Author: Jennifer Estep
Date: 2022-11-08 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Urban Fantasy; Paranormal; Romance; Paranormal Romance; Magic; Espionage; Romantic Suspense; Fantasy; Adult; Novella
Description: Bestselling author Jennifer Estep serves up an action-packed holiday adventure in her Section 47 urban-fantasy world of secrets, lies, and superspies with amazing magical abilities. Perfect for fans of Alias, Die Hard, James Bond, Jason Bourne, Nikita, and Netflix’s Bodyguard. VISIONS OF SUGAR PLUMS . . . Most spies take a break for the holidays, but not me, Charlotte Locke. As an analyst for Section 47, a secret spy organization, I normally use my magical form of synesthesia to uncover lies and track paramortal bad guys from the comfort of my cubicle. But tonight I’m going out into the field,

Copyright

Sugar Plum Spies

Copyright © 2022 by Jennifer Estep

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual or fictional characters or actual or fictional events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The fictional characters, events, locales, business establishments, or persons in this story have no relation to any other fictional characters, events, locales, business establishments, or persons, except those in works by this author.

No part or portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without prior permission from the author.

All rights reserved by the author.

ISBN: 978-1-950076-13-0

Cover Art © 2022 by Tony Mauro

Published in the United States of America

Contents

Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
EPILOGUE
ONLY BAD OPTIONS EXCERPT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
OTHER BOOKS BY JENNIFER ESTEP

Dedication

To all the fans who wanted more Section 47 books—this one is for you.

To my mom—for everything.

To Karen—who, like Charlotte, didn’t like to eat green things. You are greatly missed.

CHAPTER ONE

CHARLOTE

You could always tell the criminals by their toys.

Fancy cars, enormous yachts, private jets, expensive art. In my experience, most criminals loved showing off their ill-gotten goods. To many, it was a badge of honor, a not-so-subtle way of showing everyone else, especially their rivals, just how smart, rich, strong, and successful they were. But paramortal criminals—those with magical abilities—tended to be a little flashier and more boastful than most, with toys that were much more lavish.

Like Tannenbaum Castle.

I stood in the back of the grand ballroom, which took up a good portion of the sprawling castle’s second level. Crystal chandeliers bathed the ballroom in a soft, warm glow, highlighting the white marble floor and colorful wall tapestries, while thick strands of fresh evergreen garland studded with silver bows swooped along the second-story balcony like ribbons of icing on a tiered cake. High above the decorations, silver leaf swirled through a gorgeous ceiling fresco of a snow-crusted forest before dripping down onto the evergreen-tree-shaped crown molding like metallic icicles.

The pictures I’d seen of the ballroom didn’t do it justice, but what made it truly special was the theatrical stage that dominated the front of the cavernous space.

Detailed mosaics of stars, snowflakes, and evergreen trees had been set into the base of the mahogany platform in a mirror image of the ceiling fresco, and bits of stained glass gleamed like diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds in the dark wood. The stage was framed by white marble columns wrapped with red ribbons that twirled up like peppermint sticks to support a broad stone cornice studded with even more white stars, blue snowflakes, and green trees that capped the entire area like a sparkling crown.

Stairs at either end led up to the performance platform, and the heavy blue brocade curtains had been drawn aside to reveal a lovely holiday scene, anchored by a thirty-foot-tall Christmas tree at the back center of the stage. Thousands of white lights snaked through the branches, which were adorned with silver stars, blue snowflakes, and red bells.

Oversize gold presents trimmed with blue, red, and green bows were clustered around the tree, while six-foot nutcrackers clutching everything from candy canes to silver bells to pine-cone wreaths were lined up along the night-sky backdrop. A single twelve-foot nutcracker grasping a real silver sword was positioned on the right side of the stage, while smaller nutcrackers were spaced along the ballroom floor as though they had leaped off the platform and frozen where they landed.

A ballet troupe was set to perform scenes from The Nutcracker as part of tonight’s Christmas Eve party, and the castle’s decorators had fully embraced the theme. I eyed a cluster of three nutcrackers standing a few feet away. With their shiny black hats, painted-on mustaches, fluffy beards, and oversize teeth, the holiday figures looked like grinning, maniacal monsters that would cheerfully bite anyone who got too close to them—

Fingers snapped in front of my face, startling me out of my snide reverie, and a man wearing a black chef’s jacket glared down his nose at me. He was about ten years older than me, in his mid-forties, with dark brown hair and eyes, ruddy skin, and a thin mustache that bristled with annoyance.

“Pay attention,” Jacques Cadieux said, a faint French accent coloring his deep voice. “You’re here to work, not gawk at the furnishings.”

“Yes, Chef,” I replied.

Jacques gave me another suspicious glare, then moved on to critique the rest of the waitstaff. In keeping with the Nutcracker theme, we were all dressed alike in short royal-blue jackets trimmed with gleaming silver buttons, along with tight white pants and knee-high black boots.

I slid my index finger underneath the chin strap that secured a black brimmed hat to my head, then reached up and dug that same finger into my hair. I hated hats. They always made my head itch, but disguises were a way of life for spies like me. At least the boots were somewhat comfortable, although I would have preferred to wear my usual sneakers. You never knew when you might have to run away from an enemy.

Chef Jacques finished his inspection, then stabbed his finger at a swinging door in the back wall that led into one of the castle’s many kitchens. In the distance, the light, cheery tinking of glasses sounded, along with the louder, deeper rattling of pots and pans, and the delicious aromas of warm butter, sweet vanilla, and spicy cinnamon flavored the air, overpowering the sharp scent of the massive Christmas tree on the stage. My stomach rumbled, a painful reminder that I hadn’t managed to snag any food from the kitchen when the waitstaff had been escorted through there earlier.

“You are to serve the guests promptly and professionally,” Jacques barked out. “Not simper and flirt and make fools of yourselves. I will not have my food grow cold and my reputation be sullied by your collective laziness. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Chef!” the waitstaff shouted in unison.

The woman next to me rolled her eyes. I winked at her, and she giggled. Jacques spun in our direction, and the woman pressed her lips together to stifle another giggle. The chef eyed us for a moment, then marched over to a table along the wall and started issuing orders about how the towers of crystal champagne flutes needed to be rearranged.

The woman turned to me. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was quite pretty, with short dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and light brown skin. “I’m Maria Basu.”

“Charlotte Heldin,” I replied, giving her my cover name. “Have you worked in the castle before?”

Maria brightened. “Oh, yes! I live in the village and often work here at the castle. Sometimes I babysit for the Eisen family, but usually I’m here in the ballroom, handing out drinks with everyone else. The Eisens love to throw parties, especially this time of year.” She giggled and rolled her eyes again.

Tannenbaum Castle was located on top of the mountain of the same name in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany, while the village in the valley below was known as Tannenstelle. The village was as charming as the castle was grandiose, and the whole area looked like a storybook picture, especially given the holiday decorations and the several inches of snow that had fallen last night. Another storm was supposed to hit the region tonight and dump even more snow on both the mountain and the village.

I’d spent the last three days holed up in a village hotel eating copious amounts of pastries and preparing for tonight’s mission, which had included getting myself hired as part of the Christmas Eve waitstaff. Yesterday morning, I’d gone to the castle staffing office in the village and told the supervisor a sob story about how I was a down-on-her-luck waitress who needed money after a bad breakup with a boyfriend. Back home in Washington, D.C., I worked part-time as a waitress at the Moondust Diner, so this particular spy legend wasn’t too much of a stretch for me.

The supervisor had just been through a messy divorce herself, and she was happy to hire me. She’d even tried to give me some money, which I had politely declined. Germans were such kind, generous, thoughtful people that way.

Earlier today, I’d gotten into a van with several other folks and had been whisked up the narrow, winding road that led from the village to the castle, while the more important workers—like Chef Jacques—had ridden in the far quicker and much less cramped gondola lift.

At the castle, I had been shown to a locker room where I had stowed my regular clothes and changed into the waitstaff uniform. Makeup artists had given us all smoky eyes, pink cheeks, and red lips so that we further matched, and then we had been given a tour of the kitchen before being escorted into the grand ballroom.

I might be dressed like a nutcracker and masquerading as a waitress, but really, I was Charlotte Locke, an analyst for Section 47, a secret global spy organization that gathered intelligence and used that information to prevent terror attacks and other mass-casualty events, especially those involving paramortals with magic and enhanced weapons and technology.

Paramortals had forty-seven chromosomes, whereas regular mortals had only forty-six, or two pairs of twenty-three. Section 47 took its name from that forty-seventh chromosome, the extra bit of DNA that supposedly gave paramortals enhanced strength and speed and so many other amazing, destructive, and deadly abilities.

Me? I had a magical form of synesthesia that let me see typos, errors, and other mistakes, which was extremely helpful when analyzing bank records, purchase histories, and all the other digital footprints that criminals, terrorists, and other bad folks left behind. Most of the time, I could tell whether someone had accidentally made a simple error, like transposing the digits in a phone number, or was deliberately manipulating earnings reports and committing massive corporate fraud just by glancing through a few documents.

“Attention!” Jacques bellowed now. “The guests will be arriving any moment! Places! Places!”

He flapped his hand at the drinks table, and everyone scurried forward, grabbed a silver tray filled with champagne flutes, and took up a position along the wall. Maria and I were the last two waiters to fall in line, and Jacques glared at me again, his thin mustache bristling with even more annoyance than before.

Danger-danger-danger.

In addition to seeing typos, errors, and mistakes, my synesthesia also gave me a sense of danger, and a little voice often whispered in my mind whenever I was in the presence of other spies, assassins, and anyone else who might be a threat.

Like an angry chef, in this case.

I jerked to attention, and the sudden motion made the flutes on my tray wobble. I managed to steady the tray, but some of the fizzing golden champagne arched up out of the glasses and splattered down onto the silver.

Jacques glared at me yet again. “Imbécile,” he muttered, his cool French accent making the word even more insulting and derogatory than usual.

I gave the irate chef a benign smile in return. Jacques Cadieux’s dirty looks and rude comments were as sweet as sugar plums compared to those of Zeeta Kowalski, the seventy-something owner of the Moondust Diner, who could reduce even the most seasoned waitress to tears with one dark glower.

Jacques glared at me a moment longer, then moved down the rest of the line, ordering the other waiters to raise their trays, lift their chins, and stand up straight.

I resisted the urge to shift on my feet. The knee-high boots were not as comfortable as I’d first thought, and they were already starting to pinch my toes. Drat.

On the bright side, if things went according to plan, I would only have to endure the borrowed boots for a few hours, and I absolutely wouldn’t have to run in them. Then again, things rarely went according to plan when you were a spy.

A light, cheery trill of music sounded. The two doors that served as the ballroom’s main entrance swung open, and a woman strode inside. She was forty, five years older than me, with dark blue eyes, rosy skin, and blond hair that rippled back and up into an elegant twist. A long red velvet sheath dress with thin straps highlighted her toned arms and strong, curvy body. An emerald-and-ruby-studded gold choker ringed her neck, while matching jewels dangled from her ears like ornaments on a Christmas tree.

Elsa Eisen glanced around the ballroom, making sure everything was as it should be, then waved her hand. A ten-year-old girl stepped into view. She, too, had dark blue eyes, rosy skin, and blond hair, and she was wearing a poufy pale pink dress that made her look like a fairy-tale princess. Lina, Elsa’s niece.

“Well?” Elsa’s voice drifted across the ballroom, her soft Southern accent remarkably similar to mine. “What do you think?”

Lina clapped her hands together in delight. “It’s perfect! Thank you so much! This is going to be such a wonderful Christmas!”

Lie, my inner voice whispered. In addition to warning me about potential danger, my synesthesia also told me when people were telling the truth—or not. Despite her sunny smile and cheery words, Lina didn’t believe what she was saying, but her lie didn’t surprise me.

Not even Christmas could be wonderful when you’d recently lost your parents.

Lina threw her arms around her aunt. Elsa returned the enthusiastic hug, but her red lips twisted into a grimace, almost as if she could sense her niece’s lie the same way I could.

Elsa Eisen had been born to a German father and an American mother. Her parents had been killed in a skiing accident when she was in her early twenties, so she had taken over her family’s business and finished raising her younger brother, Peter. Six months ago, tragedy had struck the Eisen family again when Peter and his wife, Claire, had died in a car accident.

Elsa had become Lina’s guardian, and three months ago, she had moved her niece from her estate in Savannah, Georgia, to Tannenbaum Castle, which had been in her father’s family for generations. After all, it was much easier to see your enemies coming when they had to either ride a gondola lift or take a narrow switchback road up a mountain to get to you.

And Elsa had plenty of enemies.

To most folks, she was a renowned antiquities dealer who bought, sold, and procured rare art, expensive jewelry, and other fancy items for wealthy clients, just as her father had done before her. Like me, Elsa was a paramortal, with a magical form of synesthesia that let her see how old something was just by looking at it. A useful skill in determining the age and authenticity of paintings, statues, and other artwork.

But the true business of the Eisen family was serving as a broker and repository of sorts to the paramortal underworld, namely, by buying, selling, and storing art, jewelry, and other valuable items in the impressively secure, biometrically locked vault buried in the bottom of the castle.

Hence my interest in Elsa, and especially one of her clients: Henrika Hyde.

To the regular mortal world, Henrika was the smart, glamorous founder and CEO of Hyde Engineering, a prestigious pharmaceutical company that engaged in cutting-edge medical research and produced everything from vitamins to allergy medicines to skin-care serums. In reality, Henrika was a paramortal arms dealer who used her company and her own personal genius to create biomagical weapons.

Genetic-based poisons that targeted specific families and bloodlines. Corrosive gases that would melt people’s skin and bones, even as they left furniture and other items intact and unharmed. Powders, pills, and other drugs that would give mortals amazing but short-lived highs, along with paramortal powers, even as their internal organs liquefied. Henrika had created all those horrific things and dozens more, but her latest weapon was even more dangerous: Redburn, an explosive that could supposedly kill even the toughest, strongest paramortal.

I had spent months gathering intelligence on Henrika, and I’d been part of a Section team dispatched to the Halstead Hotel in Washington, D.C., to capture her. The plan had been to sedate Henrika, remove her from the hotel, and transport her to a Section black site where she could be questioned about her Redburn explosive. Another mission objective had been to learn everything Henrika knew about Adrian Anatoly, a terrorist who was responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent people, along with several Section 47 agents.

But thanks to their moles inside Section, Henrika and Anatoly had been tipped off, and I had ended up trapped in a minefield that Anatoly and his men had planted in one of the hotel’s lawns. I’d used my synesthesia to figure out where the bombs were buried and escaped the minefield, but the resulting explosion had still decimated the lawn. Anatoly had been killed during a fight at the hotel, but Henrika had escaped, and I had been tracking her ever since.

London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna. Henrika had led me on a merry chase, jet-setting from one city to another.

The whole point of Section 47 was to quietly, discreetly eliminate threats, as well as to make sure that regular mortals remained largely oblivious to the existence of paramortals, so no formal arrest warrants or charges had been filed against Henrika. As far as the general public knew, and as reflected on her social-media accounts, Henrika was having the time of her life on a whirlwind European vacation. She had dramatically increased her security and never stayed in one place more than a few days, but for the most part, she had the intelligence, money, contacts, and resources to go on living her life as though nothing much had changed.

It was going to change, though. Henrika Hyde was going to wind up in a Section black site or in the ground. I didn’t particularly care which one, as long as I found out whether she had any more moles embedded in the spy organization.

That alone would have been reason enough for me to track her, but Henrika had also given me a personal reason to hunt her down. She claimed to know exactly what had happened to my father, Jack Locke, a Section cleaner who had been killed on a mission roughly fifteen years ago. I’d thought I had put my father’s death behind me long ago, but Henrika’s taunting had opened old wounds, and I wanted answers.

But to get those answers, I had to catch up with the bitch first.

Over the past few months, I had studied every single aspect of Henrika’s life, including social-media posts about her favorite holiday parties, and I’d even gotten hold of her private Christmas card and gift lists. Henrika always sent the Eisen family a lavish present, and she had often frequented their annual Christmas Eve bash at Tannenbaum Castle. Hence my hope she would show up tonight.

But even if Henrika didn’t appear, I still might be able to find her, thanks to Elsa Eisen.

My plan was simple. I would wait for an opportunity to slip out of the ballroom, avoid the security guards roaming through the castle, and make my way to Elsa’s office. Once there, I would hack into her laptop and copy her files, along with whatever other paper records I could find, then leave the office and slip back into the party undetected.

I was already itching to get my hands on Elsa’s files and see what details they contained about Henrika. Maybe if I was lucky, I would even find some information on the Syndicate, a shadowy group of paramortal criminals and terrorists who occasionally worked together to trade secrets, sell weapons, and increase their own wealth, power, and reach. Most people in the intelligence community thought the Syndicate was nothing more than an urban legend, but my father had firmly believed in the group’s existence, and now I did, too.

A finger jabbed into my left shoulder. “Why are you just standing here?” Jacques made a sharp, shooing motion with his hand. “The guests are arriving! Go, go, go!”

He was right. Elsa and Lina were now standing by the open doors, greeting their guests.

“Start handing out champagne,” Jacques ordered. “Imbécile!”

My fingers clenched around the tray, and I longed to smash the whole thing into his face, champagne flutes and all. But that would only get me kicked out of the castle, so I pushed the angry urge aside, drew in a deep breath, and let out a slow, cleansing exhalation, just like I would on my yoga mat. Then I plastered a smile on my face and moved toward the glittering crowd.

Time for this sugar plum spy to get to work.

I quickly handed out all the champagne flutes on my tray, returned to the drinks table, and got some more. As I wound my way through the crowd for a second time, I paused here and there, angling my chest at every single person who crossed my path.

Earlier in the locker room, I had pinned an extra silver button to the front of my blue coat—one that contained a hidden camera, along with a two-way communication device. Elsa Eisen dealt with a variety of folks, and the guest list featured more than one known underworld figure, mortal and paramortal alike. By the time I had passed out a second tray of drinks, I’d spotted a forger, a biochemist, a codebreaker, and a nuclear scientist. Even if Henrika didn’t attend the party, tonight’s mission might still yield some actionable intelligence, given all the dangerous people I saw hobnobbing together.

I went to get some more champagne. Jacques was standing at the end of a nearby dessert table, brandishing a long, sharp knife at Maria.

My synesthesia kicked in, the way it so often did, and the blade burned a bright, bloody red in my eyes. I tensed and gripped my tray a little tighter. I wasn’t nearly as deadly as a Section cleaner—a polite term for an assassin—but I could defend myself and others if need be.

“Rectangles!” Jacques hissed, rolling the r an impressively long time. “The strudels are supposed to be cut into rectangles, not squares!”

“Yes, Chef!” Maria chirped in a bright voice.

Jacques let out a derisive snort and shoved the knife into her hand. Then he spun around, hurried over to a different table, and started berating another chef about the excessive amount of balsamic glaze the younger man was drizzling over the bite-size caprese bruschetta appetizers.

I walked over to Maria. “Are you okay?”

She giggled. “Of course. Do you know how many demanding chefs I’ve dealt with at castle parties over the years? Jacques isn’t that bad. At least he isn’t throwing knives at people—yet.”

She sliced a plum strudel into the desired shape, then popped one of the rectangles into her mouth. “I’m not sure how he got hired to cater the Christmas Eve party, though. It’s a big event, and his food is nothing special. Although his desserts could be really good if the pastry weren’t so terrible. My mother makes much better strudels at her bakery in the village.”

Maria made a face and handed me the other half of the strudel, which I popped into my own mouth. She was right. The tart fruit filling and sticky-sweet sugar glaze were delicious, but the baked pastry crust itself was as dry as dirt, and it ruined the rest of the dessert. I much preferred the fantastic pies that my friend Pablo Suarez whipped up at the Moondust Diner.

“But free food is free food, right?” Maria winked at me and started slicing the other strudels.

I laughed, grabbed another tray of drinks, and plunged back into the crowd.

By this point, all the guests had arrived, and conversation filled the air, along with classical music that whispered from the stage’s sound system. Selections from The Nutcracker, of course.

I was down to the last drink on my tray when someone sidled up beside me.

“Excuse me. May I trouble you for a glass of champagne?” a masculine voice murmured.

The low, husky, familiar timbre sent a pleasant chill sliding down my spine, even as the faint Australian accent made me sigh in appreciation. I was a sucker for a man with an accent, especially this man and his delicious accent.

The man was around six feet tall, with tan skin, high cheekbones, and a straight nose. His dark blond hair was slightly rumpled, as though he’d run his fingers through the thick locks and hadn’t cared how they landed. The slightly messy look was still fabulous on him, and the perfect amount of golden stubble clung to his strong jaw, adding to his appeal.

Instead of the traditional black, the man’s tuxedo was the same royal blue as my jacket, and the color brought out his light, bright, powder-blue eyes. His jacket was unbuttoned, and an old-fashioned silver pocket watch gleamed in his vest pocket. It seemed like a harmless timepiece, but the long attached chain had a hidden, razor-sharp edge, just like its owner did.

The man had broad shoulders, but his chest was lean, and he wasn’t overly bulked up with muscle like so many other men here were, especially the security guards who hovered around the edges of the ballroom. The guards might all have guns holstered to their belts, but this man radiated the quiet, confident strength of an apex predator who knew he could kill every other person in the entire castle.

Desmond Percy—a Section 47 cleaner and my fellow spy.

“It’s about time you showed up,” I groused.

Desmond grinned, his eyes crinkling and his white teeth flashing in his handsome face. “Aw, did you miss me, Numbers?”

I rolled my eyes. Desmond had dubbed me Numbers due to my analyst work, but I didn’t mind the nickname, especially since I had my own moniker for him.

“Miss you, Crocodile Dundee? Of course not,” I replied in a tart tone. “I didn’t have time to miss you. I have been busy working. Not swanning around and drinking champagne.”

Desmond arched a blond eyebrow. “I haven’t had a drink yet, and I never, ever swan. However, I did notice you sneaking a piece of strudel earlier.” Another grin spread across his face. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. All the sugar you eat is going to kill you someday.”

I snorted. “Some of us can’t subsist on kale smoothies alone.”

This time, Desmond rolled his eyes. “The smoothie contained far more apples than kale. Something you would have realized if you had taken more than three sips of it before diving right back into the box of pastries you bought this morning.”

Desmond and I had radically different opinions when it came to food. Like so many Section cleaners, Desmond considered his body to be a finely honed temple of lethality, and he treated it accordingly, by willingly and regularly ingesting kale smoothies and the like. Me? I thought life was far too short and our work for Section 47 much too dangerous to subject my taste buds to the horrors of kale and other green, healthy things.

Desmond’s latest smoothie creation had actually been pretty good, sort of like a liquid apple Danish, although I enjoyed teasing him far too much to admit the truth. At least, not yet.

Maybe later tonight, after the mission was complete and we were back in our hotel suite alone together.

My gaze trailed down his body, and hot sparks of anticipation erupted in my stomach. Desmond and I had gotten together several weeks ago, after he’d killed Adrian Anatoly and I had exposed not one but two moles inside Section 47. Even though I’d only known him a short time, I cared about Desmond much more than I had ever expected to, especially since he was a Percy and I was a Locke. Given all the bad blood between our fathers, Desmond and I being together was something of a Christmas miracle, but he was smart and funny and exceedingly loyal to his friends. Plus, the sex was incredible.

“What are you thinking about?” he murmured. “Your aura is flaring.”

Desmond was a galvanist, a paramortal who could control, channel, and manipulate various forms of energy, from the electricity running through the chandeliers overhead, to the kinetic zip of a bullet through the air, to the force, fire, and fury of an explosion. His galvanism was a rare, powerful ability and yet another thing that made him so dangerous.

He could also see the energy that people themselves constantly emitted. According to Desmond, every person had an aura, a color or feeling that hinted at their personality, emotions, and intentions. Supposedly, my aura was a deep, dark blue and as cool and crisp as a fall morning. I loved his description, even if I wasn’t sure what, if anything, a cool blue aura said about my personality.

“Charlotte?” Desmond asked. “What are you thinking about?”

I flicked the edge of his royal-blue bow tie with my index finger. “Just wondering why I had to dress up as a nutcracker while you got to wear a James Bond tuxedo like usual.”

“Because you’re the one who decided to go undercover as part of the waitstaff. I could have easily gotten you added to the guest list as my plus-one.”

Desmond was here tonight as Desmond Macfarlane, a paramortal arms dealer who acquired weapons for his own criminal activities and also resold them to the highest bidder.

“Besides, I think you’re supposed to be a toy soldier,” he continued. “Isn’t there only one nutcracker in The Nutcracker?”

“No idea. I haven’t seen the ballet since I was a child. My mother took me the Christmas before she died.” A wave of wistfulness washed over me, and I couldn’t stop a note of longing from creeping into my voice. “My grandmother and I were going to see it last year, but she was so sick we had to cancel our plans.”

My mother, Josephine, had died in a car accident when I was nine, and my father, Jack, had always been away on one Section mission or another, so my grandma Jane had raised me. Grandma Jane had been a mortal who had conned her way into working for Section 47 by pretending to be a psychic, and she had passed away earlier this year after a battle with cancer. That cruel disease didn’t discriminate between anyone, and it affected mortals and paramortals alike. Fucking cancer.

Desmond skimmed his fingers along the sleeve of my jacket, touching only the fabric and not my arm, as was his habit. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too. It would have been nice to see the ballet with Grandma Jane.” I glanced at the stage. “Maybe I can get a glimpse of the performance tonight—after I break into Elsa’s office.”

“Maybe,” Desmond agreed, still skimming his fingers along my jacket sleeve. “Although I’m glad you decided to join the waitstaff tonight. Royal blue suits you, Numbers. Plus, I’m growing rather fond of seeing you in a uniform.”

Heat shimmered in his eyes, making them burn an even lighter, brighter silver-blue, and he dropped his hand, leaned forward, and lowered his voice. “And especially of taking it off you.”

Even more sparks of anticipation exploded in my stomach. Desmond didn’t often touch me in public, but in private, well, we had grown very familiar with each other’s body over the past several weeks.

I flicked his bow tie again. “Good. Because I feel the same way about you and tuxedos, Dundee.”

He grinned. “Should we make a date for later?”

“Absolutely. Right after the mission is over.”

I held my tray out. Desmond grabbed the remaining champagne flute, then turned this way and that, angling his chest toward one person after another, just as I had done earlier. The costume diamond in the center of his bow tie contained a hidden camera just like the one in the extra silver button on my coat.

“No sign of Henrika yet,” Desmond murmured. “Although I see plenty of other underworld players here.”

I grimaced. “Tell me about it. The whole room is red.”

He gave me a sympathetic look. My synesthesia might let me see typos, errors, and mistakes, but it sometimes went haywire and overwhelmed me with colors, sounds, and other sensations. As more and more people had entered the ballroom, especially the known paramortal criminals, that little voice in the back of my mind had increased in volume and intensity, and danger-danger-danger was now relentlessly pounding in my ears.

“Even if Henrika doesn’t show up, the mission should still produce some valuable information,” Desmond said, echoing my earlier thought. “Gia and Evelyn will be very interested to see who is here tonight and apparently doing business with Elsa Eisen.”

Gia Chan was the head of the cleaners in the Washington, D.C., station, and Desmond’s and my direct boss. Evelyn Hawkes masqueraded as a secretary, but she was secretly Maestro, the head of the D.C. station and one of the most important and powerful people in all of Section 47, right up there with General Jethro Percy, Desmond’s father.

“Elsa doesn’t seem very happy to see some of her clients, though,” I replied.

Elsa smiled brightly at everyone who approached her and Lina, but more than once, she stepped forward to shield her niece from having to interact with her more dangerous, notorious guests. Curious, and not what I had expected. By all accounts, the Eisen family business had flourished under Elsa’s guidance, but given her clear lack of enthusiasm in dealing with her criminal clients, I was starting to wonder if she had been trapped in her familial duties the way so many folks at Section 47 were, including Desmond and me.

The two of us were Legacies, Section’s term for someone with family members who had also worked for the spy organization. Being a Legacy could greatly help your standing at Section 47, as it had in Desmond’s case, given that General Percy was the head of the board of directors. Or it could severely diminish your status, as it had in my case, since Jack Locke had been killed on a mission gone wrong, along with several of his fellow cleaners.

“You think Elsa doesn’t enjoy being part of the paramortal underworld?” Desmond asked.

I shrugged. “No way to know for sure without asking her, and that’s not our mission objective.”

A guard went over and whispered something to Elsa, who nodded. The guard retreated, and Elsa stepped forward and clapped her hands together, drawing everyone’s attention.

“Greetings!” she called out. “Thank you all so much for coming to the annual Eisen Christmas Eve party. I am honored to welcome you to my family’s home.”

Lie, my inner voice whispered.

Polite applause rang out at her words, and several people toasted her with their drinks.

“As you know, tonight’s party is also a charity benefit to raise money for a local dance institute,” Elsa said. “So, without further ado, what you’ve all been waiting to see—the Nutcracker Ruby!”

Elsa stepped to the side and swept her hand out. Two security guards pushed a large glass display case into the ballroom and wheeled it over to an empty spot along the wall between two nutcrackers. Elsa gestured for Lina to step forward, and the two of them took up positions on either side of the case, while the guests applauded and a few photographers snapped their pictures. Lina ducked her head and gave them all a shy smile. Elsa was smiling too, but her wide, toothy expression looked as fixed and forced as the nutcrackers’ frozen grins.

In addition to researching Elsa Eisen, I had also studied the Nutcracker Ruby. No one knew where the jewel had come from, only that a wealthy New York businesswoman had the thirty-carat ruby fashioned into a ring, which also featured black and white diamonds and a platinum band. The woman had gifted the ring to her ballerina daughter after a Christmas Eve performance of the ballet in the 1960s, hence the jewel’s name.

