Finding the office, he also found a security camera trained on the door.
That was fine. He’d just need to steal the tape for that too.
Making sure no one was watching (which there wasn’t because it wasn’t even six o’clock yet), Kiyo tried the office door. Locked.
He took care of it and slipped inside, shutting the door quietly behind him. Dumping the duffle bag, he searched the room and found three small TVs and old-fashioned VCRs for the security tapes inside a walnut cabinet. Using the remote, he rewound the tape on the first TV, which was for the camera trained on the reception desk. To his dismay, he had to rewind the damn thing back to just before midnight. There she was.
Niamh. Leaving the reception area.
She hadn’t spoken to the desk clerk.
He frowned.
Winding it back further, he found her again.
At around eight thirty last night, Niamh appeared at reception and had a ten-minute chat with the female clerk.
He noted the dazed way the woman looked at her.
No doubt, she’d used her powers to make the receptionist forget their conversation.
His fury was a burn in his throat.
Abandoning the tape, he found the one for the office and ripped it out of the VCR. Hiding it in his duffle bag, he got out unseen and returned to reception. He didn’t even look at the guy behind the desk. He just kept walking until he was outside beneath the breaking dawn.
Compounding his anger was the fact that his fingers shook as he removed his cell to call Bran. He hated that he had to make this call.
Never in his life had he failed on a job.
Bran answered with, “It’s my nighttime, arsehole, so this better be good.”
Kiyo bared his teeth, wishing the vamp was there in front of him so he could take his bad mood out on him. He needed a fight. But no one challenged him like Fionn, so what was the point?
“I lost her.”
There was silence. Then, “You what?”
“I woke up this morning and she was gone. I checked the hotel tapes. She had a nice chat with the front-desk clerk last night and then around midnight, the tapes show her strutting her ass out of the hotel.”
“Did you question the clerk?”
“No point. I could tell Niamh had used that mind-fuck thing she does. And I know from watching her do it, she covers her ass. She’d have told the girl to forget their conversation.”
“Did anything happen last night after we spoke?”
The memory of Niamh convulsing in his arms came to him instantly. “She had a vision. She said it was the same one, but …”
She’d asked him about himself and had seemed more disappointed than usual when he didn’t answer. What did it mean?
“She might have been lying,” Bran said. “What about her room? Is there anything that might suggest where she went?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Bran, this is what I do for a living. I have no leads other than Tokyo.”
The vampire was silent for so long, Kiyo thought he might have fallen asleep. He was about to growl his impatience down the line when Bran said, “Do you have anything of hers?”
“What do you mean?”
“An item belonging to her?”
“Yeah. A comb. Can we use it to find her?”
“Preferably, Fionn could come to the bloody rescue and use a tracing spell to find her. But, unfortunately, he and Rose are pretty far away at the moment. And I don’t trust any other magic user to find Niamh. So there’s only one solution.”
“What is it?”
“There’s an alpha in Scotland. He has a rare gift. For tracking.”
“Are you talking about Conall MacLennan?” Kiyo asked, surprised.
“You’ve heard of him?”
“Most wolves have. His is the last werewolf pack in Scotland, and he’s taken down any alpha who tried to win it from him.” Not to mention that once he had your scent, there was nowhere on earth you could hide from him. The wolf was a legend among their kind. “Why would you trust this guy?” Suddenly it hit him. “Wait—Conall is the werewolf who mated with one of the fae-borne and turned her?”
“Yeah, he’s the one. He was hired to hunt Thea. Instead he discovered they were true mates. The man that was after her … his son stabbed Thea in the heart with an iron knife. She was dying, so Conall bit her. Turns out, because they were mated, he could turn her into a werewolf. It’s one of the reasons the Faerie Queen wanted all the supernaturals out of Faerie. When she realized that a werewolf bite could destroy their immortality and turn them to mortal wolves, it didn’t make her happy. But it certainly made Thea and Conall happy.”
“So you think this wolf would be willing to help because Niamh is some kind of pseudo-sibling to Thea?”
“That, and Niamh was the one who convinced Thea to trust Conall. She had a vision, you see. Knew they were mated.”