“What did Veronica mean by all that?” Aaron asked me as we left the vampire gala.

“It’s personal.”

He mulled that over for a while. “You found your twin brother,” he decided finally.

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“Safe,” I replied. I trusted Aaron as far as I could throw him, which probably wasn’t more than two meters. The vampire was huge, even without his power armor.

How the hell had Veronica found out about Cameron anyway? I was suddenly really glad that he’d gone with Jason. If I really was in danger from Cameron’s kidnapper, then it was best that my brother was nowhere near me.

“Veronica is an able manipulator, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong,” said Aaron. “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

“My knight in high-tech armor,” I said drily.

He laughed. And so did I. I couldn’t help it. Maybe it was the stress, exhaustion, or the extended adrenaline spike over the last couple of days wearing down my mind.

I looked at the sky. It was late—no, actually, it was early. The sun would be coming up soon. How long had we been at that party?

“I’m taking you to breakfast,” Aaron declared.

I didn’t argue. I was too hungry to think up any convincing reasons that I shouldn’t be eating.

Aaron brought me to a restaurant in Orion’s Old District. I loved it as soon as I saw the gigantic dragon statues outside. My fondness for the place only grew as we entered the building. The restaurant was housed inside a glass-covered atrium with blooming flowers, ornamental fountains that shot jets of water, and a koi pond with fat, lazy red and gold fish. The name of the restaurant was stenciled in gold, calligraphic lettering on the menus: Paradise. It certainly was.

I was happy to see Ethan waiting for us. Aaron must have texted his cousin, asking him to meet us here. Both men grinned as I chose the chair that give me a good overview of the exits.

“You neglected to pull the lady’s chair out for her,” Ethan teased Aaron.

“If I did that, she’d probably hit me over the head with it.”

They both chuckled.

I folded my arms across my chest and gave them a flat stare.

“Sorry,” Ethan said, offering me a smile. “We’re just teasing.”

I sighed. It served me right for having breakfast with two vampires. Even though one of them was only half vampire. I opened my menu.

“I would be happy to make a suggestion,” Aaron offered.

I glanced at him over the menu. “Is there anything on the menu that doesn’t contain blood?” I asked sweetly.

The guys laughed.

“How about the Wilderness Pancakes?” said Ethan.

“Wilderness Pancakes?” I asked.

Aaron glanced at the menu. “That must be new.”

“It’s a special,” Ethan told him. “Shall we try it?”

Suspicion saturated Aaron’s frown.

A smirk tugged on Ethan’s mouth. “Scared?”

“Well, after the last time I tried a mage dish… I mean, how was I supposed to know that a dessert called ‘Everlast Ice’ was anything more than a sundae? That chocolate sauce contained enough chili pepper to burn my eyebrows right off.”

“You’re a badass vampire warrior and you can’t handle a little spicy sauce?” Ethan said.

Aaron rolled his eyes. “Spicy means a pleasant tingle dancing across my tongue, not setting the whole damn thing on fire.”

I clicked my tongue at him in disapproval. “Queen Gale would be so disappointed in you.”

My thoughts flickered back to two years ago, when Aaron and the Queen of Everlast had beaten each other bloody. Which was apparently a Phantom’s idea of foreplay. And a vampire’s too. I swallowed hard, pushing the memory from my mind.

Ethan looked at Aaron in surprise. “Don’t tell me you slept with the Queen of Phantoms.”

Aaron’s brows lifted.

“Ok, I take it back.” Ethan held up his hands in defeat. “You are brave.”

Aaron shrugged. “She tasted better than that Everlast Ice.”

As the guys laughed again, I flipped through my menu. Would anyone really notice if I just ordered dessert? The vanilla ice cream bowl with a ‘berry volcano’ on top sure was tempting.

In the end, I ended up going for pancakes with ice cream. Breakfast and dessert in one. You couldn’t get any better than that. The company wasn’t bad either. I’d really missed hanging out with Ethan. And I even forgot for a few minutes that I didn’t like Aaron.

After we ate, Aaron and I parted ways with Ethan. The sun was up now, and Orion was waking up. It was time to get back to work. Before leaving the restaurant, I’d changed into the tank top and shorts I’d stashed in my purse.

