Now I knew where Maris had seen Faldin with "her." Faldin was listed in our files as a low-level supervisor for Schuul Enterprises. Somehow, he'd managed to snare the biggest fish in Surnath's pond. He must have other talents, I thought to myself. Tory was so much nicer to look at. It made me wonder if Tory and Darletta had come here while they were still together. The thought made me shudder.

Reah, hold it together, sweetheart, Ry's voice was gentle in my mind. I doubted that Darletta would recognize Ry or me—she'd only seen us once before and that was nearly twenty-six years earlier. Faldin and Darletta were too old to be in this crowd, too—I saw the young ones all around them staring.

Darletta was nearing fifty and Faldin was in his sixties. In their prime but still too old for here. Ry and I would always appear to be in our twenties. That's what immortality did for our kind. Someone else came to speak with Faldin, someone else who was also older in appearance. He wore a badge indicating that he was a Starshine employee. Likely the manager, I thought, as I watched Faldin lean down to say something to Darletta. She went to sit at the bar while Faldin followed the employee. Ry, watching just as I was, patted my hand and rose to see where they went.

They just walked into an employee entrance, Ry sent, sitting down again.

We need to find out who owns this place, I replied.

Yeah. I think we do, Ry agreed, emptying his drink in one swallow. Let's go.

We'd barely gotten out of the place before receiving mindspeech from Lendill. The local ASD office had been broken into and ransacked. Lendill and Norian were already there; both could fold, so it wasn't surprising.

Ry folded us to the location, where two overly-zealous ASD agents thought to keep us from going inside. When Ry and I hauled out our IDs, we were allowed through. Lendill met us in the lobby.

"It's difficult to pinpoint ASD offices," Lendill rubbed the back of his neck as we surveyed the wreckage inside the building. The lobby had been destroyed by an explosion—that's how the perpetrators had gotten in. Then, they'd methodically tossed several cubicles, including the one Ry and I had been inside earlier. Ry and I blinked at one another as we stopped outside the entrance. The locked, metal door had been blasted off its hinges and everything inside was broken and scattered.

"Lendill, this is the room that held all the evidence from the shootings we're investigating," I said.

"Was anything taken?" Lendill crunched across bits of debris to poke his head inside the door.

"We'd have to get in there to see," I sighed. The place was wrecked and the desk comp had been shattered and tossed in a corner.

"The box of junk is gone," Ry said. I stared up at him; his eyes were unfocused, indicating that he was scrying the area. I eacehe areanvied his talent, at times. It would have taken time for me to go through everything in the room to determine that.

"What was in it?" Lendill waited until Ry was back with us.

"Comp-vids that Bel destroyed for some reason," Ry answered. "He'd torn chips out of several. I had to use power to put one back together that looked as if it had been stomped on."

"If he wanted to destroy it, why didn't he use power?" Lendill asked.

"No idea. I wondered the same thing," Ry shrugged.

"Reah, you look incredible," Lendill sighed softly at my side. I'd forgotten how I was dressed.

"We took a little investigative trip to Starshine, and found Maris Krastel's lover boy, Faldin Bierla, there with Darletta Schuul," Ry gave Lendill a look. I figured Ry was also sending private mindspeech. That was all right with me; the less I heard about Darletta, the better.

"A bit old for that place, don't you think?" Lendill said aloud.

"We'll research all of it," Ry said. "Do you need our help here with this?"

"Not since I know what's missing, now," Lendill shook his head. "Write a report and get it to me by the end of the night."

"We will." Ry steered me away from the wreckage.

"Here, it lists the ownership of Starshine," Ry handed his comp-vid to me when I walked out of the bathroom dressed in pajamas. I took it and scrolled through the names. Six investors were listed, and Darletta Schuul's name was one of them.

"Big surprise, but why was it Faldin and not Darletta who was asked into the back?" I said, handing Ry's comp-vid back.

"Maybe they had a technical problem and needed his assistance."

"He does work for the alarm side of their business, doesn't he?"

"Yeah. He does." Ry didn't sound convinced to me. I wasn't convinced, either. The employee hadn't spoken to Darletta at all. He'd gone straight to Faldin, and if Darletta was an owner, he should have bowed and scraped to her, first.

"Ry," I said, grabbing the purse I'd used earlier and pulling the brochure for Stellar Winds out of it, "why is Starshine promoting Stellar Winds? Does Darletta have a piece of it as well?"

