At the castle, I had been shown to a locker room where I had stowed my regular clothes and changed into the waitstaff uniform. Makeup artists had given us all smoky eyes, pink cheeks, and red lips so that we further matched, and then we had been given a tour of the kitchen before being escorted into the grand ballroom.
I might be dressed like a nutcracker and masquerading as a waitress, but really, I was Charlotte Locke, an analyst for Section 47, a secret global spy organization that gathered intelligence and used that information to prevent terror attacks and other mass-casualty events, especially those involving paramortals with magic and enhanced weapons and technology.
Paramortals had forty-seven chromosomes, whereas regular mortals had only forty-six, or two pairs of twenty-three. Section 47 took its name from that forty-seventh chromosome, the extra bit of DNA that supposedly gave paramortals enhanced strength and speed and so many other amazing, destructive, and deadly abilities.
Me? I had a magical form of synesthesia that let me see typos, errors, and other mistakes, which was extremely helpful when analyzing bank records, purchase histories, and all the other digital footprints that criminals, terrorists, and other bad folks left behind. Most of the time, I could tell whether someone had accidentally made a simple error, like transposing the digits in a phone number, or was deliberately manipulating earnings reports and committing massive corporate fraud just by glancing through a few documents.
“Attention!” Jacques bellowed now. “The guests will be arriving any moment! Places! Places!”
He flapped his hand at the drinks table, and everyone scurried forward, grabbed a silver tray filled with champagne flutes, and took up a position along the wall. Maria and I were the last two waiters to fall in line, and Jacques glared at me again, his thin mustache bristling with even more annoyance than before.
Danger-danger-danger.
In addition to seeing typos, errors, and mistakes, my synesthesia also gave me a sense of danger, and a little voice often whispered in my mind whenever I was in the presence of other spies, assassins, and anyone else who might be a threat.
Like an angry chef, in this case.
I jerked to attention, and the sudden motion made the flutes on my tray wobble. I managed to steady the tray, but some of the fizzing golden champagne arched up out of the glasses and splattered down onto the silver.
Jacques glared at me yet again. “Imbécile,” he muttered, his cool French accent making the word even more insulting and derogatory than usual.
I gave the irate chef a benign smile in return. Jacques Cadieux’s dirty looks and rude comments were as sweet as sugar plums compared to those of Zeeta Kowalski, the seventy-something owner of the Moondust Diner, who could reduce even the most seasoned waitress to tears with one dark glower.
Jacques glared at me a moment longer, then moved down the rest of the line, ordering the other waiters to raise their trays, lift their chins, and stand up straight.
I resisted the urge to shift on my feet. The knee-high boots were not as comfortable as I’d first thought, and they were already starting to pinch my toes. Drat.
On the bright side, if things went according to plan, I would only have to endure the borrowed boots for a few hours, and I absolutely wouldn’t have to run in them. Then again, things rarely went according to plan when you were a spy.
A light, cheery trill of music sounded. The two doors that served as the ballroom’s main entrance swung open, and a woman strode inside. She was forty, five years older than me, with dark blue eyes, rosy skin, and blond hair that rippled back and up into an elegant twist. A long red velvet sheath dress with thin straps highlighted her toned arms and strong, curvy body. An emerald-and-ruby-studded gold choker ringed her neck, while matching jewels dangled from her ears like ornaments on a Christmas tree.
Elsa Eisen glanced around the ballroom, making sure everything was as it should be, then waved her hand. A ten-year-old girl stepped into view. She, too, had dark blue eyes, rosy skin, and blond hair, and she was wearing a poufy pale pink dress that made her look like a fairy-tale princess. Lina, Elsa’s niece.
“Well?” Elsa’s voice drifted across the ballroom, her soft Southern accent remarkably similar to mine. “What do you think?”
Lina clapped her hands together in delight. “It’s perfect! Thank you so much! This is going to be such a wonderful Christmas!”
Lie, my inner voice whispered. In addition to warning me about potential danger, my synesthesia also told me when people were telling the truth—or not. Despite her sunny smile and cheery words, Lina didn’t believe what she was saying, but her lie didn’t surprise me.
Not even Christmas could be wonderful when you’d recently lost your parents.
Lina threw her arms around her aunt. Elsa returned the enthusiastic hug, but her red lips twisted into a grimace, almost as if she could sense her niece’s lie the same way I could.
Elsa Eisen had been born to a German father and an American mother. Her parents had been killed in a skiing accident when she was in her early twenties, so she had taken over her family’s business and finished raising her younger brother, Peter. Six months ago, tragedy had struck the Eisen family again when Peter and his wife, Claire, had died in a car accident.
Elsa had become Lina’s guardian, and three months ago, she had moved her niece from her estate in Savannah, Georgia, to Tannenbaum Castle, which had been in her father’s family for generations. After all, it was much easier to see your enemies coming when they had to either ride a gondola lift or take a narrow switchback road up a mountain to get to you.
And Elsa had plenty of enemies.
To most folks, she was a renowned antiquities dealer who bought, sold, and procured rare art, expensive jewelry, and other fancy items for wealthy clients, just as her father had done before her. Like me, Elsa was a paramortal, with a magical form of synesthesia that let her see how old something was just by looking at it. A useful skill in determining the age and authenticity of paintings, statues, and other artwork.
But the true business of the Eisen family was serving as a broker and repository of sorts to the paramortal underworld, namely, by buying, selling, and storing art, jewelry, and other valuable items in the impressively secure, biometrically locked vault buried in the bottom of the castle.
Hence my interest in Elsa, and especially one of her clients: Henrika Hyde.
To the regular mortal world, Henrika was the smart, glamorous founder and CEO of Hyde Engineering, a prestigious pharmaceutical company that engaged in cutting-edge medical research and produced everything from vitamins to allergy medicines to skin-care serums. In reality, Henrika was a paramortal arms dealer who used her company and her own personal genius to create biomagical weapons.
Genetic-based poisons that targeted specific families and bloodlines. Corrosive gases that would melt people’s skin and bones, even as they left furniture and other items intact and unharmed. Powders, pills, and other drugs that would give mortals amazing but short-lived highs, along with paramortal powers, even as their internal organs liquefied. Henrika had created all those horrific things and dozens more, but her latest weapon was even more dangerous: Redburn, an explosive that could supposedly kill even the toughest, strongest paramortal.
I had spent months gathering intelligence on Henrika, and I’d been part of a Section team dispatched to the Halstead Hotel in Washington, D.C., to capture her. The plan had been to sedate Henrika, remove her from the hotel, and transport her to a Section black site where she could be questioned about her Redburn explosive. Another mission objective had been to learn everything Henrika knew about Adrian Anatoly, a terrorist who was responsible for the deaths of dozens of innocent people, along with several Section 47 agents.