Have a snippet of Chapter 1. 

After two cases back to back that called for a lot of late nights and early mornings, I was not, needless to say, altogether awake this morning. Clint had woken me up this morning and insisted on me taking a shower. And being awake. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why.

I stood in the shower, letting the water pound against my head with the hopes that it might revive some brain cells. What was today, anyway? The fourth? The fifth? The minor fall? The major lift?

A baffled chorus of hallelujah sang in my head.

Crap. Now I’m going to have that song stuck in my head for the rest of the day.

No, but seriously, what was so important about today that I had to be up at this gods-forsaken hour of the morning?

I wandered out of the shower, toweled off, and went into the bedroom. Clint had laid out clothes for me—nice clothes. So this might be an important thing? Crap on a stick, I seriously couldn’t think of a single thing. The cats were all out, no one was in the apartment for me to ask questions from.

When all else fails, ask Henri.

I reached for the pad and wrote: You up? Busy?

He responded a moment later: Free for you. Busy for others.

Stop being so cute.

Cute for you. And rude for others.

He sounded more awake than I did, at least. Why am I up right now?

Queen Regina called us late last night wanting to see us this morning, remember?

I remember nothing before I have caffeine. Did she mention why?

You remember nothing, I see.

Not a blessed thing.

I’ll get you for breakfast in thirty minutes.

Ok. If he wanted to just fill me in then, that was fine by me. I may be even dressed and ready to go by then. Who knows?

I went back to the bathroom, because if I’m walking on palace grounds, that mean I should probably at least dry my hair. And you know, do something with it aside from a ponytail. I spent several minutes futzing with hair, putting on a little makeup, and went back to my room to finish putting clothes on. It wasn’t until I was a sock in that I heard my pad beep, and realized I’d missed a message from Sherard.

First message read, I hear you’re coming to the palace this morning?

Second message: Jamie, helllooooo?

I responded, If I have failed to respond to you in a timely manner, please know I am trying very hard to be a person.

He sent back a drawn laughing emoji. I have taught them well. The emojis are important.

I paused long enough write, I’m told that I agreed to be at the palace this morning.

You’re told?

I have no memory of agreeing to this meeting, to be honest.

Ahh. Well, after you’re done meeting the queen, swing by and let me stabilize your core. I think you’re going out of town on this next case.

I am?

Me of last night, if you could fill in the me of today, that would be awesomesauce. Seriously. How sleep deprived had I been that I seriously have no memory of any of this?

Henri came by and got me right on the dot, with cats in tow, and we all walked toward our favorite bakery for a quick breakfast. As we walked, I put my hand in his, and he gave me that warm smile he always did when I held hands with him. That smile did funny things in my chest, let me tell you.

“Alright, I don’t know how much you remember,” Henri started.

“I remember nothing. Literally nothing. