Reef leaned forward with interest, dropping his elbows onto the tabletop, a wryly disgusted smile on his lips.

“Really, Oscar?” he sighed. “You’re not even going to try and hide your face?”

“He’s getting pretty brazen,” Elsa agreed, smirking slightly. “He hit four bodegas in the Trenches in two days.”

“Is this guy for real? It’s like he thinks he’s untouchable or something!”

“Yeah,” Elsa agreed, but there was a note in her voice that Reef didn’t like.

“Well?” Reef demanded. “Why haven’t you picked him up?” He sat back from the security cameras and stared at the technician. Elsa lowered her gaze and shifted her weight uncomfortably.

“Well, we would have…”

Reef waited, but even before Elsa spoke, he had a feeling he knew what the hold up was. “Well?”

“From what I understand, Mr. Parker, Oscar is… special to your brother.”

“Wilder, I assume,” Reef grunted. “Is that who you mean?”

“I think so.”

“That’s bullshit. Have a team pick up Oscar before he robs another store. Put him in the barracks until I can figure out what to do with him.”

Elsa eyed him warily. “Are you sure, Mr. Parker?”

“Am I sure?” he choked. “Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

“Well, it just might cause friction—” She stopped talking, apparently hearing how ridiculous her words sounded as she said them.

Since when is everyone else a party to my relationship with my brothers? Reef thought. Oh, yeah, since Wilder started dragging in outsiders. I could wring his neck.

He steeled himself from going off on a diatribe. “Elsa, who is in charge of the Hollows Authority Systems?”

“I know you are, sir, but—”

“Then why is anyone listening to my brother on matters of safeguarding the Hollows?”

Elsa visibly swallowed and shrugged her shoulders. “I had my orders, Mr. Parker, but obviously, yours supersede those of my superior.”

“Damn right they do.” Reef made a mental note to deal with said superior, too. Going over my head and letting criminals run amok in the Hollows. Who the hell do they think they are? What’s the point of having the Authority if they can make deals and get out of it willy-nilly?

He rose from his chair, stretching his long legs and twisting his wide hips. He’d been going over security footage for hours, and his back was stiff and sore. After he visited his darling brother, he needed to see if Leesa was available for a massage.

The thought of the sultry Valkyrie put a spring in his annoyed steps. She was one of the few females he could tolerate for more than an hour, and that was only because she had hands of pure molten gold.

“Oh, and make sure someone gets out to fix those two cameras at the rear of the northwest side of the palace, on the commercial side,” Reef said. “They’ve been out for two days. If something should happen before they’re fixed, I’m holding you personally responsible for it.”

He let the words hang ominously over Elsa’s head, and she nodded quickly.

“I’ll do it myself,” she told him, eager to get on his good side again. Not that Reef was mad at her. It was impossible to run his business when Wilder stepped in and overrode his decisions. He didn’t fault Elsa or any of the others for being endlessly conflicted on day-to-day matters. It was hard to refuse Wilder when Reef wasn’t around to tell them otherwise.

Even though Wilder has no right to interfere with anything, he thought. Just because he thinks he’s managing partner around here doesn’t mean he is.

Without another word, Reef made his way from the bowels of the palace up toward his brother’s offices.

“Mr. Parker, you need to wait—” Wilder’s receptionist called out to him, but Reef ignored her and pushed his way inside the office. Just as Reef’s employees obeyed Wilder, Wilder’s employees also knew better than to antagonize the other dragon brothers.

Wilder peered up at him from behind his post-modern desk as Reef strode forward, a dark eyebrow raised in irritated curiosity.

“No, I don’t want to wait until next week, Virgil. I wanted it yesterday. Don’t make me come up there! You know how I hate to mess up my schedule,” Wilder ordered into the phone, his eyes already moving from Reef’s face. He was all but ignoring Reef’s arrival.