The ring had changed hands several times, until Elsa’s father had acquired it at an auction about twenty-five years ago. Tonight was the first time the ruby had been shown in public since Elsa’s parents had died, and all the guests—including Desmond—had paid ten thousand euros each for the pleasure of ogling it, with the proceeds going to charity.

The Nutcracker Ruby was another reason I thought Henrika Hyde might show up tonight. Henrika had an enormous appetite for the finer things in life, but she had a special love of jewelry, and the Nutcracker Ruby was one of the most valuable gems in the world.

“Is the ruby on Henrika’s most-wanted list?” Desmond asked.

I shrugged again. “I’m sure she would love to get her hands on that ruby. Anyone would, since it’s valued at more than thirty million dollars. But Henrika has never shown an overt interest in the ring, not like she did with the Grunglass Necklace, and she doesn’t have a familial connection to the Eisens like she does to Hiram and Petra Halstead.”

Hiram Halstead was Henrika’s father and had been killed when Henrika had bombed one of his hotels last year. Petra was her half sister and was currently in hiding from her murderous sibling. Years ago, Hiram had promised the Grunglass Necklace to Henrika’s mother, his longtime mistress, although Petra had kept the stunning emerald necklace out of Henrika’s hands—and so had I.

As part of my plan to expose the moles inside Section, I had arranged for the Grunglass Necklace to be stolen from the Halstead Hotel and replaced with a fake. Eventually, I had turned the real necklace over to Gia Chan and Evelyn Hawkes, and it was now sitting in an evidence locker at Section 47 headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The applause died down, and the photographers lowered their cameras and stepped back.

Elsa swept her hand out again. “In addition to viewing the ruby, we will also be treated to some scenes from the Nutcracker ballet, performed by the Turtle Doves troupe from Paris, led by prima ballerina Katarina Tanetsa!”

Music trilled out again, and several people dressed in leotards and tutus skipped into the ballroom. They danced to and fro for a moment before falling back into two lines. A woman strode through their ranks, stopped next to the display case, and struck a pose.

Katarina Tanetsa was an accomplished ballerina, although an ankle injury a few years ago had derailed her career and dropped her from the dazzling heights she had once achieved. She was about my size, five-six, with a toned, lithe body. Her light brown hair was sleeked up into a traditional bun, while stage makeup highlighted her hazel eyes and pale skin. Katarina was dancing the part of the Sugar Plum Fairy, and she was resplendent in a dark, plum-colored costume studded with sparkling light purple crystals. A matching crystal crown adorned her head, while smaller crystals glittered on her short, dark purple nails.

Katarina tilted her head to the side, acknowledging the hearty applause. Lina stepped forward and shyly handed the ballerina a pen, along with the program for tonight, which she autographed.

A few other folks also stepped forward with programs to autograph, but most people clustered around the display case, oohing and aahing over the Nutcracker Ruby under the security guards’ watchful eyes.

“Is the mission still a go?” Desmond asked.

I glanced around the ballroom. The rest of the waitstaff were still circulating through the crowd, although Chef Jacques had disappeared and was no longer around to terrorize Maria or anyone else for daring to cut strudels into squares instead of r-r-rectangles.

“You sure you can knock out the lights?” I asked.

Desmond studied the crystal chandeliers with a critical gaze. “The castle’s wiring is old, so it won’t be as smooth, steady, and easy as if I was working with a modern system, but I can disrupt the power. I’ll make the lights flicker a few times in warning before I shut off the electricity completely. That will force the security system to reboot, and you can slip into Elsa’s office undetected. Just like we planned.”

I looked up at the security cameras tucked into the garland on the second-floor balcony. The devices were almost invisible, except for the gleam of their glass lenses against the thick evergreen branches. The cameras covered the entire ballroom, although most of them were focused on the Nutcracker Ruby. With any luck, the guards monitoring the feed in the castle’s security center would also be focused on the jewel.

“Yes, the mission is still a go,” I said, finally answering Desmond’s question. “I just need to wait for the right moment to slip away.”

He nodded, but I kept glancing around the ballroom, my gaze darting from one group to another. Guests ogling the Nutcracker Ruby. Guards watching the chattering crowd. Katarina and the rest of the ballet troupe signing autographs and posing for pictures.

Everything was the same as before, and much of the red had faded from my vision. But for some reason, the little voice in the back of my mind started whispering even more urgently than before.

Danger-danger-danger.

CHAPTER TWO

DESMOND

Charlotte grimaced, and her aura dimmed, as though she was suddenly worried. She reached up and poked a finger into her auburn hair, scratching her scalp.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

She dropped her hand and shook her head. “I’m not sure. Just be careful, okay?”

“You’re the one sneaking around the castle, so you’re the one who should be careful. All I have to do is keep an eye on the guards and kill the lights for a few seconds. Easy as Moondust Diner pie.”

I winked at Charlotte, hoping my light, teasing tone and pie reference would ease her concern, but she stared out over the ballroom again. Her grimace melted into a thoughtful expression, but her aura dimmed a little more, as did her dark blue eyes. Even her skin grew a bit paler, despite the pink spots painted on her cheeks.

“What are you thinking about?” I asked.

“Miriam,” Charlotte confessed in a soft, sad voice. “She loved going to parties, especially holiday parties.”

Miriam Lancaster had been a charmer—a paramortal gifted with charisma—which she had used to ingratiate herself with people so she could learn their secrets and then turn that information over to Section 47. Miriam had been Charlotte’s closest—and only—friend in the Washington, D.C., station, until Charlotte had realized that Miriam was one of Henrika Hyde’s moles. Charlotte had exposed Miriam, along with another mole, Trevor Donnelly, who had been Miriam’s lover, the charmer supervisor, and one of my closest friends. I had killed Trevor and Miriam to save myself and Charlotte during a tense standoff at Section headquarters.

Lie, Charlotte would have whispered if I’d voiced the thought. That wasn’t the truth, at least not the whole truth. I had shot Miriam to save Charlotte when the other woman had taken her hostage, but I had killed Trevor because I wanted to—because I wanted vengeance for how Trevor had sold me out on the Blacksea mission.

An old-fashioned bulb in a silver wall sconce off to my left flickered, betraying my turbulent emotions. I exhaled, flexed my fingers, and released the electricity I had been unconsciously gathering up like it was a shield that would block all my horrible memories.

Several months ago, as part of the Blacksea mission, I had been sent to kill Adrian Anatoly, a terrorist who had been hiding on an island off the coast of Australia. My mission partner had been Graham Walker, a Section cleaner who was my best friend. But thanks to Trevor’s betrayal, Anatoly had known we were coming, and he had rigged the beach with Henrika Hyde’s Redburn explosive.

The images flashed before my eyes one after another, like I was watching all those bombs denotate yet again. Graham yelling, then tackling me and driving my body down into the sand. The intense force and searing heat of the explosions slamming into us both. The whites of Graham’s eyes standing out against the shiny red burns that covered his face. The sticky sensation coating my skin like I was drenched in boiling honey that was relentlessly scorching through one layer of my flesh after another. Then, worst of all, Graham hoarsely begging me to take what little energy, what little life, he had left so that I could heal myself, so that I could live, even if he couldn’t . . .

The bulb in the wall sconce flickered again.

Charlotte touched my hand. “Desmond? You okay?”

I shoved the memories away and concentrated on the aura burning bright and steady over Charlotte’s heart. I drew in a deep breath, breathing in the blue of her, and let the cool, soothing sensation flow over the jagged wounds that were still stinging and smoldering deep inside me. Graham might be gone, but Charlotte was here, and I needed to focus on the mission.

I would not lose her like I had lost my best friend.

Charlotte kept staring at me, and I had to clear a hard knot of emotion out of my throat before I could answer her.

“I’m fine. Just thinking about Graham and everything that happened.” I paused, struggling to put my turbulent thoughts into words. “Is it weird that I miss Trevor? I know he was a traitor, that he took money from a terrorist, and that he didn’t care what happened to me or Graham or all the other agents who died on the Blacksea mission. But we were friends for a long time, and I still think about him quite a bit. Missions we went on. Things he said. Jokes he told. Sometimes I just . . . miss talking to him.”

Sympathy filled Charlotte’s face, and she squeezed my hand. “I feel the same way about Miriam, especially on a night like this.” She jerked her chin out at the rest of the ballroom. “Miriam always said this was her favorite time of year. That everyone let their guard down during the holidays and made her job as a charmer so much easier. That people ate too much and drank too much and especially talked too much. She always said Christmastime was the most wonderful time of the year for spies.”

I nodded. It was amazing how much someone could haunt you after they were gone, even if you were the reason they were gone in the first place.

Charlotte squeezed my hand again, then released it. “What was Christmas like with your family?”

I was grateful for the change in subject, although talking about my father was almost as painful as remembering Trevor’s friendship—and his betrayal.

“Well, the General was usually out of town, off overseeing some Section mission, so it was only my mother and me. I didn’t mind, though. Christmas was far less tense and stressful that way.”

Charlotte huffed in agreement. “Sounds like my childhood. My father never took a break from being a cleaner, not even for Christmas, but Grandma Jane always made the holiday special. We would get the biggest tree that would fit in her apartment and decorate it while the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was on TV. Grandma Jane collected crystal stars, and they always made the tree sparkle like it was covered with diamonds. My father bought the ornaments for her for years, and then, after he was killed, I started buying them for her.” A wistful note crept into her voice. “I had to sell them all, though. After she got sick.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with it.”

Lie, I wanted to whisper. I didn’t have Charlotte’s synesthesia, but her aura dimmed yet again, revealing just how much she missed her grandmother, along with all the cherished mementos she had sold to help pay for the older woman’s medical care.

We fell silent, both of us haunted by the ghosts of our Christmases past.

Elsa Eisen tinked a fork against a champagne flute and asked people to start taking their seats. The members of the Turtle Doves ballet troupe climbed the stage steps and disappeared behind the enormous Christmas tree to finish getting ready for their performance.

“You ready?” I asked.

“Yeah. Everyone’s distracted, and I won’t get a better chance than this.” Charlotte fiddled with a silver button on her coat. “Can you still hear me?”

Her voice echoed in my ears, as well as sounding in the air beside me. I touched the fake diamond in the center of my bow tie. “Yep. Can you still hear me?”

“Crystal clear.”

In addition to cameras, we were both wearing communication devices that let us hear and talk to each other, although we had been largely silent over the past few hours as we had made our way to the castle separately, her with the waitstaff in a van, me with the guests on the gondola lift.

“Good luck,” I said.

“You too.” Charlotte flicked my bow tie in another teasing motion. “Try not to get into too much trouble drinking champagne, Dundee.”

I winked, then toasted her with my flute. “I can make no such promises, Numbers. Swanning around is dangerous work.”

Charlotte laughed and brushed her fingers against mine, and I resisted the urge to curl my hand around hers. I always wanted to touch her, to feel her warm skin melting into my own, but when we had first met at Section headquarters, Charlotte had thought I was going to take advantage of her, and I had promised never to touch her without permission. She had given that permission long ago, but I still kept my promise as much and as best I could.

Besides, denying myself now would make it all the sweeter when I finally did touch her later on.

Charlotte’s fingers dropped away from mine, and she headed to the back of the ballroom. She loaded some champagne flutes onto her tray, then strode out a side door. Once she had infiltrated Elsa’s office and downloaded the files, we could slip out of the castle and enjoy the rest of our night together.

For the first time in a long time, I was actually looking forward to Christmas morning, and it was all because of Charlotte.

People drifted toward the cushioned chairs lined up in front of the stage, but I maintained my position along the wall, once again scanning the crowd. According to my count, most of the security guards were now in the ballroom, watching over the Nutcracker Ruby. Good. That would make it easier for Charlotte to get to Elsa’s office undetected.

A shadow appeared next to mine on the floor, and a familiar energy filled the air. “Hello there, Slick,” a low voice murmured. “Fancy seeing you here.”

A thirty-something man was now standing beside me. If I hadn’t felt his strong, smooth energy, I wouldn’t have seen or heard him approach at all.

He was a bit taller than me, a few inches over six feet, and much more heavily muscled. A trimmed goatee adorned his chin, and his black hair was short, although it had grown out since I had last seen him a few weeks ago at the Moondust Diner. His light brown eyes and ebony skin gleamed under the lights, as did his large diamond cufflinks, which flashed like the real deal, unlike the square cubic zirconia in my bow tie. Just like me, he was wearing a tuxedo, only his was made of crushed black velvet, while his bow tie and shirt were a sleek black silk.

Despite his genteel appearance, Gabriel Chase was anything but gentle, and the former Section 47 cleaner was just as skilled and deadly as I was.

“Hello, Gaby,” I drawled. “What an unexpected surprise.”

He snorted. “Gaby? Really? Is that the best you can do?”

“Well, it’s not nearly as catchy and original as Slick, but if you don’t like it, I’m sure I can think of another nickname for you.”

Gabriel snorted again and took a sip from his champagne flute. His gaze swept over the ballroom in a cold, assessing way. “Where’s your smarter, better half?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He snorted for a third time. “Don’t play dumb with me, Slick. If you’re here, then that means Charlotte is here too. The two of you have been joined at the hip lately, in more ways than one.”

I bristled. “Is that a problem?”

I didn’t care if Gabriel Chase liked me or not, but I wanted us to get along for Charlotte’s sake. Gabriel and Charlotte had grown up together, and the two of them were good friends who exchanged favors from time to time. Charlotte had gotten a loan from him to help pay off her grandmother’s medical bills, and Gabriel had also stolen the Grunglass Necklace from the Halstead Hotel and helped her expose the moles inside Section 47.

“Nah. I’m happy Charlotte finally found someone to watch her back inside Section.” He smiled, but the expression was all teeth, and his smoky gray aura pulsed with a dark, dangerous light. “But if you ever hurt or betray her, I’ll reach inside your chest and pull your heart out where you can see it. And then I’ll wad it up and throw it away like a piece of paper.”

It wasn’t an idle threat. Gabriel Chase was a phaser, a paramortal who could move his entire body through doors, walls, and other solid objects. Yanking my heart out of my chest would be as easy for him as pulling money out of my wallet was for me.

“So where is she?” Gabriel asked. “And what are you two doing here?”

“Charlotte is taking care of something, and then we’re going to enjoy a nice little Christmas holiday.”

His eyes narrowed. “A holiday that involves Section business?”

“Something like that.”

Charlotte and I still worked for Section 47, but ever since the moles had been discovered inside the D.C. station, we had kept our missions to ourselves, especially our quest to hunt down Henrika Hyde.

We had both been extremely careful, but Henrika had still slipped away from us time and time again. No one could be that bloody lucky, which meant someone was tipping her off about our movements. I didn’t know who it could be, though. Charlotte and I both trusted Gia Chan and Evelyn Hawkes, who were the only two people who knew our exact mission details.

Oh, I was sure other people suspected we were hunting Henrika, including Joan Samson, a Section liaison and friend of mine. Joan had been involved with Graham, and she wanted revenge for his death just as badly as I did. More than once, she had asked to assist Charlotte and me, even though I hadn’t told her what we were doing. But Joan would never help Henrika, which meant someone else inside Section was tipping off the paramortal arms dealer, and I was going to find out exactly who, just as soon as we captured her.

“Ahh,” Gabriel drawled. “So you and Charlotte are here on the down-low. Kind of sad when you have to run an off-the-books mission from an organization that is already off the books itself.”

I shrugged. “You know how it is at Section 47. You never quite know who you can really trust.”

A harsh laugh escaped his lips. “Tell me about it.”

This time, I gave him a speculative look. “You ever going to tell me exactly what you did to get kicked out of Section? They don’t normally let cleaners of your skill just walk away.”

Gabriel took a swig of champagne, although his lips puckered as though he’d downed a bitter poison.

“Actually, now that I think about it, the more interesting question is what are you doing here?” I asked. “Your name wasn’t on the guest list.”

“How did you get access to the guest list . . .” Gabriel sighed. “Charlotte. She really is too smart for everyone, including me.”

I grinned. “Yes, she is.”

Gabriel took another swig of champagne. “If you must know, I was finishing up a consulting job in Frankfurt when Elsa Eisen reached out to me.”

Gabriel might have left Section 47, but he still had his feet firmly planted in the spy world. He ran Chase Industries, a private contracting firm that did everything from kidnapping rescues to witness protection to returning stolen art to its rightful owners. Gabriel had a sterling reputation for being either silent and invisible or loud and deadly, depending on the situation and his clients’ demands.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Elsa Eisen wants you to work for her? Doing what, exactly?”

Gabriel shrugged. “To be determined. I just got here a few minutes ago. I was on my way to speak to her when I saw you lurking over here and decided to come say hello.”

By this point, most of the guests had taken their seats, while the waitstaff was in the back of the ballroom, clearing away dirty plates and glasses. The curtains had been drawn across the stage, and music had begun playing, indicating that the performance would start soon.

I glanced over at Elsa, who was whispering to one of her security guards. The man nodded, then moved off. Elsa’s face remained smooth and expressionless, but her red aura pulsed with worry. Lina wandered over to her, and Elsa plastered a smile on her face and started talking to her niece.

“Do you think Elsa is in trouble?” I asked.

“Folks don’t hire me just for my good looks and witty conversation, Slick.”

Gabriel smirked at me, then smoothed a hand down the front of his tuxedo jacket, strutted over to Elsa, and introduced himself. Once again, her expression gave nothing away, but her aura pulsed even more strongly than before, this time with interest. Elsa ushered Lina over to a chair, then drew Gabriel off to the side and started speaking to him. I couldn’t hear what she said, but in an instant, Gabriel’s entire persona shifted from warm, charming, and relaxed to cold, quiet, and alert.

So Elsa Eisen was in trouble, and she had hired Gabriel Chase to help her deal with it. I couldn’t help but wonder what, if anything, that trouble might have to do with Henrika Hyde—and if tonight’s holiday party would turn out to be far more dangerous than Charlotte and I had anticipated.

Elsa finished speaking to Gabriel, and the rest of the guests took their seats. I snagged a chair in the final row, so that most of the other guests were in front of me and my back was to one wall.

Gabriel remained standing along the wall, close to where Elsa and Lina were sitting in the front row. His gaze roamed over everyone in the ballroom, and he started speaking to one of the guards. Whatever trouble Elsa was in, Gabriel was already trying to get a handle on it.

The lights dimmed, the curtains drew back, and the performance began. I was familiar with the music, although I had never seen The Nutcracker before. Normally, I would have enjoyed the ballet, as I appreciated anything with an artistic bent, but, like Gabriel, I kept a close watch on everyone, from the dancers flitting about the stage, to the guests lounging in the cushioned chairs, to the waiters setting out more food and drinks.

According to Charlotte’s research, The Nutcracker usually ran for about two hours, including an intermission, but since tonight’s show only featured a few scenes, it was only supposed to take about thirty minutes. Then the guests would have another chance to mingle with the dancers, admire the Nutcracker Ruby, and guzzle even more champagne.

Henrika Hyde wasn’t here, and it didn’t look like she was going to make a last-minute appearance. Disappointing but not surprising. Henrika had been smart enough to stay ahead of us this long, and I hadn’t really expected to catch her here tonight.

While the music soared and the dancers twirled onstage, I checked my pocket watch. Charlotte should be in position by now. Time to do my part.

I slid my watch back into its pocket, got to my feet, and headed toward the back of the ballroom, as though I was bored.

Maria, the waitress Charlotte had been chatting with earlier, offered me a plum strudel, which I politely declined. Instead, I tucked my hands into my pockets and drifted toward one of the side doors.

According to the schematics Charlotte had accessed, a junction box was located about thirty feet down the corridor outside the ballroom, something I had verified on my way into the party earlier. As a galvanist, I could easily reach out and channel the electricity running through the walls of whatever room I was in, but disrupting power to a larger area, like the entire castle, often required access to a junction box or something similar. Leaving the ballroom and channeling the current through the box would also lessen the chance of someone accidentally brushing up against me and literally getting the shock of their life while I was manipulating the castle’s electrical grid.

“Charlotte?” I asked in a low voice. “Are you in position?”

Silence. Then a couple of raspy huffs sounded in my ears, as though Charlotte was out of breath for some reason. “I’m working on it. Give me ninety seconds, then kill the lights.”

“Roger that.”

I glanced around the ballroom. None of the security guards was paying any attention to me, since I wasn’t close to the Nutcracker Ruby, although Gabriel was watching me with a shrewd, knowing expression. No doubt, he too had slipped out of many a party during his time as a Section cleaner so he could complete his mission—

The lights flickered.

I stopped and looked at the closest wall sconce, then the chandelier above my head.

The lights flickered again, and an odd high-pitched whine filled my ears, as though all the old-fashioned bulbs were on the verge of blowing. I reached out with my magic. Despite the layers of paint, wood, and plaster, I could still feel the energy zipping through the electrical lines in the walls. But instead of a smooth, steady flow, the current kept skipping, like a scratchy record on a turntable.

“Charlotte!” I hissed. “Something’s wrong—”

The lights flickered a third time, then snuffed out completely, plunging the ballroom into darkness.

Someone else had cut the power.

CHAPTER THREE

CHARLOTTE

I loaded some champagne flutes onto my tray, then left the ballroom. I offered the drinks to the folks standing in the hallway, but they were too busy chatting and laughing to pay any attention. Fine by me. I moved past them all, my gaze locked on the far end of the hallway.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a sharp voice called out.

I bit back a groan and turned around. Chef Jacques was striding toward me, once again clutching a large knife. This blade burned an even brighter, bloodier red in my eyes than the one he’d brandished at Maria earlier in the ballroom, but it still paled in comparison to the pinched, angry scowl on his face.

Jacques stopped and stabbed his knife at my chest like it was an extension of his index finger, although he stopped short of actually slicing me with the blade. “You’re supposed to be in the ballroom with the others. Not wandering around out here like an aimless fool.”

I gestured over at the folks still chatting and laughing. “You told us to serve the guests. Well, some of the guests came out here, so I followed them.”

He harrumphed, as though my logic annoyed him. “Hurry up and get back inside. The ballet is about to begin.”

I dutifully nodded my agreement, even as I silently cursed the delay.

Another waiter had also stepped out into the hallway, and Jacques made a beeline over to him.

“How many times do I have to tell you?” he snapped. “The sweet-and-sour meatballs are to be skewered—skewered!—so the guests don’t have to pick them up with their fingers. Imbécile!”

The waiter cringed and ducked his head. Well, at least I wasn’t the only one who had incurred the chef’s wrath this evening.

Jacques kept muttering about skewers and imbéciles as he stormed down the hallway and through a door that led into the kitchen.

The second Jacques vanished, I hurried to the opposite end of the hallway and stepped around the corner. I waited a few seconds, but no footsteps scuffed, and no knives came flying in my direction, so I headed deeper into the castle.

Like many historic buildings, Tannenbaum Castle was open for tours during certain times of the year, and I had spent hours scouring social-media footage, as well as official video clips posted on the castle’s website, and comparing that to the structure’s schematics and other information. According to my research, most of the security cameras were in the public areas, like the grand ballroom, to make sure grabby tourists didn’t stuff expensive knickknacks into their pockets and purses, but a few cameras covered the hallways, including this one. Hence my masquerading as a waitress tonight. People were much less likely to think you were up to something shady if you appeared to have a purpose, like delivering drinks.

As I walked along, my gaze roamed over the furnishings, which were even more luxe and impressive in person than they were online. After my grandmother had gotten sick, I had been forced to sell off almost all her possessions, and mine too, in order to pay her massive medical bills. Furniture, dishes, clothes, jewelry. I had pawned, hocked, and sold pretty much everything that wasn’t nailed down in her apartment or absolutely necessary to my own daily existence, right down to the crystal stars Grandma Jane had collected for most of her life. An antiques dealer not unlike Elsa Eisen had given me two thousand dollars for the ornaments, which had paid for my grandmother’s medications, at least for a little while.

After living in Grandma Jane’s empty apartment for the last several months, I found the sheer amount of stuff in the castle a bit overwhelming. Tapestries, paintings, mirrors, tables, chairs, even life-size suits of armor clutching swords, battle-axes, and other weapons. And all of it was decked out with even more stuff in the form of holiday decorations, from the clusters of mistletoe and porcelain gingerbread men hanging on the walls, to the fresh evergreen garland and red balls outlining the archways and windows, to the blue and silver ribbons dangling from the necks of the armored suits like oversize bow ties, as though the medieval knights were heading toward the ballroom to join the other party guests.

My synesthesia flared to life, painting the sharp edges of the knights’ swords in a sinister scarlet sheen, but my magic didn’t stop with the obvious weapons. Practically everything in the castle glowed with a telltale color that hinted of danger.

A strand of white lights drooping out of some garland near the floor twinkled with a pinkish tint since they were at just the right height for someone to trip over. The same thing went for a crooked gingerbread man that was dangerously close to falling off the wall and bonking someone in the head. Even the white marble floor took on a gleaming gray tinge, given how easy it would be to lose my balance and fall on the slick stone.

I gritted my teeth and ignored the colors, but my own soft footsteps rolled out like a sinister drumbeat in a movie, signaling that something bad was about to happen when the heroine least expected it. I wasn’t sure if the odd noise was the result of my synesthesia or the castle’s strange, echoing acoustics, but it was giving me a headache.

“Hello, Gaby.” Desmond’s voice sounded in my ears. “What an unexpected surprise.”

Next came a snort, followed by a familiar voice. “Gaby? Really? Is that the best you can do?”

I frowned. What was Gabriel doing here? The last time I’d texted with him a few days ago, he’d been working on a job back home in D.C.—

“Where do you think you’re going?” a loud voice demanded behind me.

For a moment, I thought Chef Jacques had followed me after all, but the deep voice didn’t have the snarky French accent or the sneer of derision.

I stopped and turned around right in front of the grand staircase that curved down to the first floor. A tuxedo-clad man clutching a walkie-talkie was striding toward me. I gave him a bright smile, even as I silently cursed my bad luck. I should have been paying more attention to my surroundings, not wondering at Gabriel’s sudden appearance.

Way to go, Charlotte. Some superspy you are.

I didn’t know if the guard had spotted me on one of the security cameras or simply happened across me during his regular patrol, but it didn’t really matter. He had seen me, and now I had a decision to make: fight or flight.

I was still clutching the serving tray in my left hand, and I slid my right hand into my pants pocket, pulled out an object that looked like a silver tube of lipstick, and held it down by my side.

Flight wouldn’t get Desmond and me the information we wanted—needed—so fight it was. Then again, things almost always ended in a fight when Section 47 was involved.

The guard stopped in front of me. He was a mountain of a man, several inches over six feet, and his white shirt and black tuxedo jacket strained to cover his bulging biceps. “What are you doing in this part of the castle?”

I tipped my head down at the serving tray. “Ms. Eisen asked me to bring some champagne to her office for a private meeting.”

To my surprise, the guard chuckled at my lie. “Private meeting. Right.” He held the walkie-talkie up to his lips and pressed a button. “Hey, Vlad, I’ve got a straggler in another part of the castle. You want me to bring her back to the ballroom or deal with her here?”

“Ballroom.” A male voice with a faint Russian accent crackled through the walkie-talkie. “The show hasn’t started yet, and we’re still getting everyone into position.”

This was my best—and probably only—chance to get to Elsa’s office, and I wasn’t leaving without completing my mission. So I waited until the guard clipped his walkie-talkie back to his belt, then smiled at him again.

“Do me a favor. Hold this a second.”

Before he could protest, I shoved the serving tray at the guard, who instinctively reached out and grabbed it. Next, I hit a tiny button on the side of the lipstick tube still in my right hand. A needle popped out of the bottom of the silver tube, and I lunged forward and jabbed it into his neck.

The guard yelped in surprise and jerked away, the tube and attached needle sticking out of his skin like it was an electrode on Frankenstein’s monster. He snarled and tossed the tray at me, but I ducked out of the way. The tray hit the wall behind me, pealing like a bell, while the champagne flutes shattered as loudly as grenades exploding.

The guard surged forward, pinned me up against the wall, and locked his hands around my throat. “You sneaky little bitch!” he snarled. “You’re going to pay for that!”

Given his tight grip and supreme ease in manhandling me, he had to be a paramortal with enhanced strength. There was no way I could peel his fingers off my throat, so I reached out, grabbed the silver tube, and shoved the attached needle even deeper into his thick neck.

The lipstick tube was one of several gadgets I had borrowed from the Section 47 armory before Desmond and I had come to Germany, and the needle contained a powerful sedative that would supposedly knock out the biggest, strongest paramortal in a matter of seconds.

But given the increasing pressure of the guard’s fingers on my throat and the alarming lack of air in my lungs, I was mentally cursing my choice of spy gear. That was the problem with a government agency, especially a secret one. Nothing ever just worked the way it was supposed to—

The guard’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he pitched forward. I grunted as his body slammed into mine, and we both slid down the wall to the floor.

It took me several seconds to wriggle out from underneath his massive bulk. I crouched over the guard, looking and listening, but the camera in the corner of the ceiling remained trained on the grand staircase, and no footsteps pounded in this direction. A relieved sigh escaped my lips. It didn’t seem as though anyone had spotted me on the security feeds, but I had to move quickly before someone else wandered through here.

I plucked the needle out of the guard’s neck, retracted it, and shoved the tube back into my pants pocket. Then I searched him.

The guard wasn’t carrying a phone or any identification, which was a bit odd, but he had two guns, along with three switchblades, tucked away in various holsters and sheaths. I hesitated, wondering if I should take the weapons, but I decided to leave them where they were. The guard certainly wasn’t going to be using them anytime soon, and I would much rather talk—or think—than try to fight my way out of another confrontation. Besides, plausible deniability was often a spy’s best friend, and cramming my pockets full of guns and knives was neither plausible nor deniable. But I did swipe the man’s walkie-talkie and clipped it to my own belt so I could hear the other guards’ chatter and potentially get a heads-up if any of them spied me on the security cameras.

