Damian watched Jamison work while feeling his phone burn a hole in his pocket.
Could she not just listen to him for once? Why was she always so goddamned obstinate?
Because of you, his dragon said, accusingly. He was currently on his dragon’s shit list since he’d been the one in charge of chasing Andi off. He’d had his worst week with the beast inside him yet, and any opportunity his dragon had found to hurt him, he had done so. If he thought his dragon was pissed off about bringing him to Earth and leaving the Realms, it turned out that was nothing compared to making the dragon leave the woman it thought was their destiny.
It was for her own good at the time, he reminded himself and his dragon.
His dragon made a dismissive rumbling sound to tell him what he thought of that.
“Got it!” Jamison said, pointing with his human hand at a string of coordinates on his screen, saving Damian from additional internal arguments. The only information he’d had to work with was the phone number the girl had given Zach. It’d been a burner, of course, and Zach had paid for their food and hotel that night, so there was nothing else to go on. Jamison had figured out which store the burner came from, and while it hadn’t had a security camera indoors, the liquor store next door that she’d visited to buy a soda had. Once Zach confirmed the woman’s face, it’d just been a matter of letting Jamison’s machines around them commune with assorted databases, searching for other locations where she’d been.
“This is the place she’s been spotted near the most,” Jamison went on, making his computer replace the numbers with a map. “Starview Apartments.”
“Starview, huh? Starry Sky, Starview…ironic, no?” Austin stated, twisting to glare at his brother.
Zach growled in response.
“Boys,” Damian tsked, inspecting the stills of the woman on the screen, entering and exiting the apartment from thirty different angles. She was blonde and slight, the kind of woman you could knock over with a stiff breeze. Maybe Zach was right, and someone had put her up to tagging him? Because she didn’t appear Machiavellian in the least.
“I’m cross-referencing, hold tight.” Jamison stared off into the distance. His metal hand was detached, and his wrist was plugged into the machine via a socket. Damian wasn’t rightly sure how everything with Jamison worked, even though he’d funded it personally. The screen began to fill with assorted driver’s license photos and leasing paperwork.
Damian leaned forward to watch the man in action. “Have I mentioned lately I’m glad you’re on our side?”
“Have cyborg arm, will travel the digital highway,” Jamison said, grinning, bringing up three final photos, then dissolving two away so that only one was left. “That’s her, right?”
Zach pushed his brother out of the way, inspecting the screen for far longer than it should’ve taken. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Kit Johnson, apartment 3C,” Jamison pronounced.
“Booyah!” Austin shouted, clapping Damian’s arm. “When do we ride?”
Damian took his hand off his phone, where it’d been lightly resting the entire time. “Now,” he said. “We ride now. Grab guns, get ready.”
Austin whooped. “See you at the tour bus in fifteen!” he shouted and ran for the door, while Zach clenched his jaw.
“I want you to drive and be our eyes, Jamison. And tell Max to be ready to ride clean-up crew,” Damian said, standing.
“She told me her name was Stella,” Zach said to himself. Damian put a sympathetic hand briefly on Zach’s arm before walking out.
Going to meet this were-woman was good, Damian supposed, because it stopped him from going to Andi’s hospital and wrestling his coat off of her.
That did assume that she was wearing it though, and hadn’t…what…thrown it away? Consigned it? Frozen it in carbonite? He snorted and stalked back to his bedroom so he could change clothes. He didn’t need a tactical suit like Zach and Austin would likely put on, but he probably ought to wear black for the occasion.
He closed his door and had his clothes half off when he heard a knock. “Boss?” asked a feminine voice from the other side.
Millicent, aka Mills, his resident witch and secretary. “Hang on,” he said and finished changing as quickly as possible. “Come in.”
Mills was mid-forties with salt-and-pepper brunette hair she’d never cut according to her coven’s principles. It would wind down to the floor, and then some, if she didn’t keep it up in an ornate bun. She had devoted her life to her magical arts, and Damian reaped the rewards of her vast knowledge, due to the fact that they respected one another—and her curse. When Millicent was sixteen, an older and more powerful rival for her boyfriend “blessed” her so that she could never tell a lie. As lies were the grease of human society, it behooved her to run with a slightly-less-than-human crowd.
“Need backup?” she asked, knowing full well what his all-black outfit meant.
Grimalkin instantly appeared to wind around her ankles and yowl at Damian. “Don’t you dare take her! If all of you go and leave us behind, we order secret cheeseburgers!”
Damian bit back a smile. “Depends on why you’re visiting,” he addressed her, not his cheese-obsessed cat. “What’s up?”
“I think I finally found the dress you were after.” She held up two photos. One of them was Andi in a gorgeous black silk dress, snapped by paparazzi when they’d left a restaurant last week, and the other was clearly that same dress on a model on a runway. Damian knew which photo he preferred, reaching out to take it from her. Andi’s face was partially hidden by her coat’s collar, but you could still see the blue streak colored through her black hair as it swung around her, and her beautiful doe-brown eyes slightly widened in surprise. For the first time in his life, he was glad to’ve been stalked by a photographer, and he wished that he had more and better pictures of her. He’d bought these from the man through a third party at an exorbitant rate, but at least this way, all of them stayed out of circulation and were just for him.
“So,” Mills began, stalling like she sometimes did before she had to tell someone bad news because she couldn’t help it. “You want me to buy one for her?”
Damian’s eyes narrowed. “Yes. In her size. And have it sent to her immediately.” He cleared his throat. “Pen and paper, Grim, please.”
