Tales of the Otherworld (43 page)

“You’re pathetic. You manipulate Father into making you his heir, then blame him for it.”

“If you’ll excuse me—”

Hector wrapped his fingers around my forearm. “No, I don’t excuse you. For anything. But speaking of excuses, you’ve set up a nice one for me here. Barging in on a takedown. The perfect excuse for a tragic accident.”

I caught a flicker and looked past Hector to see Paige in the doorway, lips moving in a binding spell. I gave a small shake of my head. She stopped casting, but hovered there, watching Hector.

I took out my cell phone.

“Let me guess,” Hector said. “Time to call Father. Tell him you’re being bullied again.”

Even from the earliest threats in childhood, I’d never complained to my father about any of my half brothers. But there was no sense pointing that out. Hector had created his own version of reality to explain why our father favored the son who was arguably least worthy of the honor. Nothing I could ever say would change Hector’s mind.

My father answered his cell phone and I explained the situation as succinctly as I could.

“And, as such,” I concluded, “it does not fall within Cabal judicial jurisdiction, which is why I’m here to assist Paige in investigating the matter for the interracial council.”

At that moment, an officer hurried in to tell us that Geddes had been apprehended.

“This is a matter for the council,” I repeated.

My father agreed that there was some “possible” basis for the claim, and that it would be “considered.” I didn’t push the matter. Even Paige, stepping from her hiding spot, gave me a reluctant nod when I looked her way.

The council had abdicated its rights in such matters, if not in theory, at least in practice. For decades they had bowed to Cabal claims, however spurious. Knowing they lacked the numbers to fight, they’d concentrated
their efforts elsewhere. Paige, Adam, and the other delegates were trying to change that now, but it was not a battle that could be won in this moment.

“I’ll meet with you and Paige as soon as you arrive in Miami,” my father said. “The jet is—”

“Paige and I would prefer to remain close to the scene of the investigation, and I’m sure Mr. Geddes does not wish to serve his incarceration on the opposite side of the country.”

“Understood, but the Seattle satellite office isn’t equipped to hold a prisoner. The nearest one that has a proper cell is in Chicago.”

“Oh? There’s nothing…closer?”

My father paused. “Well, there is the office in Phoenix—”

“What about Portland? Or are the security cells there still undergoing construction?”

A longer pause. Then, “I can explain—”

“I’m quite certain you can, and very convincingly. However, it’s growing late and we have a long drive ahead of us. If there are cells in that office, that is where I’d like Mr. Geddes to be taken. Please have someone e-mail directions to me, and Paige and I will meet the team at the office.”

I hung up before he could answer.

“Maybe this isn’t the place,” Paige said.

We stood in front of a small warehouse that appeared to be in the last stages of a renovation. From the exterior, it was difficult to tell what it was being converted into—there were no signs, not even one advertising the construction company. Yet I knew once we passed through those main doors that we’d find ourselves in a Cabal satellite office. There was no mistaking the structure.

“I don’t get it,” Paige continued. “Construction has obviously progressed far enough to have a holding cell ready, but your father told Adam they hadn’t even decided whether they were going forward.”

“A useful fiction. If Adam knew the offices were almost complete, and my father still didn’t want me to know …”

“He’d smell trouble and tell us.”

“Mr. Cortez!”

I turned to see a small, balding man hurrying down the sidewalk. Hector and his bodyguard followed at a distance.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the man said. “I hope you weren’t waiting long.”

“Not at all. And I apologize for getting you from bed to let us in.” I extended my hand. “Chris Ibsen, isn’t it? I believe we met a couple of years ago. In New York, when you were supervising the renovations to the offices there.”

Ibsen beamed, as if I paid him an enormous compliment simply by remembering who he was.

“And this is my wife,” I began. “Paige—”

“Mrs. Cortez,” he said, taking her hand between his. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“She is
not
a Cortez,” Hector said as he rounded the street corner.

“Hector is correct,” I said. “My wife kept her maiden name, Winterbourne.”

“Paige is fine,” she said with a wide smile. Then she turned to Hector. “Has Mr. Geddes arrived yet?”

For a moment, Hector said nothing. Paige rolled her eyes at me.