I didn’t have time to clean up the mess, so I used my right boot to shove the silver platter under a nearby table, along with the larger pieces of the shattered champagne flutes. Some broken glasses were normal during a party, but an unconscious man was much harder to overlook, so I bent down, took hold of the guard’s arms, and dragged him toward the closest room.

The mountainous man was even heavier than he looked, and it took every ounce of strength I had to move him. I wouldn’t have managed it at all if the floor hadn’t been so smooth and slick, and I sent a silent thanks to whoever had mopped and waxed the marble.

It took me the better part of a minute, but I pulled, yanked, and tugged the guard into a nearby bathroom, which was devoid of cameras. I managed to hoist him up and into the old-fashioned clawfoot tub, then yanked the poinsettia-themed shower curtain forward. That hid most of him from sight, although the guard was so tall that his feet stuck out from the end of the tub like he was a toy soldier that had drowned inside the white porcelain.

“Charlotte?” Desmond’s voice sounded in my ears. “Are you in position?”

I sucked down a couple of breaths. “I’m working on it. Give me ninety seconds, then kill the lights.”

“Roger that.”

I stuck my head out of the bathroom, but no one was in the hallway or coming up the staircase, so I shut the door behind me. I might have lost my serving tray and champagne props, but I was able to move a lot faster without them, and it didn’t take me long to reach Elsa’s office.

No cameras covered this area, so I tried the knob. Locked, as expected, so I held the silver watch on my left wrist up to the keyhole. The watch was another gadget from the Section 47 armory and contained a powerful magnet that could do all sorts of things. I twisted the watch face clockwise, triggering the magnet.

Snick.

The door’s metal lock flipped open, but instead of going inside, I remained in the hallway, waiting for Desmond. According to the schematics I’d studied, Elsa’s office was wired so that the guards in the castle’s security center were alerted anytime the door was opened, except if the power was disrupted and the security system had to reboot.

The lights flickered once, twice, three times, then went out completely.

I grinned into the darkness. “Way to go, Dundee.”

Desmond didn’t respond. Weird, but I had work to do, so I twisted the knob and slipped into the office.

My heart quickened, and a heady mix of eagerness and determination rushed through me. The hard part was over, and now it was time to finally find the information that would lead Desmond and me to Henrika Hyde and all the answers she had about potential moles, who was in the Syndicate, and what had really happened to my father on his last mission for Section 47.

I shut and locked the door behind me. A few seconds later, the lights flared back to life, illuminating the enormous office. Tapestries, maps, and paintings adorned the walls, while floor-to-ceiling wooden bookcases flanked a white marble fireplace that was big enough for me to walk into standing upright. Flames crackled behind the tall iron grate, adding a pleasant warmth and a cheery glow to the drafty room.

Just like the rest of the castle, Elsa’s office had been decorated for Christmas. Fresh evergreen garlands studded with silver bows and white lights swooped along the bookcase shelves, while wicker baskets filled with colorful blown-glass ornaments perched on the tables. Two life-size nutcrackers dressed in blue jackets just like mine were clutching presents and standing in the corner between a bookcase and some glass doors that led out to a terrace. I shivered and looked away from their wide, toothy grins.

I didn’t have long until the security system rebooted, so I hurried over to the desk along the front wall and sat down in the green leather chair.

The desk was a massive affair, more than six feet long, made of solid wood and trimmed with brass accents. A monitor, a landline phone, several manila folders, some framed portraits, a couple of mismatched cups containing pens and pencils. I ignored the office paraphernalia and cracked open the laptop in the center of it all. The device whirred to life and asked for a password, along with a biometric fingerprint. Once again, I pulled the silver tube out of my pocket. This time, I yanked off the cap, revealing a thumb drive, which I inserted into the laptop.

The device whirred for several seconds, ingesting the decryption software on the thumb drive. The fingerprint request vanished, replaced by a new log-in prompt. I entered my Section 47 username and password, and the laptop’s home screen appeared.

“Thank you, Diego,” I murmured.

Diego Benito was one of the best IT techs at Section 47. A few days ago, I had asked him for a thumb drive that would let me bypass biometric, password, and other security measures—everything I needed to access Elsa Eisen’s laptop. Of course, he had asked what mission it was for, but I’d been vague on the details. Diego seemed like someone I could trust, but then again, so had Miriam, and I wasn’t taking any chances until I knew for certain that all the moles had been eradicated from Section 47.

The first thing I did was access the Internet and upload the entire contents of the laptop to my own personal, heavily encrypted cloud. Then I repeated the process and uploaded a second copy to a cloud that only Desmond, Gia, and Evelyn could access. And because you could never have too many data backups—and I was excessively paranoid—I also copied the files directly onto the thumb drive.

While the download churned along, I searched the desk. More folders, pens, and pencils. A couple of pairs of scissors. Several silver letter openers. A battered stapler that had seen better days. Nothing interesting. I also rapped my knuckles on the insides of the drawers, but the desk was solid wood, and I didn’t find any secret compartments. Pity. I loved finding secret compartments.

The files were still downloading onto the thumb drive, so I opened a search box on the laptop’s home screen and typed in Henrika Hyde’s name.

Dozens and dozens of documents popped up, some of them dating back more than twenty years. Henrika had been involved with the Eisen family for much longer than I had realized, although Peter Eisen, Elsa’s brother, had been her main contact in recent years, instead of Elsa, the official head of the family business. Curious.

I clicked on some of the documents, most of which were auction invoices, wire transfers, and shipping manifests detailing the rare, expensive items Peter had found, purchased, stored, and transported for Henrika. Given Henrika’s rampant love of jewelry, many of the items were rings, necklaces, and bracelets, along with a variety of cut and uncut gemstones, although there were several paintings, statues, and books in the mix.

I sat back in the chair and let the entire screen fill my field of vision all at once. To anyone else, the screen would have looked the same as always, but my synesthesia kicked in, and different colors appeared, like inks spilling over a blank piece of paper.

Many of the words remained a flat, stark black, indicating that they were the complete, absolute, unaltered truth, but a few paragraphs with typos and small punctuation errors took on a light gray tinge. The longer I looked, and the more documents I scanned, the more pinks popped up, revealing bigger errors and more significant mistakes. And then there were the reds, which indicated major errors, along with outright fraud and other financial misdeeds and malfeasance.

There was a lot of red.

Some of the invoices, transfers, and manifests were practically bathed in red, and I half expected the bold, bright color to start dripping off the screen, as though the words and numbers were nervously sweating blood at being examined so closely.

As odd and unexpected as the sea of red was, I didn’t have time to do a deep dive into the information and figure out what was wrong with it. Besides, I didn’t care about Peter Eisen’s financial shenanigans, only how these files could help me track down Henrika Hyde.

I clicked through a few more documents, but I didn’t see anything that would immediately lead me to Henrika. No penthouse apartments where Peter had sent the rare scientific books that he had procured for her at auction. No country homes where her antique paintings were being stored. No yachts anchored in port waiting for a shipment of uncut diamonds to arrive. Nothing I didn’t already know about.

The download finally finished, so I grabbed the thumb drive, capped it, and slid the fake lipstick tube back into my pocket. I started to close the laptop when I noticed a file in the bottom left corner of the home screen labeled “Final Accident Report.”

Curious, I clicked on it, and a photo popped up—two people trapped in a crumpled car, their bodies badly burned.

I blanched, but I forced myself to study the gruesome photo, along with the accompanying information. The picture had been taken at the site of the car accident that had killed Peter Eisen and his wife, Claire, about six months ago. According to the police report, Peter had been driving from New York City to the Eisen family home in the Hamptons when his car had skidded off a rain-slicked road and plowed into a tree. The vehicle had exploded on impact, leaving behind the mangled metal and charred bodies in the photo.

I started to close the file, but something made me lean forward and take another look at the report. All the words remained a flat, stark black, indicating that the person who had typed up the information believed it to be true and accurate. But I couldn’t shake the nagging sense that I was missing something, so I kept studying the information. My gaze zoomed in on the photo of Peter and Claire, and I finally realized what was bothering me about the picture: their skin.

Their bright, strangely shiny, neon-red skin.

My stomach roiled, and acid crawled up my throat. I’d seen those terrible burns once before in a classified Section 47 mission report, in a photo that showed Desmond cradling the body of Graham Walker after Adrian Anatoly had blown up a beach trying to kill the two Section cleaners.

Only one thing made burns that bright, brutal, and shiny: Redburn, Henrika Hyde’s explosive.

I rocked back in the chair, making it squeak in protest. Peter and Claire Eisen hadn’t been killed in a car accident. The couple had been run off the road, and then someone had used Henrika’s Redburn explosive to blow up their car with them still inside it.

What a horrific way to die.

I shuddered and finally closed the file, although questions crowded into my mind. Who had killed Peter and his wife? Henrika Hyde? Or someone else? And why had they used Redburn? Had Henrika already sold her explosive formula to the highest bidder?

Each question led to two more, but my time was up, and I had to leave the office and return to the party before someone discovered the drugged guard in the bathroom—

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

The noises startled me, making me sit bolt upright in the chair, and they were almost immediately followed by another round.

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

Even with all the thick walls and wide halls muffling and distorting things, I still knew exactly what those sounds were. I had heard them often enough, both as a child during training sessions with my father and during my adult life working for Section 47.

Gunshots.

CHAPTER FOUR

DESMOND

Darkness descended over the ballroom like a black curtain. A few startled gasps rang out, along with concerned murmurs. The guests stayed seated, although several folks fished their phones out of their purses and pockets and used them as flashlights.

I put my back to the closest wall and reached out for the electrical current again. Maybe I could use my galvanism to restore the power—

The lights blazed back to life. The concerned murmurs faded away, but my gaze zipped around the ballroom. The guests sitting in the front, the security guards lining the walls, the waiters clustered in the back. Everything was the same as before, but even more unease filled me. Something was wrong.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” a loud voice called out. “If I may please have your attention.”

I looked toward the stage, along with everyone else.

Katarina Tanetsa was standing in the middle of the open space, still wearing her purple Sugar Plum Fairy outfit just as she had a minute ago. But while the lights had been out, she had added a new accessory to her glittering costume: a large silver revolver.

Everyone sucked in a collective breath, and the other dancers onstage froze, as though they were puppets whose strings had been tied together, holding them all in place.

I cursed and moved forward, even though I was too far away from the stage to stop Katarina before she started shooting people. At the front of the ballroom, Gabriel also moved forward, heading straight toward Elsa and Lina, who were still in their chairs, along with the guests. The security guards were much slower to react, although they reached for their weapons, their gazes fixed on the ballerina.

I was about halfway across the ballroom when tuxedo-clad men armed with guns rushed in through the main open doors in front of me. A couple of the security guards spun around, drew their own weapons, and took aim, trying to stop the gunmen.

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

The gunmen fired, and four guards dropped to the floor, their blood splattering across the glossy white marble.

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

More guards tumbled to the floor, and the gunmen stepped over the bodies and kept moving forward, sweeping into the ballroom like a river of death.

I changed direction and quickened my pace, sprinting toward the closest gunman. I was twenty feet away from him.

Fifteen feet . . . ten . . . five . . .

The gunman spun around and snapped up his weapon. I was too far away to tackle him without getting shot, so I had no choice but to jerk to a stop and raise my hands in surrender.

The guests finally realized what was going on, and several of them started screaming. Most of them dove down toward the floor, hiding behind their chairs, although a few folks panicked and shot to their feet. But they were already surrounded, and there was nowhere for them to run.

In the back of the ballroom, some of the chefs and waiters rushed toward the door that led into the kitchen, but it must have been locked, because they couldn’t get through it. Just like the guests, they had nowhere to run.

“Charlotte!” I yelled above the screams. “Charlotte!”

She didn’t answer me, and an eerie, buzzing silence filled my ears. In addition to cutting the power, the gunmen must have also activated a signal jammer, which meant no comms and no way to warn Charlotte.

“Move!” the gunman in front of me growled and jerked his weapon to the side. “Now! Or I’ll shoot you in the face!”

I was outmanned and outgunned—literally—so I had no choice but to let him herd me toward the center of the ballroom with everyone else.

The gunmen were calm, confident, and coordinated, and it took them less than a minute to force the remaining security guards to surrender and fully seize control of the ballroom. They were most definitely professional mercenaries, and given the intense energy emanating off them, all the men were also paramortals.

A couple of the mercs removed the guards’ weapons and tied their hands and feet, while the other mercs forced all the guests, chefs, waiters, and dancers to take a seat in front of the stage.

I managed to stay on the edge of the crowd, putting myself between some of the guests and the mercs surrounding them. Across the room, Gabriel had taken up a similar position, sitting next to Elsa and Lina Eisen.

He nodded at me, and I returned the gesture.

We had never worked together before, but we were both seasoned spies, both Section 47 cleaners with years of training and dozens of missions—and kills—under our belts. The instant one of us saw an opening, he would take it, and the other man would join in the fight however he could.

I just hoped we could prevent anyone else from being killed.

Once all the hostages were seated, Katarina strode back and forth across the stage, still clutching her gun, looking at first one person, then another. Her lips curled back in disgust, and her aura flashed the same dark, wicked purple as her costume. The bold color and the intense energy radiating off her told me that Katarina Tanetsa would do whatever was necessary to get what she wanted, including murdering everyone in the ballroom.

“Charlotte?” I whispered, barely moving my lips. “Charlotte?”

Once again, that eerie, buzzing silence filled my ears. Still no comms. Worry surged through me about where Charlotte was and what kind of trouble she might be in, especially if more mercs were roaming through the castle, but I ruthlessly walled off that emotion with icy bricks of determination. First, I had to get myself and everyone in the ballroom out of the trouble we were all currently in. Then I could find Charlotte.

Katarina stopped in the center of the stage, and a wide, smug smile spread across her face. “Did you enjoy the ballet?” she asked, a light, almost musical Russian accent coloring her voice. “I bet it didn’t end the way you thought it would.”

She let out a merry laugh at her own bad joke, and several people flinched at the mocking sound.

Katarina jerked her head at one of the mercs, who holstered his gun and stepped forward. The guy was huge, easily six-foot-six, and his thick body bulged with muscle, making him look like a cinderblock wall poured into a tuxedo. He had cropped black hair, dark brown eyes, and ruddy skin, and the bumps in his large hooked nose indicated it had been broken numerous times.

The merc gestured at the stage, and another, smaller man with blond hair, blue eyes, and tan skin climbed up onto the platform. The second merc grabbed a large red velvet bag trimmed with white faux fur from underneath the Christmas tree, then hopped down off the stage.

“My friend Vlad and his helper Emilio are going to collect your jewelry, phones, watches, and wallets,” Katarina called out. “Think of it as putting presents in Santa’s sack for this needy girl and her boys.”

She let out another merry laugh, and several of the mercs joined in with her cheery chuckles.

Vlad and Emilio started winding their way through the hostages on my side of the ballroom. Most people cooperated without hesitation. Several of the paramortal criminals shot the mercs sour glares, but those folks knew they were outmatched, and they too handed over their valuables without protest.

I discreetly plucked my watch out of its vest pocket and tucked it up my left sleeve. I wasn’t giving up the only weapon I had. My grandfather Percival had given me the watch when I was a boy, and I was going to use it just the way he had taught me—to kill my enemies.

Vlad and Emilio quickly reached me. I handed over my phone and wallet, and Vlad stabbed a finger at my bow tie. “Pretty diamond. Take it off.”

I shrugged. “Sure, but you should know it’s fake.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe you.”

I shrugged again. “Suit yourself.”

He punched me in the face.

Vlad was tall and muscled, but his punch packed an extra-painful paramortal pop, as heavy and solid as a sledgehammer cracking against my jaw. He was probably an enduro, someone with incredible endurance, and, in his case, some extra strength thrown in for good measure. Terrific. Because things weren’t bad enough already.

Vlad’s hard hit knocked me clean out of my chair, and the second I hit the floor, he stepped up and kicked me in the ribs. A groan escaped my lips, and I flopped around like a fish out of water. Still, as sharp and painful as Vlad’s blows were, they sent an equal amount of energy spiking through my body. In addition to electricity, I could also channel kinetic force, even if that force was the result of me getting my ass beaten.

He kicked me again. More pain and energy spiked through my body, and I groaned again and rolled away, as though I was afraid of him. Really, I had my eyes locked on something else: a dessert table along the wall.

Vlad stepped forward and kicked me yet again, and this time, I used the energy and momentum of the blow to slide myself across the floor and crash into one of the table legs.

Above my head, several glasses toppled over, showering me with champagne, while a few plates dropped to the floor and shattered into dozens of pieces. People screamed, and a couple of frightened sobs rang out.

I ignored the commotion, as well as Vlad preening above me, and shoved my right hand forward into the shadows. My fingers closed over a tiny dessert fork that had spun to a stop under the table. Now I had two weapons. All I needed was a chance to use them—

Hands dug into the back of my tuxedo jacket and hauled me upright. Two mercs spun me around, then latched onto my upper arms, holding me in place.

Vlad ripped the bow tie with its fake diamond off my neck and handed it to Emilio, who grinned and dropped it into his red velvet sack.

Vlad smirked at me. “Bet me kicking you in the ribs didn’t feel too fake.”

I concentrated on sucking air down into my lungs and using the lingering kinetic force of his blows to ease the sharp ache in my ribs. Let the arrogant bastard crow all he wanted. The merc didn’t realize who he was dealing with yet, but I would show him soon enough.

Vlad smirked at me again, then jerked his head to the side. The two mercs holding my arms shoved me forward and forced me to sit back down.

On the opposite side of the ballroom, Gabriel shifted on the edge of his seat, as though he was going to leap up and start attacking the mercs. I shook my head the tiniest bit, then deliberately looked to the left. Gabriel turned his head in that direction. A merc was staring at him, with his gun up and ready to fire. Gabriel stilled, but his smoky gray aura pulsed with anger and frustration.

Silence dropped over the ballroom again.

“Well, that was an amusing interlude,” Katarina said. “But the show must go on, and it’s time to get what we came here for.”

She leaped down off the stage and strode over to the display case that contained the Nutcracker Ruby. She tucked her gun into the small of her back, then slammed her fist into the case. It cracked, and the ballerina dug her fingers into the grooves and casually ripped the thick, tough plastic apart like she was peeling the skin off a banana.

Surprise and wariness shot through me. Katarina Tanetsa was another enduro, and she was even stronger than Vlad.

Katarina plucked the platinum ring off its white velvet stand and held it up to the light. She studied it for a few seconds, then let out a disgusted snort and dropped it onto the floor. She stood en pointe, lifted her right leg, and then snapped it down.

She stabbed the ring with her foot, hammering it with her toes. Once, twice, three times.

Crack!

The Nutcracker Ruby shattered.

Another stunned silence dropped over the ballroom. Everyone looked shocked, except for Elsa, whose jaw clenched.

Katarina daintily kicked one of the larger pieces away. “The famous Nutcracker Ruby you all paid so much money to see is nothing but a pretty piece of glass.” She clucked her tongue in mock sympathy. “Really, Elsa. How disappointing. I expected a much more convincing fake from someone who authenticates antiques for a living.”

All eyes turned to Elsa, who slowly rose to her feet. Anger stained her cheeks the same red as the glass shards littering the floor.

“What do you want?” she snapped. “What is the point of this spectacle?”

A cruel smile curved Katarina’s dark purple lips. “To show everyone just how duplicitous and deceitful the Eisen family truly is. Why, you put thieves like me to shame, Elsa.”

Several agreeing, angry murmurs rang out among the guests, especially the paramortal criminals. They had all thought the ruby was real, and no one liked being swindled.

Katarina tilted her head toward the main ballroom doors. “Let’s take a walk.”

Elsa lifted her chin. “And if I refuse?”

Vlad yanked his gun off his belt, stepped forward, and leveled the weapon at Lina’s head.

“Then my friend will shoot your sweet little niece,” Katarina replied in a deceptively pleasant voice. “Your choice.”

Lina gasped. Her blue eyes bulged in her pale face, and she looked back and forth between her aunt and the gun. Maria, the waitress, was sitting beside her, and she wrapped her arm around the girl’s shoulders in a protective motion.

Next to them, Gabriel shifted on the edge of his seat again, his fingers flexing wide. He was ready to leap up and tackle Vlad to try to save Lina and Maria, even if such a reckless move would probably end up getting him killed. My estimation of Gabriel Chase rose another notch.

“She’s just a kid!” Elsa snapped again. “She doesn’t know anything.”

Katarina shrugged. “I don’t care what she does or doesn’t know. All I care about is getting what I came here for—the real Nutcracker Ruby. Now, are you going to give it to me, or do my men have to hurt some more people first?”

Emilio stepped forward, raised his gun, and aimed it at my head. I tightened my grip on the dessert fork still hidden in my right hand. Just like Gabriel, I too would attack if the merc tried to shoot me or anyone else.

“Fine.” Elsa ground out the word. “You win.”

“I always do,” Katarina purred. “Elsa and I are going to take a little stroll through her lovely castle. The rest of you? Don’t go anywhere. The show’s not over, and trust me, you don’t want to miss the grand finale.”

The ballerina let out yet another merry laugh, then swept out of the ballroom. Vlad waggled his gun at Elsa in a clear command to follow the other woman.

“It’s okay, Lina!” Elsa called out, a tight smile creasing her face. “Just do what they tell you to, and everything will be fine. Okay?”

Lina bobbed her head, causing a couple of tears to streak down her round cheeks. Elsa’s brittle smile cracked, then vanished altogether. She stared at her niece a moment longer, then left the ballroom. Vlad trailed along behind her.

Emilio lowered his weapon to his side. He made a circular motion with his other hand, and a couple of mercs moved forward and shut the doors, sealing everyone inside.

My gaze skipped around the ballroom, and I quickly assessed the situation and cataloged threats, just as I would on any other Section mission gone wrong. More than three hundred hostages, and more than a dozen mercs, all of whom were paramortals, carrying guns, and wouldn’t hesitate to shoot—kill—anyone who tried to escape.

I looked over at Gabriel, and the corners of his mouth curved up into a rueful grin. He knew the same thing I did: we might not survive this mission.

CHAPTER FIVE

CHARLOTTE

The distinctive cracks of the gunshots vanished, replaced by an empty, eerie silence.

“Desmond? Desmond!” I hissed, but he didn’t respond, and the faint crackle of static in my ears indicated that our comms were being jammed.

Suddenly, I remembered what the man I had drugged earlier had said. I’ve got a straggler in another part of the castle. You want me to bring her back to the ballroom or deal with her here?

He hadn’t been a regular security guard. That was why he hadn’t had any identification or a phone. He was part of whatever hostile group had just fired those shots, most likely in the ballroom, since that was where all the guests were, including Elsa Eisen, Gabriel, and Desmond.

I slammed the laptop shut, surged to my feet, and hurried over to the office door. I had to get back to the ballroom and see what was happening. I had to make sure Desmond was okay—

“The office is secure.” A deep male voice sounded on the other side of the thick wood. “So is the rest of the castle. Everyone is locked down in the ballroom. You have a clear path to the office. We’ll get started outside.”

My hand froze on the knob, even as my heart leaped into my throat. No more voices sounded, although I heard the faint tapping of footsteps striding away.

I released the knob and backed away from the door, making as little noise as possible. Someone was on their way to the office, and I didn’t want to be here when they arrived, so I hurried over to the glass doors on the other side of the room. I reached for the closest door to yank it open—

A bright beam of light cut across the glass and stabbed into my eyes.

Once again, I froze with my hand on the knob, but the beam of light quickly vanished. I blinked the stars out of my eyes and waited, but no voices sounded, so I turned the knob, opened the door, and cautiously stuck my head outside.

The glass doors led out to a wide terrace that overlooked a small pond ringed by black wrought-iron benches. The pond itself appeared to be frozen solid, while fat, fluffy flakes of snow were drifting down from the night sky, coating the landscape in an ever-deepening layer of white.

Beyond the pond, several black hulking shapes were perched at the edge of the evergreen woods ringing the castle. I tiptoed forward and squinted through the snow, and I finally realized what the shapes really were: snowmobiles. The intruders must have used the vehicles to get up the mountain instead of taking the road or the gondola lift and potentially alerting the exterior castle guards. Smart.

I kept scanning the landscape. No one was close to the snowmobiles, but someone was lying on the left side of the terrace—a security guard.

I crept forward, crouched down, and put my fingers up against his neck, but he didn’t have a pulse, and blood stained his white shirt. Given the shocked look on the guard’s face, he’d never seen the attack coming.

I patted him down, but his gun was missing, and he didn’t have any other weapons. Why, oh why, hadn’t I taken a gun from the man I’d drugged earlier? But I already knew the answer: because this was supposed to be a simple information retrieval, and I hadn’t thought I would need a weapon tonight.

First rule of being a spy, Grandma Jane’s voice whispered through my mind. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

She was right. I should have known better and grabbed a weapon when I’d had the chance, not expected to skate out of trouble with sunny smiles and lame lies. I muttered a curse at my own shortsighted foolishness, although the soft sound was lost in the whistling winter wind.

“Hey!” a voice called out. “Pass me some more of that det cord.”

I got to my feet, tiptoed over to the castle wall, and followed several footsteps that were visible in the snow. Then I stopped and cautiously peered around the corner.

Three men dressed in tuxedos were clutching flashlights about thirty feet away. One of them pulled a large spool of red cord out of a black duffel bag at his feet and handed it to another man, who fed out the cord, while the third man came along and taped it across a couple of doors that led into a different section of the castle.

One of the men moved to the side, and I spotted a digital display embedded in what looked like a white brick that was also taped to one of the doors. My stomach lurched, and my breath rushed out in a cloud of frost.

A bomb.

These men were wiring the outside of the castle with detonating cord and explosives like they were hanging up holiday lights. Whoever these people were, they weren’t messing around—or planning to leave any witnesses behind.

A mixture of dread and urgency rushed through me. I had to get to Desmond, and Gabriel too, and warn them about the explosives. Still keeping an eye on the three men, I stepped back, and my boot cracked through a patch of ice.

Crunch.

One of the men stopped and spun around, peering into the still-falling snow. “Hey. What was that?”

For the third time, I froze. He couldn’t have possibly heard my footstep over the wind, unless he was a paramortal with enhanced senses.

“I didn’t hear anything,” the second man said.

“Me neither,” the third guy chimed in.

The two of them went back to stringing up det cord, but the first man waved his flashlight back and forth, still suspicious. There was no way for me to slip past the three men, so I eased back around the corner.

No stairs led off the terrace, and it was too high for me to climb over the railing and drop to the ground below without breaking a bone or two. So I had no choice but to retreat into the office, which was still empty.

For now.

The first thing I did when I got back inside was try the landline phone on the desk. Nothing—no ring tone and not so much as a crackle of static. In addition to blocking cell signals, the intruders had also cut the phone lines. Drat .

I sat back down at the desk and opened the laptop. To my surprise, the Internet was still working, so I sent an SOS email to Gia and Evelyn, even though I knew how useless it truly was. Even if they read the message right away, the nearest Section station was in Frankfurt, and it would take those agents hours to get here, especially given the snowy conditions.

I was on my own.

I blew out a breath, then pulled the laptop a little closer. First things first. I had to figure out exactly who had infiltrated the castle and what they wanted, other than to kill everyone. Thanks to Diego’s decryption thumb drive, I still had access to everything on the laptop. The security system had finally rebooted, so I pulled up the cameras that covered the ballroom.

It was even worse than I’d feared.

More than a dozen tuxedo-clad men with guns—professional mercenaries, most likely—were holding the guests, dancers, and waitstaff hostage.

Elsa Eisen was no fool. The party security had been extremely tight, especially since the Nutcracker Ruby was to be displayed, but these mercenaries had still found a way to overpower the guards and seize control of the castle, which meant they were extremely skilled and dangerous.

I clicked through a few more camera feeds. Gabriel was sitting next to Lina Eisen and Maria Basu. They all looked unharmed, so my gaze moved over to Desmond, who was on the opposite side of the ballroom. His blond hair was mussed, his face looked bruised, and the top part of his shirt was ripped open, but he was still alive. A relieved breath hissed out from my lips, although tight knots of tension still filled my chest.

I rocked back in the chair, making it squeak in protest, even as my brain whirred. I couldn’t take on more than a dozen mercenaries. Not physically, anyway. So how could I fuck up their plans? What kind of leverage could I come up with to save myself, Desmond, Gabriel, and everyone else in the ballroom? Or at least buy us some time until the Section agents arrived?

Think, Charlotte, think!

I started clicking through the security feeds, looking at different sections of the castle and searching for more mercenaries, even as I tried to come up with some brilliant idea to save us all.

One of the feeds showed a large metal door. I started to click over to the next camera, but then I realized exactly what was on the screen. Of course. How could I have forgotten about that? It was the most important part of the castle.

An idea popped into my mind, and I rocked forward and started typing. I winced every time my fingers hit the keys, expecting some mercenaries to hear the soft tappity-tap-tap-taps and storm into the office. But no one appeared, so I kept working.

Eventually, a long string of numbers appeared on the screen. I scribbled down the sequence on a piece of paper, which I stuffed into a pocket inside my jacket. Then I started typing again. A few seconds later, a command box appeared on the screen.

Authorize remote access change?

I hit the Enter key—

“Let’s have a chat.” A voice sounded outside the office.

The laptop was still thinking about the change, but I had to leave everything the way I’d found it, so I had no choice but to close the device and hope the command went through.

I didn’t want to think about how very dead I would be if it didn’t.

I surged to my feet and hurried back over to the doors, intending to hide outside on the terrace, but a flashlight beam once again stabbed into my eyes, closer and brighter than before. I hissed like one of Santa’s elves flushed out of the dark and jerked back. Through the glass, I could see the three mercenaries, who were now stringing up bombs along this side of the castle.