Grimalkin paused in his ankle-wind to point his tail, and Damian followed it to the bar where his cat had materialized his request for him.
“Send her this with the dress later,” Damian said, as he signed a slip of paper to send with the dress to Andi. Not from your uncle – D. and brought it back over to present to Mills, who’d started typing on her smartwatch. “So?”
“It’s very, very expensive,” she said. She glanced at the note. “Not from your uncle?”
“Long story.” Damian half-expected her to pry; if she was forced to be utterly honest with everyone, it would be unfair to not expect the same in return. “And money is no object when it comes to Andi.”
She held her wrist out to him. “Even this much?”
The dress was already in a shopping cart online, and its price was a number with many, many zeros.
Damian grunted. “Of course.” Andi was worth all his wealth, ten times over. Only…no wonder Andi assumed he’d gotten that dress for her, rather than her uncle, at that price? “Mills, why didn’t your background check mention she had an uncle?”
“Because she doesn’t. Damian, there’s no one in her life who could’ve bought this for her.”
“But she didn’t buy this for herself,” he said, pointing at her watch.
Mills frowned at the screen, taking her time before she spoke again, and then to only say, “Agreed.”
He knew what it meant when she was quiet. “What’re you thinking?”
“That your girlfriend is poor, and that this is couture,” she said, holding up the runway photo. “It just came out in Italy last month. It’s exclusive as hell and painfully hard to acquire…even before the price tag. So, either it’s a truly exceptional knock-off or Andi’s ‘uncle,’” she said, making air-quotes around the word, “has both funds and connections.”
Damian felt truly wounded—a rarity for him. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
“You asked, remember?” Mills said, before grimacing. “She was a little. Or you wanted her to be. I’m sorry…you know I can sometimes read your aura when you’re feeling human.”
Damian closed his eyes and ignored her. Who would be close enough to Andi to send her that dress, but then choose to let her live in debt, in an apartment with a roommate, worried about a degenerate brother? It wasn’t his business anymore, but….
“Anyhow,” Mills said, “I’ll see that the transaction goes through smoothly. And I’ll mail it to her, with your note, right away.”
“Good. Thank you,” Damian said, his mind whirling.
Grim sat down on his haunches and looked up at Mills. “Cheeeeeeseburgers?” Grim asked her forlornly, even though she couldn’t understand him. She leaned over to pick him up and cradle him so she could rub his belly, and Damian snorted. In the Realms, that kind of behavior would be unbecoming. Earth was rubbing off on Grim.
“Other than that, will you be needing me?” she asked.
“No…stay home. Relax for once…order yourself some dinner,” Damian said.
“Oh, we were already going to do that, weren’t we, Mister Grimsley?” Mills said while bouncing Grim, who was purring loudly enough that Damian could hear. He looked at the photo of Andi she’d left with him as she started for the door. He’d gone through these photos this past week, again and again, searching for something. He didn’t know what, though, until just this moment: he wanted a sign that Andi would be coming back to him.
Damian jogged for the door and leaned out to shout after her. “Mills!”
“Damian, if you ruin cheeseburger night for me, I swear—” Grim growled clearly.
“Yes, boss?” Mills paused and asked, oblivious to Grim’s concerns.
He stared at the photo a moment more. Something didn’t add up. It wasn’t like he and Andi had had a chance to discuss their families, but…. “Run another background check on Andi,” he called down to her.
“Right away!” Mills said, then started down the stairs.
“T-minus five and counting!” Austin yelled from below her in the entryway, not even bothering to hide the excitement in his voice.
Damian joined Austin at the bottom of the stairs. The were-shifter had put on all of his tactical gear, not because he needed any of it, but because he enjoyed it. Damian suspected it reminded him of his time in the military. Zach came down at exactly fourteen minutes and fifty-nine seconds dressed in street clothes; he wasn’t even wearing black.
Austin looked between the two of them. “What…am I running this mission alone?”
“I’m sorry, did I need something more than being able to turn into a fire-breathing dragon?” Damian said.
“Fine,” Austin allowed, then glared pointedly at his brother. “But what’s this?” he asked, looking Zach up and down. “Were you planning on asking her out on another date?”
“We don’t always have to kill everything all the time, brother,” Zach said in a clipped tone.
“Uh, yeah, we do. It’s why we’re here? And what we’re good at?” Austin said, then looked over to Damian. “This is your fault. All the diplomacy bullshit you’ve been teaching him.”
Damian snorted and considered Zach’s current state. The man hadn’t even brought a gun—although they could outfit a small SWAT team with the contents of their SUV—the “tour bus”—if they had to. “You agree this needs doing, yes?” If he didn’t, they would leave the wolf at home.
“Yes, and I’m going,” Zach said with a tone that broached no disagreement.
“To fight her with, what…your dress belt?” Austin pressed.
“You don’t have to shoot everything when you can use your words,” Zach said. “She is a person—not an Unearthly.”
“Would you listen to that?” Austin asked Damian, as though he'd already chosen a side. “It’s like he doesn’t want us to have any fun at all,” he said, before bursting out the front door to trot down the front brick stairs toward the garage.
“Fun,” Zach mouthed at Damian, assuming Damian had his back, making air quotes around the word with an eye roll before following his brother.
Damian walked out right after them. Of course, they both assumed he’d taken their side. It wasn’t hard for him to seem impartial—he had no skin in their personal argument—and he was only interested in interrogating the girl. But beyond that, he knew that they were both wrong.
He knew from personal experience that words could be weapons, strong enough to pierce through dragon scale.