Either way, the Vaughns looked like they were facing a firing squad. Both were stretched up to their full six-foot heights, their bodies stiff and tight with tension, their wary eyes fixed on someone sitting in the dark green leather chair behind the desk.
Tobias Dawson lounged on a sofa off to one side of the room, along with Elliot Slater. They must have left the dining room when I’d taken my forced detour to the kitchen. Both men looked far more relaxed than the Vaughns did.
“You can imagine my concern,” a low, smoky feminine voice drifted out the cracked windows to me.
Vaughn dry-washed his hands a few times before he realized what he was doing. His hands stilled, and he clasped his fingers together to keep himself from repeating the nervous, worried motion. Sebastian’s dark eyes flitted to his father, but that was his only reaction.
“I do understand your concern,” Vaughn said, his voice stronger than I thought it would be, given his obvious apprehension. “But as I’ve told you repeatedly, I have no idea what happened. I’ve been over everything a dozen times—the materials, the work history, even the crew that did the job—and I can’t find anything wrong. Not one single thing. I don’t know why that terrace collapsed.”
My eyes narrowed. They were talking about the accident at the restaurant, the one that had killed and injured so many people. The most likely reason that someone wanted Vaughn dead.
“Does it really matter why?” the woman asked.
Vaughn gave her a helpless look.
“Of course not,” she answered her own question. “All that does matter is that it did happen. And now we need to find someone to blame for it.”
For a moment, Vaughn’s gaze cut to his son, but no one else seemed to notice. If Vaughn was capable of abusing his own daughter, I had no doubt that he would throw Sebastian to the wolves in front of him in order to save his own skin.
So he was a coward too. Another thing that made me want to kill him.
A rustle of silk sounded, and the woman in the chair gracefully rose to her feet. She wore a deep emerald-green gown that clung to her curves in all the right places, and a bit of gold glinted around her neck.
Vaughn and Sebastian both swallowed, as if they were afraid that the woman was going to snap her fingers and kill them on the spot. I wondered whom they could be more scared of than Slater, but I got my answer a moment later. The woman turned toward the windows, and I finally got a good look at her face.
Her coppery hair was smoothed back into a sleek bun, the bright color a stark contrast to the absolute blackness of her eyes. Her skin was pale and luminous, dotted here and there with faint freckles above the generous swell of her décolletage. But my gaze locked onto the necklace that ringed her throat: several dozen wavy golden rays with a large ruby set in the middle of the design. I recognized it—and her—immediately.
A sunburst, the symbol for fire, the personal rune of Mab Monroe.
5
Mab paused, almost as if she were posing to let everyone in the room get a good look at her in all her glory. Then she did the worst thing possible.
She walked toward the windows.
Mab moved closer and closer to the glass, her green gown rippling out like water around her, the fabric swirling away and then settling back against her body, every fold and drape perfectly in place once more. She walked slowly, carefully, deliberately, as though every step were a great debate of some sort—probably about whether Cesar and Sebastian lived or died.
And me too if she spotted me.
I froze, scarcely daring to breathe, but Mab kept coming and coming, heading right toward the windows—and me. Five more feet, and she’d see me hanging on to the shutter. It was no longer a matter of if she noticed me but when. Four feet . . . three . . . two . . . one . . .
Mab stopped.
She clasped her hands behind her back and peered straight out through the glass, her black eyes scanning the ominous clouds and the lightning that was still crackling in the distance.
I stayed exactly where I was, hanging on to the shutter, my toes perched on the ledge below the windows, not moving so much as a single muscle, not wanting to do anything that might catch her eye. I wouldn’t have even breathed if I could have managed it.
Because if Mab noticed me, if she realized that I was eavesdropping, she would raise her hands and incinerate me with her Fire magic. Everyone knew that Mab was the most powerful person in Ashland. Some even said that she was the strongest elemental born in the last five hundred years. I might have scoffed at the rumors before but not now—because I could feel exactly how powerful she really was.
My magic was self-contained, in that another elemental couldn’t sense that I had any power at all unless I was actively using it in some way, like making an Ice knife or shattering a bit of rock. But others, like Vaughn, continually emanated magic, like heat shimmering up from the pavement on a summer day, even when they weren’t doing anything more strenuous than blinking.
And Mab did too.
The hot, pulsing feel of her power blasted right through the glass and stone that separated us, as though I had stuck my face into a furnace. Dozens of tiny, invisible needles stabbed into my skin, each one leaving behind a burning pinch of pain, and the sensation only intensified the longer she stared out the windows. My breath came in shallow pants, and sweat dripped down my face, streaming into my eyes. I bit my lip against the hot, phantom pain and focused on maintaining my grip on the shutter and the ledge, which was doubly hard now when all I wanted to do was let go, if only to get away from the horrid feel of her magic washing over me again and again.
Mab kept gazing out through the glass, as though she were contemplating all the secrets of the universe. All she had to do was turn her head to the left a few scant inches, and she would see me. I bit my lip again, but I stayed where I was, knowing that even the slightest movement might make her dark gaze shift to mine—and mean my death.
A minute passed, then two, then three, and still, Mab kept staring out the damn windows. My fingers twitched, my legs trembled, and my muscles ached from holding the same position for so long, but I stayed put. I didn’t have any other choice.
At first, I wondered what Mab could possibly find so fascinating about the approaching storm, but then I realized that it was all just a ploy to make Vaughn and Sebastian sweat. It was working too, judging from the fine sheen of perspiration on Vaughn’s forehead. I wondered if he could feel her Fire magic the same way that I could, and realized how easily she could scorch him to death with it.
Finally, Mab turned away from the glass and walked back toward the two men, taking the hot, stabbing feel of her magic with her. I let out a soft sigh of relief and slowly eased my fingers and toes this way and that, shifting my weight and trying to ease the burning sensation in my muscles. That had been the longest five minutes of my life.