If I went outside, the mercenaries would spot me, but so would whoever was coming into the office. I had to find someplace to hide, but where?

Where?

I whirled around and around, but no solution presented itself. Someone was bound to spot me crouching under the desk, and my boots would stick out from beneath the curtains. The fireplace might have been an option, if not for the cheery flames still crackling inside. I had no desire to be roasted like a chestnut, although that might actually end up being a more merciful death, depending on who was coming into the office.

A flash of white caught my eye. I whirled around again, thinking that someone else was already in the office, but it was just one of the nutcrackers, his big teeth frozen in a wide, chomping smile.

The knob turned, and the office door slowly opened.

I was out of time.

CHAPTER SIX

DESMOND

As soon as Katarina, Elsa, and Vlad left, another tense silence dropped over the ballroom, broken only by the soft clinking and clanking of jewelry, phones, watches, and wallets rattling around in Emilio’s red velvet sack. He was moving through the crowd again, with another merc trailing along behind him, but none of the hostages protested, and he swiftly separated people from their valuables.

The other mercs held their positions along the walls, their guns still clutched in their hands. My gaze moved from one man to another, and I reached out with my galvanism, studying the energy rippling off them, along with their auras.

They were all paramortals, most likely enduros, which meant they would have incredible stamina, and some of them probably had enhanced strength as well, just like Vlad and Katarina did. I couldn’t afford to engage in a lengthy fight with any of the mercs, lest their stamina overcome my own skills, and I needed to eliminate as many of them as quickly as possible. The faster the mercs went down, the less risk there was to the hostages.

Normally on missions, I avoided collateral damage at all costs, something that had pissed off the General and some of my other Section supervisors on more than one occasion. But the mercs weren’t wearing masks or trying to disguise themselves in any way, which meant they weren’t worried about witnesses describing them to the authorities later. And the only way the mercs could be absolutely certain they wouldn’t get identified and ratted out to the police was to kill all the hostages before they left the castle.

Across the ballroom, Maria was whispering to Lina. The waitress was doing a good job of comforting the girl, who sniffled and wiped away her tears. Beside them, Gabriel was scanning the ballroom, looking for weaknesses among the mercs, just like I was still doing.

“No! Please don’t take that! My grandmother gave it to me! It’s a family heirloom!”

Emilio and the other merc were looming over an elderly woman, who was clutching the angel-shaped brooch pinned over her heart. The brooch looked like an antique, but it was clearly made of blue crystals, not precious jewels.

“I don’t care who gave it to you,” Emilio growled. “Take it off, or Ricardo will rip it off.”

Ricardo stepped forward and cracked his knuckles, his face cold and dispassionate. I’d dealt with—and killed—a lot of bad people during my time at Section, but you had to be the lowest sort of scum to threaten an octogenarian.

The woman’s hand curled around the brooch, and her chin jutted up in defiance. “No.”

Emilio rolled his eyes, while Ricardo kept cracking his knuckles. Everyone was watching the three of them, including the other mercs still stationed along the walls.

I stared at Gabriel and flashed him a glimpse of the dessert fork I’d swiped when Vlad had been kicking me earlier. We had to make a move right now, while the mercs were distracted.

A small grin curved Gabriel’s lips, and he flashed the butter knife hidden in his hand at me. I grinned back at him. Sometimes deadly minds really did think alike.

I raised my eyebrows in a silent question, and Gabriel made a little shooing motion with his hand, as if to say, Go ahead, Slick.

Still clutching the dessert fork, I loudly cleared my throat and stood up. “You heard the lady. The brooch belongs to her, not you. So leave her alone.”

Emilio laughed. “Tough talk for a guy who couldn’t even hold on to his own bow tie.”

“Who cares about a bow tie when I’m going to make a necklace out of all the teeth I knock out of your mouth?”

Emilio blinked a few times, as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard me right. Then Ricardo and a couple of the other mercs snickered, and an angry flush swept up Emilio’s neck and stained his cheeks a bright scarlet. He glared at the other mercs, but they kept right on snickering. Emilio dropped his red velvet sack onto the floor, shrugged out of his tuxedo jacket, and tossed it at Ricardo, who batted it aside. Emilio started rolling up his shirtsleeves.

“Forget it,” Ricardo called out. “He’s just running his mouth.”

Emilio ignored him and stomped over to me. He jerked his head, and two other mercs holstered their guns and stepped forward.

“Hold him still,” Emilio snarled. “And we’ll see how many teeth I can knock out of his fucking mouth.”

I didn’t offer any resistance as the mercs grabbed my upper arms and anchored me in place.

Emilio swaggered to a stop and grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth. “Nothing to say before I beat you to a pulp?”

I shrugged. “Just wondering how many teeth I need to make a necklace. Three? Five? Seven? Or maybe I should go for a whole set and knock them all out.”

Once again, Ricardo and a couple of the other mercs snickered, further enraging Emilio, who lunged forward and punched me.

He put considerable paramortal force into the blow, and pain exploded in my jaw like a grenade. But I was a Section cleaner, and I’d been punched, slapped, kicked, stabbed, sliced, shot, and bludgeoned more times than I could remember. Emilio’s attack hurt, but it was a minor annoyance compared to Henrika Hyde’s Redburn explosive washing over my body, relentlessly burning away one layer of my flesh after another.

So I stood there and let Emilio use me as a punching bag. He hit me three more times in rapid succession before he had to stop and shake out his hand. Lightweight.

I blinked the stars out of my eyes and glanced across the ballroom, wondering when Gabriel was going to strike. By this point, all the mercs were focused on me, and no one was paying any attention to him.

I blinked away a few more stars. Wait a second. Where was Gabriel? He wasn’t sitting next to Lina and Maria anymore—

Emilio’s fist plowed into my face again. This time, I couldn’t stop a groan of pain from escaping my lips. The two mercs released my arms, and I fell to the floor, my knees cracking against the marble. Emilio delivered a vicious kick to my ribs, then leaned down and punched me in the face again, making my head bounce off the floor.

I blinked the fresh constellation of stars out of my eyes. Something . . . odd was moving along the ballroom wall, like a smoky shadow sliding across the white stone, although the light was all wrong for a shadow to be in that spot.

Emilio dug his hand into my hair and yanked my head back, forcing me up onto my knees. Across the ballroom, the odd smoky shadow crept closer and closer to a merc who was watching Emilio pummel me with avid interest.

Emilio bent down, and his sour breath washed over my face. “What? No witty remarks now? How disappointing.”

Across the room, the shadow moved even closer to the unsuspecting merc, and the smoke solidified into the shape of a man. Eyes glittered, along with the dull gleam of a blade.

Emilio snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Stay with me. I’m not through hurting you yet. Not even close.”

I laughed. The chuckles spewed out of my mouth, along with some blood from where he had split my bottom lip.

“What’s so funny?” he growled.

“I’m not the one you should be worried about,” I rasped, and pointed across the ballroom.

Emilio frowned, but he looked in that direction just in time to see Gabriel step forward and bury his stolen butter knife in the side of a merc’s neck.

The merc screamed, and Gabriel wrested the man’s gun out of his hand, shoved him away, and put two bullets in his chest. Then Gabriel spun around, lifted the gun, and put two bullets in another merc’s chest. Before that man even hit the floor, Gabriel was spinning in another direction and firing two more bullets at yet another merc.

Damn. He was fast. In a matter of seconds, he had eliminated three enemies and was already targeting a fourth.

Emilio cursed, released his grip on my hair, and fumbled for the gun on his belt. The instant he was distracted, I whipped up my right hand and stabbed the dessert fork into his thigh. Emilio screamed and staggered away, plowing into the two mercs who’d been holding me for him.

While Emilio kept fumbling for his gun, I reached for the electricity flowing through the walls and channeled it into my own body. In an instant, the stars vanished from my eyes, and the pain pounding through my face and ribs faded away. Fresh energy flowed through my muscles, and I smoothly rose to my feet and surged forward.

Emilio’s eyes bulged in surprise, but he finally yanked his gun out of its holster. I wasn’t as fast as Gabriel, but I was faster than Emilio. I plucked the gun out of his hand, then slammed it into his face. Once again, Emilio screamed and staggered back.

The chandeliers flickered as I grabbed even more electricity, channeled that power down into my right arm, and hit him a second time. A couple of his teeth flew out of his mouth and tinkled across the floor like bloody piano keys. Emilio gurgled something incoherent and lunged at me, but I avoided his flailing hands and hit him a third time, smashing the gun against the side of his head. Something cracked in his skull, and he collapsed, blood dripping out of his head and mouth.

I spun the gun around in my hand so that I was clutching the grip instead of the barrel. The two mercs who’d been holding me earlier had recovered their balance and were yelling and reaching for their own guns. I shot one of them in the head, then pivoted to the side and did the same thing to the second man. They were both dead before they hit the floor.

I stepped over their bodies and moved forward, shooting and killing two more mercs. Screams rang out, and the hostages flattened themselves against the floor, trying to make themselves as small as possible. Even the paramortals hunkered down, not wanting to risk getting injured. Not surprising, since the majority were criminals who wouldn’t stick their necks out for anyone.

Most of the remaining mercs cursed, yelled, and whipped their weapons back and forth, unsure whether to target Gabriel or me first, but one man darted forward, scooped Emilio’s sack of valuables up off the floor, and sprinted up the stage stairs. He turned and aimed his gun at me, but I shot him, and he screamed and tumbled down the stairs, the sack sliding out of his hand and spilling loot everywhere.

Across the ballroom, Gabriel shot another man, but a merc rushed up on his blind side. I spun in that direction and fired, and the merc dropped like a stone. Gabriel tipped his head in thanks, then targeted another enemy—

A hand latched onto my shoulder and spun me around, and a fist plowed into my face. My head snapped back, and more stars exploded in my eyes, even as pain and energy pounded through my body. My wing tips skidded on the slick stone, and I had to windmill my arms to keep from falling on my ass.

Ricardo lunged forward, chopping the gun out of my hand. “You killed Emilio!” he growled. “You killed my brother!”

Behind me, several more cracks of gunfire rang out, but I didn’t dare turn around to see how Gabriel was faring against the other mercs. I just had to trust him to do his job and watch my back the same way I had watched his.

Ricardo punched me again, causing even more pain to pound through my body. He was even stronger and faster than Emilio had been, and if I wasn’t careful, he could easily beat me to death.

He came at me again, but this time, I dodged his blow and palmed my pocket watch, which was still tucked up my left sleeve. I reached for more electricity, and blue-white sparks sizzled along the silver chain. Ricardo growled and charged at me again. Right before he would have latched onto me, I gripped the watch and slapped the electrified chain up against his face.

Ricardo howled in pain and surprise. While he was distracted, I slid to the side and pivoted so that I was directly behind him. Then I stepped forward, looped the long chain around his neck, and strangled him.

The merc growled and clawed at the chain, but I sent another wave of electricity zipping along the metal links. Ricardo cursed and released the chain, but he churned his legs and backpedaled, slamming me into the wall. The blow jolted me from head to toe, and twin spears of pain and energy spiked through my body.

Ricardo slammed me back into the wall again and again, but I hung on to the bucking merc, tightened my grip on the chain, and ruthlessly crushed his airway. Eventually, his blows grew weaker and weaker, until they ceased altogether. I unwound the watch chain from around his neck, and he slid to the floor.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another merc aim his gun at me. I whirled in that direction, although I didn’t know if I would be fast enough to grab hold of the bullets’ kinetic energy and send them spinning away—

Crack! Crack!

Two bullets punched into the merc’s back, and he collapsed, his gun tumbling out of his hand.

Gabriel stepped forward. He made sure the man was dead, then swept his gun out over the rest of the ballroom, looking for another enemy to kill. But all the mercs were dead, and their blood stained the white marble walls like abstract paintings.

The last echoes of the firefight faded away, and the hostages slowly raised their heads and bodies up off the floor. A few low, choked sobs rang out, but most folks, including the paramortal criminals, remained quiet, still stunned by what had just happened.

“You good, Slick?” Gabriel called out.

I tucked my watch back into my vest pocket. “Yeah. You?”

“Just peachy,” he drawled. “You recognize any of these guys?”

I glanced at first one man, then another. The mercs were a mix of different ages, sizes, shapes, and ethnicities. “Nope. You?”

He shook his head and lowered his gun. “They’re not part of any crew I know of, but they all definitely had professional training, and they were all paramortals.”

“What about Katarina Tanetsa?”

Gabriel shook his head again. “Never heard of her before tonight, but obviously, she’s more than just a prima ballerina.”

“And this is about more than just stealing the Nutcracker Ruby.” I gestured out at the dead mercs. “You don’t bring this much muscle and this many guns for a simple jewel heist. So what is this really about?”

“Money,” a soft voice answered. “This is about money.”

Lina Eisen tiptoed over to Gabriel and me. Her face was still pale, and her gaze kept skittering away from the dead mercs, but she lifted her chin and squared her shoulders. Maria stepped forward and put a comforting hand on the girl’s shoulder.

“My father . . .” Lina’s voice trailed off for a moment. “My father stole things. Art and jewelry and other stuff. From a lot of bad people. Aunt Elsa doesn’t think I know, but that’s why she brought us here. She thought the castle would be the safest place for us.”

“Do you know anything about Katarina Tanetsa?” I asked. “Did your father steal something from her too?”

“I don’t know. Although my father took me to see her perform in New York earlier this year, so . . . maybe?” Lina bit her lip. “Aunt Elsa didn’t even want to have the Christmas Eve party, but I begged her to host it. I thought it would be fun, especially the Nutcracker theme. We always perform the show at my ballet school, and I was missing not being a part of it this year. I never thought . . .” She sucked in a ragged breath, then let it out. “I never thought something like this would happen.”

“It’s not your fault,” Maria piped up, squeezing the girl’s shoulder. “You didn’t ask these people to crash the party. They did that all on their own.”

Lina gave her a sad smile that made her look far older than her ten years. “Yeah, but I made it easier for them, so in a way, it is my fault.”

Her haunted blue gaze landed on one of the dead mercs, and she shuddered and quickly looked away from the body.

“Where do you think Katarina took your aunt?” I asked. “Where is the real Nutcracker Ruby?”

“In the vault. Before the party, Aunt Elsa told one of the guards the real ruby was too valuable to put on display.” A ghost of a smile drifted across the girl’s face. “Something else she didn’t think I knew about.”

I looked at Gabriel. “Then that’s where I’m headed.”

Lina shook her head. “They’ll have to go to Aunt Elsa’s office first. The vault code changes every day, and she’ll have to copy it off her laptop.”

An icy fist of fear curled around my heart and squeezed it tight. The same office and the same laptop Charlotte had been determined to access.

“The mission?” Gabriel asked in a soft voice.

I nodded, not even trying to hide my concern.

“Go find Charlotte,” he said. “And Elsa too. I’ll get everyone to safety.”

“We can take the gondola lift down the mountain to the village,” Lina piped up. “I know all the access codes.”

I looked again at Gabriel, who nodded.

“Go,” he repeated. “Find Charlotte.”

“I owe you one.”

Gabriel grinned, his white teeth flashing underneath the lights. “Nah, Slick. We’re even—this time.”

I grinned back at him, then scooped a gun up off the floor, wrenched one of the doors open, and sprinted out of the ballroom.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHARLOTTE

This was, quite possibly, the dumbest idea I had ever had.

But it was also the only idea I had, and all I could do was embrace it—and hope it wouldn’t get me killed.

So much for my big brain, as Desmond always called it. Because when the office door had started opening, the only thing I could think to do was snatch a present from a pile of decorations on a nearby table, dart behind the two life-size nutcrackers also clutching presents in the corner, and freeze, as though I was part of the holiday tableau.

Nope, definitely not my most brilliant idea. Not by a long shot.

My gaze flicked around the office yet again, but there was still nowhere to hide. If one of the mercenaries coming into the room spotted me, then I would have to bolt for the glass doors and hope I could get outside before they started shooting at me. But going onto the terrace would mean running into the other mercenaries stringing up bombs on the exterior castle walls, so I would probably get shot—and killed—either way.

Damned if I did move, damned if I didn’t move.

Sometimes I thought that was the story of my life, especially when it came to Section 47. Forget reindeer games. Spy games were much more dangerous.

But this was what my big brain had conjured up, and all I could do now was see how it played out. So I stood absolutely still, as though I were as dead and lifeless as the two nutcrackers standing in front of me.

The door opened all the way, and Elsa Eisen marched inside. Her chin was high, her shoulders squared, and her hands fisted by her sides as though she was a soldier ready to do battle. She was followed by a mercenary who was even taller and more heavily muscled than the man I had sedated and stuffed into the bathtub earlier. Bringing up the rear was Katarina Tanetsa.

Surprise shot through me. Was the ballerina a hostage too? She moved closer . . . and I saw the large silver gun in her hand. Nope, definitely not a hostage.

My big brain might not have come up with the best hiding place, but it was great at recalling facts, figures, and details, including everything I had read about Katarina Tanetsa.

After I’d gotten hold of the guest list, I’d done a preliminary check on every single person who was expected to attend the Christmas Eve party to see if anyone might be connected to Henrika Hyde or Adrian Anatoly. No one had jumped out, not even Katarina, but maybe I had missed something, so I started reviewing the facts in my mind.

Katarina Tanetsa, age thirty-three, born in Saint Petersburg to a middle-class family. Trained to be a ballerina since she was old enough to put on toe shoes. Danced her way up through the ranks and from company to company until she was one of the top ballerinas in the world. Sidelined by an ankle injury a few years ago, after a male dancer had dropped her during a performance. In the middle of a comeback tour that had her performing in public and private venues across Europe, including Tannenbaum Castle.

But being a ballerina wasn’t the only thing Katarina had trained for, given her easy familiarity with the gun. My synesthesia kicked in. Since it wasn’t currently pointed at me, the weapon only glimmered a soft, warning pink in my eyes, but Katarina herself was bathed in a bright, bloody red. From my research and watching online clips of her performances, I’d already suspected that Katarina Tanetsa was an enduro. Lots of professional athletes, like dancers, were secretly enduros who used their magical stamina to sculpt and push their bodies to their fullest potential.

Seeing Katarina up close confirmed that she was most definitely a paramortal and extremely dangerous, as if I didn’t already know all of that. Sometimes I thought my synesthesia was nothing but a form of magical overkill, telling me things that were already glaringly, painfully obvious.

Katarina strode around behind the desk, shoved the landline phone aside, sank down into the chair, and propped her ballet-slippered feet up on the antique wood. She was still wearing her purple Sugar Plum Fairy costume, complete with her sparkling crystal crown, and she looked like a pretty porcelain doll that had been positioned at the desk.

Katarina waggled the gun, and Elsa shuffled over and dropped into one of the chairs in front of the desk. The mercenary closed the office door and took up a position in front of it, a gun clutched in his hand.

Elsa sat stiff and tall, her back not touching the cushion behind her, but Katarina settled a little deeper into her chair. It squeaked in protest, making me flinch.

Katarina glanced around the office. My breath caught in my throat, and I willed myself to remain still and frozen and to look even more like a nutcracker. Her gaze skimmed over me and kept going, and I bit my tongue to keep from exhaling with relief.

“What do you want?” Elsa asked, breaking the silence.

Katarina laughed, and the merry sound made me flinch again. “Straight to business, eh? I can respect that. But I already told you what I want. The Nutcracker Ruby. The real ruby, not that cheap piece of glass I smashed in the ballroom earlier.”

So Elsa had charged her guests through the nose for the pleasure of gawking at a fake ruby. What a foolish risk. So why take it?

“Fine,” Elsa snapped. “The real ruby is in the vault. You can have it.”

“Oh, I know it’s in the vault, and you are most certainly going to give it to me. But I wanted to have a little chat first.”

“About what?”

“Your brother, of course.”

Elsa stiffened a little more. “Are you the one who killed Peter?”

Once again, surprise shot through me. Elsa knew her brother’s death wasn’t an accident. Interesting.

“Oh, yes,” Katarina purred. “I killed him. I was in New York for a performance earlier this year, so it was easy for me to take a little side trip out to the Hamptons and eliminate him. I’ll spare you the details, but he suffered quite a lot before he died.”

I thought of those shiny red burns on Peter’s body. Suffered was putting it mildly. That sort of prolonged agony would be enough to drive most people mad. Even if Peter had survived the physical injuries, he would have had severe emotional trauma. Like Desmond, who still had vivid nightmares about the beach explosion and Graham Walker’s death during the Blacksea mission.

“Why?” Elsa asked, but there was no real heat in her voice, as if she already knew the answer.

“Oh, don’t play dumb,” Katarina replied. “You know as well as I do that your brother was stealing from some very powerful people. Skimming money from auction accounts. Finding imaginary flaws in antiques to devalue them. Replacing paintings and statues with forgeries, then selling the real artwork to other buyers on the black market. Peter was playing quite an impressive shell game.”

Well, that explained all the red I’d seen in the documents I’d looked at earlier. Katarina was right. That was an impressive shell game. But the problem with that sort of con was that sooner or later, someone got pissed enough to knock all the shells off the table and realized that there was nothing underneath any of them.

“Unfortunately for your brother, one of those people just happened to be my current employer,” Katarina continued. “She always thought your brother was such a smart man, too smart to steal from her. She wants to know why he did it. Hence our little chat.”

She? My heart beat a little faster. I had a sneaking suspicion I knew exactly who Katarina was talking about.

Elsa’s lips pressed together into a tight, unhappy line. After a few seconds, she spoke. “Peter had a gambling problem.”

Understanding filled Katarina’s face. “Ah, I see. Well, too bad for him, and you too.”

“I didn’t know he was stealing,” Elsa protested.

Lie, my inner voice whispered.

Katarina arched an eyebrow at the other woman, while the mercenary snorted his disbelief. The two of them didn’t have my synesthesia, but they still knew a line of bullshit when they heard it.

“Not at first,” Elsa amended. “I only discovered it earlier this year, a few months before Peter’s . . . death. But as soon as I realized what was going on, I put a stop to all of it—Peter’s gambling and his stealing. I’ve been trying to make it right, trying to pay back the money and recover the items.”

I didn’t need my synesthesia to hear the anger, frustration, bitterness, and disgust in her voice, and unexpected sympathy surged through me. Elsa’s brother had buried her in trouble, and she’d been desperately trying to dig her way out of it ever since, much the same way I had been drowning in debt for so long, thanks to my father’s final, fucked-up mission and my grandmother’s massive medical bills.

More understanding filled Katarina’s face. “Ah, so that’s why you charged all those fools to come to your party and view the Nutcracker Ruby. And here I thought it was a charity benefit. Clever.”

“It is a charity benefit,” Elsa snapped. “Peter stole from the dance institute too. I was going to use the party proceeds to return the institute’s money before the directors realized it was missing. But you ruined that when you destroyed the fake ring. Now all the guests will demand their money back.”

“Don’t worry.” Katarina smiled, but her expression was as cold as the snow still falling outside. “No one’s going to ask you for a refund.”

Elsa tensed, and a muscle ticked in her jaw. She probably thought Katarina was going to kill her right here and now, but given the bombs I’d seen earlier, the ballerina was planning to destroy the entire castle and kill everyone inside.

“Whatever you’re being paid, I can double it,” Elsa said.

Another merry laugh tumbled out of Katarina’s mouth. “Trying to bribe me now? I can respect that too. But my employer wouldn’t like that very much, and unlike your brother, I know better than to double-cross Henrika Hyde.”

My breath caught in my throat again, and I had to resist the urge to pump my fist in triumph. I was right. Katarina was working for Henrika, and the paramortal arms dealer had given the ballerina some of her Redburn explosive to kill Peter Eisen. My mind raced, wondering what other jobs Katarina might have done for Henrika, what other information she might have about the other woman, and especially if she knew where Henrika was right now.

“Henrika was going to come to the party and deal with you herself,” Katarina continued. “But she got word that some of her enemies might be in attendance tonight, so she sent me to deal with you instead. Consider yourself lucky. Henrika had an impressive death in mind for you. I don’t care enough to be that creative.”

Enemies? Was the ballerina talking about . . . me and Desmond? But how could Henrika have possibly known we would be here tonight? We hadn’t told anyone at Section, except for Gia and Evelyn, and they would never betray us.

I pushed the thought aside to study later. Right now, I needed to concentrate on staying still, something that was becoming more and more difficult. My arms were burning from holding up the present, my borrowed boots were pinching my feet, and, worst of all, the toy soldier hat was making my head itch like crazy. Not being able to scratch my scalp was rapidly becoming its own form of torture.

“Why are you doing this?” Elsa demanded. “Why? You’re one of the most famous ballerinas in the world. You weren’t born into this life, trapped in it since birth like I have been. So why risk your name, your reputation, and especially your dancing legacy?”

More sympathy surged through me. I’d had similar thoughts about my father, wondering why Jack Locke had always been so eager to risk his life for Section 47 when he could have been safe at home with Grandma Jane and me. Why the two of us, his family, never seemed to matter to my father as much as his missions did, as much as being a cleaner, an assassin, a spy.

Katarina shrugged, although anger flared in her hazel eyes. “Because dancing is hard fucking work, and most of the time, there is very little reward. And once you’re injured, once you can’t flit around a stage like a butterfly anymore, then many dance companies have no further use for you. After I hurt my ankle a few years ago, I realized that I needed a retirement plan, and this is it.”

Even more anger erupted in her eyes, and her purple lips curled back in a disgusted sneer.

“You have no idea how fucking tired I am of dancing The Nutcracker over and over again. Not to mention having to smile and laugh and make nice with people like you who spend more on clothes than I make in a year. So it’s time for Katarina Tanetsa to take a final bow and exit the stage once and for all.”

She glanced over at the mercenary, who had remained silent during their conversation. “Vlad and I already have plans to spend the rest of the winter on a beach. No more cold, no more snow, no more dull, insipid performances I could do in my sleep. Isn’t that right, baby?”

“Absolutely,” Vlad rumbled.

Katarina grinned at him, then swung her feet down off the desk, grabbed the laptop, and spun it around so that it was facing Elsa. “Henrika has decided to close her account with the Eisen family, effectively immediately. Time for a withdrawal.”

Vlad stepped forward and aimed his gun at Elsa’s head. She glared at him for a few seconds, then gave in and pulled the laptop over to her side of the desk. She cracked it open, scanned her fingerprint, and started typing.

After about a minute, Elsa frowned. “That’s odd.”

“What?” Katarina asked.

“Someone else looked at Henrika’s account just a few minutes ago.”

I tensed. Dammit. Elsa must have gotten a time stamp or some other alert that I’d accessed her laptop.

Katarina leaned forward. “And the money? Where is the money?”

Elsa hit a few more buttons. “It’s still sitting in the account.”

Katarina jerked her head, and Vlad plucked a piece of paper out of his pocket and thrust it at Elsa.

“Transfer all of Henrika’s money to this new account,” Katarina ordered. “Right now.”

Elsa took the paper and started typing again. A minute later, a soft chime sounded. “It’s done.”

She angled the laptop to the side so that Katarina could see the screen.

The ballerina nodded. “Good. You get to live a little longer for being so helpful. Now, get the vault code.”

Elsa tensed again. “Why?”

“Henrika might have extracted the proverbial pound of flesh from your brother, but she’s much more interested in all the artwork and jewelry stored in your family’s vault,” Katarina replied. “Especially the Nutcracker Ruby.”

So Henrika had sent Katarina and her crew to steal the ring, along with everything else in the vault, to recoup what had been stolen from her and further punish the Eisen family. It also explained the explosives I had seen earlier. After they removed the valuables from the vault, the mercenaries were going to detonate the bombs to kill all the witnesses, destroy the castle, and cover up their massive theft. Smart, efficient, profitable, and ruthless, which was exactly what I would expect from Henrika Hyde.

“The vault code,” Katarina repeated. “Now.”

Elsa hesitated, so Vlad aimed his gun at her head again. Elsa’s fingers clenched around the edge of the laptop like she wanted to snatch it up and slam it into the mercenary’s face, but after a few seconds, she released the device and started typing again.

Her fingers stuttered to a stop. “That’s . . . impossible.”

“What?” Katarina demanded.

“Someone changed the vault code. Here. From my laptop.” Elsa leaned forward, her gaze locked on the screen, her fingers flying faster and faster over the keys. “I can’t . . . I don’t see . . . I don’t know what the new code is. It’s like . . . they changed the code and then . . . deleted all the information from the system.”

She looked up at Katarina, a sick, stricken expression on her face. “It’s not here. Why isn’t it here?”

Katarina surged to her feet and jerked her head at Vlad. “We have an uninvited guest at our party. Check in with everyone. Right now.”

Vlad nodded and plucked the walkie-talkie off his belt. “Emilio? Emilio, come in.”

His voice crackled through the walkie-talkie still clipped to my belt, which I had forgotten to silence earlier. Fuck.

Katarina whirled around, and her gaze met mine. Her face hardened, and she pointed her gun at me. “Not an uninvited guest—an extra nutcracker. Come out. Right now. Slowly.”

Elsa stared at me in shock, while Vlad shoved his walkie-talkie back onto his belt and trained his weapon on me. I stepped out from behind the two nutcrackers and lowered the present I’d been holding to the floor. I also yanked the annoying hat off my head and tossed it over onto a nearby chair, along with the stolen walkie-talkie. Then I dug my fingers into my scalp, scratching the spot that had been itching for so long.

Ahh. Such sweet, sweet relief. I relished the moment of bliss, even as I stared death in the face.

“I’m not a nutcracker,” I drawled, dropping my hand and repeating Desmond’s words from earlier. “Technically speaking, I’m a toy soldier.”

Katarina took a little better aim at my chest. “You’re going to be a very dead toy soldier if you don’t start talking. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

I saw no reason to lie. “I work for Section 47.”