“I need to talk to you,” Reef said, not caring that he was on the phone. Wilder continued to speak with Virgil, completely disregarding his brother, but Reef had expected as much, and he leaped, half-shifting onto the desk, smashing the phone aside with an extended claw before falling gracefully back on his wings. His tail swept the papers and pens off the surface into a clatter on the floor.

By the time Reef landed on his feet, he was in his full mortal form again, staring impassively at his incensed sibling with bored, blue eyes.

“I was on the phone!” Wilder spat.

“The operative word being ‘was,’” Reef agreed. “Now you’re not, and you can explain to me why you are, once more, poking your nose in Authority business.”

Wilder frowned and leaned over to grab the broken pieces of the phone from the ground before straightening himself in the chair. He coolly glanced at Reef.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” he replied nonchalantly. “I’ve been cleaning up your messes since the dawn of time, it seems.”

Reef snorted. “You didn’t seem to feel that way when you put me in charge of enforcing the laws around here,” he snapped back. “And since when is letting a robber roam free ‘cleaning up messes,’ anyway?”

“Robber? Oh, are you talking about Oscar Lucas?”

“Holy hell, Wilder, he better be the only one. If there’s more—”

“We need Oscar,” Wilder interjected smoothly. “And if you’d been on top of your security, you’d know why.”

Reef was almost afraid to ask not only what his brother was going on about, but how he knew. It was unfathomable that Wilder could be everywhere at once, and yet sometimes it seemed that he was cloned ten times over.

“What?” Wilder demanded when Reef gaped at him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Well, for starters, I’m waiting for you to elaborate.”

Wilder sighed heavily, as if an explanation would take more energy than he had, but Reef wasn’t going anywhere until he understood why his brother interfered with yet another matter that didn’t concern him.

“Oscar brought an interesting tidbit of information to my attention,” Wilder explained, falling back in his chair. He pressed his fingertips together in a way, Reef knew, he thought made him look regal, but it just made Reef want to smack Wilder’s smug face.

“Oh, I can’t wait to hear this,” Reef muttered sarcastically. It wouldn’t be the first time an immortal had gone to one of the dragon princes to curry favors, and with a career criminal like Oscar Lucas, it could only be sheer bull.

“I don’t like your tone,” Wilder said.

“I don’t like a number of things about you, but that’s not really the issue we’re discussing, is it?”

Wilder’s scowl deepened. “You are very ungrateful toward someone who is trying to stop a catastrophe from occurring under your watch.”

“Oh, would you just spit it out? What crap did Oscar feed you?” Reef snarled. “I have real matters to attend to today.” Wilder stared at him, presumably for effect, before opening his mouth and speaking again.

“He claims to have knowledge of an infiltration.”

Reef didn’t know what to make of that and continued to eye his brother, but Wilder didn’t offer anything else, much to Reef’s increasing annoyance. “You know, dragging this is out doesn’t add an air of mystery, but it does grate on my nerves.”

“What else do you need to know? Someone has been infiltrating the Hollows.”

“What the hell does that mean, Wilder? ‘Infiltrating the Hollows’? Infiltrating with what? Bad music? Jerk chicken? What is so important that you think it’s worth giving a crook like Oscar a pass?”

Wilder snickered. “I assure you it’s worse than spicy food and heavy metal.”

“What’s wrong with heavy metal?” Reef asked before he could stop himself.

Wilder smirked. “May I finish?”

“Gods, would you? Please?”

“From what Oscar knows, one of the immortals living on the Sunside has been bringing mortals into the Hollows.” He said it in such a flippant way, Reef had to laugh. “What’s so funny?” Wilder demanded, seeming slightly hurt by the chortle.

“You know, brother, you are a lot of things, but I never thought dumb was one of them.”

“Are you saying I’m dumb, Reef?”

“I’m saying,” Reef elaborated, “if you bought a dumbass story like that, you’d have to be. Mortals can’t come into the Hollows. You know that. They can’t survive the portal.”

“Ah, yes. That.” The smile of bemusement slipped off Reef’s face as he realized that his brother believed what he was saying. “Well, according to Oscar, there is one portal which can be survived, although why is anyone’s guess.”

