To save the Valkyrie who broke his heart, the Fae Sea God makes a deal with the Demon Prince of the Aerial Kingdoms, but Pazuzu has a history of stealing the women Manannan loves.
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When Mist visits her parents' home in California, she assumes th...
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"Poseidon, it's been an age," Triton said as he held the door open and gestured me inside. "What brings you to our home?"
"Is Mist your daughter? Do you know where she is?" My response was blunt. I knew I wasn't observing the usual pleasantries, but the blood pumped hard through my veins after days of swimming at top speed. Tension fired my muscles as I followed him inside.
Triton frowned, glancing back at me while leading us into an office filled with bookcases, a solid oak desk, a gas fireplace, several comfortable chairs, a black leather couch, and a large bay window looking out over the ocean. "Yes, Mist is my daughter. Isn't she back in Asgard? She came for a visit a few months ago, but left earlier than Arachne and I expected." He shook his head, brows lowering further into a scowl. "Damn girl didn't even have the courtesy to say goodbye before leaving. We haven't seen her since."
I did some mental calculations, based on Dylan's time frame. "A week or two before winter solstice?"
Triton blinked, in the midst of pouring a whiskey from the bar at the corner of the room. "Yes, the evening of the seventeenth." He finished pouring, then poured a second, handing it to me. "We had a solstice party lined up for the next night to introduce her to some of the local immortals but she didn't stay for it."
"Nemain kidnapped her off your beach." I tossed the mortal drink back in a quick swallow.
Triton slammed his tumbler down. "Bullshit."
"There is a witness, but the last he saw, Nemain was carrying an unconscious Mist up the cliff. Do you have cameras?"
Muttering curses, Triton moved around his desk and opened a laptop. With a few clicks, he brought up his security system and navigated through the history to December seventeenth. My fists clenched, teeth grinding, we watched Mist come out of the water, get hit with a dart, collapse, and Nemain bind her limbs. Blue braids almost dragging on the ground with Mist's naked form draped over a shoulder, Nemain carried her up the flights of stairs to the top of the cliff. She skirted around the house sensors where we lost track of them. A few minutes later, a gate camera at the street caught Nemain driving a black four-door Honda civic with darkly tinted windows and no sign of Mist.
"That bitch must have put her in the trunk," growled Triton.
"Yes. Back it up. What's the license plate?" I'd already come to the same conclusion, but I needed clues. Some trail to follow.
"It's... oh fuck." Triton's curse was a bare breath of sound and he'd paled under his Californian tan.
"What? What is it?" I looked at the screen with the frozen image of the car, back plate visible. It was a Washington state plate—1427BG—with a license plate frame that had two silver lizards, no... those were serpentine dragons descending the frame towards a circular object in the bottom centre.
Triton's eyes were fixed on the screen and he slowly sank into his desk chair. "The emblem on the plate frame. It's Dark Drake Endowments."