Elsa gasped, and her face paled.

Katarina’s eyes narrowed in thought. “So you’re a spy.”

“Technically speaking, I’m an analyst.”

“I don’t care what the fuck you are,” Katarina snarled. “What did you do to the vault? What’s the access code?”

I pointed at my chest. “May I?”

She waggled her gun in agreement. “Slowly.”

I reached inside my blue jacket and pulled out the piece of paper that contained the string of numbers I’d written down earlier—the new vault code.

“Give it to me,” Katarina demanded. “Now.”

I eased forward. So did Katarina, who stretched her hand out. Right before she would have snatched the paper, I squashed it in my fist, then whirled around and threw the crumpled ball into the fireplace.

CHAPTER EIGHT

DESMOND

Gun in hand, I hurried out of the ballroom and moved down the corridor, keeping an eye out for more mercs. I glanced up at a security camera in the ceiling, wondering if someone was watching me on the feed and sending men to gun me down. No way to know for sure, and it was a risk I would just have to take.

I would take any risk for Charlotte.

The deeper I moved into the castle, the quieter it became. The muffled sobs and nervous chatter from the ballroom had vanished, and I didn’t hear anyone else moving through the corridors, not the softest squeak of a shoe on the slick marble floor. Katarina’s mercs had probably killed all the other security guards, both outside and inside the castle, before they had stormed into the ballroom.

With any luck, Charlotte had copied Elsa’s files and gotten out of the office without being discovered, but if there was one thing working for Section 47 had taught me, it was that luck was mostly bad, especially when you were a spy.

If Charlotte hadn’t escaped from the office, if Katarina and Vlad found her, then they would kill her.

Fresh worry churned in my gut like razors slowly slicing me to ribbons. I could easily put myself in the line of fire. I’d done it often enough as a cleaner, including in the ballroom just a few minutes ago. And I’d lost people along the way, colleagues—friends—who had just been doing their jobs for Section 47 and trying to make the world a little safer for everyone, mortal and paramortal alike.

But watching Graham die on the beach, watching the light fade from his eyes, and realizing that I couldn’t save him—and that I was going to have to snuff out what little life he had left in order to save myself—had been one of the most horrific experiences of my life. It had changed me in ways I didn’t fully understand yet, but I knew one thing for certain.

I had already lost my best friend, and I wasn’t going to lose Charlotte too.

Guilt burned in my heart, even hotter and stronger than the sharp worry slicing through my gut. Charlotte and I both wanted answers from Henrika Hyde, but I was the one who’d pushed to come to Germany, to infiltrate Elsa Eisen’s holiday party and see what leads we could find. Us being here tonight was largely my fault, and if something happened to Charlotte . . . well, I would never forgive myself.

It continually surprised and amazed me just how much I had come to care about her in such a short time. As a Section cleaner, I had been trained to see people as targets to eliminate. Nothing more, nothing less. And then, of course, my father, the General, viewed others as either assets to use to his advantage or obstacles to be coldly, ruthlessly swept out of his way.

Given all that, I hadn’t thought I was capable of such intense emotion, of such warmth, caring, and concern, but Charlotte saw right through all my macho cleaner bullshit, something I admired, respected, and appreciated more than she knew. But perhaps the most surprising thing was that I trusted Charlotte just as much as I had trusted Graham—completely and absolutely—and I hoped she felt the same way about me.

Maybe I would have the courage to ask when I found her. And I was going to find her. I didn’t care how many mercs were between us.

After all, they were just targets to eliminate.

I quickened my pace, my gun up, my gaze sweeping back and forth. I searched for the smallest sign of movement or anything out of the ordinary, anything that didn’t belong amid the castle’s festive finery—

“Did you hear that?” a voice said.

I stopped and flattened myself up against the wall.

“What?” another voice asked.

“I heard it too,” a third voice chimed in. “It sounded like footsteps.”

I crept forward, taking care not to scuff my wing tips on the floor. When I reached the end of the corridor, I crouched down on one knee to make myself a smaller target and peered around the corner.

Three mercs were in the corridor in front of me, right next to the wooden railing that was part of the grand staircase curving down to the castle’s main entrance. Black duffel bags were sitting on the floor next to the railing, along with several spools of red det cord and an open metal case. I couldn’t see what was inside the case, but it was obvious the mercs were going to blow up the castle and everyone inside it.

At the far end of the corridor, a glass door was standing open, letting the cold night air gust inside, along with waves of snow. The door creaked open a little wider, and all three mercs whirled in that direction and raised their guns. After a few seconds, they relaxed and lowered their weapons.

“It’s just the wind,” one of mercs said. “Let’s hurry up and finish the staircase.”

The other two men murmured their agreement, and the three mercs holstered their guns and started winding the det cord around the railing again.

I could backtrack to another corridor and go around them, but that would take precious time Charlotte might not have. I needed to get past the mercenaries as quickly and quietly as possible, especially since I didn’t know how many more men might be roaming through the castle, rigging it to explode. If my stolen gun had been equipped with a suppressor, I would have just shot them and been on my merry way, but nothing about being a cleaner was ever that easy or simple. I would have to kill the mercs another way.

I stood up, shoved the gun into the small of my back, and plucked my watch out of my vest pocket. Then I reached out with my galvanism and took hold of the electricity surging through the crystal chandelier above the mercs’ heads.

The current was strong and warm, like I was dipping my hands into a soothing bath. I let the energy flow through me, healing all the cuts, bumps, and bruises I’d gotten from the ballroom battle, as well as juicing me up for the fight to come. Then, when I was ready, I cut off the power.

A murky gloom descended over the corridor, and the three mercs peered up at the chandelier.

“Hey!”

“What happened to the lights?”

“Ancient fucking wiring . . .”

While the mercs chattered, I rounded the corner and sidled forward, staying close to the wall and clutching my pocket watch. I wasn’t nearly as stealthy as Gabriel was with his phasing ability, but I’d been a cleaner for a long, long time, and I knew how to sneak up on my targets—

Crunch.

My wing tip landed on some glass littering the floor. The three mercs whirled around. Despite the gloom, they immediately spotted me, and all three reached for their guns.

I was too far down the corridor to retreat around the corner, so I sprinted forward and released my grip on the current. The chandelier blazed to life again, and all three mercs flinched at the sudden influx of light. Their slight hesitation gave me enough time to close the distance between us, knock the first man’s gun away, and wrap the long silver watch chain around his neck.

The merc lashed out with his fists, but I ignored the hard, heavy blows to my ribs and tightened my grip, strangling him. The merc gurgled and punched me again and again, growing more and more desperate by the second. The other two men cursed and raised their weapons to shoot me, so I churned my legs, unwound the chain from the first merc’s neck, and shoved him toward his friends.

The other two mercs leaped aside, banging into each other and losing their grips on their guns. The first man hit the staircase railing and flipped over it, and a second later, a sharp crack rang out as his body hit the first floor.

Once again, the mercs flinched, but I was already moving forward. My watch in hand, I ducked the second man’s wild swing and spun around so that I was behind him. I looped the chain around his neck, then yanked it free, like I was ripping a belt off a pair of pants. The chain’s razor-sharp edge easily cut his throat, and he toppled to the floor, bleeding out.

The third merc growled and charged at me like a hungry yeti running at a reindeer. I tried to sidestep him, but he latched onto the front of my jacket. The merc slapped my pocket watch out of my hand, then yanked me toward him and punched me. Pain exploded in my jaw, and white stars twinkled in my eyes.

I shook off the hard blow and slammed my own fist into his chest. The merc grunted, but he didn’t release me, so I kept hitting him. Two, three, four times. The merc grunted again and finally loosened his grip on my jacket.

This time, I snapped up my fist and drove it straight into his face, and the merc’s nose made a loud, satisfying crunch under my knuckles. Tears and blood streamed down his face, but he growled and charged at me again.

I stepped back and tripped over one of the duffel bags. I went down hard, my right knee cracking against the floor. A snarl spewed from my lips, but before I could scramble to my feet, the merc kneed me in the chin. More pain exploded in my jaw, and my brain sloshed around inside my skull, but I put a hand down on the floor, lashed out, and kicked his legs out from under him.

The merc yelped, pitched forward, and landed right on top of me. We rolled around and around on the slick marble, punching, hitting, and smacking each other time and time again. Pain and energy spiked through my body in equal measure, but the merc was strong, skilled, and fast, and he returned my punishing blows with equally brutal ones of his own.

We kept grappling, and the merc managed to climb on top of me. He grabbed my head, wrenched it up, and slammed it right back down against the floor. My entire field of vision went white with pain, and my mind felt dull and disconnected from the rest of my body, like a single, burned-out bulb in a strand of bright holiday lights.

The merc drew back his fist to punch me again. At the last second, right before he would have hit me, I jerked my head to the side, and his fist slammed into the floor instead of my face. The merc howled with pain, but he leaned down and locked his hands around my throat, squeezing, squeezing tight.

I punched him again and again, but he was an enduro and much stronger than I was, and he ignored my blows as though they were as insignificant as paper cuts. He also used his weight to pin me down, making it impossible to reach the gun tucked away in the small of my back. All I could really do was kick myself across the floor like a mouse trying to escape from the paws of an Icelandic yule cat.

Since my fists weren’t doing the job, I skated my hands over the marble, searching for something I could use to hurt him. My pocket watch, one of the merc’s guns, even a wayward bloody candy cane that had fallen off one of the decorations. Didn’t matter to me. But all I felt was slick stone in all directions . . .

My right hand brushed up against something long, hard, and thin and sent it skittering across the floor. I jerked my head in that direction and spotted the shattered stem of a champagne flute.

I grunted and stretched my hand out as far as it would go, but I couldn’t quite reach it. The merc tightened his grip, and white stars started flashing in my eyes again.

Charlotte was always teasing me that I needed to do some yoga, some stretching, in addition to all my cardio, endurance, and other training. And right now, not being able to reach six more bloody inches to grab a potential weapon and save my own life, I had to agree with her.

But the thought of Charlotte and how much danger she might be in further motivated me, and I reached for the pain and energy still spiking through my body. Then I channeled all that force down into my legs, dug my heels into the floor, and pushed, like a diver leaping off a springboard.

My body slid across the floor, dragging the merc along with me. He growled and redoubled his efforts to strangle me, but I focused on that shard of glass, and I stretched out for it again . . . and again . . .

And my fingers finally closed around it.

As soon as I had a good grip on the glass, I snapped my hand up and drove the shattered stem into the side of the merc’s neck.

His eyes bulged, and he screamed with pain. He released my throat, then reared up and back and clawed at the shattered stem in his neck like a dog scratching at a cone collar. I drew my right foot up between us and kicked the bastard away. The merc toppled over onto his side, still trying to yank the glass out of his neck.

I scrambled up onto my knees, then leaned down and dug my fingers into his hair. Still channeling the pain and energy, I slammed the merc’s head against the floor. One, two, three, four times.

Crack.

Something in his skull finally split open, and the merc went slack and still. Blood oozed out from underneath his head, joining the steady stream dripping down his neck.

I released him and sat back on my heels, gasping for breath through my bruised throat. My gaze locked onto the broken stem sticking out of the merc’s neck. Where had that come from?

I glanced around. A silver tray was lying on the floor underneath a nearby table, while the shattered remains of several champagne flutes had been pushed up against the wall. Well, that explained the glass I’d stepped on earlier.

More worry sliced through my gut. Charlotte had been carrying a tray of champagne flutes the last time I’d seen her. Maybe she hadn’t made it to Elsa’s office. Maybe the mercs had found her first.

Maybe she was already dead.

No. I shoved that awful thought away. Charlotte Locke was the smartest person I knew, able to think her way out of any situation. She wasn’t dead. I wouldn’t let myself think she was dead, not for one bloody second.

But she was most likely in danger, and I was going to kill every single person in this castle until she wasn’t.

Fresh determination surged through me, replacing some of my worry, and I sucked down another breath and staggered to my feet. I grabbed my watch from the floor and slid it back into my vest pocket, and my gaze landed on the open metal case still sitting by the staircase railing. Anything I could learn about the mercs and their weapons—especially their bombs—might help me, and Charlotte too, so I limped in that direction.

The metal case contained a couple of white blocks of what I was guessing was some explosive, along with a few digital timers and several glass vials. Curious, I plucked out a vial and held it up to the light streaming from the chandelier.

The glass vial itself was nothing special, but the thick substance inside looked like blood, and a faint aroma tickled my nose—sweet, sticky honey mixed with rotten eggs.

A chill swept down my spine that had nothing to do with the cold air and snow still gusting in through the open door at the end of the corridor. I knew that horrid scent. It had been seared into my nose and throat on the beach the day Adrian Anatoly had detonated his trap for Graham and me.

Even though I had never seen this liquid before, I still knew exactly what it was: Redburn, Henrika Hyde’s explosive.

The castle around me melted away, and suddenly, I was back on the beach, back in the middle of the blast zone, cataloging the destruction as though I was in the middle of some dystopian wasteland.

The once-white sand now blackened and smoking. The complete, utter, eerie lack of life, energy, and motion. The absolute quiet, even of the ocean, which had seemed to stop moving, along with everything else. And then there was me, sitting in the center of it all, clutching Graham’s body to my chest and howling with all the pain, misery, anguish, grief, and guilt that was burning through my heart the same way the bombs had burned our skin—

The chandelier flickered, rousing me out of my dark memories.

Once again, I had unconsciously reached out and latched onto the closest energy source, trying to reassure myself that I wasn’t as powerless right now as I’d been on the beach. That everyone in the castle wasn’t going to be the victim of a Redburn explosion like Graham and I had been. That innocent people weren’t going to be used as guinea pigs for Henrika Hyde just so she could prove how deadly, gruesome, and effective her explosive formula was to potential buyers.

That Charlotte wasn’t going to die the same way Graham had.

That I wasn’t going to fail her like I had him.

I shuddered out a breath, swiped the cold sweat off my forehead, and released the energy. The chandelier returned to its normal bright, steady, cheery glow.

My gaze dropped back down to the vial, and my fingers clenched around the glass. As much as I wanted to smash it to pieces, I couldn’t do that. For one thing, I didn’t know how stable the explosive was, or what might trigger it, and I didn’t want to accidentally blow myself up, along with this part of the castle.

I carefully slid the vial back into the case with the other ones and closed the lid. But I couldn’t just leave the explosives out here in the open. Another team of mercs might come along, scoop them up, and finish using them. I had to hide the case, but where? The only things in this corridor were the mercs I’d killed, along with the plethora of holiday decorations—

My gaze landed on a pile of oversize presents sitting at the feet of a nutcracker holding a gingerbread man up to its mouth as though it was going to bite off the smaller figure’s cookie head. That might work.

I grabbed the metal case, went over, and yanked the top off one of the presents. It was hollow and empty, just like I’d hoped, so I nestled the case inside, then replaced the top. I slid the present back in line with all the others, then marked the spot in my mind. Not a particularly inspired hiding place, but it was the best I could do right now—

A scream shattered the silence.

I froze, trying to figure out where the scream had come from, but the thick walls distorted the sound, and all I really heard were a couple of faint, furious echoes.

I listened for several seconds, but no more screams rang out. I wondered if that was because the person couldn’t scream anymore—because they were dead.

Equal parts worry and anger filled me. Dealing with the three mercs had cost me precious time. Fuck being cautious and quiet. I had to find Charlotte before it was too late.

I pilfered some fresh magazines from the mercs’ bodies and shoved them into my pockets, as well as loading a new one into my stolen gun. Then I hurried along the corridor, determined to kill every single person between me and Charlotte.

CHAPTER NINE

CHARLOTTE

Katarina screamed with fury and rushed toward the fireplace, but it was too late. The paper I’d tossed inside was already engulfed in flames, and the vault code had literally gone up in smoke.

She watched it burn, and dark satisfaction filled me at the anger and frustration on her face. Elsa sidled toward the terrace doors, but Vlad pointed his gun at her and shook his head. Elsa froze, her escape attempt over before it had even started.

Katarina whirled around to me, the fury in her hazel eyes burning as brightly as the flames in the fireplace. “You meddling bitch!”

She spewed out a string of profanities in a variety of languages. I recognized some of the terms, but the length and breadth to which Katarina was cursing my existence were quite impressive. Then again, she was an enduro. She could literally curse for hours nonstop.

Vlad eyed me, while Elsa looked around the office, obviously trying to figure a way to get out of here alive. But I had a plan for that, one that was much better than pretending to be a nutcracker.

Katarina finally quit cursing. Her eyes narrowed, and she took a closer look at me. “You must be Charlotte Locke, the little spy Henrika told me about. The one who’s been such a thorn in her side lately.”

I was surprised the arms dealer had mentioned me by name, but once again, I saw no reason to lie. “Yep, that’s me.”

“When Henrika said she wasn’t coming here because of you, I thought she was just being paranoid,” Katarina said. “But it seems she was right about you being hot on her trail.”

“How is Henrika?” I drawled, trying not to let my own frustration show.

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s been quite amused by your frantic attempts to track her down and take her in for questioning.” Katarina chuckled. “Henrika is much too clever for that, and she has far too many friends in sky-high places for some lowly Section 47 spy to take her down. Even if you did manage to capture Henrika, she would be free in a matter of hours. So really, you’re no more bothersome to her than a sore muscle is to me.”

Truth, my inner voice whispered. Katarina believed every word she said. I wondered if Henrika’s mysterious friends were part of the Syndicate—or maybe even Section 47. That might explain why she had managed to stay one step ahead of Desmond and me for the last several weeks.

Anger bubbled up in my chest, boiling right next to my frustration, and I couldn’t stop myself from sniping back at the ballerina. “Oh, I’ve been a bit more than merely bothersome, considering that I exposed Henrika’s moles inside Section 47 and kept her from getting the Grunglass Necklace.”

Katarina tipped her head, acknowledging my points. “Perhaps. But none of that changes the fact that you’re going to die tonight.”

She stepped forward and aimed her gun at my chest. Vlad stifled a yawn and checked his watch, while Elsa sucked in a breath, her eyes bulging like she was a balloon about to pop from the strain of holding in so much air.

I stared at Katarina’s gun, which now burned a bright, bloody red in my eyes, and concentrated on my own breathing.

In, out, slow, controlled, smooth, steady.

The burn of red dimmed, and a cold calm settled over me. Thanks to my father’s work for Section, I had been repeatedly threatened, kidnapped, and hurt as a child, so I was used to being on the wrong end of a weapon. And then, of course, several weeks ago, I had willingly put myself in danger and almost been killed multiple times trying to expose the moles inside Section 47. So Katarina’s finger caressing the trigger didn’t particularly frighten me. If anything, it solidified my resolve to do whatever it took to survive—and beat the bitch at her own game.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I said.

“Why not?” Katarina replied, fresh anger staining her cheeks like overdone rouge. “So far, all you’ve done is make things difficult. Besides, Henrika promised me a bonus if you did show up and I killed you.”

“Really? How much am I worth?”

“Enough to make it worth my while,” Katarina retorted.

I started to ask for the exact dollar amount, but her finger curled around the trigger. Definitely not the time to try to satisfy my own morbid curiosity about the price tag Henrika Hyde had put on my death.

“But is killing me enough of a bonus to forgo all those treasures just sitting in the vault?” I tapped my right index finger against my temple. “Because I memorized the code.”

A shocked silence filled the office, and Katarina, Vlad, and Elsa all stared at me.

“You memorized the vault code?” Katarina scoffed. “I don’t believe you. It’s sixteen digits long!”

“Actually, I changed the code to make it twenty-three digits long, but who’s counting?” I grinned at her. “Oh, wait. I’m counting. Pun intended.”

Katarina’s left eye twitched, a clear sign of her annoyance. She glanced over at Vlad, who shrugged his massive shoulders.

“She’s telling the truth,” Elsa piped up. “She really did memorize the vault code.”

“How do you know?” Katarina asked.

“My synesthesia,” Elsa replied. “It does more than just let me authenticate antiques. It’s also quite helpful in determining whether people are lying.”

I stared at her, but for once, my inner voice remained quiet. I didn’t know if her magic was canceling out mine, but I couldn’t tell if she was telling the truth, if she had the same sort of paramortal ability that I did. Either way, Elsa was trying to help me, trying to keep me alive, so I tipped my head to her, and she returned the gesture. Right now, we each knew we needed the other to survive.

I focused on Katarina again. “You still want the Nutcracker Ruby? Then keep me alive and take me to the vault.”

Katarina stared at me, with her finger still curled around the trigger. Even more anger flared in her eyes, making them flash as brightly as the purple crystal crown on her head, and she stepped forward as though she was going to shoot me after all.

I tensed and shifted to my left, ready to lurch to the side and try to dive behind the nearest nutcracker.

Katarina let out another scream of frustration, although this one wasn’t nearly as loud as her first bellow had been.

“Fine,” she growled, lowering the gun. “I’ll take you to the vault, Charlotte Locke. And if you can’t open it, then I’ll paint the walls with your blood.”

Katarina stormed over to the office door, wrenched it open, and stepped outside. Vlad jerked his gun at Elsa and me, and we had no choice but to follow the ballerina.

“Take us to the vault,” Katarina ordered. “Now.”

Elsa set off down the hallway at a brisk pace. I walked along beside her, with Katarina and Vlad following us, guns in hand.

As we moved through the castle, I reached out with my synesthesia, along with my other senses, hoping I might get a glimpse of Desmond hiding behind a column or Gabriel’s smoky shadow sliding along a wall. But I didn’t see anything like that, and no more telltale cracks of gunfire sounded.

Vlad pulled out his walkie-talkie and ordered his men to check in, but only sharp crackles of static greeted his command. He and Katarina exchanged a worried look, and she snapped her fingers at Elsa.

“Hurry up,” she ordered.

Elsa quickened her pace, and I did the same. Eventually, she reached the grand staircase in the center of the castle, and all four of us stopped in surprise.

Two dead mercenaries were sprawled across the floor, their blood splattered across the white marble like someone had spilled mulled wine everywhere. Through the railing, I spotted a third mercenary lying dead on the first floor below.

“What the fuck happened here?” Vlad growled.

He shouldered past me, knocking me to the side and making me bump up against a nearby table. Like all the others in the castle, this table was bristling with holiday decorations, and I stretched out my hand, plucked a snowman out of a menagerie of crystal figurines, and tucked my arm behind my back.

Katarina let out another curse and glared at me. “How many Section 47 agents are here with you?”

“Enough.”

It was the truth. Desmond and Gabriel were both highly skilled cleaners. Between the two of them, they could kill a veritable army of mercenaries.

“That’s not an answer!” Katarina hissed, and aimed her gun at me again. “How many agents are with you? Tell me! Now!”

I smirked at her and remained silent. We both knew she wasn’t going to kill me. At least, not until after she got the vault code.

Katarina lowered her gun, paced back and forth in front of the railing, and started cursing my existence again.

Vlad turned to her. The instant he was distracted, I tightened my grip on the crystal snowman, darted forward, and cracked it across the back of his head.

The snowman broke on impact, while Vlad hissed and stumbled forward. He slammed into Katarina, and the two of them got tangled up.

“Run!” I yelled at Elsa. “Go! Go! Go!”

Elsa picked up her skirt and dashed down the corridor. I followed her.

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

Bullets chased us down the hallway, plowing into the walls and furniture. A ceramic reindeer on a table by my elbow shattered, and I picked up my pace, cursing the borrowed boots that were once again pinching my toes. Why was it that anytime I didn’t wear my usual sneakers, I always ended up running for my life?

“I need them alive, you idiot!” Katarina’s voice sounded behind me.

No more bullets zinged in our direction, and we rounded a corner.

“This way!” Elsa yelled. “The ballroom is on the other side of the kitchen!”

She pushed through a door, and I followed her into one of the castle’s many kitchens. I slammed the door shut behind me, grabbed a sturdy wooden chair sitting along the wall, and wedged it up underneath the doorknob, trying to buy us a few more precious seconds to escape.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Elsa yelled. “I have to find Lina!”

I followed her around a corner, and we both had to stop short to keep from plowing into a man in the middle of the space in front of us.

Chef Jacques was standing at a butcher-block table, using a long wooden spoon to stir white icing in a large metal pot. He looked at us, his face creasing in confusion. “What are you doing in here?”

What was he doing in here? Had he somehow escaped the mercenaries’ notice?

Behind us, the door started shaking. Vlad was putting his shoulder into the wood, trying to force it open. Given his paramortal strength, it wouldn’t take him long. I started to grab Chef Jacques’s arm and pull him along to safety, but I spotted a bright silver gleam that quickly morphed into a familiar bloody red—

Chef Jacques lashed out at me with a long, sharp knife. I threw up my hand to protect myself, and the blade only sliced across my right forearm instead of my chest. I yelped and fell back against the butcher-block table. To my surprise, the substance in the metal bowl started to bubble violently, as though it was a white volcano about to erupt.

I lurched away from the bowl. Sugar might kill me, but not by blowing up in my face. That was definitely not icing.

Elsa tried to dart past Jacques, but he dug his fingers into her blond hair and tossed her into the wall, stunning her. I lunged toward a cast-iron skillet sitting on a nearby countertop.

Jacques whirled around and threw his knife at me. The blade sank into the wooden countertop an inch away from my fingers. I yelped again and jerked my hand back.

The door finally gave way. Vlad and Katarina rushed into the kitchen and trained their guns on Elsa and me, making us both freeze.

“Thank you, Jacques. I knew I could count on you.” Katarina’s gaze flicked over to the metal pot. “Anything damaged?”

He shook his head. “No. My explosive will settle back down in a few minutes.”

I eyed the white substance. He was right. It already looked far less hostile and volatile than before.

I’m not sure how he got hired to cater the Christmas Eve party . . . His food is nothing special. Maria’s voice whispered through my mind.

The waitress had said that earlier in the ballroom. I hadn’t paid much attention to her words at the time, but now I knew that Chef Jacques was capable of cooking up far more than just party food. He’d been in here whipping up explosives so Katarina and the rest of her crew could destroy the castle.

Jacques planted his hands on his hips and sneered at me yet again. “Imbécile!” he crowed.

I stifled a groan. For once, he was right.

CHAPTER TEN

DESMOND

Gun in hand, I hurried from one corridor to another, still keeping an eye out for more mercs. I had to find Charlotte before they did—

Crack!

Crack! Crack!

Crack!

Several gunshots rang out.

I stopped and plastered my back up against the wall, looking and listening, but no enemies appeared in this corridor, and I couldn’t tell which direction the shots had come from. I was really starting to hate this bloody castle with its eerie echoes and whistling whispers. But standing here wasn’t doing me—or especially Charlotte—any good, so I moved away from the wall and quickened my pace.

I didn’t know where the shots had come from—or if they involved Charlotte, Gabriel, or someone else—but I headed toward the office, since that was the most logical place for Charlotte to be, along with Elsa, Katarina, Vlad, and whatever mercs might still be alive.

Less than a minute later, I reached the corridor where Elsa’s office was located. No one was guarding the door, which was standing wide open. More worry and fear sliced through my gut, but I tightened my grip on my gun and hurried in that direction.

No noises drifted out of the office, so I cautiously eased inside. I peered into every single corner, but it was empty.

No blood, no bodies, no Charlotte.

A breath hissed out between my clenched teeth, although my relief was short-lived. Where was Charlotte? And Elsa, Katarina, and Vlad?

I studied the office a little more carefully, but I didn’t see any signs of violence, and the only thing that was out of place was a single large present sitting on the floor next to a couple of nutcrackers in the corner. My gaze moved past the present, and I spotted something else odd: a black hat lying on a chair, along with a walkie-talkie.

I stalked over and grabbed the hat, which matched the one Charlotte had been wearing earlier. No blood covered it, and no bullet holes marred the shiny plastic. Another relieved breath hissed out between my teeth, although the hat didn’t tell me what had happened to her.

I tossed the hat aside and turned around. I studied the office again, and I finally realized that something else was out of place: a laptop, which was facing one of the visitor seats in front of the desk, rather than being turned toward the owner’s chair behind the desk.

Curious, I went over and hit the space bar. The laptop whirred to life, and a small box appeared on the screen: Override successful. Please enter code manually for access.

I frowned at the cryptic words. Someone had been in here recently, but who? Charlotte downloading files? Or Elsa being forced to give Katarina and Vlad some sort of information?

More worry surged through me, but I pushed the emotion aside and forced myself to think, just like Charlotte would if she were here and I was missing. As a cleaner, I was trained to assume the worst, so that’s what I did—and the worst-case scenario was that Katarina and Vlad had discovered Charlotte in the office.

My gaze swept over the room yet again, looking for anything else I might have missed, but I only saw the same nothingness as before.

No blood, no bodies, no Charlotte.

The mercs might have found her, but Charlotte had convinced them to keep her alive—for now. So what did Charlotte have that Katarina and Vlad wanted?

My gaze strayed back to the message on the laptop screen: Override successful. Please enter code manually for access.

Despite the situation, a grin spread across my face. Suddenly, I knew exactly what Charlotte had done, what she always did—used information to outwit the bad guys.

“Clever, Numbers,” I murmured. “Very, very clever.”

Still holding my gun, I sprinted out of the office.

I knew where they were going.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHARLOTTE

Vlad kept his gun trained on Elsa and me, while Jacques used a spatula to scoop his homemade explosive into a small pastry bag, which he tied off with a piece of butcher’s twine. I shuddered. I would never look at white icing the same way again.

“You’re sure it’s stable like that?” Vlad asked. “It doesn’t look like the other bricks you made a few days ago.”

Jacques hefted the bag in his hand like it was a snowball he was thinking about throwing. “That’s because it’s a slightly different formula, but it’s all chemistry, just like baking is. Besides, you hired me for my explosives expertise, not my soufflés.”

“Is it enough to blow the vault open?” Katarina asked. “If we can’t get in another way?”

