We had collected one heart out of seven. They must know, or at least suspect, the game had changed to strike back this swiftly. At me, in particular. If I had kept the heart in my apartment, it would have been toast. I doubted that was a coincidence. The coven hoarded power. They wouldn’t give up an ounce of it without a fight.
“I’ll inform the Society, and my mother, of what you’ve learned.”
Briefing his mom was ten times worse than facing Tisdale. “Thanks.”
“Reach out if you need me.”
“I will.”
He ended the call before I could change my mind and beg for his help climbing out of the hole I dug for myself the day I dragged him to the den to bargain on Midas’s behalf. The alternative, though, had been unthinkable. Midas would have given all he had to save Ford, and Natisha would have let him. Clearly, the man couldn’t be trusted to let others gauge his worth.
Those nightmares of his were vicious, and they messed with his head. He woke from them haunted in a way I saw in the mirror a few times a week. Less now that he was a wall of warm muscle I sheltered behind when I woke from dreams, sweaty and trembling from the reminder of what I had done, what I was deep down in my soul.
Tapping the phone against my thigh, I searched for the bright side. “At least now I’ll have an espresso machine.”
“About that…” Bishop dug a debit card out of his pocket. “There you go.”
“What is it?” I accepted the card and frowned at my name on the front. “This isn’t my bank.”
We all carried expense cards linked to the OPA, expenses—much like our salaries—paid by taxes on the paranormal citizens, but this logo was different from those too.
“Here’s the thing.” Bishop settled into a ready stance that set alarm bells clanging in my head. “When Linus moved out, he told me to get the penthouse ready for the next potentate.”
“I remember.” Linus offered his old suite to me that night, and I passed. “That doesn’t explain this.”
“He took what he wanted and told me he didn’t care what I did with the rest.” He paused. “Have you been up since then?”
“Without Linus there, I haven’t had a reason.”
“You remember all those paintings and sculptures?”
I’m sure my thoughts on them leaked onto my face. “Yes.”
“Turns out his interior designer purchased them from up-and-coming local artists.”
That sounded about right. The place had a classy but cold feel. It was glossy and perfect like a magazine. Linus lived there, had for years, but it was clear it wasn’t his home. Just a place where he slept.
“You’re the one responsible for that paras-only silent auction.” Midas sat upright. “Mom bought a godawful red painting from it when she recognized the work as Leo Morgan’s. He’s one of our old ones. I respect that, but it’s literally a solid-red canvas.” He glared at Bishop. “It looks like blood spatter, smells like blood too. It cost her seventy-three thousand dollars. A dozen more paintings from other artists, and twice as many figurines and sculptures, were on the auction block that night. We’re lucky she stopped with one.”
“Bishop,” I said calmly. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you did.”
“The apartment is empty, a blank slate. You’ll need funds to dress it up, make it your own.” He stared at me, daring me to refuse. “You need the money to start over, and I hate to tell you this, but it might not be the last time we have this conversation. I’m going to teach you how to invest what you don’t use, and we’re going to set you up for life.”
“You need to transfer these funds to Linus.”
“He doesn’t want them. He didn’t want anything but his personal art. That’s all he took when he left.”
Those portraits had been a study in Grier, as I recalled, and it didn’t surprise me he wouldn’t part with them.
“I can’t accept this.” I pushed the card back at him. “It’s too much.”
“Think about your family.” He held up his hands, palms out. “Addie could use the money, and so could your dad. Think what you could do for them, for your ancestral home.”
The dissonance between what I expected him to say and what he said jarred me so much I almost said something stupid, like My family doesn’t need the money.
Boaz and Macon were both still Pritchards. I was the one who had been disinherited. They had family, homes, and trust funds. I had…a cool breeze on my backside from the crack in the hospital gown. The Whitakers didn’t have much more than that to their names either.
“I can’t.” I set it on the nearest solid surface. “I appreciate what you did, but it’s not mine to spend.”
“He said you’d say that.”
Linus, no doubt. The man was darn near prescient.
Remy, done eating her way through our leftovers, chimed in. “That’s why he bought shares in your company at a ridiculous markup.”
“There are no shares. There is no company.” I owned a franchise, that was all. “What did you do?”
“As your business manager—” she lifted an imperious brow, “—I took it upon myself to secure us an investor so that we might expand your brand.”
The whole purpose of the mall was how easy it made collecting gossip. I couldn’t afford to lose that, even with Remy’s ability to split into multiples.
“In addition to opening a storefront,” she kept going, “we’ll be opening kiosks in every mall in the city.”
The storefront would go a long way toward legitimizing my business, but goddess. The expense left me shaking in my boots. I teetered on my feet and sat on the bed before I collapsed.
The MBA I earned in my past life glittered in my mind’s eye, tantalizing me. I used to have such different dreams, and this touched on one of my old ones. Entrepreneurship had sounded so fancy back then, like a ticket
