"But at least some shipments might get through," Lissa pointed out. "I assume something is jamming all the locating beacons you slip into those shipments."
"Yeah. We can't get a handle on any of it. It's like the things go dead the moment the pirates hit."
"I'll come with you to your meeting, honey. Maybe we can work something out."
"If they stop yelling long enough," Gavril agreed. He already had a headache, and it was only going to get worse.
< S win just sfont size="+0">* * *
"Jerves, would you like to come to dinner tomorrow evening? I'm off and Ry wants ox-roast for the evening meal." I was inviting Zendeval's assistant to dinner. I hoped he'd talk freely with us, especially after we served him a few glasses of wine with the meal.
"Yes. I'd love to come," Jerves usually vibrated in a restless sort of way, but he seemed happy, now.
"Good. Be there at eighteen bells and we'll start with drinks," I said.
"I will." Jerves trotted away happily to do Zendeval Rjjn's bidding.
"Baby, if we hadn't invited Jerves for dinner, I'd lift you onto this table and love you senseless," Ry wiggled against me suggestively. He was my secret, now. And he could almost make me come just by smiling and placing his hands in certain spots. I don't know what kept us apart all those years, but he was certainly attempting to make up for lost time.
"Ry, I really do love you," I said against his mouth.
"I love you more," he said and kissed me.
I was pulling the ox-roast out of the oven when Jerves rang the guest bell. He then walked into the apartment, followed by Zendeval Rjjn and Perdil the Dwarf.
"I hope you prepared enough for two extras," Ry gave me a brief frown while his back was turned to all three of our dinner guests.
"I did," I sighed. So much for having leftovers on Second-Day. Ry got them seated in our tiny sitting area and offered all of them the rum and fruit drink I'd prepared earlier.
"You'll love this," Ry said as I laid plates of ox-roast covered in mushroom sauce and baked inside a pastry in front of our guests a short time later. "I think it's my favorite thing that Reah makes."
Perdil was in raptures after the first bite. Zendeval Rjjn was staring at me as he chewed. Jervis was busy eating as quickly as he could. I refilled drinks before sitting down to my own portion of food.
"Reah, I wish to be invited to dinner every time you serve this," Perdil demanded as he held his plate out for a second portion. I also laid salads by each plate, with a special dressing drizzled over the long leaves and tiny greens.
"I've never seen anyone cook as you do," Zendeval finally stopped stuffing himself long enough to say a few words.
"And you may never see it again," Ry said, holding up his glass to me.
"Thanks, hon," I smiled at him.
"This is a live feed?" Norian watched the dinner party with interest. Ry had hoped to get information from the assistant they'd invited to dinner. Instead, two others had shown up. Lendill had received mindspeech that those two were Zendeval Rjjn, the one who managed the five best resorts on Stellar Winds, and one of the other master cooks from Galedaro's kitchens.
"I've sent both images through the databases, and nothing comes up," Lendill said as he watched Zendeval Rjjn stare at Reah. He wanted to growl and fold there, just to kill the man. Zendeval had designs on Reah—Lendill recognized that predatory look.
"So, we've got Stellar Winds full of unknowns, likely from outside the Alliance," Norian S&quato paced as he watched the large vid-screen inside his office. "Are all of them involved in human trafficking?"
"It's possible, but we still need more evidence," Lendill concluded. "And you won't believe what Rylend told me through mindspeech."
"What was that?" Norian didn't take his eyes away from the image. Lendill proceeded to tell his oldest friend what Reah had seen from inside a voyeur booth.
"Norian, are you kidding me?" Lissa blinked at her lion snake shapeshifting mate.
"No. Ry says that Reah was almost ill over it."
"Has anyone ever looked into what happened to Darletta's mother?" Lissa thought to ask.
"No. But I will now," Norian hauled out his comp-vid.
"Six successful deliveries of gishi fruit," Dee whispered gleefully to Gavril as they walked through the pool area behind Gavril's palace.
"It's what Mom calls the old shell game. We used three separate shipments, all going out at the same time," Gavril smiled slightly. "Cotton, wheat and nannas. Only all those cartons held gishi fruit in special, cool boxes. The prices are already up, so the boxes weren't such a stretch to afford."
"It worked," Dee grinned. And for an old vampire, that grin was something to see.
"We'll have to be just as subtle about other things, Dee. And we'll have to send some normal shipments, or their suspicions will be raised."
"Already thought of that. I asked Drix to send the culls on a ship and label it as gishi fruit. It will be; it'll just be what he normally wouldn't sell off-world."
"Good idea. Perhaps we can do that with rejections from electronic plants and such as well."
"Potentially making their black-market customers angry, if they get substandard equipment and supplies," Dee's grin was wider.
"The shell game just became more complicated," Gavril slapped his surrogate father on the back—quite hard. As a vampire, Dee barely felt it.
"Thank goodness." I breathed a sigh after our guests, expected and unexpected, left for the evening. They'd stayed quite late, drinking, laughing and not saying one damned thing that we wanted to hear.
"Reah, it was a good effort. I just think that Zendeval Rjjn isn't going to let you out of his sight. He's got it bad, baby."
"Ry, he only knows lust," I said, lifting plates off the table and carrying them to the kitchen.
"I know lust, too," Ry took the plates from my hand and set them on the counter, and then lifted me up to sit there. "Big lust," he sighed against my mouth.
Daddy Schuul left today, but his baby girl is still here and screwing Faldin and any other man she can pull inside one of those voyeur rooms, Ry sent as soon as I walked inside the apartment on Second-Day.
She's mortal; she has to do what she can while she can, I quipped silently, causing Ry to laugh.
" Sze=She's mo;Feel like going outside for a while?" Ry asked. Outside on Stellar Winds meant outside the vast complex of resorts and glassed-in tunnels and tubes that formed the city of Stellar Winds. There was plenty of planetoid left, but much of it was barren, not getting much rainfall. A small ocean bordered the city, and desalinated water from it supplied the needs of Stellar Winds. Hikers often went outside to climb nearby cliffs or explore canyons carved by eons of winds.