Jacques nodded. “Absolutely. My explosive is the most potent when it’s first made, so that’s why I whipped up this batch on-site. Right now, it’s strong enough to blow through just about anything. Some of the items inside will be damaged, but the vault will open.”

He tossed the pastry bag over to Vlad, who caught it with a grimace. After a few seconds, when nothing exploded, Vlad glared at the chef, marched over, and shoved the bag into the other man’s chest. Jacques grinned back at him, looking as maniacal as one of the nutcrackers, then slid the bag into his pocket.

The chef marched over and yanked his knife out of the countertop. Then he started flipping the blade end over end in his hand and eyeing me like I was a Christmas goose he wanted to carve up. “I knew you couldn’t possibly be a real waitress. You were much too clumsy for that.”

“And I wondered how a poser chef like you got such a high-profile gig as this,” I snarked back. “Especially since your strudel crust was as dry as dirt.”

Anger stained his cheeks, and he sucked in a breath, probably to insult me. Katarina waved her hand, and Jacques swallowed his nasty words, although the look he shot me was even sharper than the blade in his hand.

“Where are the others?” Katarina asked. “What happened?”

Jacques shrugged. “A couple of the hostages overpowered and killed all the men in the ballroom. I was here in the kitchen and saw the whole thing happen.” He stabbed his knife at a swinging door with a round window set into the far wall. “The two of them tore through your men like they were paper dolls. I was going to rig the kitchen door with my explosive in case they tried to force their way in here, but they left the ballroom, along with all the hostages.”

He shrugged again. “We’re here for the vault, not the people, so I let them escape.”

Hope erupted like fireworks in my chest. He had to be talking about Desmond and Gabriel. If all the mercenaries in the ballroom were dead, then the two of them were probably getting the guests to safety. Once that was done, Desmond would come find me—I knew he would.

I just had to stay alive until then.

Katarina let out another string of curses, then stormed out of the kitchen. Elsa and I followed the ballerina, with Vlad and Jacques trailing along behind us, weapons in hand.

“Take us to the vault right now,” Katarina snarled. “And if either one of you tries to escape again, I’ll kill you both and take my chances with Jacques’s explosive.”

Elsa glanced at me, but I shrugged in return. Right now, I was out of moves.

“This way,” Elsa muttered.

We returned to the grand staircase. Katarina snapped her fingers, and Vlad and Jacques scooped up two of the black duffel bags that had belonged to the dead mercenaries. They upended the bags, spilling digital timers, spools of det cord, and rolls of tape across the floor. Once the bags were empty, we all headed down to the first floor.

Elsa led us to another staircase that spiraled down, down, down into the bowels of the castle. No holiday decorations or luxe furnishings adorned this area, and the temperature plummeted at least ten degrees. I shivered. Or maybe it was just the threat of death strolling along behind me that made it feel so frosty.

We reached the bottom of the stairs, went down a short hallway, and stopped in front of a thick metal door that was set into an even thicker stone wall.

“Open it,” Katarina ordered.

Elsa pricked her finger on a needle that was jutting out from a keypad embedded in the wall, then placed her hand on a nearby scanner. In addition to being buried in the bottom of a heavily guarded castle on a remote mountaintop, the Eisen family vault was also protected by several biometric measures, including Elsa’s DNA and handprint. The biometric scans were among the reasons Desmond and I had decided not to break into the vault. Besides, I needed information to track down Henrika, not whatever art and jewelry she might be storing here.

A green light flashed, confirming Elsa’s identity. She bent forward and submitted to a retinal scan, as well as blowing into a small clear tube that checked her DNA a second time.

The light flashed green again, and she stepped back and looked at me. “Now the code.”

I glanced down the corridor, once again hoping to get a glimpse of Desmond or Gabriel, but neither one appeared.

“The code,” Katarina demanded. “Or I’ll let Jacques practice his knife skills until you feel like cooperating.”

The chef gave me another cruel grin and started flipping his knife end over end in his hand again.

Now I was out of time, along with moves, so I punched in the twenty-three-digit code I’d programmed in the office earlier. It was easy to remember, since it was the credit card I had used to pay all of Grandma Jane’s medical bills, and I could have rattled off the card number, expiration date, and security code in my sleep.

I entered the final number and stepped back.

Nothing happened.

“What the fuck is taking so long?” Vlad muttered.

Katarina’s eyes narrowed to slits. “If you’re playing games with me, you’re not going to live long enough to regret it.”

The keypad light flashed green again. Several loud clicks sounded, and the vault door slowly cracked open. Vlad tucked his gun into its holster, then grabbed the edge of the door and pulled it open the rest of the way.

Katarina waved her gun at Elsa and me. “Move. Now.”

We stepped inside, with her, Vlad, and Jacques following along behind us. We went through a small antechamber, then rounded a corner and stopped.

“This is it,” Elsa said, a sour note creeping into her voice. “The famous Eisen family vault.”

Wooden tables ran down the center of the vault, while bookshelves lined two of the walls. The area reminded me of a wine cellar, only there were far more valuable things in here than just bottles of wine. Paintings covered one of the walls from top to bottom, the frames fitted together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Gold, silver, and bronze statues perched on pedestals, standing guard over the rings, necklaces, and watches on black velvet trays on the tabletops. White gloves rested on the shelves next to books with worn leather spines, and a stack of gold bars was piled on a heavy-duty wooden pallet in the corner like a miniature pyramid.

Katarina regarded the items with a cold, critical gaze, but Vlad and Jacques were both grinning, and even I couldn’t help but be a little dazzled by all the rare, expensive, beautiful objects on display.

“It’s just a bunch of useless trinkets,” Elsa muttered. “Nothing in here really matters.”

Once again, sympathy filled me. “In the end, this is all just stuff, isn’t it? And none of it will bring back your brother or ease the hurt of his betrayal.”

Surprise flared in her eyes, but she jerked her head in agreement. “You understand.”

I thought of my grandmother’s mostly empty apartment. “More than you know.”

Katarina snapped her fingers at Vlad and Jacques again. “Grab as much as you can comfortably carry. Small items only. We don’t have the time or the men to take everything, and we need to get out of here as quickly as possible, just in case more Section agents are on their way.”

Vlad and Jacques both nodded, then started shoving jewelry off the tabletops and down into their waiting duffel bags.

Katarina aimed her gun at Elsa. “Where is the Nutcracker Ruby?”

Elsa bit her lip and glanced at me. I shook my head. The ruby was the most valuable thing in here, and as soon as she gave up its location, we were both dead—

Crack!

Katarina pulled the trigger, and a bullet zinged past Elsa’s head and thunked into one of the bookcases, making us both flinch.

“The next one goes into your ankle,” Katarina said in a calm voice. “And you don’t want that. Believe me. I know exactly how painful an ankle injury can be.” She paused. “Or perhaps I should send Vlad to find your sweet little niece. I bet she hasn’t found a way out of the castle and off the mountain yet.”

Elsa glared at the ballerina, but after a few seconds of silent defiance, she sighed and gave me a regretful look.

“It’s okay,” I said. “If I had a niece, I would do anything to protect her.”

A sad, knowing smile creased Elsa’s face, although it quickly vanished. She sighed again, then pulled a book off one of the shelves. Unlike all the other old, worn volumes, this book looked brand-new and featured a colorful, whimsical drawing of a nutcracker wearing a blue jacket on the cover.

Elsa trailed her fingers over the slick, shiny cover, then held it out to Katarina. “Here. This is what you want.”

“Watch them,” Katarina called out.

Jacques turned toward us, still clutching his knife, although he kept blindly grabbing jewelry with his other hand.

Katarina laid her gun on a nearby table, then took the book from Elsa and cracked it open. The pages had been hollowed out and replaced with blue velvet. Katarina reached into the center and pulled out a ring.

“The Nutcracker Ruby,” she whispered in a reverent tone. “At last.”

Despite its name, the Nutcracker Ruby was shaped like a heart, and its flashing facets and brilliant red hue made it look like an actual heart beating in Katarina’s fingers. It truly was stunning, although my synesthesia added a dark, sinister sheen to the sparkling jewel. The ruby wasn’t a physical danger, but rather something Katarina—and, by extension, Henrika Hyde—would do anything to possess, including murdering a castle full of innocent people. Sometimes the motive was far more dangerous than the object itself.

Katarina slid the ring onto her finger. “And it’s a perfect fit,” she purred.

“You could always keep it for yourself,” I suggested, still trying to think of some way to get out of this situation alive. “Pretend the ring was lost or destroyed in the chaos and confusion. Or have a fake made and give that to Henrika. Thanks to my work for Section 47, I know some excellent forgers.”

Katarina laughed, and the mocking sound bounced off the vault walls and echoed in my ears. “Give a fake jewel to Henrika Hyde? Are you kidding me? She would spot it in an instant. Besides, I’m not stupid enough to lie to or steal from Henrika. Why, she would make what I did to Elsa’s brother seem like a pleasant dream compared to all the ways she would torture me for betraying her.”

She shuddered, and with good reason. Henrika delighted in inventing new and painful ways to inflict suffering on people, mortal and paramortal alike.

Katarina admired the ruby for another moment, then grabbed her gun from the tabletop and aimed it at me again. “And now, Charlotte Locke, your usefulness is officially at an end.”

Now I was out of time, moves, and space. I shifted to my right, ready to dive behind the nearest table in hopes of buying myself a few more precious seconds to figure out how to survive—

The vault lights flickered. Once, twice, three times.

My gaze darted from Katarina to Jacques and Vlad. The two men were still filling their duffel bags with loot, and they weren’t anywhere near any of the light switches.

Katarina frowned. “You’re about to die. Why are you smiling like that?”

The lights went out completely, plunging the vault into darkness.

CHAPTER TWELVE

DESMOND

After leaving the office, I ran all the way back to the grand staircase in the center of the castle.

The two dead mercs were still on this floor, with the third man sprawled on the one below. I had started to head down the steps when a bright glimmer caught my eye. Curious, I changed direction and headed a little farther down the corridor.

A crystal snowman was lying on the floor close to a table full of similar figurines. The snowman’s head and arms had been broken off, and blood speckled its body, as though it had been smashed into someone’s skull. I frowned. That hadn’t been here before—

“Take us to the vault right now,” an angry voice snarled. “And if either one of you tries to escape again, I’ll kill you both . . .”

Several sets of footsteps sounded, and for once, I could tell they were heading in this direction. I quickly and quietly retreated down the corridor, moving past the staircase and ducking behind a wide column adorned with balls of mistletoe.

A few seconds later, a group of people appeared at the opposite end of the corridor—Elsa, Katarina, Vlad, Chef Jacques, and Charlotte.

My gaze zeroed in on Charlotte like a heat-seeking missile locking onto a target. Strands of auburn hair had come loose from her low ponytail and were wisping around her face, and she was limping slightly, as if her boots were hurting her feet. Her blue jacket was rumpled, as if she’d been in a couple of fights, and the right sleeve had been sliced open, revealing an ugly gash on her forearm that was oozing blood.

Icy fury roared through me, howling like the snowstorm outside. My entire body crackled with the urge to kill every single person who had dared to lay a finger on her, but I smothered my rage. Charlotte and Elsa were in the front, and the three mercs could easily use the two women as human shields if I revealed myself—or, worse, kill them outright.

Besides, Charlotte didn’t look scared or worried or resigned. Instead, her lips were pursed, and her eyes were narrowed, as though she was playing a game of chess with herself and considering and discarding all the moves she might make. Her deep blue aura flickered again and again, as if it were mirroring the mental gymnastics of her mind. I’d seen that look on her face and that blaze in her aura before, and I knew exactly what they meant.

Charlotte had a plan. She always had a plan.

So as much as it pained me, I held my position behind the column and watched Charlotte and Elsa trudge down the staircase, followed by Katarina, Vlad, and Jacques.

I waited until they were down on the first floor, then followed them.

They went straight to the vault. Elsa opened the biometric locks, while Charlotte entered a lengthy code. Despite the situation, I grinned. Just like I’d realized back in the office, Charlotte had changed the access code so that the mercs couldn’t open the vault without her. Clever, Numbers.

The metal door opened, and Elsa, Charlotte, and the three mercs disappeared inside the vault. I hurried down the corridor, careful not to make any noise, and peered into the space. The small antechamber was empty, so I eased through it, stopped, and looked around the corner into the main part of the vault.

Katarina was once again threatening Elsa, while Vlad and Jacques were sliding jewelry into a couple of duffel bags like kids looting a candy store and stealing all the gumdrops they could carry.

Elsa handed a book over to Katarina, who pulled the Nutcracker Ruby out of its hiding spot. The ballerina was so busy admiring the ring and sliding it onto her finger that she didn’t see me slip into the vault. Neither did Vlad and Jacques, who were still stuffing jewelry into their bags. I might not be able to phase through walls like Gabriel, but I could be as silent as smoke when I needed to be. And right now, nothing mattered but saving Charlotte.

I crouched down behind an antique table, then reached out with my galvanism. Energy flowed through me like an electric river of power crackling through my veins. Katarina started crowing about how she was going to kill Charlotte, but I tuned out her words and focused on her body language, especially the way her index finger kept tapping against her gun.

When her finger curled around the trigger, I tightened my grip on the current running through the walls. I concentrated, and the lights flickered once, twice, three times.

Katarina kept talking, but Charlotte tilted her head to the side, and her gaze darted from Katarina to Jacques to Vlad. Her eyes brightened, and a smile spread across her face. She’d gotten my message.

“You’re about to die,” Katarina said. “Why are you smiling like that?”

I cut off the power, and the vault plunged into darkness.

For a split second, silence filled the room, buzzing almost as loudly in my ears as the current still humming through my body. Then everything happened at once.

“Elsa!” Charlotte yelled. “Get down!”

A couple of thumps sounded, like two people hitting the floor. Katarina started cursing in Russian, and Jacques joined in with some French expletives, but Vlad remained silent. He was too professional and too well trained to make any noises and give his location away in the dark.

I stood up, put my back to the wall, and crept deeper into the vault, heading toward the spot where Vlad had been before, since he was currently the biggest threat. If he was smart, the merc had already moved to another position and would be somewhere else when I released the current and the lights came back on. But if he wasn’t so smart, maybe I could shoot the bastard in the back.

Katarina and Jacques stopped cursing, and a tense, eerie silence filled the vault. No one moved or spoke, and I couldn’t even hear anyone breathing. Everyone was waiting for someone else to make a move, a sound, a mistake.

I kept going, my gun up and my back skimming the wall. I set my wing tips down one at a time, slowly and carefully, so as not to make a scrape, a scuff, or a tapping echo that would ring out and give away my position. I also kept a tight grip on the electrical current running through the walls so that the vault remained bathed in blackness. Normally, in a dark room, I would have been able to pick out exactly where all the other people were, but holding on to the current drowned out the energy emanating off Charlotte and everyone else.

My shoulder bumped up against something. I froze, but it was only a bookcase. I compared where I was in the vault to where Vlad had been before and where I thought he might have moved to—where I would have moved to—if our situations had been reversed.

Time to see if my theory was right and if I could kill him before he killed me. Or, worse, Charlotte.

I reached around the edge of the case and slid my fingers back and forth until I found a book, which I pulled off the shelf. The cloth cover rasped as it rubbed up against its neighbors. I froze, wondering if I had given my own position away, but no shots, scurries, or other sounds shattered the silence.

Since I couldn’t see the book, I hefted it in my hand to get a sense of its size, shape, and weight. Once I had that fixed in my mind, I stopped, again straining to look and listen in the absolute darkness that coated the vault from top to bottom like thick black paint.

Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

The seconds ticked by, each one slower and more tense than the last, but I held my position, my nerves calm, my body ready, my magic steady. I wasn’t an enduro, so I couldn’t maintain this silent, watchful stance for hours on end, but I could be patient when needed, especially if it meant saving Charlotte.

A soft scuffing sounded, like someone shifting on their feet to ease into a slightly more comfortable position. Gotcha.

I carefully, silently drew my arm back, then slung it forward and tossed the book over to the far side of the vault, well away from where I thought Charlotte had hit the floor.

Crack! Crack!

Vlad fired at the spot where I had thrown the book. His muzzle flash revealed his position, and he had moved exactly where I’d thought he would. I stepped around the bookcase, aimed my own weapon, and pulled the trigger.

Crack! Crack!

Vlad screamed, and his body thumped against the floor—

Something moved through the air behind me. I spun to the side, but a blade stabbed deep into my right upper arm, and red-hot pain exploded in my body.

I grunted and jerked back. The blade wrenched out of my arm, and I lost my grip on my gun, along with the electrical current I was still corralling with my galvanism.

The vault lights blazed back to life, and Jacques brandished his knife at me. I growled and lashed out with my left fist, but he ducked the blow and put his shoulder into the center of my chest. Jacques was strong, even for a paramortal, and he drove me back into the bookcase hard enough to make several volumes slip off the shelves and tumble to the floor.

“Fucking Section spies!” Jacques spat out the words.

He punched me in the face. My head smacked back against one of the shelves, and pain spiked through my skull. Jacques twirled the knife around in his hand and surged forward. I caught his wrist, but he was stronger than I was, and I couldn’t stop the blade from inching closer and closer to my heart—

Thwack!

Jacques’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he toppled to the floor.

Charlotte stood behind him, clutching the book she had just bashed into his skull. I wasn’t quite sure, given the way my head was aching, but I could have sworn the title was Murder for Christmas by Agatha Christie.

Charlotte tossed the book aside and looked at me. “Desmond! Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I rasped through the waves of pain cascading through my body. “It’s just a little stab wound.”

Her eyes crinkled with concern, and she opened her mouth, probably to argue that, no, it was not, in fact, just a little stab wound.

“Come back here!” a voice growled.

Charlotte and I both whirled around. On the other side of the vault, Elsa lunged forward and latched onto Katarina’s arm. She yanked the ballerina toward her, then punched the other woman. Katarina hissed and tried to break free, but Elsa was in a rage, and she tightened her grip, driving her fist into the ballerina’s face again and again.

“How dare you kill my brother!” Elsa yelled. “How dare you come here and threaten my niece!”

She drew her fist back for another blow, but Katarina finally shook her off and shoved her away. Elsa staggered back into a table, bounced off, and fell down onto her hands and knees.

Katarina’s gaze cut from the dead Vlad to the unconscious Jacques to Charlotte and me still standing by the bookcase.

“Fuck this,” she snarled.

Katarina darted forward, grabbed one of the duffel bags full of jewelry, and ran out of the vault. Charlotte took a step in that direction, then stopped, clearly torn between staying with me and chasing after the fleeing ballerina.

“Go!” I yelled. “I’m fine. Go get her!”

Charlotte nodded, scooped Vlad’s gun up off the floor, and sprinted out of the vault.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHARLOTTE

As I ran out of the vault, the lights flickered again. Desmond must have been using the electrical energy to heal the nasty stab wound in his arm. Fear still squeezed my heart about how close I’d come to losing him, but I couldn’t think about that right now.

No, right now, I had to concentrate on chasing down Katarina.

I rushed out into the hallway. Katarina was already at the far end and heading up the staircase. I sprinted after her, but by the time I reached the top of the steps and was back on the first floor, I was panting, and she had vanished.

Instead of rushing blindly down one of the corridors, I forced myself to stop, look, and listen, straining to hear her footsteps, a rustle of fabric, a clink of jewelry, or anything else that would tell me which direction she’d gone. But I couldn’t hear anything over my own pounding heart and quick, raspy breaths. Maybe Desmond was right about me cutting back on the sugar and doing more cardio.

I kept looking and listening, trying to figure out where Katarina had gone. All her accomplices were either dead or unconscious, and she didn’t strike me as the type to double back and mount a rescue mission, given how swiftly she’d left Vlad and Jacques behind in the vault. No, Katarina was smart enough to realize her best play was to get out of the castle as swiftly as possible. But how could she do that?

The gondola lift was the quickest, easiest way off the mountain, but once Katarina boarded it, she would be trapped, and Section 47 agents or other law-enforcement officials might be waiting at the bottom. She could go to the castle’s garage, hop into one of the vans that had brought me and the rest of the waitstaff up the mountain, and drive down the narrow, curvy road, but once again, she would risk running into Section agents or the regular mortal police in the village below.

So how else could Katarina get off the mountain? She might be an enduro, a professional ballerina, and an incredible athlete, but I didn’t think she was going to ski to safety or parachute off the side of the mountain, especially given the snowstorm outside. She needed some sort of transportation, something with an engine and lights, something like a . . .

“Snowmobile,” I whispered.

I remembered the vehicles I’d seen earlier. The mercenaries had come up the mountain on snowmobiles, and the vehicles were probably still sitting at the edge of the woods. At this point, a snowmobile was Katarina’s best—and probably only—chance of escape.

I glanced around again, thinking about where I was in the castle in relation to where I’d seen the snowmobiles. Katarina would take the shortest route to the vehicles, which meant . . .

More stairs. Drat.

I sucked down a breath and started running up the grand staircase.

Still clutching Vlad’s gun, I sprinted up the stairs to the second floor, then ran from one hallway to another, only slowing down long enough to peer around the corners and make sure Katarina wasn’t lying in wait to shoot me.

I repeated that process again and again, quickly working my way toward the ballroom. I also stopped every so often to look and listen, but I still didn’t hear anything above my own pounding heart and raspy breaths. Yep, I definitely needed to cut back on the sugar and do more cardio. Maybe that would be my New Year’s resolution—if I lived through the rest of this night.

Less than two minutes later, I had made it back to the ballroom, and I cautiously crept through one of the open doors.

“Oh my nutcrackers.” I muttered the impromptu curse.

The elegant, picturesque ballroom was now a jumbled, tattered mess. Chairs and tables had been flipped over onto their sides, shattered glasses and dented trays littered the floor, and several of the nutcrackers had been knocked down onto their backs, like toys that a child had tossed aside in a tantrum. It looked like someone had thrown the wildest Christmas Eve party ever, and no one had bothered to clean up the debris yet—including the bodies.

More than a dozen dead mercenaries lay sprawled across the floor, along with several security guards. No matter what side they had been on, all the men’s faces were frozen in pain and shock, and everyone’s blood had stained the white marble the same dark, ugly red.

What a waste of life.

Anger and disgust rolled through me. This whole thing had started because Henrika Hyde had decided to punish Elsa Eisen for her brother’s misdeeds, to make an example out of Elsa for something that wasn’t even her fault, something she was trying to fix. Well, Henrika might have started this little party, but I was going to end it.

Just like I was going to end Henrika herself, sooner or later.

The only part of the ballroom that was unscathed was the stage. The lights on the enormous Christmas tree were still glowing brightly, and all the other set decorations were in the same places as before. I eyed the life-size nutcrackers. Maybe it was my synesthesia—or overactive imagination—but the figures seemed to clutch their candy canes, bells, and other decorations a little more tightly than before, as though they were going to leap off the stage and join my hunt for Katarina—

The stage. Of course.

My gaze locked onto the wooden platform. Behind the night-sky backdrop was a series of dressing rooms and other areas, including a door that opened onto the rear of the castle, close to where the snowmobiles were probably still sitting at the edge of the woods.

I raised my gun and hurried in that direction. My boots crunched through some broken glass, but I grimaced and kept going. Katarina had probably already beaten me here and was long gone out the back, but I still had to try to catch up to her.

I ran around to the right side of the stage, pounded up the stairs, and stepped onto the wooden platform. I veered to the right, heading around the blue brocade curtain that was tied back.

A flash of metal caught my eye. On instinct, I ducked back around the curtain.

Crack! Crack!

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Bullets zinged across the open space and slammed into a control panel in the wings on the opposite side of the stage. Colorful sparks flew everywhere, and machinery started groaning and grinding together.

I dropped to one knee and leaned around the curtain. Katarina erupted out of the shadows, still clutching that duffel bag full of jewelry. She headed for the Christmas tree in the center of the stage, and I fired my own weapon.

Crack! Crack!

Katarina ducked behind the branches, and my bullets thunked into the tree, shattering a couple of ornaments instead of her bones.

The ballerina eased out from behind the tree. I tensed, expecting her to fire at me again, but she gave her silver revolver a disgusted look and tossed it aside. Out of bullets.

Bad for her, good for me. I aimed my own weapon at her and pulled the trigger.

Click.

My gun was also empty. Fuck.

Katarina tilted her head to the side, and a grin spread across her face. She dropped the duffel bag, gracefully leaped over the presents around the base of the tree, and ran straight at me. I surged to my feet and hurled the gun at her, but she slapped it away.

The ballerina put her shoulder down and rammed into me, and we both went down in a heap in the middle of the stage. My ass hit the wood, and pain spiked up my back and down through my hips. Katarina snarled and threw herself forward, trying to jab her elbow into my throat, but I rolled to the side and scrambled to my feet. She did the same thing, and we faced each other.

Behind Katarina, red and green sparks kept erupting out of the bullet-ridden control panel, and tinkling music spewed out of the sound system.

Bah-da-dum-dum-dum-dum . . . dum-de-dum . . . dum-de-dum . . . dum-de-dum . . . dum-de-dum-de-dum . . .

I recognized the classic tune. “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” Naturally.

“You’ve ruined everything!” Katarina yelled. “Why couldn’t you just cower somewhere inside the castle? But no, you just had to play the part of the hero, didn’t you?”

“Me? You ruined everything yourself!” I yelled right back at her. “Who plans a heist on Christmas Eve? Where’s your holiday spirit?”

Katarina flexed her hands, causing the Nutcracker Ruby to sparkle on her finger. “This ring is all the holiday spirit I need. Although killing you will certainly put a smile on my face. Why, it will be the best Christmas present ever.”

She launched herself at me again. This time, I was ready, and I raised my fists and stepped up to meet her.

Katarina and I moved back and forth across the stage, exchanging one vicious blow after another. My father’s work and his enemies had often followed him home from Section 47, and I had been in more fights than I cared to remember over the years. Plus, in the past several weeks, Desmond had ramped up my training, and he was an even more dedicated and ruthless taskmaster than my father had ever been. So I wasn’t without some fighting skills, but as an enduro, Katarina had a paramortal speed and strength that I simply didn’t have. For every blow I landed, she punched two more harder ones into my chest and stomach.

Still, I was holding my own, more or less, until she turned around. I chased after her, thinking she was running away, but Katarina whirled back toward me. She lashed out with her right leg, as though she was doing a complicated ballet move, and kicked my own legs out from under me.

Once again, I hit the stage hard, and even more pain spiked up through my back and down through my hips. A groan escaped my lips, and all I could do was lie there and listen to the tinkling strains of “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” How many times was the sound system going to repeat that song? I was rapidly coming to despise it, along with everything else having to do with the blasted ballet.

“What did Henrika say your power was?” Katarina said, circling around me, as light as a feather on her feet. She snapped her fingers. “Oh, yes. Some weird form of synesthesia. Face it, Charlotte. You’re no match for me. I’m an enduro. I can beat you to death and not break a sweat doing it.”

To punctuate her point, she kicked me in the ribs, making even more pain shoot through my body and throwing me back several feet across the stage. She was right. As an enduro, she was physically much tougher and stronger than I was. Add in her years of ballet training, and she could literally dance around me for hours.

I had to find a way to end the fight before she knocked me out—or killed me.

I staggered to my feet, sucking down air and trying to ignore the many aches and pains rising and falling inside my body, as though they were keeping time to the music.

Katarina leaped toward me. My synesthesia roared to life, and her entire body became a blur of red, as though her costume was scarlet instead of purple. I tensed, expecting another hard punch, but she whirled past me and shoved her hand into my back, sending me stumbling to the side. Then she danced away, her mocking laughter even louder than the music.

The bitch was playing with me.

Anger roared through me, overpowering my pain, but instead of recklessly charging at her, I forced myself to do what I did best—think. I already knew that Katarina was extremely dangerous, and the little voice in the back of my mind kept muttering it again and again in that annoying magical overkill. Right now, I needed something else dangerous, like a weapon I could use against her.

I looked past the gloating ballerina at the rest of the stage, but there were no weapons on the wooden platform. Just the backdrop and the Christmas tree and all those life-size nutcrackers clutching their holiday props . . .

My eyes narrowed. Now, that might be something.

Katarina was still twirling around me, but once again, I looked past her, my gaze zipping from one figure to the next. A candy cane, a cluster of silver bells, a wreath, a sleigh . . . The nutcrackers were clutching holiday decorations that anyone might have in their home at Christmastime. But the longer I stared at the decorations, the more colors flared on them, shifting from light gray to neon pink to that bright, bloody red that followed me everywhere.

Danger-danger-danger, the little voice in the back of my mind whispered again. But just like with the Nutcracker Ruby in the vault, the danger wasn’t in the objects themselves but in how I could use them against my enemy.

Katarina twirled past me, reached out, and shoved me again. This time, I leaned into the motion, using the momentum to propel myself across the stage to the closest nutcracker.

“Running away, Charlotte?” Katarina called out in a loud, mocking voice. “That’s the smartest thing you’ve done all night. But it’s too little, too late.”

Her footsteps sounded on the stage behind me, but I only had eyes for the nutcracker. I skidded to a stop, reached out, and pried the plastic candy cane out of its hand.

Katarina dug her fingers into my hair and yanked me back. I yelped with pain and anger, then tore my hair out of her grasp, spun around, and smashed the candy cane into her face.

Crunch.

For once, I got lucky and landed a perfect blow, and Katarina screamed and staggered back. I rushed forward and hefted the candy cane for another strike, but she wrested it out of my hands and tossed it aside. The prop skidded across the wood and slid off the edge of the stage.

“You bitch!” Katarina screamed, blood dripping down her face. “You broke my nose!”

“That’s not the only thing I’m going to break!” I yelled back.

She growled and lunged at me, but I dodged her, headed over to another nutcracker, and snatched the string of silver bells out of its hands. Then I spun around and hit her with the bells the same way I had done with the candy cane.

