Dominic sighed when the phone rang at 4:59 the next morning. He was already awake, hadn’t been able to sleep, actually. Not with Stephanie down at the desk by herself.
The sharp trill blared again. “Good morning, Steph,” he said into the receiver.
He had the pleasure of a moment of her silence before she found her words. “You were awake?”
A grin tugged up the corners of his mouth. “Yes ma’am.”
“Bastard,” she muttered.
“You know, while I have you. I’d like to order some breakfast.”
Her sigh rattled across the airwaves. “I’m not the kitchen.”
“I’m sure you can relay my order.”
She didn’t respond for a long moment. Then she sighed again. “Fine. What do you want?”
“Scrambled eggs, pancakes, and bacon. For two,” he said. “And two glasses of orange juice.”
“For two?”
Dom liked the note of hostility in her tone. “Yup. For two and… sweetheart?”
“What?” she snapped. “What else could you possibly want?”
“Bring it up yourself.”
He hung up the phone to the sound of her sputtering, knowing it was a snowball’s chance that she’d bring the meal up herself, but wanting to get her alone and confined anyway.
The barbed armor she wore made him sad. Dom knew she’d been hurt by that night ten years ago, but he’d honestly thought she’d wanted to leave. So he’d given her some money and wished her well.
It wasn’t as if he’d thrown her to the wolves. Not like she seemed to think. In fact, he’d read every letter she’d sent to her sister.
Which was the only reason he knew she was in NOLA now.
He clicked on the TV and stared at the parade of early morning news stories that flashed across the screen, watching the blur of faces and videos without really absorbing the stories.
There was a sudden flare of noise from the television, and Dom’s eyes flew up.
“And in sad news, another unexplained murder has occurred just off Bourbon Street. The young female was discovered this morning by a group of college students heading home after a late night out…”
The voice continued, but Dominic’s gaze had locked on the accompanying video. It showed police surrounding the crime scene, a CSI tech draping a sheet over the body. But that wasn’t what caught his stare.
No. There was a flash of blond, the slim but curvy build. And an arm.
An arm with blue flame tattoos.
His gut squeezed tight, and he was instantly bathed in a cold sweat. If he hadn’t just talked to Steph, he would have thought the girl was her.
The Forgotten had markings resembling fire, striking colored patterns that could be mistaken for flame tattoos, which began in their palms and extended up to their shoulders.
The markings were just one byproduct of experiments the Dalshie — in conjunction with Hitler — had conducted during WWII.
The Forgotten had been born in those cruel trials, the result of which had transformed them from normal humans into a sort of mutant, magical half-breed.
They’d undergone gene therapy. Hundreds of injections. Multiple forced consumptions of compounds with horrific side effects.
Most of those humans had died.
Those who’d survived had become the Forgotten.
The Dalshie had activated their ability to do magic — just not as well as the as the other two power-wielding races.
But they did get the distinctive flame-like patterns.
It made them different than the Dalshie and Rengalla. Unique, even.
Dom snorted. He sounded like a parent trying to make their misfit kid feel better.
Truth was, the Forgotten didn’t possess the writhing black marks of the Dalshie or multi-faceted elemental abilities of the Rengalla. They were stuck in between, another example of the strange and terrible place they’d found themselves after the experiments had torn them from their human lives.
Those markings had appeared spontaneously on the Forgotten who’d undergone the treatments in the concentration camp of Ravensbrück, but now developed at puberty for those born into their number.
They were distinct. They were impossible to completely hide.
And Steph’s markings looked almost identical to that of the deceased girl’s.
“Shit,” he muttered and thrust a hand through his hair. This should at least do away with Steph’s ridiculous coincidence excuse.
But until that point he hadn’t possessed any evidence that the Dalshie were after her, and if it wasn’t a coincidence, if the Dalshie had targeted that girl specifically because they thought she was Steph… then things were about to get a lot more dangerous.