The Twiceborn Queen (The Proving Book 2) (33 page)

“Sure smells like it.”

I tried to sit up, but I wasn’t strong enough yet. I’d stopped leaking blood, but my chest still felt like I’d been kicked by a Clydesdale. He helped me to a sitting position. Well, half sitting, half leaning on him. I felt a hundred years old, my body shaking with the effort of healing that vicious stab wound.

“Then it’s good to … be an abomination. Bane leaf’s not fatal any more.”

Maybe sitting hadn’t been such a good idea. My stomach started to churn in an ominous way.

“What does bane leaf do to humans?” he asked.

“Makes them … throw up.”

And then I leaned over the side of the bed and demonstrated.

How had I not seen it? Like they say, if something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Kasumi had seemed like an answer to my prayers, so I’d refused to see the truth, in spite of all Garth’s efforts. She’d even told me she wanted revenge for her sister’s death.

And I had killed her. I had no one to blame but myself.

It had taken me a good half hour to stop throwing up. I still felt nauseous, but I couldn’t tell if that was the after-effects of the poisoning or nerves. My insides were a roiling mass of barely controlled panic. Kasumi had my son.

Kasumi had my
son
.

She could be doing anything to him right now, while I hunched in a chair in the comms room reviewing video footage. He could be dead already.

No, I mustn’t think like that. It would paralyse me, and I had to stay strong. Surely if she meant to kill him she would have done it on the spot. Why take him if she only meant to kill him? There must be some other plan.

I’d questioned that fool Bear. My compulsion still held and he was only too happy to answer, but he knew nothing. No, he’d never heard of a kitsune being involved with Elizabeth’s secret daughters. No, he’d never seen her before. Gideon Thorne might know more, but he wasn’t privy to everything that Thorne knew. Bear had spent most of the past twenty years supervising the upbringing of my seven unwanted sisters, and had only recently arrived at court, which explained why I had never seen him before today.

So. If I couldn’t find Kasumi, I would hunt down Thorne. The minute I’d been able to string two words together again without vomiting in between, I’d ordered Garth to call in Trevor and the pack. For a hunt I needed hunters.

Luce and Mac came in, Mac sporting newly pink hair. While Kasumi had been parading around impersonating her, she’d been in her bathroom with her head stuck under the tap.

“You even told me you were going to dye your hair,” I said now. “Why didn’t I realise something was wrong the minute she walked in with brown hair?”

“You weren’t to know I was going to do it straight away,” she said. “You had no reason to be suspicious.”

I shook my head. Kasumi had proved over and over what a consummate actress she was, but I should have known, shouldn’t I? It was a mother’s job to protect her child. Where were my motherly instincts when I needed them?

“Did you find the car?” I asked Luce.

Luce had contacts in the police force. She’d passed on the registration of the car Kasumi had left in. I’d watched the security tape of her exit three times already. The black sedan rolled down the drive, waited while the guard opened the gate, then turned right onto the street. Easy.

“Nothing yet.”

She didn’t say the chances of them ever finding it were slim. She didn’t have to. Four and a half million people lived in Sydney; there were a lot of cars.

I didn’t care. I would try everything I could think of. I’d tear the city apart if I had to.

I hauled myself out of the chair, pain shooting from my chest right through my body. I may not have died, but that didn’t mean I felt great. Even a dragon takes a while to get over a knife to the chest.

I leaned on the back of Steve’s chair till the dizziness passed. “Keep looking.”

He nodded, not taking his eyes from the screen. Kasumi’s face whizzed past. In the foyer, in the kitchen, in the throne room. We were looking for anything out of the ordinary.

Clutching at straws.

Garth followed me out into the hallway. “You should lie down.”

“I can rest when I’m dead.” I sagged against the wall and shut my eyes. Bitterness overwhelmed me. “That shouldn’t be long. Seven other sisters. Can you believe that? Seven.”

Just when I’d thought I was home free. I’d beaten the odds! What a joke.

He leaned against the wall next to me. I opened my eyes to find him watching me, his usual scowl tempered with sympathy. He’d been right all along about Kasumi, but he hadn’t even said I told you so, which under the circumstances seemed like a superhuman restraint.