Our first stop was a tiny brick house in Orion’s Old District. According to Aaron, the man who lived there was a Selpe Intelligence Network agent who had information that might be of use to us. We weren’t meeting him at the SIN office because that place was drowning in cameras.

Aaron knocked on the front door of the house. Almost immediately, the door squeaked open just a crack, and a pair of olive-green eyes peered out at us. When the man saw Aaron, he didn’t look happy, though that was to be expected after all. SIN agents and Diamond Edges weren’t exactly best buddies. In fact, from what I’d heard, they pretty much detested one another.

“Darren Hollen, I am Aaron Pall, and this is Terra Cross. We require a few minutes of your time,” Aaron said smoothly, as though the sight of an elite vampire soldier on your doorstep never, ever ended badly. Aaron had even changed into his armor to add to the menacing effect.

Darren looked me over, his eyes freezing on my two swords. “Well, I don’t suppose I have a choice anyway.” He swung the door wide open and stepped back. “Do come in.”

The inside of the house was every bit as small as the outside suggested. Darren led us past the tight entryway to the living room, which was nearly as tight but somehow cozier. That was probably thanks to the antique furniture. Two narrow sofas were positioned opposite each other, an old oak coffee table in-between. Darren sat down on one of the sofas. I took the one across from it. Aaron sat down beside me, and the sofa groaned under the weight of his armor.

“This is beautiful furniture you have here,” I said, brushing my hand across the smooth, pale pink fabric of the sofa.

“You’re mocking me.”

“Not at all. I have a very similar sofa in the waiting room of my office.” I smiled. “Almost the exact same shade of pink.”

“This house and all its possessions once belonged to my grandmother,” Darren said.

“In other words, the pink wasn’t your idea,” I said.

His lower lip twitched. “Exactly.”

“My father got our bubblegum pink sofa in an estate auction. The color is highly underrated.”

He laughed. He turned himself more toward me than Aaron, as though he’d decided I was the lesser of the two monsters in his living room.

“Mr. Hollen,” Aaron said. “We are investigating matters crucial to the prosperity of the Selpe Empire. I hear you possess information that could help us.”

“I will, of course, always cooperate with the Diamond Edges in any way possible,” Darren said drily.

“Two years ago, SIN sent you to Orion.”

“Yes, they sent my partner and me. We were working in the Red Castle office at the time. The SIN agent assigned to the mission in Orion was wounded, so we filled in for a few months.”

“Tell me about this assignment,” Aaron said.

Darren’s lips thinned. He definitely wasn’t pleased to be splitting one of SIN’s cases right open, but Aaron represented the Diamond Edges, who could basically tell anyone and everyone in the Empire what to do. Their authority wasn’t limited to the military; it included the Selpe Intelligence Network too. The Diamond Edges could tell any SIN agent to spill their organization’s secrets, and they’d have to do it. It was no wonder the agents of SIN didn’t like the Diamond Edges. One group hoarded secrets and the other cracked them wide open by any means necessary.

“My partner and I were assigned the task of trailing Governor Raith Moonswallow, a district head under Lord Salix Aspenstone,” Darren said. “SIN suspected Moonswallow of being an Avan spy.”

“What did you find?” Aaron asked.

“No evidence, merely suspicions. We discovered that Moonswallow was somehow linked to Lady Veronica Frostwater. He met with her occasionally, often aboard her ship. We also discovered that Moonswallow was trailing Ethan Frostwater. And Ethan knew it.”

So Veronica was spying on her cousin Ethan. Aaron’s expression showed he wasn’t surprised. Veronica must have spied on Aaron all the time.

“What happened to the case?” Aaron asked Darren.

“As soon as our boss heard Lady Veronica’s name, he pulled us out of Orion. A few weeks later, Hawthorne, the agent we were covering for, went back on the case, just to tie up some loose ends,” said Darren. “He should have left those loose ends well alone and dangling. Within the week, he was found dead.”

“Shot?” Aaron asked.

“No, he died of a heart attack.”

Darren didn’t look at all convinced, and I didn’t blame him. This whole thing stank worse than a shot glass full of Phantom’s Bite.

“Since agents were dying on a case with zero evidence of anything, SIN closed the case. And it’s been closed ever since.”