He stepped out of the taxi and into the pissing rain. No hotel doorman here waiting with an umbrella, and Quentin didn’t own one anymore.

Egerton Crescent curved elegantly through the downpour, its white-walled black-doored townhouses the very image of early Victorian London living. Black wrought iron fences lined the street, and there was a small, private park across the narrow road. Frederick had owned a property here ever since he was old enough to make a purchase, and had lived in it whenever he was in Town.

Quentin hopped up the steps to Frederick’s house and banged the door knocker three times. As with most along this crescent, it was a ring hanging from a lion’s mouth, the same door knocker the house had been fitted with almost two hundred years ago.

Rain ran cold down his collar. Perhaps he could prevent it, but it would likely look peculiar, and it was impossible to know whether any eyes were on him. This was the city where CCTV was a fact of life, after all.

The door finally opened, and the face which greeted him was all too familiar, even if this time the owner wore an expertly tailored two-piece suit.

“Michael,” Quentin snarled.

The redhead flashed a grin and stepped back out of the way as Quentin slammed the door out of his way and stormed into the hallway.

“Icky,” Michael purred. “How good to see you. So sorry it couldn’t be with my own eyes. Michael has kindly loaned me his.”

Quentin slicked rain from his hair and face, then stared at Michael.

The voice wasn’t Freddy’s. But the accent was. The speech patterns.

And nobody else called him Icky these days.

Michael idly pushed the door to, and beckoned. “Come along. I’m sure you’d like to see Laurence.”

“You had best have a bloody good explanation.” Quentin chased after Michael as the man led him through to the downstairs drawing room. “What the hell is going on?”

“Don’t sit,” Michael said absently. “I should hate for you to ruin the upholstery.” Then he flashed a humorless grin. “Tea?”

Quentin snarled and grabbed Michael by the lapel, hauling him to his tiptoes and dragging him to within an inch of his nose. “How dare you,” he seethed. “How dare you drug me, kidnap Laurence, lead a merry dance halfway around the bloody world. Where is he?”

Michael idly quirked his eyebrows and glanced down toward Quentin’s hand. “Icky, if you don’t unhand Michael this instant, Laurence is going to lose an eye.”

He snatched his hand free of Michael as though burned, but the rage simmering at his core twisted into something darker.

More focused.

“Frederick.”

“Correct.” Michael idly smoothed his jacket down.

“How?”

“Ah, we’re down to words of one syllable, are we?” Michael tutted. “I see. Well, this will come as a shock to you, dear brother, but I’m telepathic. And so was Mother. I inherited it from her, just as you gained Father’s psychokinesis. You have a little touch of her gifts, too. Your facility with animals comes from her, not from Father.”

Quentin sat heavily.

Michael rolled his eyes. “The bloody sofa, Icky!” he opined. “Yes, I’m sure this is a tremendous shock. As I keep telling you, if only you’d damn well applied yourself instead of getting utterly blotto all these years we wouldn’t be here now.”

The words washed over him but didn’t linger. How could they?

Freddy was telepathic.

Like Mother.

He shook his head numbly. “Where is Laurence?”

“Mm. He’s tucked away where you won’t find him.” Michael snapped a hand up as Quentin launched to his feet. “You need to hear what I have to say before you go off half-cocked. My property portfolio is vast, dear boy, and that’s even assuming I’m holding him at one of my properties instead of in a hotel. Or a vacant property. Or possibly a hole in the ground. In Paris. You see, I flew in by private charter, so I am a few hours ahead of you and I’ve had a good night’s sleep en route. Have you?”

“You will tell me where Laurence is,” Quentin said with deliberate care, “or I will wipe several million pounds off the value of this particular house.”

“You are such a thug.” Michael sighed and wandered to a table, and reached toward the laptop on it. “Laurence is right here. No, not in this house, idiot. Here.” He popped the laptop open and tapped at it, then turned it toward Quentin.

Quentin approached it with caution, as though the device might explode, but the closer he got the more it became apparent that the screen showed another location.

A location with Laurence in it.

He leaned across the table to scrutinize the screen.

Laurence looked like hell. He was gagged by a black leather strap, and his eyes bore dark circles beneath them. He sat awkwardly in his chair, arms behind his back, chest raised to make room for them.

Frederick stood at his side, hand in Laurence’s hair to hold his head up.

“There we are,” Freddy said. The laptop’s speakers made his voice sound a little tinny. “One florist, as promised. Well, I hardly made a promise, but it is what it is. Say ‘hello’, Laurence!” He shook Laurence’s head, but all Laurence did was cry out in pain, muffled by the gag. “He’s not very talkative at the moment,” Freddy lamented.

Wind tore through the drawing room and scattered cushions across the floor.

