“Mr. Gregoire, please walk me through it,” I said.
Stéphane Gregoire nodded. Of average height, he was in his midforties, a white clean-shaven man with a Texas tan and dark wavy hair sprinkled with grey. He wore glasses, his suit was impeccably tailored, and he seemed unperturbed despite the human decoration on the wall of his restaurant. The server next to him, a young blond woman in a black and white uniform, wasn’t nearly so composed. She clenched her hands into a single fist and looked at the ground directly in front of her. I understood the urge. I would’ve liked to look at the ground as well.
“Madam Cabera arrived alone at two minutes past eleven. She informed me that she expected a guest,” Mr. Gregoire said.
“Did she say who?”
“No. She sat at her usual table.” He indicated a table eight feet away, where one of the chairs was knocked over. “Simone brought her her customary wine. She preferred to have a glass of La Scolca Gavi before the meal.”
“Did she order anything?”
“Not right away. It was her custom to linger. She enjoyed sipping her wine and catching up on her work. She would usually signal the staff when she was ready to order.”
I had dined here before with Linus. The Respite subscribed to the European school of hospitality. Unlike American servers, who were encouraged to approach customers repeatedly, the Respite’s staff left the patrons to their own devices. They didn’t ignore the customers, and a slight gesture or a glance would summon the server nearly instantly, but they didn’t intrude. To interrupt a meal by offering refills or bringing the check unasked would have been the height of rudeness.
“Madam Cabera sat for about six minutes. The first missile tore into her chest, lifted her out of the chair and pinned her to the wall. The second missile hit her face. Death was instant. She didn’t even have the chance to scream.”
We were looking at a Prime or an upper-level Significant telekinetic. A spike fired from a weapon would have hit Luciana at a downward angle and continued in that direction, piercing the chair and likely knocking it over. We would’ve found her on the floor. But telekinetics almost never threw objects in a straight line across a significant distance. They threw them in a catenary curve. The object swooped down and shot back up, drawing a shallow U.
Connor had explained it to me one time when he was training us to respond to telekinetic threats. He got really technical about it, but mainly it boiled down to three reasons. One, a person who saw a missile coming toward them would naturally jump to their feet or back up. The curve ensured that the missile would still get them on the upswing, which was why Luciana now hung off the wall. Two, an object thrown by a powerful telekinetic packed a lot of kinetic force. Even if it didn’t kill the target, that upswing would knock them into the air, throwing them away from where they stood and resulting in additional damage. And three, the curve felt more natural than a straight line. Telekinetics using it hit with greater accuracy. It was a hard habit to break, and a surprised telekinetic would almost always throw in a curve. If you happened to see it coming, the only way to avoid it was to drop under it as flat as you could. Luciana never saw it.
“Who else was on the patio?” Alessandro asked.
“Prime Curtis and her daughter.”
House Curtis specialized in horticulture, specifically cotton, sunflowers, and corn. They would have wanted none of this. They would have calmly gotten up and left and talking to them would be useless.
“Do you have video footage?” Alessandro asked.
“The Respite does not record their guests.”
That was glaringly unlike Linus. Hm. “Can you tell me exactly what Prime Cabera said to you?”
Mr. Gregoire opened his mouth and said in Luciana Cabera’s voice,“Stéphane, we meet again.”
He switched back to his own voice. “Always a pleasure, madam. Your usual table?”
“Yes, please. I’m expecting a guest.” Again, a flawless female voice.
“Very well, madam.”
Alessandro laughed softly.
An auditory mnemonic. Linus didn’t need a CCTV. Mr. Gregoire was a perfect recording device all by his lonesome.
My phone chimed. The cleanup crew was here.
“Mr. Gregoire, our people are downstairs, please let them in.”
He nodded and departed with the server in tow. Simone practically tripped over her own feet to escape.
Alessandro nodded at the tower. “What’s that building?”
I glanced at my phone and pulled up a map. “HCC. Houston Community College. Do you think the roof?”
“Yes. That’s where I would have set up.”
I pulled up an image of a two-foot spike with a ring on the blunt end on my phone and showed it to him. It looked identical to the two sticking out of Luciana.
“A marlin spike,” Alessandro said. “Used by sailors for ropework.”
“Most telekinetics throw crossbow bolts or giant nail-shaped skewers. I know of only one family that throws marlin spikes.”
Alessandro raised his eyebrows. “House Rogan?”
I nodded. “The telekinetic who attacked us in the Pit also used marlin spikes.”
“You think it’s Xavier.” A dangerous light flared in Alessandro’s eyes.
“I seriously doubt that Connor climbed the HCC building and hammered two giant spikes into the Speaker of the Texas Assembly. If he wanted to kill her, he would have done it quietly.”
My brother-in-law’s control was off the charts. If he’d wanted to kill Luciana, and I couldn’t imagine that he would, he could have slit her throat with a razor blade from hundreds of yards away, or choked her with her own necklace or clothes, or sent a tiny needle through her eye, scrambling her brain. This was loud and aggressive. It had to be Xavier. I had no proof, but I knew it was him. It felt like him.
Alessandro’s phone rang. He stared at it like it was a snake.
“Please excuse me. I have to take this.” He walked away, speaking in Italian, too low for me to hear.
Something was going on with him, and that something wasn’t good.
I looked back to the spike.
Until Arkan got to him, Xavier’s magic talents were modest. When Arkan had stolen a sample of the Osiris serum years ago, putting himself on Linus Duncan’s permanent hit list, he kept some of it. Once someone took the serum, its effects persisted through generations, and if any of that person’s descendants tried to take it again, it would kill them. Arkan was obsessed with finding a way around that certain death, and he used Xavier as a guinea pig. Most of Arkan’s test subjects died in agony, but Xavier had won the life-or-death lottery, becoming an incredibly powerful insta-Prime.
Xavier had grown up in my brother-in-law’s shadow. To him, Connor, his distant cousin, was the example of everything Xavier wanted to achieve. Connor was freakishly powerful, wealthy, and respected, a war hero who was looked up to by the whole family. To someone like Xavier, with his modest telekinetic talent and craving for the finer things in life, Connor was at the apex of everything he ever hoped to achieve. Now, thanks to Arkan, he thought he had reached that height, and he flaunted his power. The spikes were a special fuck you to Connor.
You didn’t think I was strong enough to use these. Look at me now.
Alessandro came striding up, his phone put away. He and Xavier had a score to settle. Alessandro had tried to kill Arkan for murdering his father. Xavier had hit him with a semitruck and nearly ended his life.
I looked into Alessandro’s eyes and saw calculated, cold rage. Fear punched me right in the stomach. I’d spent the last six months doing everything I could to avoid the confrontation between him and Arkan, but it was coming like a runaway train, unstoppable and inevitable.