Reef couldn’t stop gawking at Wilder, even though he was acutely aware of his mouth hanging open.

“Really.” It wasn’t a question but a statement of sheer cynicism.

“Yes. Really.”

“So what, the mortals are among us? Wandering around in the Hollows, and we just never noticed? Does that sound right to you?”

“Why not? We have been living along the mortals without them being any wiser.”

Reef gritted his teeth, wondering if perhaps his brother was genuinely losing some of his razor-sharp mind. “Wilder, they can’t sense us. We know a mortal when we see one. If one was walking around, we’d know it. Instantly.”

“According to Oscar—”

“Oh, dear gods, I wish you’d stop saying his name. He’s a conman, Wilder! He’d say anything to get what he wants, and you granted him immunity based on some fairy tale!”

Wilder stared at him coldly. “Do you want to know or not?”

“I guess I really do,” Reef confessed. “It’s like an audio train wreck.”

“There are no mortals staying here, but they do come on short trips and leave. Whoever is bringing them through has made a business out of it.”

Reef laughed again, disbelief staining his face. “Mortal tours through the Hollows? Do you even hear yourself? If anyone was ever caught doing something like that—”

“I know,” Wilder insisted, “but it’s happening.”

“Okay.” Reef took a deep breath. “How do you know this isn’t something Oscar concocted? I have to believe that you’re basing this on something other than his word.” Wilder smiled thinly and leaned his huge frame forward, pulling open one of his desk drawers. He withdrew an envelope and shoved it toward his brother. “What’s this?”

“Open it.”

Reluctantly, Reef pulled the tab back and dumped out the contents. His eyes widened when he saw what was inside. There were half a dozen pictures, each apparently taken within the Hollows. And there were unmistakably mortals in each of the shots.

That’s impossible, he thought. I don’t care what Oscar says, and I don’t care what the pictures show. This isn’t real.

“These are photoshopped,” Reef declared, although to his highly-trained eye, they didn’t appear to be.

“I thought they might be,” Wilder agreed. “Which is why I didn’t bring this to you immediately. I am still investigating myself.”

“Well, next time, bring it to me first. Letting beasts like Oscar Lucas do whatever the hell they want is not how we run things down here.”

“Letting mortals into the Hollows is not how we do things, either.”

The brothers stared at one another for a silent moment.

“What did you promise that cretin for this information?” Reef asked, breaking their silence.

Wilder shrugged. “I didn’t promise him anything, really. I merely compensated him for his information and told him he is to report to me with anything else he learns.”

“Meanwhile, he thinks he’s untouchable,” Reef muttered. “I am having him detained as we speak.”

Wilder face twisted in anger. “I gave him my word.”

“Then you did promise him something. Your word doesn’t apply to his criminal acts, Wilder. He can’t do whatever the hell he pleases on the hopes that what he says is even true.”

“Well, do whatever you have to do, Reef,” Wilder sighed. “Just remember, if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be alerted to this catastrophe at all.”

“If it’s even true!” Reef snapped again. “You’re making a giant leap.”

Wilder shrugged, apparently relenting under his brother’s ire. “I guess it’s up to you to figure out if it is, isn’t it?”

“I wish you had come to me with this first,” Reef grumbled. “When did you learn this?”

“It’s been about a fortnight since he’s come to me.”

“A fortnight?”

Wilder was unperturbed by Reef’s outburst and turned his attention toward the phone. “Is there anything else, Reef?”

“Yes,” Reef snarled. “The next time you go behind my back in the matters of Hollows security, you’ll regret it.” The expression in Wilder’s face was confirmation enough that his brother believed him, and he spun to storm from the inner office.

He held the folder in his hands, the pictures clutched to his curled fingers. No matter how skeptical he had appeared for Wilder’s sake, Reef had a terrible feeling that when he examined the pictures, he was going to find out that they were authentic.

And then what the hell am I going to do?