Free The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) by Kate Locke

into bed. Vex was already between the sheets in the dark. He pulled me into his arms, our naked limbs entwining. He kissed meverHe kiss, and a few minutes later I wasn’t so exhausted any more–not that I needed that much energy as Vex did all the work. All I had to do was try to be quiet so as not to traumatise Penny.
    Afterward, my muscles and bones felt like they were made of lovely lead. Vex gathered me close and I buried my face in his shoulder, letting sleep come for me.
    I dreamed of the goblin lair, of sitting around a fire in the flickering torchlight as gobs presented me with meat. I saw Church’s face in the flames–pale in death, with unseeing eyes. I didn’t protest when the goblins fell on his corpse. Then he turned into Val and the prince offered me his heart. I tookit just as I had Churchill’s, and sank my teeth in for a big juicy bite.
    I wish I could say I woke up screaming, but I didn’t. I didn’t wake up at all.

    Penny’s notes went back almost six months. The first entries were in point form, pages from a calendar: “23 February–Jacob, sword swallower, never showed for work.” Then, a fortnight later, “Still no sign of Jacob. No one has heard from him. Flat empty.”
    Around March and April she began keeping more detailed accountings. There were three disappearances in March, each on a different night of the week, but all three busy nights. The three were all patrons, and according to Penny, the kind of person that wasn’t likely to be terribly missed. The Prometheus protein could lurk unnoticed in regular humans; that was what made courtesans so popular with aristocratic men. Sometimes aristos did the nasty with humans who weren’t courtesans and didn’t know they were carriers, and that was when these unexpected halvies were born. Often they were ostracised from their human families and left to their own devices once the social system was done with them. A few made it into the Academy, but many did not.
    “Four disappearances in April,” I remarked aloud when Vex refilled my coffee mug with French roast. “Albert’s fangs, did no one notice?” It’s not like half-bloods are so numerous.
    “Penny did,” he commented, sitting down at the table.
    I looked up and met his gaze. “Besides Penny. Why didn’t the rags run this?”
    “People disappear all the time, Xandra. Four halvies in April, God knows how many humans. It only makes the papers when there are bones to be picked clean.” He didn’t like the press.
    A bitter taste rose in the back of my throat. “I suppose they’d blame the goblins.” But goblins wouldn’t nab a halvie–it was against the treaty, and goblins had more honour than I would have given them credit for two and a half months ago. If a body was tossed into the tunnels, the goblins considered it carrion and the treaty didn’t apply. It was only because they’d scented me on the corpse that my friend Simon’s death became public at all. If not for the goblins’ loyalty, he’d just be one of the missing.
    “There are more monsters out there than just goblins. Humans torture and kill their own all the time. I’m not saying it’s right, just that missing doesn’t make a story.”
    “Some people run away,” I murmured, thinking of Dede. “Some disappear because they don’t want to be found.”
    “Do you really think that’s the case with Freak Show?”
    I shook my head. “No. It would help if we knew if there was anything special about these halvies.”
    size="-1">Vex went still. “You mean like you. Like Duncan.”
    I nodded. I knew it pained him to talk about his son, so I wasn’t going to dwell. “I’ll have to talk to Penny. Maybe she remembers something she didn’t write down.”
    My wolf frowned. “Special would mean these abductions aren’t random.”
    I dumped sugar into my cup. A lot of it. “Val’s certainly wasn’t.” I stirred my creamy coffee. “I should have taken all those files in Church’s safe.” He’d had