“He’s being brought in through the rear,” Hector said finally, though he addressed his answer to me.

Ibsen unlocked the door and escorted us inside. As he walked through the lobby, he explained the layout and the progress of construction. Paige hung back a few paces while she phoned Cassandra, to tell her that Geddes had arrived in case she wanted to join us.

I slowed, ensuring she didn’t fall too far behind, and kept an eye on Hector as he drifted to the side with his bodyguard. Harming Paige in front of witnesses would be too bold a move for Hector, but that didn’t keep me from watching.

As we walked, Ibsen sought my input and approval on everything, as if this was vitally important. When I’d first taken Paige to the Cabal head office in Miami, I’d watched her reaction, that mix of amazement and amusement as everyone in my path tripped over themselves to greet me.

“Sure, you’re the boss’s son,” she’d said to me later. “And they
think
you’ll be the next boss, but come on—it’s an employer, not a king. I don’t even think kings get that treatment anymore…not outside of tiny
despot kingdoms.” And that, I told her, was quite possibly the best analogy for a Cabal—a tiny despot kingdom.

Unlike modern companies, where employees were loyal only as long as it behooved them to be so, Cabals were, in most cases, life employment. Certainly that was the goal—to work for the Cabal all your life, the same one your father worked for, the same one your children would work for.

Most employees were an integral part of the entire Cortez Cabal community. Some, particularly half-demons, had weaker ties—lacking that hereditary link—and they would move from Cabal to Cabal chasing better opportunities. But a man like Ibsen had grown up in the organization. From the earliest age, he’d socialized with other supernatural Cabal children—went to the same schools, joined the company ball team, used the company’s private doctors, dentists, hospitals. He’d married within the organization. His children were now growing up in that same community.

For Ibsen, being a supernatural had never been a disadvantage. Every complication was resolved simply by being part of the tiny despot kingdom that was the Cortez Cabal.

In return, the Cabal had his complete loyalty. Why wouldn’t they? He didn’t know how to survive in the human world; he’d be lost the moment his child needed a doctor who could treat supernaturals.

Can one blame him, then, for kowtowing to the man he believed would be the next ruler of his kingdom? I might hate the lie—and the reminder of the power Cabals wielded—but I could not blame him, so I had to accept his obeisance with grace.

As we approached the elevator, I motioned for Ibsen to wait until Paige joined us. Once she did, he pushed the button.

“The day-care facilities are on the second floor with the executive offices,” Ibsen said. “We debated that. Would it create too much disturbance? Or would it be an advantage, having one’s children close enough to visit? Your father and I decided good soundproofing would resolve any noise issues. I was hoping to have your input, but your father didn’t want you bothered. If you’d prefer to move the day-care, we can still do that.”

Paige gave me a quizzical look, wondering why my input mattered, but I was accustomed to this. My father often found ways to “consult”
me on office renovations, doing so under the guise of simply valuing my opinion.

When I’d met Ibsen working on the New York offices, Paige and I had supposedly been enjoying a mini–New York vacation, courtesy of my father. Then he just happened to be in New York at the same time and, after softening me up by treating us to box seats at a Broadway show Paige had wanted to see, he’d “had to make a stop” at the office renovation on the way back to our hotel.

While there, naturally, he’d had to take us on a tour, then take me aside to meet Ibsen and discuss the design. My father had no plans to retire anytime soon—this was just his way of reminding everyone that they’d be answering to me someday. “Someday” as in “when hell freezes over,” but if I said so, I’m sure he’d find a way to accomplish that as well.

“The security cell is in the basement,” Ibsen said as he ushered us into the elevator. Hector and his bodyguard headed to the stairs. “It’s just a single cell, but that seemed adequate, under the circumstances.”

He pressed the button, not for the basement, but for the second floor.

“While you’re here, I want to ask a few questions about the executive suites.”

“We really should see to Mr. Geddes,” I began.

“It’ll only take a moment, sir.”

Once off the elevator, he led us to the main office at the end. It was still under construction and we had to pick our way through the debris.

As I stepped inside, Paige murmured, “This is an office? It’s huge.”