"Good question," Ry said, tapping on his comp-vid. Obviously he had clearance codes, just as I did. "Here." He offered the comp-vid to me a second time. Seven names were listed, and right in the middle was Darletta Schuul's.

"So, Daddy makes comp-vid chips and Darletta does sex and sin," I grumbled.

"Both lucrative," Ry said.

"No doubt about it," I agreed. "Did Lendill have new ideas on any of this?" I asked. "When you had your long mindspeech conversation?"

"I think Lendill wants to see you in that dress again," Ry said as I pulled the covers back on my bed. The dress was currently hanging in our small, hotel room closet and Ry was steering me away from his mental contact with Lendill. It figured that they'd been discussing Darletta and Tory.

"Lendit; >"ll might find time for that in a year or two," I said, shoving thoughts of Tory and Darletta aside before climbing into my bed and turning out the light on my side. Filing the report and fretting over the break-in had worn me out, but what bothered me most was the missing box of junk Bel left behind. Why had thieves taken it, only to leave more expensive equipment behind?

"Mom, I left Reah asleep in our room." Ry settled on the sofa inside Lissa's private study. She was working late and told Ry where to find her when he'd sent mindspeech.

"What's up?" Lissa looked at her firstborn (by a matter of days) who sat across from her desk.

"I think I know part of the reason why Tory's memory has gaping holes in it."

Lissa's eyes widened. She was dressed comfortably in fleece as she worked over the information for the next Reth Alliance Conclave. "What did you find? Do you know how it happened?"

"I don't know the how, but I may know the why," Rylend's sigh was heavy. "Darletta has her fingers in Starshine on Surnath, and is one of the owners of Stellar Winds. When she and Tory married, she didn't have anything – Daddy owned all of it. That has obviously changed through the years. She didn't want to give Tory any part of that when she sent him packing. And it was her choice, I'd bet on it," Ry's handsome face held worry.

"She's already going around with someone else," Ry went on. "Reah and I saw both of them earlier tonight at Starshine. The thing is, the man Darletta was with is the former lover of the woman who shot several of her coworkers at Abinger's Legal Firm in Quezlos."

"That's weird," Lissa said. "Are you and Reah working on all that?"

"Yeah. That's what we're working on. Bel was doing the investigation, and he disappeared. Lendill asked us to find Bel, so we're backtracking his last few steps. This is turning into one of your cans of worms, Mom."

"Sounds like it. You really think Darletta and dear old Dad had something to do with Tory's loss of memory?"

"Yeah. How else can we explain it? How's Tory doing?"

"Connegar says that they've got him to the point where he believes Raedah and Tara are six," Lissa said, standing and pushing her chair in. "If I find out the Schuuls did something to him, I may have a few words to say."

"You can't interfere, can you?"

"No. Belen and the others say no. They say that this has to play out as it does. It will alter the timeline if I try."

"So, no sense Looking, huh?"

"I haven't even tried."

"Then Reah and I will do our best to piece this together. Don't worry, Mom, we'll get to the bottom of it."

"Please do. Get good, hard evidence for me, honey, and I'll see that they're prosecuted."

"We will. I need to get back."

"Let me know if you need anything," Lissa stood on tiptoe to kiss Ry's cheek.

"Will do." Ry folded away.

"Have fun?" I asked sleepily when Ry appeareorkn Ry apd in the darkness inside our hotel room.

"Went to see Mom for a few minutes," he replied, pulling his shirt off and wandering into the bathroom. "Besides, you're supposed to be sleeping."

"I need a glass of water," I said, tossing back covers and sliding out of bed. Ry stood beside me in the bathroom, brushing his teeth as I filled a glass with water. If I hadn't gone to smaller Thifilatha and skipped Ry away when our room exploded, he might have been badly burned at the very least.

Chapter 6

No heat or fire can harm a High Demon's Thifilathi. Or Thifilatha, if the female can turn. Most didn't. My daughters hadn't. At least not yet. I'd wrapped myself around Rylend Morphis and hauled him out of our burning hotel room, skipping to the first place that came to mind—my house on Kifirin. The cottage was empty, thank goodness, else we might have had to explain why I was naked and Ry's clothing was smoldering.

"Fuck!" Ry shouted, pacing and flinging his arms this way and that. I'd never seen him so angry. I wasn't arguing with it, though, opting instead for going to the closet in my old bedroom and pulling something out that I could wear. My new clothing had been inside the hotel room, and all of it was now obliterated.