“Seth has wings,” I said, “and I know he can fly. Get him to the widow’s walk. We’ll be down in a minute.”
When I shut the door, Ethan was already up and behind me. “What is it?”
“If you had any plans to vote for Mayor Kowalcyzk, you might want to rethink those.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE FAIRY TALE
We hurried into clothes and ran down the stairs. Cops in black shirts and cargo pants with yellow SPECIAL UNIT designations on their backs were tearing through the first floor of the House. The yard was littered with paper and other objects, as the cops had already overturned furniture and flipped open drawers, as if the secrets of the city’s sups were hidden away in a notebook in a foyer drawer.
The leader appeared to be a woman in a black pantsuit. She was tall and slender, with dark skin and darker hair pulled into a bun so tight it stretched the corners of her eyes. She might have been attractive if her face hadn’t been pinched into an “Aha, I caught you!” expression.
“Lieutenant Tamara Hays,” she said, flipping out a wallet-style badge for Ethan’s inspection and then shoving it back into her pocket.
“We have reason to believe you are harboring a fugitive,” she said. “Mayor Seth Tate. He’s wanted in connection with a series of murders.”
The city might have known supernaturals were out of the closet, but they really had no clue what was going on behind the scenes.
“Mayor Tate is not here,” Ethan said, and I hoped he was right and Juliet had gotten Seth out in time. I doubted the cops would check the skies to see if a white-winged Seth Tate was flying by overhead. On the other hand, they had seen Dominic.
Hays gestured toward one of her cops, who passed a couple of folded sheets of paper to Ethan. He looked them over, then handed them to Malik. “Call Fitzhugh and Meyers,” he said. I assumed they were our attorneys. Hays blanched at the name, so the firm must have meant something to her.
“High-profile lawyers won’t help you here, Mr. Sullivan. We have the authority to search the premises.”
Ethan held out a hand. “Then do so.”
There were probably a dozen cops in all. While suited Cadogan vampires looked on, they stormed up the stairs, eager to find evidence that would implicate us all, whatever that might have been.
“Keep the vampires calm,” Ethan told Luc. “Have the guards get as many as possible onto the first floor in the event we need to make an exit. Tell them not to lock their bedroom doors—there’s no point in giving them an excuse to break the hardware, too.”
Ethan stood beside the open door, hands on his hips, watching as strangers ripped apart his home and terrorized his family. But his gaze was calculating, recording each wrong move they made, no doubt for recollection to the House’s attorneys later on.
One way or the other, the city would pay for this.
Magic erupted in nervous bursts as vampires began to funnel toward the first floor. I pasted on a smile and directed them into the front room.
“Everything’s under control,” I said, watching to ensure they were settled and wouldn’t—given the rising tensions—make everything worse.
An hour later, Lieutenant Hays came storming out the front door.
Ethan followed her but stopped on the threshold. “As I was saying, my attorney looks forward to your call and your explanation about your apparent lack of probable cause.”
“This isn’t over,” Hays said. “We know you’re behind this, and one way or the other, we’ll prove it.”
“ ‘We,’ as in Mayor Kowalcyzk’s misguided administration, or ‘we,’ as in you and whoever else in your office believes harassing citizens is the way to a promotion?”
She growled. “Just watch yourself,” she said, then marched down the sidewalk again, her cabal of officers behind her.
We all released a collective breath.
“It seems we have made another enemy,” Ethan dryly said.
“We’ll add her to the list,” Malik said, stepping behind Ethan. “But first, let’s get this place cleaned up.”
I volunteered to help clean up the yard, raking bits of the hacked-away shrubbery into piles and moving furniture back into the House again. It wasn’t glamorous work, and the night air was chilly, but the manual labor was a nice change from the usual. I could lose myself in the rhythm of the work, instead of fretting over the problems I couldn’t solve.
I’d just raked up the final pile of branches when one of the fairies at the gate approached.