“So the inspectors haven’t found anything yet?” she asked.
Vaughn’s head whipped back and forth as he hurried to reassure her. “No, nothing. Nothing to indicate that the accident was anything other than that.”
“Nothing that you can be held accountable for as the builder?” Mab asked, her smoky voice dipping even lower.
He kept shaking his head. “No, nothing. Nothing at all. I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again, I don’t even know what happened. I don’t know what went wrong. If I did know, I would tell you. I would tell everyone.”
Mab studied him, her black eyes taking in everything from his clenched jaw to his stiff posture to the fact that he was dry-washing his hands again. Sebastian, Dawson, and Slater stayed where they were, as frozen as I had been a moment ago. They knew as well as I did that Cesar Vaughn’s fate was hanging by a thread, one that Mab could char to ash if she wanted to, right here, right now.
“Well, then,” Mab said. “I’ll ask Jonah to look into things to make sure that you stay blameless in all of this. But if things take a turn for the worse, I may have to go through with my original plan to sever all ties with Vaughn Construction. And you know what that would mean.”
Vaughn couldn’t hide the shudder that rippled through his body. “Of course. I understand.”
Yeah, we all knew exactly what Mab meant—that Vaughn would be the one to suffer if anything else happened that displeased her in the slightest way.
Fletcher didn’t need me to kill Vaughn. Neither did whoever had hired us. Mab would probably take care of Vaughn herself in a few more days, maybe weeks, if he was lucky.
“I’m glad we understand each other.” Mab smiled at him, but the only warmth in her face was the Fire magic burning in her eyes, making them seem as dark and hot as two black, smoking coals. “For your sake, I hope that the building inspectors continue to find you . . . blameless.”
Vaughn paled, his tan skin taking on a sickly, sallow tint, but he slowly squared his shoulders and gave her a respectful nod.
Her warning delivered, Mab swept past Vaughn, unlocked the doors, threw them open, and strolled out of the library, with Dawson and Slater getting to their feet and trailing along behind her.
Vaughn and Sebastian stared at the open doors. Then Vaughn stumbled forward, clutched the back of a nearby chair, and sagged against it. He plucked a white silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket and dabbed the sweat off his forehead. But he was made of sterner stuff than I thought, because he tucked the bit of damp silk away and straightened back up.
“Well, that went about as well as could be expected,” he grumbled. “I suppose I should be grateful that she didn’t use her Fire magic on me to really make her point.”
“Well, there is that small favor,” Sebastian drawled.
Vaughn eyed his son, as if he was surprised by his snarky tone, but he didn’t respond. Instead, he paced back and forth before striding past the desk and walking over to the windows, coming even closer to the glass than Mab had.
I grimaced and gripped the shutter and ledge more tightly, trying to press myself even closer against the wall so that he wouldn’t look to his left and see me hanging right next to him. What was it with everyone coming over to stare moodily out through the glass tonight? You’d think that they’d never seen the great outdoors before.
Sebastian strode over and put his hand on his father’s shoulder.
“It needs to stop, Papa,” Sebastian said, his voice kinder than it had been before. “You need to stop blaming yourself for what happened at that restaurant. You did nothing wrong. When the inspectors release their report and say so, everyone else will realize it too. It was just an accident, just a freak occurrence, nothing more. There’s no one to blame, nothing you could have done to stop it, and nothing you can do to make it right now.”
His impassioned words showed his loyalty to his father, even if Vaughn didn’t deserve it. I wondered if Sebastian knew what his father was doing to Charlotte, how Cesar was hurting her whenever the mood struck him. I wondered what he would think of his beloved papa then.
Vaughn shrugged off his son’s hand. “We’ll see what the inspectors find. Until then, I’m not discounting any possibility. Perhaps a bad batch of materials got mixed in with what I had ordered, after all. It could still be my fault, whether I know it or not. All of those people, their families . . . their loss, their pain, their suffering . . . it could still be because of me.”
The sad, wounded, defeated tone in Vaughn’s voice made me frown. He seemed genuinely upset by all the deaths and injuries that had resulted from the terrace collapse. Not how I would have expected him to feel, but maybe the guilt had finally overwhelmed his greed, if he had, in fact, cut corners on the job. But it didn’t much matter. My assignment was to kill him, not speculate about who wanted him dead.
Vaughn turned away from the windows. “Anyway, I must return to the dinner. I wouldn’t want the others to think that something is wrong.”
“Oh, no,” Sebastian drawled again. “We wouldn’t want that.”
Cesar gave his son another odd look, then strode out of the library. Sebastian followed him, although he was walking much more slowly.
Since there was nothing else to do or see here, I let go of the shutter, gripped the stone with my fingers again, and headed back in the direction from which I’d originally come.
The climb back was much quicker, and I made it across the wall and in through the open window without any problems. Dust and dirt from the stone had smeared across my white tuxedo vest and black pants, and I wiped it off the best I could, hoping that no one would notice the faint stains or the tiny tears in the white silk from where bits of rock had scraped against the thin material. I also untucked my shirt and used the ends to wipe the sweat off my face before stuffing the fabric back down into my pants again.
When I was more or less presentable, I headed toward the end of the hallway. I’d gone ten feet before I realized that I’d forgotten the most important thing: the tray of champagne that I was supposed to have been circulating through the dining room twenty minutes ago.
I grumbled, turned around, and grabbed the tray from where I’d set it down on the floor. I hoisted it into position in the crook of my elbow and scurried down the hallway toward the main corridor. I was about to round the corner when someone stepped into view in front of me.
Sebastian Vaughn.