“You know what the stupid part is? I don’t even want the friggin throne. I just want to be left alone to live my life with Lachie.” And Ben. Just the three of us. “A normal life.”

He snorted. “Normal kind of went out the window the minute you met Leandra. This is it now. It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

“I just want him back, Garth.” My voice shook. “I need him back.”

He pulled me into a hug. He smelled of wolf: of hot blood and dark moonlit nights, of fresh air and moist earth. I buried my face in his brawny shoulder.

“Uh … Kate?”

Mac’s voice. I wiped my eyes, sniffing. She held her mobile phone out to me.

“What? Is it Trevor?” The pack leader should have been here by now.

“It’s Lachie.”

“
What
?” I snatched the phone. “Lachie?”

“Mum?” He whispered into the phone, as if he was trying to hide the call from someone.

“Oh, my God, I was so worried. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

“Where
are
you?” I could hardly get the words out, my heart was hammering so hard. “Can we trace this?” I whispered to Garth.

He dragged me back into the comms room and began a whispered conversation with Steve, who skidded his wheeled chair across to another computer and began typing furiously.

“I don’t know,” Lachie said. “Some hotel.”

“Is there a name? On a menu, or a notepad or something?”
Come on, baby, tell me where you are so I can come and get you.

“I’m in the bathroom,” he whispered.

“Good thinking. How did you get Kasumi’s phone?”

“It’s not hers. It’s Dad’s.”

I froze. Jason’s?

“You’re with
Dad
?” Every face in the room turned to me. I felt for a chair, and sank into it, my knees suddenly weak. Last I’d heard Jason was overseas. Had he been in Sydney the whole time? Had he somehow discovered Lachie had been kidnapped and rescued him?

No, that was ridiculous.

“Is Kasumi there too?”

“No, she left to go back to Japan.” In the background I heard a man’s voice. “Mum? I’ve got to go—”

There was a crashing sound on the other end of the line, like a door being thrown back against the wall.

“Lachie?”

No reply, just muffled noises, then a voice raised in disbelief. “Your
mother
?”

“Kate?”

I knew that voice. I was tempted to hang up, but Steve was gesturing at me to keep the conversation going.

“What are you doing with my son, arsehole?”

“I can’t believe it.” He sounded genuinely shocked. “What does it take to kill you, for God’s sake? That bitch told me you were dead.”

“Hope you didn’t pay her much for the job, then. Guess you can’t trust anyone these days. Don’t tell me you killed one of her sisters too?”

“What are you talking about? She doesn’t have any sisters.”
What the hell?
“She did a good job though, getting rid of Elizabeth and Alicia. Such a shame she didn’t finish the job properly. My lady won’t be pleased.”

“Oh? And who are you brown-nosing these days?” My new sisters must be fools if they trusted this guy, after what he’d done to me.

“My new queen. Kasumi’s gone to bring her over. I’d offer to introduce you, but she really will be very disappointed if you’re not dead when she gets here. So I guess I’ll be seeing you soon.”

“Give me back my son, you worm, and I might let you live.”

“Sorry, no can do. And now I bet you’ve almost got this call traced, haven’t you? Shame about that.”

He hung up.

I turned to Steve, heart in my mouth. “Did you find him?”

Steve shook his head. “I needed another few seconds.”

I threw the phone across the room. There was a distinct cracking sound as it hit the wall. No one said a word.

Then I remembered it wasn’t my phone. “Sorry. I’ll get you a new one.”

“No problem,” said Mac, her big eyes wide. With that new pink hair she looked even more like an anime character than ever.

I swivelled the chair back and forth as I thought. At least my immediate fear for Lachie had eased. Jason was a dirt bag, but he loved his son in his own twisted dragon way. Lachie should be safe for a little while at least.

Garth came and perched on the desk beside me, but no one spoke. The only sound in the room was the hum of computers. The banks of screens flickered in a constantly changing display, showing the life of the house, but in here nothing moved.

“Apparently Kasumi has no sisters,” I said at last.

Luce raised an eyebrow. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Everything.” I shook my head. I almost had to admire the woman. It was Machiavellian. “The whole thing was a lie. She set me up.”

“Did Jason tell you she had no sisters?” Garth frowned. “He’s probably lying.”

