He nodded arrogantly. “My glamours are the best – only Fae magic is better.”

Nikolas crossed his arms over his chest. “Our sources tell us that Madeline was on her way here to Los Angeles in December, around the time Sara paid you a visit.”

“She came to see me at my home that same night,” Adele admitted. “I told her there was a faerie youngling asking after her on behalf of her daughter, and she asked me if I was joking. She left the next morning, and I haven’t seen or heard from her since.”

She was lying. I was tempted to go over and force the truth out of her, but I stayed where I was. She and Orias thought I was full Mohiri and I wanted to keep it that way. There was no telling what either of them would do with the information if they discovered what I really was.

Adele set her glass down on the coffee table. “This has been lovely, but I’m afraid I must beg you to excuse me. I have a lot of work to do before the club opens in a few hours.”

She knew a lot more than she was saying, and I didn’t want to leave until I knew what it was. Before I could say anything, Nikolas thanked her for her help and steered me toward the door.

“What are you doing?” I protested after the door shut behind us. “She knows exactly where Madeline is.”

“Yes, and we are the last people she is going to tell. It’s clear she and Madeline are very close, and she is not going to betray her friend.”

“But she’s our only connection to Madeline.”

Nikolas gave me an infuriatingly enigmatic smile as we descended the stairs. “I didn’t say we were giving up.”

We emerged from the club into the cool evening air and I sighed in frustration. “Adele’s probably on the phone with Madeline right now, warning her about us.”

“And that is exactly what we want her to do,” Nikolas said as we approached one of the three SUVs sitting across the street. The other two held Elijah’s team, who were along as backup. Nikolas opened the SUV door for me. Once we were all inside he said, “Are we good, Chris?”

Chris pulled a smart phone from his pocket and turned it on. A smile spread across his face. “We’re in.”

I looked over his shoulder at the phone screen where some kind of app was displaying signal bars lit up in green. At the top right corner of the screen, a blue dot appeared followed by a red one. “What is that?”

“That is the signal from the transmitter I left in Adele’s office,” he answered smugly.

Jordan frowned. “Wait. Didn’t you guys say you couldn’t bug her place because she uses warlock magic to detect them and short them out?”

Nikolas started the vehicle. “These aren’t normal transmitters. Raj loaned us one of his prototypes to test out.” He looked at the phone in Chris’s hands. “So far it appears to be working.”

I leaned in closer to Chris. “How do you know?”

Chris pointed to the signal bars. “Green means the transmitter is working and the signal is good.”

“What do the dots mean?”

“That blue dot tells us that someone is using the land line in Adele’s office. The red dot means that my receiver is recording it.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “Recording it?”

Chris grinned and waved the phone at me. “Why don’t we see who the lovely Adele was in such a hurry to call?”

Chapter 20

“You are a genius!” I threw my arms around the headrest to hug Chris.

“I have my moments.” He pressed a button on the phone and Adele’s voice came over the speaker.

“Orias, would you be a dear and make sure our Mohiri friends didn’t leave a little gift for me?”

“Your wards should take care of that.”

She chuckled softly. “It never hurts to be thorough.”

Static filled the line and I held my breath. A few seconds later it cleared and Orias’s voice came to us as clear as day. “If they did leave something, it’s no longer working.”

We heard the sound of a receiver lifting and someone dialing a number. “Darling, you will never believe who just left my office,” Adele gushed. “Nikolas Danshov. And your daughter.”

There was a short pause. “Yes, your daughter, Sara. Why did you never tell me you had a child?”

Another pause. “I understand wanting to leave the past behind, but you could have told your oldest friend. God knows we’ve shared everything else.”

Madeline said something I couldn’t hear and Adele laughed. “She doesn’t look like you, but she certainly has your fire. And she is an inquisitive little thing. She wanted to know all about my friendship with you.” Adele sighed. “I didn’t have much choice. She showed up with pictures of us from that summer in San Diego. I could hardly lie about them.” Pause. “Of course, I didn’t tell them about that. How can you even ask?”

Tell us about what? What did Adele know about Madeline that she wasn’t telling us?

“No, I think you should stay where you are for now. No one knows I own that place, and they’d never expect you to go there.”

“Where?” I wanted to yell at the phone.

“Orias’s glamour is good for another month at least. Here, talk to him yourself.”

There was a rustling sound and the warlock spoke. “Madeline, stop worrying. None but a faerie could see through my magic.”

Jordan and I exchanged glances, and she smirked at me.