The bells jingled out a merry tune as I whacked her with them again and again, chiming in with the music still playing through the sound system. The bells were heavy, solid silver, and red and purple welts appeared on the ballerina’s face to match her bloody nose and costume.

Katarina shrieked with pain and fury, then wrenched a candy cane out of another nutcracker’s hands. She snapped off the hook, leaving behind a sharp, jagged end, and twirled the long piece of plastic around in her hand like a cheerleader with a baton. Then she tossed the broken hook aside and came right back at me.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

Katarina hit me with the candy cane just as I had been hitting her with the silver bells. Fresh pain exploded in my arms, legs, and stomach, and I struggled to breathe through my bruised, aching ribs.

“Doesn’t feel so good, does it?” she hissed, and kept right on battering me.

I used the silver bells to block some of her blows, but she was still much, much faster and stronger than I was. Sooner or later, she was going to shatter my ribs, crack my skull, or drive the broken end of the candy cane into my heart like a spear. So once again, I looked around the stage, desperately searching for something that would let me kill her before she killed me.

A shimmer of silver caught my eye, and I focused on the twelve-foot nutcracker on the right side of the stage. This figure was much larger than the other ones, as was the silver object in its hand, which started burning a bright, bloody red in my eyes. I didn’t know if I could get to the object in time or how to make it work if I did reach it, but it was the only chance I had left, so I raced in that direction.

Thwack!

Katarina cracked the candy cane against my back like a baseball bat, making me lose my grip on the silver bells and stumble forward right into the nutcracker. At the last instant, I twisted my body to the side, so that my chest only smacked into the nutcracker’s right arm instead of the object it was holding.

The hard blow still drove the air out of my lungs, and I latched onto the nutcracker, gasping for breath. I looked up and found myself face-to-face with the nutcracker’s massive, gleaming white teeth. I shuddered, lurched away from it, and turned around.

Katarina was still clutching the broken candy cane, and she whirled toward me, building up speed and momentum. If she hit me with that much force, I was dead, but I held my position and let her twirl in my direction.

“Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” kept playing and playing, once again building to its big, tinkly finish.

The ballerina spun closer and closer. I flexed my fingers wide and waited, even as my inner voice whispered an urgent warning of the death that was so clearly whirling toward me.

Danger-danger-danger!

Katarina kept spinning toward me, almost too fast to follow, and all I could really see was the murderous gleam in her eyes and the blurring flash of the purple crystals on her costume. Still, I held my position. I had to get the timing just right, or I was dead.

The ballerina spun closer and drew her arm back for a killing strike, and my entire field of vision turned red.

Now!

I lunged forward and locked my hands around her wrists, as though we were partners in a complicated dance of death. Katarina growled in frustration, but she was too committed to her strike to stop or try to wrench away.

I tightened my grip on her wrists, keeping her spin going, even as I looked over her shoulder, once again searching for that telltale burn of red and trying to get the timing just right again . . .

Now!

I stopped, planted my boots on the stage, and shoved Katarina forward as hard as I could—right into the nutcracker’s silver sword.

The weapon plunged into her back, and she screamed in pain and surprise. She started to yank herself free, but I tightened my grip on her wrists again and churned my legs, shoving her back, back, back, and driving the sword all the way through her body.

Katarina screamed again, and blood bloomed on the front of her purple costume, as though she had somehow draped herself in roses after a performance. She snapped up her hand and hit me with the candy cane she was still clutching, but her blows were weak and awkward, and they soon stopped altogether.

“The . . . fucking . . . nutcracker . . .” she mumbled, although I couldn’t tell if she was talking about the ballet or the figure I had just used to kill her.

Katarina twitched a few times, and then her hazel eyes went glassy and still. Her head drooped, the broken candy cane slipped out of her hand, and her body slumped forward, still impaled on the sword, the nutcracker grinning maniacally behind her.

I shuddered and staggered away from the gruesome sight. My boots skidded on the wood, and my legs slid out from under me. I hit the stage, and the tinkling music finally ended with a soaring flourish.

Dum!

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

DESMOND

I took hold of the electricity running through the vault’s walls and used it to heal the deep stab wound in my arm. Elsa watched the lights flicker and studied me with curious eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

I patted down the unconscious Jacques, making sure he didn’t have any other weapons. I removed a plastic bag containing what Elsa said was an explosive from his pocket and set it aside. Then I trussed him up with a pair of shackles that Elsa pulled out of a collection of antique weapons.

I scooped up my gun from the floor. Then together, Elsa and I left the vault.

“Where is Lina?” she demanded as we climbed the stairs to the first floor. “Where is my niece? What happened to the guests?”

“Lina is fine,” I replied. “She’s with Gabriel Chase. He was taking her and everyone else to the gondola lift. They should all be safely away from the castle and off the mountain by now.”

Elsa frowned, as though she was confused about something. She opened her mouth, but a scream ripped through the air, cutting her off. We both froze, and a few seconds later, another scream sounded.

“Where did that come from?” I demanded.

Elsa pointed at the grand staircase. “The ballroom.”

I hurried up the steps, with her following along. I kept my gun up, but I didn’t encounter any more mercs, and I ran through the corridors as fast as I could. A minute later, I sprinted into the ballroom, Elsa lagging behind me in the distance.

I glanced around, searching for more mercs. I didn’t see any enemies to fight, but there was something new in the ballroom: two bodies on the stage.

Katarina Tanetsa was impaled on a long sword that the largest nutcracker was holding, as though she was a puppet waiting for someone to grab her strings and make her dance again. She was obviously dead, so I focused on the figure sprawled a few feet away. Icy claws dug into my heart, shredding and freezing me from the inside out.

“Charlotte!” I yelled, racing toward the stage. “Charlotte!”

A low groan sounded, and she slowly stirred and sat up.

“Relax, Dundee,” Charlotte rasped. “I’m just catching my breath. New Year’s resolution: less sugar and more cardio.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, and right now, the only thing I cared about was making sure she was okay. I stopped in front of the stage, my gaze sweeping over her. The deep cut on her right forearm was still oozing blood, bruises covered her face, and she was clutching her ribs, but her blue aura burned bright and steady over her heart. Relief rushed through me, and the icy claws in my heart slowly thawed and retracted.

Charlotte scooted to the edge of the stage and swung her legs over the side. I gently grabbed her around the waist and lifted her down. She hissed with pain and curled her hands into the front of my ruined tuxedo jacket to steady herself. Her eyes locked with mine, and I stood there and breathed in the cool, soothing blue of her.

“You worried me, Numbers.”

“No more than you worried me, Dundee,” she replied, her voice just as low and strained as mine was.

We stared into each other’s eyes. Some of the tension between us eased, and a teasing grin spread across her battered face.

“The next time you want to crash a Christmas party, I’m going to do us both a favor and talk you out of it,” she said.

I laughed and pulled her closer, careful of her injuries. Our gazes locked again. Her fingers crept up and tangled in my hair, and I lowered my lips toward hers—

“I leave you two alone for an hour, and look what happens,” a familiar voice drawled.

I sighed and rested my forehead against Charlotte’s. “Your friend has terrible timing.”

“My friend? You’re the one currently engaged in a weird cleaner bromance with him. But yes, terrible timing is one of his special gifts.”

I drew back. Charlotte slid her hand into mine and gave my fingers a firm squeeze. I squeezed back, then we both turned to the side.

Gabriel was now standing in the ballroom, a gun in his hand. Somehow, despite everything that had happened tonight, he was untouched by all the death and drama, and he looked as clean and fresh as when the party had first started a couple of hours ago.

Lina poked her head out from behind Gabriel’s shoulder. “Aunt Elsa!” she cried out, and raced forward.

Elsa opened her arms, and the two of them hugged in the middle of the ballroom, surrounded by blood and bodies. Maria also stepped out from behind Gabriel and gave Charlotte a tentative smile.

Charlotte tightened her grip on my hand. We didn’t speak, but we didn’t need to. We were both just grateful to have survived another mission—together.

I used the electricity running through the ballroom’s walls to heal Charlotte. Then she, Gabriel, and I searched the castle for more mercs, but they had all been either killed or captured. We had just finished our sweep when several Section 47 agents from the Frankfurt station arrived.

Some of the Section agents stayed at the bottom of the mountain, taking statements from the party guests, as well as staving off questions from the mortal authorities, while others moved through the ballroom, scanning the mercs’ faces and fingerprints and taking samples of their DNA to figure out exactly who they were. And of course, the bomb techs had to disarm all the devices and remove the det cord the mercs had strung up both inside and outside the castle like red tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Charlotte and I gave our statements to the Frankfurt station chief, who was none too happy that we had ruined her Christmas Eve plans with her family. Couldn’t blame her for that. This wasn’t how any of us had planned to spend the holiday.

Even though I had already healed our injuries with my galvanism, one of the Section medics still checked out Charlotte and me, along with Elsa, Lina, and Maria. A medic approached Gabriel, who didn’t seem to have a scratch on him, but a dark look from the former cleaner sent the other man scurrying away.

Eventually, Charlotte and I left the ballroom and returned to the grand staircase in the center of the castle. The bomb techs had already finished disarming this area, and the bodies of the three mercs I’d killed had been loaded into black bags and were lying on gurneys on the first floor below so they could be transported back to the Frankfurt station. Jacques was sitting in a nearby chair, his hands cuffed behind his back, along with the man Charlotte had drugged. They were the only two surviving mercs.

Charlotte and I stood by the staircase railing and watched while a couple of Section agents hauled Jacques and the other merc to their feet.

“You picked the wrong party to hijack, Chef,” Charlotte called out. “Imbécile!”

Jacques shot her a nasty look and started cursing in French as the Section agents led him and the other merc outside. The agents shut the door behind them, leaving us alone in this part of the castle.

I jerked my head to the side. “There’s something I need to show you.”

Charlotte followed me down the corridor. I glanced around again to make sure we were still alone, then grabbed one of the presents from the floor, led Charlotte into a nearby library, and closed the door behind us.

I set the present on a table, lifted off the top, and showed her the metal case I’d hidden inside the hollow space, along with what it contained.

Charlotte carefully pulled one of the vials out of the case, held the glass up to the light, and studied the thick red liquid inside. “So this is Redburn. Henrika Hyde’s explosive that can supposedly kill any paramortal. It looks so . . . harmless.” Her nose crinkled with disgust. “Despite the weird sweet stench.”

Memories of the explosion on the beach flickered through my mind again. Blackened sand. Graham’s shiny red skin. My own skin burning, burning, burning, like a campfire that refused to be extinguished no matter how much water was poured on it . . .

I cleared my throat, but it still took me a moment to shove the memories aside. “We both know how deceiving looks can be.”

Charlotte nodded, and she slid the vial back into the case with the others. The bomb techs had found dozens of white blocks of Jacques’s homemade explosive, both inside and outside the castle, but this was all the Redburn the mercs had brought with them. Seven small vials to destroy a castle that had stood for hundreds of years. I still couldn’t quite wrap my mind around how truly powerful and dangerous the explosive was.

“What do you want to do with these?” Charlotte asked.

“We should turn the vials over to the Section bomb techs so they can make sure the explosive is stable and won’t blow us all sky-high when we least expect it.”

“Grandma Jane had a saying: Should is not the same thing as want.” Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “And you don’t want to turn these vials over to the bomb techs.”

“No, I don’t. I want us to keep the vials to ourselves, at least until we know for sure that there are no more moles inside Section.” I hesitated, then cleared my throat again and confessed my other, more worrisome thought. “Even if there aren’t any more moles, you know what the board of directors, especially my father, will want to do with these vials.”

She sighed. “General Percy and the others will want to study the explosive and reverse engineer the formula so they can make their own version of Redburn.”

I nodded. “Precisely.”

We both fell silent. Charlotte’s gaze dropped to the vials. Her expression turned grim, and mental calculations filled her eyes as she thought of all the ways my father could misuse the Redburn formula. I’d already thought of half a dozen, and I was sure far more scenarios were rattling around in Charlotte’s mind.

She lifted her gaze to mine again. “So we keep the vials to ourselves. For now, anyway. Find someone to discreetly analyze the formula without telling anyone else we have samples of Redburn. Not even Gia or Evelyn.”

I nodded again. “It’s the safest thing to do—for everyone.”

A wry grin curved the corner of Charlotte’s mouth. “Except for us.”

I couldn’t argue with that. But we’d made our decision, so I closed the lid, hefted the case out of the present box, and held it down by my side.

Charlotte and I returned to the ballroom. A few Section techs were still scanning the mercs’ faces and fingerprints, while Gabriel, Lina, and Maria were pulling rings, necklaces, phones, watches, and wallets out of the red velvet sack the mercs had used when they robbed the guests. The three of them were laying all the valuables out on the stage so they could be identified and returned to their rightful owners.

Elsa was standing a few feet away, her arms crossed over her chest. While we had been gone, someone had pried the Nutcracker Ruby off Katarina’s hand and given it to her. The ruby gleamed like a drop of dark red blood on her index finger, and Elsa kept rubbing her thumb over the heart-shaped jewel like she was trying to summon a genie out of a bottle so she could wish away all her problems.

Charlotte and I went over to her.

“I just wanted to give Lina a good Christmas after everything that happened over the last several months,” Elsa said, staring out over the ruined ballroom. “I didn’t know about Peter’s gambling debts or that he was stealing from Henrika Hyde and our other clients until it was too late. I tried to fix it. I tried to fix all of it, but you can see how well that turned out.”

I nodded at the ring on her finger. “Is that why you invited people here and charged them ten thousand euros each to look at a fake ruby?”

“Of course,” she replied. “No one would have known the difference, and I was going to use the money to pay back what Peter owed to our good, honest clients, the schools and charities he swindled. I also needed to keep up appearances for my family’s other, more dangerous clients. I wanted to convince them that everything was fine so they wouldn’t look too closely at their own accounts and artwork and come after me en masse—and Lina too.”

Elsa sighed, weary resignation filling her face. “I never wanted to take over my family’s business, but I didn’t have a choice after my parents died. I had to make money and protect myself, and Peter too.” A bitter laugh escaped her lips. “But the irony is that I’m good at it. At finding artwork and authenticating antiques and keeping them safe for criminals. And Peter just . . . wasn’t. I think maybe that’s why he started gambling. Because he wanted to be good at something, better at something than I was.”

Charlotte nodded. “I know how complicated family legacies can be, but sometimes we just have to make the best of them.” Her face hardened. “But don’t you ever apologize for being fucking brilliant at something, and don’t you think for one second that any of this is your fault. Your brother’s gambling and jealousy were his problems. He was just petty, stupid, and reckless enough to make them yours.”

I eyed Charlotte, remembering what she’d told me about Jack Locke’s enemies targeting her over the years, especially when she was younger. She might have been speaking to Elsa, but I got the sense she was talking about herself and her father too.

Elsa jerked her head in agreement, and her shoulders straightened, just a bit. “So now what? You take me into Section custody?”

Charlotte glanced at me, and I shrugged back. Her choice.

“Actually,” Charlotte said, “I have a better idea. Instead of taking you into custody, I think we should agree to become . . . friends.”

Elsa blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“Keep doing what you do, what your family has done for generations—finding art, keeping it safe, and moving it around for paramortal criminals.”

Elsa’s blue eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And in return?”

“Whenever Desmond or I ask for a favor, you do it, with no hesitation and no questions asked,” Charlotte replied.

“What sorts of favors?”

“The best kind.” A sly smile spread across Charlotte’s face. “Information.”

Elsa’s eyebrows shot up. “You want me to rat out my clients to you. That’s an excellent way to get myself killed.”

“Call it what you like. But it’s far better to have friends like us than to waste away in a Section black site.”

Emotions flickered across Elsa’s face, and her red aura pulsed with the same sensations. Surprise, suspicion, wariness, and just the faintest bit of hope.

She shook her head. “Even if I wanted to take your deal, it’s too late. Several of my clients were here tonight, and all the guests know that I charged them to look at a fake ruby. They won’t just forget that.”

Charlotte shrugged. “Then spin it.”

“What?” Elsa and I both asked in unison.

Charlotte gestured out at the ruined ballroom. “Spin it. Twist the situation around to your advantage. Tell the story you want to tell.”

“And how do I do that?”

“First of all, tell everyone you had no idea the ruby was a fake. Say that your security team received some last-minute information about a potential robbery attempt and switched out the ring before the party without telling you. Second, refund everyone’s money with a twenty percent bonus for their time and trouble, and invite them back for another, bigger, better party, free of charge, so they can see the real ruby. If you have some expensive baubles that you could throw in as parting gifts, that would be a nice touch. Everyone likes free stuff.”

Charlotte looked over at a pile of toppled nutcrackers. “Maybe you could give them the nutcrackers as souvenirs.” She shuddered. “Okay, maybe not.”

Elsa’s eyebrows climbed up in her forehead again. “So you want me to say that I, a well-known, well-regarded antiquities expert, didn’t spot a fake jewel and that my security team knowingly put people’s lives in danger? That will ruin my reputation.”

“Your reputation will certainly take a hit, but folks are going to be pissed no matter what you say,” Charlotte replied. “So smooth things over as best you can. Namely, by telling your guests about the secret, top-notch professionals you hired to ensure their safety.”

She gestured at me, then over at Gabriel, who was still sorting through the stolen items with Lina and Maria. “All the guests saw Desmond and Gabriel kill the mercenaries, and then Gabriel escorted everyone to safety. So paint them as part of your security team, at least when you’re talking to your regular, mortal, legitimate clients.”

“And when I’m talking to my paramortal clients?” Elsa asked.

“Tell your criminal clients that you knew all about the robbery threat. That you set a trap, lured Katarina and several other mercenaries into your vault, and then disposed of them,” Charlotte replied in a cold, flat voice. “Basically, the story boils down to this: you’re alive, and the thieves are not. Your criminal clients will see that as a sign of strength, not weakness. Your enemies attacked you, and you eliminated them. That alone will make other people think twice about coming after you, and it might just give you enough time to track down the items Peter sold and replace the money he stole.”

Elsa threw her hands up into the air. “No one is going to believe that story. It’s preposterous!”

Charlotte shrugged again. “Of course it’s preposterous. But it’s also a good story, and everyone loves a good story, no matter how improbable it is.”

Elsa bit her lip, clearly not convinced.

Charlotte tilted her head toward the stage. “If you won’t do it for yourself, then do it for Lina. She needs you here with her, not languishing away in a Section black site. Especially since you’re the only family she has left.”

Elsa studied Charlotte, the same sorts of calculations going on behind her eyes that I so often saw in Charlotte’s gaze.

After a few seconds, Elsa barked out a harsh laugh. “I completely underestimated you. All this time, I thought you were just a Section analyst like you claimed. But really, you are a cold, ruthless, manipulative bitch.”

A razor-thin smile spread across Charlotte’s face. She tipped her head in acknowledgment and held out her hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Elsa eyed Charlotte for a moment, then stepped forward and shook her hand. “I happen to like cold, ruthless, manipulative bitches. They make the best friends.”

Still clasping hands, the two women studied each other. Their auras pulsed, while calculations galore filled their eyes.

Elsa dropped Charlotte’s hand. “I should check on Lina.”

She tipped her head to us, then headed over to her niece. Gabriel was coming in our direction, and Elsa stopped and murmured something to him. Gabriel nodded, then walked over to Charlotte and me, while Elsa joined Lina and Maria in front of the stage.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Oh, Elsa was reserving my services for the next few days until her security team can be replaced and the castle can be fortified again,” Gabriel replied. “What’s in the case, Slick?”

My fingers tightened around the handle of the metal case that contained the vials of Redburn explosive. “Party favors,” I drawled.

Gabriel arched an eyebrow at my nonanswer, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he turned to Charlotte and looked her over. “Love the costume. Very . . . spycracker.”

“Spycracker?” She snorted. “That’s not a real word, and your mockery is duly noted. Especially since you look like you just stepped out of a fashion magazine.”

Gabriel strutted forward, twirled around, and held his hands out wide, as though he was a model showing off his perfect black tuxedo. “What can I say? I’m much better at being a cleaner and getting through fights unscathed than your boy Slick is.”

“I’m standing right here,” I replied. “And I seem to remember shooting a merc who was about to put a bullet in your back.”

“Agree to disagree,” Gabriel replied.

“Yeah, yeah,” Charlotte chimed in. “You are both excellent cleaners. Dangerous and deadly and whatnot.”

“I’m the best,” Gabriel and I both replied in unison.

He glared at me, and I glowered right back at him.

“Assassins and their egos.” Charlotte rolled her eyes, then focused on Gabriel again. “Although I am extremely glad you were here tonight. What a lucky coincidence.”

Her voice was mild, her tone pleasant, but her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Charlotte was doing those mental gymnastics in her mind again, although I had no idea what she was thinking—or what conclusions she was drawing about her friend Gabriel Chase.

Gabriel reached up and straightened his bow tie, even though it was already perfectly in place. “You know me, Char. I’m always exactly where I need to be. Right place, right time, and all that.”

“Mmm.” She made a benign, noncommittal sound, but her eyes narrowed a little more.

Gabriel grinned at Charlotte, but his smoky gray aura flickered, just for a moment, almost like he was . . . worried about something. “Anyway, I should go make sure Maria gets home safely and that Elsa and Lina have someplace secure to stay tonight. Catch you later, Char, Slick.”

He nodded to us, then strolled back over to Elsa, Lina, and Maria. Charlotte watched him go, still doing those mental calculations. After a few seconds, she shook her head, as if dismissing those thoughts, and looked at me again.

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve had about all the Christmas cheer I can stand. Let’s get out of here, Dundee.”

“Whatever you say, Numbers.”

Charlotte held her hand out to me. I threaded my fingers through hers, and together we left the ruined ballroom behind.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHARLOTTE

I retrieved my regular clothes and sneakers from the castle’s locker room, then Desmond and I rode the gondola lift down the mountain.

Even though it was after midnight, the whole village was awake, shocked by the violence at the castle. People had thrown coats on over their pajamas and were clustered in groups, gossiping about what had happened, but no one paid any attention as we slipped through the crowd and returned to the hotel where we had been staying for the last few days.

We were both exhausted, so we showered and went to our respective beds. My sleep was dark, deep, and dreamless, and I woke the next morning to the soft murmur of voices, along with the rattling of dishes. I yawned, stretched, and sat up.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Desmond called out from the living room.

I groaned and flopped back down onto the bed. “You are entirely too cheerful this early in the morning.”

“I thought I would surprise you with breakfast. Although if you don’t want any pastries . . .” His voice trailed off suggestively.

I immediately sat back up. “Pastries?”

His chuckle drifted into the bedroom. “You’re like a bloodhound when it comes to anything containing sugar.”

“When there are pastries involved? Absolutely.”

I got up, dragged a comb through my hair, threw on a white hotel robe over my pajamas, and padded into the living room.

A table for two was perched in front of a wide picture window. The snow had finally stopped, and the entire village of Tannenstelle was covered in a thick layer of sparkling white powder, as was the looming mountain. From this distance, everything looked calm, peaceful, and serene, and you couldn’t tell anything out of the ordinary had happened at Tannenbaum Castle last night.

I made a mental note to text Gabriel and find out where he had stashed Elsa and Lina. I wanted to question Elsa about Henrika Hyde and her other criminal clients before we left, but that was a problem for later. Right now, I was determined to enjoy this time with Desmond, who was transferring silver platters from a room-service cart onto the table. He’d already gotten dressed in a powder-blue shirt, along with a matching tie, vest, and pants, and my heart skipped a painful beat. More than once last night, I’d thought I would never see him again, which made this morning—Christmas morning—even more special.

Desmond finished with the dishes and glanced over at me. “Charlotte? What are you thinking about?”

I didn’t feel like discussing my fragile feelings, so I snagged a cherry Danish off one of the platters. “How I’m going to eat every single pastry on this table.”

He arched an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say something last night about less sugar and more cardio?”

I waved the pastry at him. “That’s my New Year’s resolution. But lucky me, it’s still December, which means I can indulge as much as I want to until then.”

Desmond chuckled again, then grabbed a glass filled with red liquid and handed it to me. “Here.”

“What’s this?”

“A new smoothie recipe I’m working on.”

I eyed the liquid with suspicion. “It looks very . . . healthy.”

“Oh, it is very healthy, which is why you should drink it.”

I grumbled some more, but I sipped the smoothie, which was a delicious mix of cranberries and oranges. It was so good that I could almost forget it was good for me.

In addition to the pastries, Desmond had ordered scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, breakfast potatoes, and fresh fruit. We sat at the table and ate in companionable silence, both of us checking our phones and messages.

“Gabriel brought Elsa and Lina here, to the hotel,” I said. “They’re two floors down. Maria went to her mother’s house last night.”

Desmond nodded, his gaze on his own screen. “Gia says the other Section agents have finished their work at the castle. She and Evelyn are expecting a full debrief when we return to D.C.”

I nodded back, and we finished eating and checking our messages.

Eventually, I set my phone down, pushed my plate away, and let out a loud, happy sigh. “Ahh.”

“Don’t tell me you’re finished,” Desmond teased. “There are still half a dozen pastries left.”

He reached for one of the scrumptious treats, but I playfully swatted his hand away. “Those are for later. Everyone knows you have to eat multiple times on Christmas. Including before you open presents.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Presents?”

I hesitated, wondering if I should have brought up the subject, but it was too late to take back my words. “Yes, presents. I know we’ve been focused on the Tannenbaum mission and we didn’t talk much about Christmas, but I got you something.”

I went into my bedroom and fished a large, wrapped box out of my suitcase, then returned and set it on the table. Desmond picked up the box and gently shook it, but it didn’t make a sound, so he tore off the paper.

His face brightened. “An art kit.”

He cracked open the wooden box and skimmed his fingers over the assortment of charcoal pencils, paints, and other supplies nestled inside. A smile spread across his face. “Thank you, Charlotte. I love it.”

Truth, my inner voice whispered, but I didn’t need the magical confirmation. As soon as I’d seen the art kit a couple of weeks ago, I’d known that he would like it. Back in D.C., Desmond secretly owned a small art gallery, which also served as one of his safe houses. Art was one of his passions, and he was always drawing and doodling on one notepad or another.

Desmond shut the box and set it aside. “I got you something too.”

He disappeared into his own bedroom. A few seconds later, he returned and placed a small box on the table. I grimaced. Silver nutcrackers grinned up at me from the shiny purple wrapping paper.

“Sorry,” he said. “I wrapped it before we went to the castle.”

“It’s okay.”

I picked up the present and shook it, but this one didn’t make a sound either. I tore off the paper and opened the blue velvet box inside to reveal . . .

A crystal star.

Shock punched into my heart, but it was quickly replaced by a warm, soft rush of wonder. The morning sun hit the faceted edges and delicate spikes of crystal, making the star sparkle even more brightly than the snow outside and painting the table in colorful rainbow prisms.

“This . . .” My voice trailed off, and words escaped me for several seconds. “This is the same sort of crystal star that my grandmother used to collect. How did you know?”

“Remember when I came over to your apartment when the movers delivered your new couch a few weeks ago?”

I nodded.

“Well, you were looking at some old holiday photos, including one of your grandmother in front of a Christmas tree covered with those stars. You mentioned how much you missed her holiday decorations, so I did a little research, and I found out the company still makes the ornaments.” Desmond hesitated. “Do you . . . like it?”

This time, I knew just what to say—the truth. “I love it.”

I reached over and grabbed his hand, and he curled his fingers into mine.

We sat there, smiling and staring into each other’s eyes. Slowly, the mood between us shifted, going from fun and playful to something far more serious and intense. Once again, I was startled by just how much I cared about Desmond, much more than I had ever expected to, especially given how much we had disliked and distrusted each other when we had first met.

And I was also reminded of just how close I’d come to losing him last night. When the lights had come back on in the vault and I’d realized that Jacques had stabbed him, that the mercenary chef was going to kill him, I had forgotten about everything else but protecting Desmond.

The mission, stopping Katarina, even my own safety.

Nothing had mattered but saving him—just like nothing else mattered to me right now but being with him.

I got up and went around the table. Desmond started to get up as well, but I put my hands on his shoulders, and he stayed seated. I looped my arms around his neck, then sat down and straddled him.

Desmond grabbed my waist and pulled me forward so that my hips were flush with his. Just that simple contact made heat flare deep inside me, like a dormant volcano rumbling to life. We stared at each other a heartbeat longer, and then I leaned forward and lowered my lips to his.

Our first kiss was soft and slow, a gentle exploration, a sweet celebration that we were both still here, still alive, still together, despite all the awful things that had happened last night. But the kiss quickly deepened, our tongues darting out to stroke against each other, and I hummed with happiness.

“Even now, you taste like sugar and limes,” Desmond murmured, nibbling on my neck with his teeth.

“And you smell amazing, fresh and sharp and clean, like soap and snow and pine trees,” I replied, tangling my fingers in his silky hair.

We sat like that for a long while, exchanging kisses, slow and deep, taking our time. But with every touch of our lips and tongues, a little more heat flared in my body, and I rocked against Desmond, trying to get even closer to him, trying to feel even more of him all at once.

He nipped my neck again, then drew back. “You know, since it’s Christmas morning, there is one more present I’d like to unwrap.”

“What?”

A wicked grin spread across his face. “You.”

Desmond stood up, bringing me along with him. I locked my legs around his waist, and we kissed again, a little longer and deeper than before. Desmond carried me away from the window and set me down on my feet on the thick, plush rug in front of the living room’s fireplace. Flames crackled behind the grate, but they were nothing compared to the heat building in my body.

I reached for the buttons on his vest, but he caught my hands and gently lowered them to my sides.

“Nope,” Desmond said. “I called dibs on unwrapping.”

The husky promise in his voice made me shiver with anticipation.