“I don’t think so. It was just a throwaway comment. So if she wasn’t here for revenge, what was she doing?”

“But you killed that nurse,” Garth said. “You’re saying she was just some random bounty hunter trying to kill Ben?”

“No. I think that was Kasumi.”

“What the hell are you two talking about?” Luce’s dark eyes sparked with annoyance at being kept out of the loop. “You’re forgetting I missed all this.”

I sighed. “Ben was attacked by a nurse when he was in hospital. Some random human, with no apparent motive. We thought she must have been a secret bounty hunter until Kasumi turned up claiming that that was her sister impersonating the nurse. Said she’d been egged on by Elizabeth and Davison to do it.”

“And what happened to this nurse?”

“I killed her.”

Luce leaned forward. “What happened to the body when she died?”

I frowned. “Nothing.”

“It didn’t change appearance?”

“No.”

“Then it wasn’t a kitsune. When a kitsune dies, whatever form they were wearing dissolves, and they take their true form.”

Garth grunted in disgust. “Wish we’d known that before.”

A lot of things might have gone differently if we’d had Luce with us from the start. I’d missed her, but I hadn’t realised just how valuable her wealth of experience was.

“So it must have been the real nurse,” Luce continued, “and the kitsune was possessing her, the way Kasumi controlled Thorne in the throne room. In that case it would have been easy for her to slip free at the moment of death.”

I nodded. “I saw something like a yellow mist leave the body when the nurse died. I didn’t take much notice at the time. Things got pretty crazy. But I bet that was Kasumi, leaving the body. She probably hid in her hoshi no tama till we’d all gone, and then walked right out of there.”

“And then she came to you and claimed you’d just killed her sister? That seems … an odd choice. She was lucky Garth didn’t get all over-protective and disembowel her on the spot.”

“Would have been happy to,” Garth growled. “Still would, in fact.”

I shrugged. “She said she didn’t blame me, that I’d only acted in self-defence, and that her real beef was with Elizabeth and Davison for putting her sister up to it.”

“Some bullshit about the knife and the hand that wields it,” said Garth.

If Luce’s eyebrows rose any higher they’d disappear into her hair and we’d have to send out a search party. “And you agreed to work with her, thinking you had her sister’s blood on your hands?”

I shrugged again, a little more defensively this time. “She was very convincing. But if she has no sisters, it must have been her all along.” In my mind’s eye I saw the nurse brush past my chair again and knock my bag to the ground. She’d probably kicked my car keys out of sight, the sneaky bitch. “She meant for me to catch her in the act. She knew I’d be back for my keys. She
wanted
me to ‘kill’ her.”

And to think I might have missed out on meeting the delightful Detective Hartley and jumping through all her hoops, if not for Kasumi’s little set-up.

“Seems a lot of trouble to go to.” Garth looked doubtful. “Why not just knock on the door and offer to work for you?”

“You were there, Garth. You know how it was. We were desperate for allies, but we couldn’t trust anyone. Anyone could have been planted on us by Elizabeth—or even you, Luce. This way she convinced me she was really on my side. Supposedly she had a burning desire for revenge, and I was the best way to achieve it. Convoluted, but it worked.” Ballsy, too, I had to give her that.

“So she gave herself a convincing cover story,” Luce said. “But what was her real motive? Is she working for Jason?”

I shook my head. “It’s bigger than that. She wanted me to trust her, so she saved our arses a couple of times, like when you attacked us in The Rocks. But she was here to kill all of us—Elizabeth, Alicia
and
me. The best way to do that was to help me kill Elizabeth and Alicia, then kill me last. All of it was so she could destroy the succession in this domain, to make room for her real employer.”

“You mean one of your other sisters?” Luce asked. “How would she know about them if she only just arrived from Japan?”

“She doesn’t. And neither does her employer, which could work in our favour.”

“Who’s her employer, then?” Garth asked. “Not Jason?”

“No.” I sighed. There was Lachie to rescue and Jason to deal with, not to mention Gideon Thorne and my seven surplus sisters. It would be kind of nice to locate my missing boyfriend, too. A lot to accomplish in a few short days. A dragon’s work was never done. “The queen of Japan is coming to visit. She thinks she’s walking in to take up an empty throne. We’re going to show her she’s wrong.”