Michael glanced around the room, then sat down behind the laptop and regarded Quentin with a much more concerned expression.

“Let him go.” It came out of Quentin quietly.

Coldly.

There were times when he felt distant from his own body. Out of control. As though he were merely an observer, and the world occurred around him without really touching him.

This was not one of those times.

“No,” Freddy said. “There are things you need to know, Icky. Like the fact that Father shares your gifts. You surmised, but you had no idea, did you? Well, I do. I know. Because he used them on me. Because he has threatened my life. Because he will kill me if I do not do as he commands. So I’m afraid, Icky, that this is us now. You and I. Destroyed by his touch, just as he destroys everything else. I bloody told you to kill him, but you wouldn’t, and so here we are. Trapped.”

Quentin placed one hand down on the table and loomed over the laptop. He couldn’t intimidate a machine, but that hardly seemed relevant. “If you are telepathic,” he countered, “if you have the facility to possess Michael and use him as a puppet, why have you not simply solved the problem yourself?”

“For the very same reason that I am hardly about to allow you to meet me face to face.” Freddy released Laurence’s head, and it hung forward. “We d’Arcys are immune to telepathy and mind control. It’s why Wilson couldn’t boss you around. It’s why Mother married Father in the first place. She thought it could bring her some peace and quiet to be around people she couldn’t read. Instead she married a monster.”

Quentin’s fingers curled until his nails all but dug into the table’s surface. “This is conjecture,” he hissed.

“No. I’ve seen it.” Freddy grabbed Laurence by the hair and hoisted his head up. “Or rather, he has.”

Laurence didn’t respond, other than to blink tears from his eyes.

“I made extensive use of Laurence’s gifts. He doesn’t recall, of course. There was no need. But he looked at what I needed him to, and he’s shown me some interesting facts. I’ve got quite a lot of information you lack. Information which, if you had ever bothered to unearth it, would have sidestepped this situation entirely. You didn’t recognize Michael when you met him, did you?”

The change of direction made Quentin pause, and he glanced to Michael. “Should I?”

“Perhaps. If he had introduced himself as Mikey. I had no idea whether you knew his surname, so I had him furnish you with a false one, but you didn’t even recognize him by description, did you?”

Mikey.

Quentin blinked owlishly and raised his gaze to the man sitting at the table.

Michael shrugged faintly. “I guess I’m just not important,” he said without any reproach. His accent was back to the odd mix of American and English he’d used at the mansion.

Mikey and his other customers dragged me out into an alley and dumped me there.

“You.” The wind redoubled. Windows began to crack. Quentin’s voice remained quiet. “You left him to die.”

Michael’s skin paled. He swallowed. Green eyes flickered toward the windows, but then the laptop began to judder across the table, and he reached out to grab it and hold it still.

“Icky,” Freddy snapped. “I know other things. I know what Father did to you, and I know why. But more importantly, so does Laurence.”

Quentin’s attention snapped back to the laptop at mention of Laurence’s name.

Laurence seemed to have come around to some semblance of awareness at last, and his eyes grew wide. He shook his head and screamed a protest into the gag.

“You think you were accident-prone,” Freddy continued. He tugged on Laurence’s hair, and then let go of it altogether. “You think you fell off horses, tripped down stairs, got run over, and whatever other rubbish excuses you’ve given over the years, but haven’t you ever stopped to wonder why all of your scars are in straight fucking lines, Icky? Not once?”

Laurence bucked in his chair and his cheeks burned as angrily as his eyes.

“Sh.” Freddy waved a dismissal, and Laurence quieted down immediately, but the outrage remained in his gaze.

“Father beat you, Icky. He took a crop to you as part of a ritual, and that ritual lasted thirteen years. He beat you until your skin broke and you bled. He beat you until you blacked out, shut down to protect yourself. He beat you until you were broken, he hit you so hard that your blood was on him, Icky. And then when he was done beating you, he raped you.”

It was a lie.

It had to be a lie.

If it was a lie, why was Laurence crying?

Because Frederick was controlling his mind. This was staged. Set up. Faked. It was a trick. A joke. A prank.

Yes.

It was a prank. In poor taste, indubitably, but just a bit of brotherly leg-pulling gone too far, that was all.

“He raped you,” Frederick said. And now his voice was raw, his features twisting into indignation. “All to give you the power to use magic, just like he can. Just as grandfather did to him. Are you listening to me, Icky?”

Michael screamed as glass sliced past his face, and he dove to the ground.

“Thirteen years!” Frederick fumed from the screen. “Jesus Christ, Icky, aren’t you the least bit angry?”

Then Frederick went away. Laurence went away. The laptop went away.

Darkness came.