Desmond undid the belt on my robe slowly and carefully, as though I truly were a present he was unwrapping and he wanted to draw out the suspense and surprise for as long as possible. He pushed the halves of my robe aside, and I shrugged out of the thick garment and let it fall to the floor.

He chuckled. “I love the pie pajamas.”

Tiny slices of brightly colored pies covered the white long-sleeve top and the matching bottoms. “They were an early present from Pablo. We had a Christmas party at the diner last week. I gave him a bow tie with hamburgers and fries on it.”

Desmond nodded. “Well, the next time I see him, I’ll have to tell Pablo that he has excellent taste. But right now, I’m much more interested in unwrapping the rest of my present.”

He undid the buttons on the front of my pajama top. I let it fall to the floor beside the robe, shivering as the air hit my bare chest. Desire sparked in Desmond’s eyes, and the lights flickered, almost as if they were showing me his appreciation.

He slipped his hands inside the waistband of the pajama bottoms and slid them down my hips and legs, along with my underwear. I stepped out of them, and Desmond got to his feet. He wasn’t touching me, but I felt even hotter than before, and that hum in my body intensified, along with the roar of my heart in my ears.

“Well, now that I’ve unwrapped my present, I wonder what I should do with it,” Desmond murmured, his voice a low, husky rasp. “Ah, I have an idea.”

He stepped forward and picked me up. I wrapped my legs around his waist and leaned forward to kiss him again, but Desmond lowered me all the way down to the floor so that my back was flat on the rug. Then he gave me another wicked grin, gently parted my legs, and put his mouth on me.

The first touch of his tongue made me suck in a breath and buck up off the rug. Desmond lifted his head and stared at me, his eyes bright with desire.

“So much better than pie,” he growled.

He put his mouth on me again, licking, stroking, and sucking, even as he teased me with his fingers. Moans tumbled out of my mouth, my hands fisted by my sides, and my entire body trembled as waves of pleasure cascaded over me.

“Yes . . .” I rasped. “More . . . Desmond . . . please . . .”

He gave me more—more licking, stroking, and sucking—until an orgasm zipped through me, hot, intense, and electric.

Stars exploded in my eyes, burning brighter than any holiday lights, but even stronger was the warmth that flooded my heart—warmth for Desmond and everything he meant to me—and that was the best present of all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

DESMOND

I watched as Charlotte climaxed, her aura burning so bright and blue it almost seared my eyes. Sometimes I thought I would never get tired of kissing her, never get tired of touching her, never get tired of wanting to bring her as much pleasure as possible. Even now, I ached to keep caressing her, but I forced myself to remain still.

Charlotte shuddered out a breath and slowly sat up. Her pupils were dilated, her eyes more black than blue, and I could feel the pleasure still sizzling through her body.

“Merry Christmas to me,” she purred.

The smile on her face and the slightly glazed look in her eyes made even more heat explode in my body. Once again, I wanted to reach for her, wanted to bury myself deep inside her, but I remained still, content to sit beside her on the rug.

Some of the glow faded from Charlotte’s aura, and her gaze focused on mine. A seductive smile spread across her face, making my dick sit up and take notice, even though I was already hard and aching for her.

“My turn,” she purred again.

She swiftly loosened my tie and undid the buttons on my vest, along with my shirt, and I obligingly discarded them all. She stopped a moment to admire my chest, then reached for my pants. She caressed me through the fabric, making me hiss, and I couldn’t resist any longer.

I grabbed her around the waist and pulled her closer so that she was straddling me again. Then I cupped her breasts, enjoying the weight of them in my hands. Charlotte let out a soft sigh, put her hands on my shoulders, and leaned into my touch. I ran my tongue around one of her nipples before tweaking it with my teeth and sucking on it. Warm, soft, and sweet, just like the rest of her.

“Ahh,” Charlotte rasped, her fingers sliding down and digging into my back. “You’re distracting me.”

“Really?” I murmured, moving over to suck on her other nipple. “Would I do something like that?”

She groaned, but her fingers dropped down and started moving again, faster than before. She undid my belt and zipper and peeled off my pants, along with my boxers. I plucked a condom out of my wallet. Charlotte was on birth control, but we always used protection.

Now that we were both naked, Charlotte put her hands on my shoulders, and I let her push me down onto my back on the rug. She grinned, then leaned down and put her mouth on me, licking, stroking, and sucking the same way I had done to her. This time, I was the one who groaned and gasped and begged for more.

Right before I would have exploded, I got the condom, tore the wrapper open, and rolled it over my erection. Then I reached for Charlotte again. I wanted to make this moment last as long as possible, so I stretched out beside her on the rug, marveling at how smart, strong, and beautiful she was, inside and out.

She cupped my face in her hands, then kissed me. Her tongue glided against mine, and I breathed in the blue of her, letting her taste, touch, scent, and aura fill in all the empty, aching, cracked places inside me. The ones I hadn’t even realized were so deep and jagged before I met her.

I growled and pulled her closer, until every inch of her was pressed up against every inch of me. She tangled her fingers in my hair, dragging her nails across my scalp, while I reached down and stroked her again. Charlotte writhed against me, her fingers skimming over my body as mine skimmed over hers.

“Desmond,” she rasped. “Desmond.”

I flipped us over so that she was beneath me. Her eyes were once again more black than blue, and she locked her legs around my waist. She nodded, and I slid into her.

It was . . . she felt . . . amazing.

I tried to take my time, tried to make it last, but my body started moving of its own accord, and I pumped my hips hard and fast, sliding a little deeper into her every single time.

Charlotte gasped and tightened her legs against my waist. She tugged my head down and kissed me again. We were both in a frenzy now, and we moaned into each other’s mouth. I thrust forward, and Charlotte shuddered beneath me, another orgasm building inside her.

I kept going, once again trying to give her as much pleasure as possible . . .

Charlotte cried out, and an answering orgasm ripped through me, far stronger and much more electrifying than any current I had ever felt. The pleasure was incredible, but even more amazing was the softness that sparked in my heart whenever I looked at Charlotte—far more emotion than I had ever thought myself capable of.

Merry Christmas to us both.

Afterward, we lay on the rug, covered with a fleece blanket I had pulled off the nearby couch. The fire had burned down low, and the room was growing a bit chilly, but I was still basking in the afterglow and the blue of Charlotte’s aura.

“This is the best holiday I’ve had in a long, long time,” I confessed in a low voice.

Charlotte lifted her head and looked at me. For a moment, I thought I’d said too much, revealed too much, shared too much about how important she was to me and all the things I felt for her—things that went far beyond the terrific sex we’d just shared.

But then a soft, warm smile spread across her face, and I knew everything was all right. “This is the best holiday I’ve had in a long time too,” she replied. “Merry Christmas, Dundee.”

“Merry Christmas, Numbers.” I cleared my throat. “You know, you were right before.”

“About what?”

“We should have some pastries—later.”

She arched an eyebrow. “How much later?”

My hands slid down her body. Her breath quickened, and her aura pulsed. I grinned. “Much, much later. What do you say?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Charlotte laughed and raised her lips to mine.

EPILOGUE

GABRIEL

I stood in my suite at the hotel, staring out the window at the quiet, sleepy village below.

Elsa and Lina Eisen were safely tucked away in the suite next door, and I’d finally had a chance to take a shower and get some sleep. Charlotte had texted earlier, and we had agreed to meet up late in the afternoon so that she could question Elsa about her family business and her many shady clients, including Henrika Hyde.

I took a sip of hot cider, enjoying the mix of crisp, tart apple and warm cinnamon. Not exactly how I thought I’d be spending Christmas, but all in all, everything had turned out okay.

My phone buzzed on the table, and I picked up the device.

Unknown caller.

I tensed, my thumb hovering over the screen, but in the end, my curiosity won out, and I swiped to accept the call. I had been expecting it for hours.

I held the phone up to my ear but didn’t say anything. Through the speaker, I could hear music playing in the background—some version of “Carol of the Bells.” Well, at least it wasn’t “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.” After everything that had happened last night, I never wanted to hear that music again.

“I take it things went well at Tannenbaum Castle,” a soft feminine voice murmured in my ear.

“Depends on what your version of well is,” I drawled. “Because it didn’t work out so well for Katarina Tanetsa and her crew of mercenaries.”

My mysterious caller laughed, and the sound intrigued me far more than it should have.

“Care to tell me why you called me three days ago and told me to come here?” I asked.

I really had been in Frankfurt wrapping up some last-minute work for a client, just like I’d told Desmond before everything had gone sideways in the ballroom. I just hadn’t told him the real reason I was at the castle—that I’d gotten an anonymous call saying he and Charlotte were going to be there and might need my help, along with a text invitation to the party.

The first thing I’d done was try to figure out if the information was legit and exactly who had tipped me off, but so far, my usual tricks and techniques hadn’t yielded any results, and I was still in the dark about who was on the other end of the line.

I hated being in the dark.

“I have my reasons, Mr. Chase,” the woman replied, finally responding to my question. “And they are no concern of yours.”

“Oh, I think they are most definitely my concern, especially since they involve my friends.”

“Hmm. So you’re counting Desmond as one of your friends now? Interesting pivot. I was under the impression the two of you hated each other. Cleaners often do. Their egos get in the way of everything else.”

She was right about that. Most cleaners were arrogant, insufferable jackasses, myself included. I had scuffled with more than one fellow cleaner when I’d been working for Section 47 before, during, and after missions, but I kept my mouth shut. She already knew too much about me, and I wasn’t revealing anything else.

The silence stretched out between us. In the background, the music continued to play. It matched her—light and pealing one moment, dark and sultry the next, with all sorts of intriguing shades and hidden depths in between.

Finally, the music ended.

“You know I’m going to find out who you are and why you’re so interested in Charlotte and Desmond,” I said.

A low laugh sounded. “Good luck with that. Especially since I’m guessing you haven’t told your friends that Elsa Eisen didn’t invite you to her holiday party.”

I didn’t respond, and she laughed again, but it wasn’t a mocking sound. More like she was highly amused by the awkward position she had put me in.

“You really should go ahead and tell them,” she said. “If Charlotte Locke is as smart as everyone says she is, she’ll figure it out sooner or later. So will Desmond. Save yourself the headache, Mr. Chase. You don’t want to lose the few friends you have left in Section.”

I thought of how Charlotte had stared at me in the ballroom last night. I was willing to bet that she had already figured it out, although she hadn’t said anything in front of Desmond. But I knew Charlotte better than just about anyone, and I knew when the gears were grinding in her mind. My mystery woman was right. I should tell Charlotte. She was one of my best friends, and I didn’t want to lie to her—or, worse, make her think she couldn’t trust me.

“As soon as I tell Charlotte about your charming calls, she’ll start trying to figure out who you are,” I said. “And believe me when I tell you that you do not want Charlotte Locke digging into your life, whoever you are.”

I could almost hear her shrug. “I know I won’t be able to hide forever. I’m prepared for the fallout. In the meantime, I will do what I think is best to get what I want.”

“Which is what, exactly?”

For a moment, I thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then a single word echoed through the line.

“Revenge.”

A dozen questions crowded into my mind. Who had wronged her? Katarina Tanetsa and her crew? Henrika Hyde? Or someone else? And what did Charlotte and Desmond have to do with whatever revenge she was seeking? But once again, I kept my mouth shut. She wouldn’t tell me anything.

“Nothing else to say?” she asked, a faint, mocking note in her voice.

I shrugged, even though she couldn’t see the motion. “Not much to say when I don’t even know your name.”

“You can call me . . . Nemesis.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re a smart man. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Oh, and Mr. Chase?”

“Yeah?” I asked in a wary voice.

“Merry Christmas.”

Before I could respond, she hung up. I stared at the phone for several seconds, then texted one of my most trusted techs, asking him to try to trace the call, although I knew he wouldn’t come up with anything.

All I could do was wait for my mystery woman to call again. And she would call again. I could feel it, deep down in my bones.

But until then, I would just have to do my best to help Charlotte and Desmond with their dangerous mission to capture Henrika Hyde. So I put my phone down, took another sip of cider, and stared out into the snow.

Thank you for reading Sugar Plum Spies. Want more adventures with Charlotte Locke and Desmond Percy? Download A Sense of Danger, book 1 in the Section 47 urban fantasy, spies-with-magic series.

Want to learn more about Jennifer’s books? Keep reading for an excerpt of Only Bad Options, book 1 in the Galactic Bonds science-fiction fantasy romance series.

ONLY BAD OPTIONS EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE—VESPER

Sometimes in life, you have only bad options.

Like planning to commit corporate espionage in the morning, becoming a whistleblower by noon, and trying not to be murdered by midnight.

Those thoughts—and a dozen disturbing visions of my own potential murder—zipped through my mind as I perched on the sofa and stared out over the low table in front of me.

Screwdrivers, laser cutters, and other handheld tools covered the scarred faux wood surface, along with colorful gelpens and clear plastipapers boasting sketches and schematics of everything from household appliances to shock batons to a pair of gloves designed to mimic the look and feel of human skin. Squiggles and doodles of blue eyes and black arrows adorned the edges of the thin, reusable plastipapers, since those odd symbols had haunted my dreams for as long as I could remember. Wires snaked out from underneath the papers, while a cup squatting on the corner of the table held the remains of a raspberry protein shake that had stained the clear plastic a dull, sickly pink.

I leaned forward, picked up the miniature spaceship in the middle of the mess, and turned it around in my hands. The cheap plastic model was a little larger than my palm and had been spewed out by one of the multidimensional printers at Kent Corp, where I worked in the research and development lab. Yep, I was a lab rat, responsible for fixing flaws in Kent Corp designs, as well as dreaming up new products for the Regal-family-owned company to sell to further increase House Kent’s already hefty coffers.

Velorum was grooved into the side of the model, in the same place it had been on the actual ship, and I traced my fingers over the letters, my skin sinking into the tiny dips and empty curls. Kent Corp products always had boastful, grandiose names, whether it was a new space cruiser, a solar-powered blaster, or a can opener.

I snorted. Hubris would have been a much more appropriate moniker, especially given the small but deadly flaw in the cruiser’s design.

Footsteps clacked along the floor, and a woman shuffled into the room where I was sitting and clutching the model ship like a recalcitrant child who refused to give up her favorite toy.

The thirty-something woman was dressed in a light beige pantsuit that outlined her trim body, while black stilettos added a couple of inches to her already-tall frame. Gold shadow and liner brought out her dark brown eyes, while plum lipstick did the same for her ebony skin. Her dark brown hair was slicked back into a low bun, and a gold chain made of square links hung from her neck.

Her sleek, tailored look was a direct contrast to the shapeless white lab coat I wore over a long-sleeved light gray shirt, matching cargo pants, and work boots.

The woman yawned, her eyes still a bit bleary with sleep. “Why are you messing with that model? I thought you finished your report on the Velorum crash last week.”

“Good morning to you too, Tivona,” I drawled, ignoring her question.

She shuddered and stepped into the tiny kitchen. “There is no such thing as a good morning, especially not a good Monday morning.”

Tivona Winslow might be a brilliant negotiator, but she was most definitely not a morning person. Still, her love of late nights meshed well with my get-up-and-get-things-done mentality. The two of us were rarely home at the same time, which made sharing our small two-bedroom apartment—and especially the single bathroom—much more manageable.

A grin split Tivona’s face, and she gave me a saucy wink. “Although the weekend was very enjoyable, especially Saturday night.”

I laughed, despite the tension simmering in my body. “Let me guess. True love lost and found on the dance floor thanks to a chembond cocktail.”

“Something like that.” Tivona scrunched up her nose. “Although she wasn’t nearly as cute and charming the next morning.”

“They never are when chembonds are involved—”

Tivona waved her hand, cutting off my lecture. “I know, I know. A chembond isn’t real.” She sighed with longing. “But it was fun while it lasted. You should try it sometime, Vesper.”

I rolled my eyes. “No, thanks. I’ve sworn off relationships, remember? Especially chemically induced ones. They burn out even faster than regular ones do.”

Tivona arched an eyebrow at the bitterness in my voice. “What was it you said after your breakup with Conrad? Oh, yes. That attraction, desire, and love are nothing more than chemicals in the brain. Dopamine and pleasure centers and all that other technical stuff you spout all the time.”

I lifted my chin. “And I stand behind every single word.”

This time, I sighed, the sound full of the melancholy that haunted me like a bad dream. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should go clubbing with you, down a cocktail with someone, and see what happens. At least you know what you’re getting into with a chembond—and that it will wear off in a few hours.”

Unlike my current heartache, which had been dragging on for months.

Sympathy filled Tivona’s face. “This thing with Conrad will wear off too. Especially when you get out there and meet someone new. You’ll see, Vesper. Soon you won’t be thinking about Conrad at all.”

Her cheerful words were completely innocent, but they blared in my mind like an alarm warning that something bad was about to happen. I held back a shudder, trying to ignore the magic suddenly pricking my skin like needles on a medtable.

Tivona hit a button on the brewmaker on the kitchen counter, which let out a series of high-pitched beep-beep-beeps, almost as if it was talking to her. Liquid streamed down into the chrome pot, and the rich, dark scent of chocolate espresso filled the air. It looked and smelled far more appetizing than my chalky raspberry shake.

Brewmaker was a misnomer, since the appliance was actually a food fabricator that could produce everything from scrambled eggs to almond oatmeal to a serviceable steak, depending on which protein pods were loaded into it. But people called them brewmakers because most folks used them to whip up drinks—coffees, teas, protein shakes. No matter how advanced technology got, folks still loved to gulp down caffeine, ginseng, and other stimulants, along with massive amounts of processed sugar.

Tivona drew in a deep breath. “Ahh. I’ll never admit it, since I am legally obligated to claim that Kent products are perfect as is and defend them vigorously against all lawsuits, but those tweaks you made to this brewmaker last week really worked. Espresso in less than ten seconds that is the perfect temperature and won’t scald your mouth? That’s genius, Vesper.”

“You know I like tinkering with things.”

Tivona’s dark gaze darted over to the mess of tools, plastipapers, and wires on the table in front of me, and her lips turned down into a disapproving frown. “That’s one way of putting it.”

When we’d first moved in together about three years ago, Tivona and I had divided the common room into two sections. Her side, which included the kitchen, was spotless, and everything was either neatly stowed away, like her plethora of mugs in the cabinets, or stacked in precise piles, like the latest contracts she was working on that covered the dining table.

My side of the room, which included the sofa and the low table, was far less organized. Like Tivona, I preferred the pile method of storage, but mine were haphazard mountains that contained everything from old technical manuals to appliance parts. I found the clutter cozy and comforting, but it supremely annoyed Tivona. More than once, she had challenged me to find a particular plastipaper or tool to get me to clean up the mess, but I always located the requested item within a matter of seconds, like an old-timey magician pulling a rabbit out of her proverbial hat. Always knowing where things were was one of the few advantages to having seer magic.

Despite Tivona’s neat-freak tendencies, she was a genuine friend and by far the best roommate I’d ever had, mainly because we didn’t see each other all that often, not even at Kent Corp, where we both worked. Having an in-person conversation with her was a rare treat, rather than an everyday chore.

Tivona poured the chocolate espresso into an oversize mug, then plopped down on the other end of the sofa. She plucked the remote from the end table on her side of the room and hit a button, causing the holoscreen embedded in the opposite wall to flare to life. She yawned and took a sip of her espresso, while her favorite gossipcast played on the screen.

“And now we bring you the latest in the ongoing conflict between the Imperium and the Techwave . . .” The gossipcaster’s voice droned on and on, delivering yet another variation of a story I’d heard a hundred times before.

The Imperium, led by Lord Callus Holloway, who was supported by the other noble families, collectively called the Regals, was one of the major ruling forces in the Archipelago Galaxy, along with the slightly less powerful Techwave and the Erzton. Each group controlled and focused on a different area. The Imperium dealt in magic, genetics, and bloodlines, while the Techwave eschewed such arcane things in favor of cutting-edge technology, experiments, and weapons. The Erzton maintained a neutral stance, selling minerals, wood, and other raw materials to both the Imperium and the Techwave, as well as to other wealthy organizations and individuals. Basically, the three groups boiled down to magic, tech, and minerals, although they would all happily use whatever they could get their hands on to acquire more wealth, weapons, power, and resources.

The Imperium and the Techwave had been at odds for years, but lately, hostilities had increased to unprecedented levels, with the Techwavers attacking several Regal-owned corporations and stealing everything they could. Supposedly, the Techwavers—or Techies, as they were sometimes called—wanted to make personal enhancements, military-grade weapons, and other advanced technology available to everyone and thus level the playing field between the magic-wielding Regals and the common folks. But really, the Techwave just wanted to rule the galaxy the way Callus Holloway had for the last thirty years.

I had little love for the Imperium and even less for the Regals with their self-important Houses, esoteric societal rules, and unrelenting determination to value magic, alliances, and bloodlines above all else, but at least they maintained some semblance of law, order, and freedom. Unlike the Techwavers, who were little more than terrorists who just took what they wanted and left death and destruction behind in their wake.

Like on Temperate 33.

Two months ago, the Velorum space cruiser had crashed shortly after takeoff on its maiden flight, killing everyone on board, as well as hundreds of additional people on the ground in the spaceport below. I’d been one of dozens of lab rats sent to investigate the ship’s smoldering remains. A group of Techwavers had used the chaos of the crash and its aftermath to break into Kent Corp offices on Temperate 33, steal info on the company’s new line of weapons, and blow several buildings to smithereens.

For a group that supposedly wanted to make things better for everyone, the Techwavers hadn’t cared whom they hurt as long as they got what they wanted. Greedy bastards. Then again, someone was always rebelling against someone else in the galaxy.

“The fighting is getting extremely intense on Magma 7, where the Techwave commandeered a large metal refinery three days ago,” the gossipcaster droned on. “The Imperium has taken heavy casualties trying to regain control of the facility. Another attack is expected to begin later today, with Imperium soldiers hoping to finally root out the Techwavers from their fortified position inside the refinery . . .”

In other words, both sides were going to lay waste to the refinery, then retreat to lick their wounds. Something else that was not surprising.

“And now, on to more pleasant matters: the spring ball being held later this week on Corios.”

Tivona squealed with delight. “Finally!”

Like many folks, Tivona followed the Regals’ exploits with great interest, especially when it came to their lavish parties on Corios, their home planet. Whereas I did my best to tune out the incessant gossipcasts, which always reminded me of how I had been tossed aside and twinged my childhood heartache like a finger poking into a deep bruise.

The gossipcaster grinned at the camera, showing off her blindingly white teeth. “The spring ball is one of the most anticipated events of the social season, with several engagements expected to be announced during the event. Some anonymous sources claim one of those announcements will involve Kyrion Caldaren, the current leader of the Arrows, the Imperium’s elite fighting force.”

The feed cut away from the gossipcaster to show a shadowy figure dressed in dark clothes stalking through a smoke-filled hallway on some spaceship. A dark helmet covered his head, so I couldn’t see his face, but I didn’t need to. Just the man’s tall, imposing silhouette, as well as the glowing stormsword in his hand, was enough to strike fear into the heart of anyone with even a modicum of common sense.

Tivona let out another fangirl squeal of delight, completely enraptured by the image on the screen. Well, at least this gossipcast was about someone I had never met, making it far less annoying than most.

“Kyrion Caldaren is the son of the late Lord Chauncey Caldaren and his wife, Lady Desdemona,” the gossipcaster continued, as if everyone didn’t already know exactly who he was. “He is also the current head of House Caldaren and thus in control of the substantial Caldaren fortune. More than one Regal lord and lady has tried to catch Kyrion’s eye over the years, although, so far, he has resisted all attempts to be caught. Perhaps someone will be lucky enough to finally snare him at the ball.”

The gossipcaster chuckled and winked at the camera, as though Kyrion Caldaren was a fat trout just waiting to be plucked out of an aquafarm pool.

I rolled my eyes. “As if anyone in their right mind would want to be engaged, much less wed, to the most notorious killer in the galaxy. C’mon. The man supposedly murdered his own father when he was a teenager just so he could take control of their House.”

Tivona flapped her hand at me, never taking her eyes off the screen. “Shush!”

The gossipcaster kept extolling the many supposed virtues of Kyrion Caldaren, while glossing over the fact that the Arrows were among the deadliest warriors in the galaxy and that their main objective was to systematically eliminate Callus Holloway’s many enemies. Something Kyrion Caldaren had done more than once if the rumors were true.

But among the Regals, Kyrion Caldaren was quite the catch, and this wasn’t the first program speculating about whom he might eventually wed, even if he wasn’t bonded to the person. Then again, he was rich enough to induce any kind of chembond he wanted for as long as he desired. Such things were common among the Regals, especially since truebonds were so rare, even among the nobility’s psions, seers, spelltechs, siphons, and other wielders of magic.

My mother’s voice snaked through my mind. I should be back on Corios. I should be part of the Regals, not rotting away on a useless planet trapped in a useless life with an utterly useless child.

Pain spiked through my heart like a drill punching through a sheet of steel. I grimaced, wishing I could forget that conversation, which was among the last things my mother, Nerezza, had said to her cousin Liesl, whom we’d been staying with at the time. But perfect recall was part of my seer magic, at least when it came to all the horrible things that had happened in my life—especially my mother’s abandonment. Nerezza had left when I was seven, and even now, thirty years later, I could still hear her harsh tone as clearly and vividly as though she had uttered the words a moment ago.

“Vesper? Are you okay?” Tivona asked. “You look like you’re about to snap that model in two.”

My fingertips had dug into the Velorum miniature, and the dull white plastic was creaking in protest. I loosened my grip and tossed the ship down onto the table. “I’m fine. I should get to the lab.”

“What are you working on now?” Tivona asked. “A dozen ways to improve your latest brewmaker design? Even though it’s already perfectly perfect?”

I forced myself to smile at her teasing. “That is tomorrow’s project. Today I have a few final things to wrap up with the Velorum crash report.”

Tivona toasted me with her mug. She took another sip of her espresso, then focused on the gossipcaster again.

I gathered up the loose plastipapers from the table and stuffed them into the crook of my arm. I hesitated, then grabbed the Velorum model. As soon as my fingers closed around it, magic pricked my skin again. A faint silver glow shimmered around the tiny cruiser, even as a cold finger of dread tickled my spine.

Normally, I would have dropped everything, sat back down, and studied the model from all angles. My seer magic often highlighted things, but it was always up to me to puzzle out exactly what my power was trying to tell me. My mother’s harsh voice was still ringing in my ears, though, and the ache of her abandonment was still spiking through my heart, so I glared at the light gilding the miniature spaceship.

Go away! I hissed in my mind.

The silver glow snuffed out, although that cold finger of dread kept tickling my spine. Somehow, even without my seer magic, I knew that my plans for the model ship were going to cause me a whole lot of trouble—and maybe even get me killed.

Want to keep reading? Download Only Bad Options, book 1 in the Galactic Bonds science-fiction fantasy romance series.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JENNIFER ESTEP is a New York Times, USA Today, and internationally bestselling author who prowls the streets of her imagination in search of her next fantasy idea.

Jennifer is the author of the Section 47, Galactic Bonds, Elemental Assassin, Crown of Shards, Gargoyle Queen, and other fantasy series. She has written more than forty books, along with numerous novellas and stories.

In her spare time, Jennifer enjoys hanging out with friends and family, doing yoga, and reading fantasy and romance books. She also watches way too much TV and loves all things related to superheroes.

For more information on Jennifer and her books, visit her website at www.jenniferestep.com, or follow her online on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, BookBub, and Goodreads. You can also sign up for her newsletter.

Happy reading, everyone!

OTHER BOOKS BY JENNIFER ESTEP

The Section 47 series

A Sense of Danger

Sugar Plum Spies (holiday book)

The Galactic Bonds series

Only Bad Options

The Elemental Assassin series
featuring Gin Blanco

Books

Spider’s Bite

Web of Lies

Venom

Tangled Threads

Spider’s Revenge

By a Thread

Widow’s Web

Deadly Sting

Heart of Venom

The Spider

Poison Promise

Black Widow

Spider’s Trap

Bitter Bite

Unraveled

Snared

Venom in the Veins

Sharpest Sting

Last Strand

E-novellas and short stories

Haints and Hobwebs

Thread of Death

Parlor Tricks

Kiss of Venom

Unwanted

Nice Guys Bite

Winter’s Web

Heart Stings

The Crown of Shards series

Kill the Queen

Protect the Prince

Crush the King

The Gargoyle Queen series

Capture the Crown

Tear Down the Throne

Conquer the Kingdom

The Black Blade series

Cold Burn of Magic

Dark Heart of Magic

Bright Blaze of Magic

The Bigtime series

Karma Girl

Hot Mama

Jinx

A Karma Girl Christmas (holiday story)

Nightingale

Fandemic

The Mythos Academy spinoff series
featuring Rory Forseti

Spartan Heart

Spartan Promise

Spartan Destiny

The Mythos Academy series
featuring Gwen Frost

Books

Touch of Frost

Kiss of Frost

Dark Frost

Crimson Frost

Midnight Frost

Killer Frost

E-novellas and short stories

First Frost

Halloween Frost

Spartan Frost

Other Works

The Beauty of Being a Beast (fairy tale)

Write Your Own Cake (worldbuilding essay)

Table of Contents

- Dedication
- CHAPTER ONE
- CHAPTER TWO
- CHAPTER THREE
- CHAPTER FOUR
- CHAPTER FIVE
- CHAPTER SIX
- CHAPTER SEVEN
- CHAPTER EIGHT
- CHAPTER NINE
- CHAPTER TEN
- CHAPTER ELEVEN
- CHAPTER TWELVE
- CHAPTER THIRTEEN
- CHAPTER FOURTEEN
- CHAPTER FIFTEEN
- CHAPTER SIXTEEN
- EPILOGUE
- ONLY BAD OPTIONS EXCERPT
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- OTHER BOOKS BY JENNIFER ESTEP