“My Royal Highness, how may I help you?” she interrupted, and I had to focus on not crushing the phone in my hand due to my impatience.
“The Syngeneia half-witch, Ana, is in attendance at the ball tonight. You must discretely collect her and bring her to my residence,” I instructed.
“Yes, right away, Ma’am,” she answered.
“Do not delay.” I hung up.
I could hear Heidi complaining as Rylan carried her up the gravel driveway. He had foregone a vehicle, it being faster to run through the grove and across the fields than drive.
I met the pair at the mansion's entrance, Sanguis Academy guards holding the same shocked expression they wore when I dragged the partially shifted mutt past them.
“Put me down, you bloodsucking bat,” Heidi shouted, and Rylan obeyed, dropping Heidi roughly to the floor at my feet.
“Lady Heidi of Coactus, as you requested, Ma’am,” he introduced formally.
“Oww, my derrière,” she cried, standing to her feet and rubbing her backside. “What is the meaning of this, Selene?” she asked angrily.
“I need your talents. This way,” I commanded as I began to take quick steps toward the suite I had left the mutt in.
“My talents? What talents are we talking here? Because if you’ve heard of that trick I can do with my tongue, I’d be more than happy to share. Yet I did have other plans that involved a different appendage and a lanky Obscurum vamp,” she rambled behind me. Perhaps if I was not so highly strung, I might have found her amusing, but instead I could only growl as I led her into the suite.
“Talents of the telepathic sort,” I told her as I opened the door to the room where the mutt lay, thankfully not having died.
“What the actual fuck Selene?!” Heidi shrieked. “What happened?”
“That’s what I need to know,” I told her, “Earlier tonight, Percy was abducted by House Ardens. This mutt was with her at the time. I need to know everything that happened. He is too injured to speak. You will communicate telepathically with him for me.”
“It’s not that easy Selene. Non-witches find it difficult to communicate back with me,” she told me desperately, looking like she might pass out every time she glanced at the mutt.
“I don’t care how difficult it is; you will do so, and he will answer,” I snarled. I turned to address the mutt. “Do you understand what’s happening here? You will tell me everything that happened. Everything. If you don’t or fail to, I will destroy House Viridis,” I threatened him and was met with a gurgled response I took to mean understanding.
“Now, Heidi, begin.”
“Okay, okay, give me a minute,” she said, rubbing her temples. “I shouldn’t have had so much to drink,” she continued pathetically. “Right, right, I’m in, but I can’t promise we’ll get a reply.”
“What happened? Why was she with you in the grove?” I asked, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
“‘She was sad. I was walking her home. We were ambushed.’” Heidi translated his thoughts.
“He’s lying. I can feel deceit. Percy was certainly sad, I know that myself, but everything else he said was a lie,” she told me.
I walked to the bed, took his half-shifted leg in my hands, and snapped. He howled loudly.
“For every lie you tell, for every detail you leave out, I will snap a new part of you. If I run out of parts to snap, I will start dragging your friends here to break while you watch.”
“‘You fucking bitch, it’s all your fault. I was trying to save her from you.’” Heidi continued her translation. “‘Halvorsen created the distraction so I could deliver Percy to his men, away from you and the blood magic you’ve been using to control her. But when we reached the grove House Ardens’ men were waiting. Not Halvorsen’s.’”
Halvorsen’s men? I ignored the accusations of my having used blood magic to control Percy. The mutt would believe anything, other than that Percy simply belonged to me. I knew he was obsessed with her. He wanted her. He was clearly willing to go to far greater extremes than I thought. Again, I had failed my pet. I should have ended the boy’s infatuation when it started.
“Why did Oskar want to help you?” I asked him.
“‘He said you were making a laughingstock of him with how you flaunted Percy around. He didn’t want to hurt her. He felt sorry for her and said he would help me get her away from you.’” Heidi translated. Her eyes were closed and I could see how she strained to continue.
“How did he propose to help?” I asked.
“‘He would create a distraction that kept you occupied tonight. I was to lead Percy away to the grove and his men would take her. She would stay in House Halvorsen until you lost interest and the blood magic wore off on Percy. Then she would be moved to House Viridis with me.’”
He wanted her so badly he thought he could take her from me, against her will.