Chapter Fourteen
“What is it supposed to mean? The painting screams?” Fenrir hurried to keep up with me. He still had a sandwich in his hand. When I’d explained I was going to speak with Relda again, Fen had given me a nod like he would happily see me later.
“It means Luna hears something the rest of us can’t.” Evan had not been as easily left behind. She’d immediately stood and said good-bye to her friends. Including Fen, who had looked longingly at the buffet and finally begrudgingly grabbed some sandwiches as he hustled to follow Evan.
“She can hear the painting?” Trent hadn’t wanted to leave either, but both wolves seemed to understand when it was time to follow the women in their lives. He’d stuffed a couple of shrimp down his throat as we’d walked out. “I can’t hear anything. I’ve got excellent hearing. How about you, Fen?”
“I don’t hear anything at all. Not that I would say sounds particularly like a painting,” Fen managed around a mouthful of tea sandwich. They were tiny, so Fen had eaten a lot of them. “But I wouldn’t know what a painting sounds like. I skipped art class. Have we considered that Luna is like what? Four?”
“She’s five. She turned five a couple of weeks ago,” Evan pointed out as we started down the stairs that would lead us to the residential levels for non-primals.
I had instructed Casey to secure the painting and to have Luna point out any others that bothered her. “I don’t care about her age. I care about her hearing.”
“How is her hearing better than mine?” Fen asked, a bit of arrogance in his tone.
I stopped on the stairs and turned his way. “Are you serious?”
Trent winced. “He skipped biology class, too. Pretty much all of the classes. And werebats are rare. Until he came down here, he’d never seen one. He knows more about fighting than anything else.”
“But I’m really good at that,” Fen insisted.
“Echolocation,” Evan said with a sigh. “I didn’t have classes either, but I did read. Luna can hear frequencies up to 200 kHz. A normal wolf can hear 80. You can hear maybe 100 since you’re the wolf king. She can literally hear twice what you can, and you’re considered one of the most powerful creatures in the supernatural world.”
“Huh. That’s pretty cool.” Fen polished off his last sandwich. “We should use her when we want to listen in on Rhys and Lee plotting pranks.”
“Or we could use her to try to figure out what the hell is happening with that painting.” I started back down the stairs. “It seems to me it all comes down to that class. From what I was told, Alvis was working on the night sky painting for the class he’d been teaching.”
“And that tells us what?” Fen asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think I should find out.”
“Okay, but isn’t this that…what did Sasha call it?” Fen jogged down in front of me to get to the door first. “Sasha taught us a lot about investigating things, and one of the most important things we learned is that just because something seems to connect, doesn’t mean it’s connected.”
“But we can’t know it’s not connected if we don’t investigate,” Evan argued.
“But we’re investigating something on the word of an imaginative kiddo.” Fen opened the door, allowing us to pass through. “The last time I was here Luna told me she talks to owls. She talked about being the only bat allowed in the Secret Owl Society.”
Evan shook her head. “She has a bunch of stuffed owls.”
“See, she talks to stuffed animals and has whole conversations with them. Maybe it’s the same with paintings,” Fen argued.
Trent patted our son on the shoulder as he walked by. “Your mom knows what she’s doing, and one of the things Sasha taught you was to follow your gut. Your mom’s gut is pretty smart.”
I stopped just inside the hallway and turned to Fen. “I’ve learned when a supernatural creature with crazy good senses tells you something is wrong, it’s usually wrong. And even if I don’t see the connection right away, it’s usually there and waiting to bite me in the ass. So I give in to instinct and see where it takes me. Relda’s paintings look a lot like the one in Alvis’s studio. She was taking Alvis’s class. I need to know way more about what was happening in that class. I’ve talked to three of the students, and none of them were working at the same level as Relda. She’s my connection. I want to talk to her and take one of those paintings she’s been working on back to our apartment so I can compare them. Casey is moving Alvis’s even as we speak. I’m going to study it and break down the paint that was used.”
“And we can bring Luna in to see if Relda’s paintings scream at her, too,” Evan added.
The princess had a whole lot of detective vibes going on. I approved. “That is my plan. Rose is going to bring her by before they go to bed. Now I have to hope that Relda is going to cooperate.”
“Well, if she doesn’t we’ll simply take what you need and handle the situation,” a deep voice said.
I practically jumped out of my skin because no one had let me know someone was approaching. I’m not easy to sneak up on, and then my jaw dropped when I realized who was standing behind me.
Tix stood there looking dapper and all too human in his three-piece suit, dark hair slicked back. He wore what looked like a pair of expensive loafers, but they’d made no sound at all on the hardwood floors.
Trent stepped beside me, his hand coming around my waist to touch my hip as though he needed to keep a hand on me to hold me back. Or to protect me. But probably the first. “Tix, is Gray back, then?”
Tix moved closer, his hands going into his pockets. “Not at all. He’s in session, but you should understand that things are going well. However, I cannot interrupt Master Gray and the Dark Lord, and I need guidance. There is a problem in the household, and I’m not sure how to handle it.”