized crowd watched and did nothing. Probably thirty or forty people witnessed this and only one called 911.”
    “I did talk to the agent in charge,” Chis said. “He is going to fly in one of our few fae field agents. She should be able to sense if any of these three vamps have been under a compulsion of some kind. If so, they are going to go along with our plan.”
    “We are about fifteen minutes away from Kaosium’s place,” Rolfe said, giving Chris the address.
    Kaosium had an office and apartment in the same building in the downtown district not too far from my place and the police station. His secretary, a pointy eared fae, showed us in to his office. He was an inner circle fae and had good connections on both sides of the divide. His primary business was trade between the human side and Faerie. There were two nice leather chairs in front of his desk, I took one and Sarah the other, the guys standing behind us. Rolfe was letting me take the lead on this one.
    I explained both the extent of the glamour I had seen the fae that had shot me and two other officers use, as well as what details I remembered of his shield that stopped Rolfe’s bullet.
    “Our main interest is what fae could have accomplished this,” I said as I finished my recall of those events.
    Kaosium was a typical fae of royal blood, perfect features, classic fae lines, slender and graceful. “Not I,” he said and for a fae of his bloodline it had to be the truth for a fae like that can obscure the truth but not tell a direct lie. “You are probably looking at not more than a dozen male fae from both Winter and Summer Courts that are strong enough to do that. None of them have I seen on this side of the divide recently.”
    Damn, I thought. We had hoped for a solid lead. Still, he had narrowed the field somewhat. “Any idea of who would have reason or motivation to do such a thing?” I asked.
    “It’s got to be either a politics and power thing or a favor or boon that was granted,” he replied. “There is plenty of motivation from both royal courts to recover some of the footholds that were in place on this side prior to the fae wars. I suggest going to Faerie to ask the Queens for an audience, I am heading over