“Haven’t my glamours kept you hidden all these years?” He listened to something she said, and I wished we could hear her. “As I’ve told you many times, no one’s magic is strong enough to undo that. I’m the strongest warlock I know, and I’ve been trying for years. No, I’m not giving up. I’ll let you know if I come up with anything.”

There were more background noises and the sound of a door closing. Adele spoke again. “Stop worrying, darling. Orias and I have your back as always. Now I have to go and open the club. I’ll catch up with you in a few days. Night.”

Adele hung up the phone and there was a minute of silence before she sighed heavily. She picked up the phone again and dialed. “Roc, make sure we have enough Glaen in stock. We almost ran out last night and the faeries won’t drink anything else.”

When she started to talk about liquor inventory, Chris turned off the recording and looked at Nikolas. “What do you think?”

Nikolas put the SUV in drive and pulled away from the club. “I think we need to take a closer look into Adele’s real estate holdings.”

I chewed my lip as I replayed Adele’s conversation in my head. There had to be a clue there somewhere. Would it have killed her to say the name of the city at least? “Why would Adele say that no one would expect Madeline to be wherever she is? Is there a place Madeline would not want to go?”

“Wherever the Master is would be my first guess,” Jordan said.

Chris stuck the phone in his coat pocket. “Madeline wouldn’t be foolish enough to hide near the Master. She’s evaded him this long by being smarter than that.”

“She doesn’t want us to find her either, so maybe she’s hiding near one of our strongholds,” Jordan suggested. “Hell, maybe she’s in Boise.”

Nikolas nodded. “That is a possibility. We should narrow our search to places near our compounds; see if Adele has property in any of them.”

Chris pulled out a different cell phone and called Raoul. I half listened to his conversation because I was still going over what we’d heard. When Chris hung up, I took out my phone and called David. Jordan gave me a questioning look, and I held up a finger as David answered.

“Sara? Everything okay?”

“So far, so good.” We caught up for a minute before I got to the reason for my call. “Listen, how much did you and Kelvan dig up on Adele? Do you know if she owns any property outside of LA?”

“Yeah, we found a couple, actually.”

My pulse quickened. “Really? Where?”

“Let’s see.” He tapped his keyboard. “There are three that we know of. She owns a night club in New York, another one in San Diego, and a warehouse in Miami.”

“What about houses?”

“Yes, she has a large house in San Diego.”

I repeated what he’d told me to the others. “Anything else?”

“No, that’s it. Why the sudden interest in her holdings?”

“We think Madeline is hiding out in one of Adele’s places, and it’s a property no one knows about.”

David sighed. “That doesn’t give us much to go on.”

“Would it help if I said I have absolute faith in your abilities?”

This time he laughed. “I work for peanuts and flattery. Let me check with Kelvan and call you back.”

“Okay. Talk to you soon.”

I hung up and told them what David was doing. We had two very resourceful groups searching for Madeline, and I allowed myself to hope that one of them would turn up a solid lead. My loyalty was with the Mohiri, but if I’d had to bet, I would have put my money on David and Kelvan.

Chris tapped his fingers on the center console. “Something else I’d like to know is what Orias has been trying to undo for years for Madeline.”

“I’d like to know that myself,” Nikolas replied. “Orias is a powerful warlock. If he can’t undo something, it must be very strong magic.” He looked at me. “By the way, what was he talking about back there when he said you put a gag on him? And what did you do to his demon?”

“Oh, that.” I gnawed on my lower lip. “I might have made him take a binding oath that prevented him from telling anyone we were there.”

“What kind of oath?”

“You ever hear of the White Oath?”

Nikolas and Chris shook their heads, and I explained the oath to them. “It’s something I learned from Remy.”

Both of them looked at me with new respect, and Nikolas said, “And what did you do to upset his demon?”

Jordan scoffed. “That bastard had the rest of us tied up, so Sara took his demon hostage until he let us go.”

Chris turned in his seat. “You took an upper demon hostage? This I have to hear.”

“It wasn’t like I actually saw the demon. Orias already had it trapped in a lamp. I took the lamp and shook it up a little. Demons really don’t like Fae magic.”

“No, I would guess not.” Nikolas kept his eyes on the road, so it was hard to tell what he was thinking.

“How do you fit a demon in a lamp anyway?” Jordan asked. It was something I had wondered myself.

“It takes a spell cast by a very crafty and powerful warlock,” Nikolas told her.

“If Madeline is using his glamours, how was Sara’s friend David able to get that picture of her in Vancouver?” Chris said almost to himself.