Ibsen chuckled. “As befits the top executive. Or, I should say, executives. That brings up my main question. According to the plans, it’s a single office with a partial divider severing the space into two equal areas. Conjoined offices, so to speak. Is that what you want? Or would you prefer completely separate spaces, perhaps with a joint sitting room?”

“Conjoined offices?” I said. “I’m afraid I don’t follow, Chris. My father hasn’t briefed me on the management arrangements.”

Now it was Ibsen’s turn to look perplexed. “Perhaps you want to think about it, then, sir? Discuss it with your wife.” He nodded to Paige. “Mr. Cortez
did
say you two like to work together, but this might be closer than you want.”

“Closer…?” Paige looked around, then asked with trepidation, “Whose office is this?”

Ibsen laughed. “Yours, of course. For the two of you. It is your operation, after all. A new division for the Cortez Corporation, and I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of it.”

A
S WE HEADED TO THE ELEVATOR, LEAVING
Ibsen behind, I struggled to forget what he’d said. More of my father’s manipulation and delusions, thinking he could tempt me with my own satellite office…comanaged with my wife.

“We should hurry,” Paige murmured. “I don’t like leaving Hector alone down there with our vampire.”

Her words started me out of my thoughts and that, I knew, was their purpose. But I played along. Anything to steer my mind onto another course.

“There’s little danger,” I said. “Yes, killing Geddes would be a nose-thumbing ‘screw you’ in the face of my efforts to protect him. If it was Carlos down there, I’d be worried. But Hector would never lower himself to such a crude ploy. He’ll want to battle me on this matter through the appropriate channels.”

As I reached for the elevator button, Paige shook her head. “Your dad won’t allow it. I’d be surprised if he hasn’t recalled Hector to Miami already.”

I glanced at her.

“Do you think he sent Hector to Seattle knowing you were on this case?” she asked as we stepped onto the elevator. “Never. Whatever set him onto Geddes, his motivation wasn’t to head you off at the pass. If that was the case, Hector wouldn’t have been there.”

She was right. While I’d learned not to commit the cardinal sin of underestimating my father’s gift for manipulation, that did not extend to putting his eldest and youngest son at odds to see who would
triumph. When Paige and I had been chasing Edward in Miami, Hector had been ordered to stay in New York on business. My father wouldn’t send Hector to Seattle knowing I was also pursuing Geddes. It was an error that would be rectified with a speedy recall to Miami. I won’t say I wasn’t relieved.

Cassandra arrived before we made it downstairs. We introduced her simply as “a council member” and no one inquired further. Hector was in an office, taking a call from my father, but had left orders with Kepler—the young officer I’d first met at Geddes’s house. Kepler was to escort us downstairs.

“We didn’t try to sedate him, sir,” Kepler said as we reached the basement. “We weren’t sure that would work when, you know …” A faint shudder. “The guy’s already dead.”

“He’s not dead,” Cassandra said.

“Undead, then.”

“Vampirism is simply another state of consciousness,” she said. “You will find that vampires do not appreciate being called—” Her lips twisted. “Undead.”

“Aaron doesn’t mind,” Paige murmured. “He uses it himself.”

We stopped before a steel door. The security pad wasn’t connected yet, but Reichs—the team leader—seemed to be working on changing that.

“How is Mr. Geddes?” I asked.

Reichs grunted and pulled at a wire. “Behaving himself, sir. He’s an arrogant SOB, but he hasn’t fought. And hasn’t tried to eat anyone yet.”

“Feed,” Cassandra said. “Vampires do not eat anyone, they feed off their blood.”

“Like giant mosquitoes,” Reichs said. “Parasites.”

He wiped sweat from his brow as he pulled back to look at the panel wiring. “No offense to the council”—a nod to Paige—“but after that business with those psycho vamps killing kids? You gotta start thinking the St. Clouds’ proposal might not be such a bad idea.” He jerked his thumb toward the security ward. “We can start with this one.”

“St. Cloud—?” Cassandra began.

“One of the Cabals,” I said, quickly ushering her past. “The second smallest one.”

“I know
who
the St. Clouds are—”

“Is he in there?” I asked Kepler, pointing to a steel door with a small window.

“Yes, sir. It’s not locked—we’re still working on that—but he’s in a cell inside. Would you like me to go with you?”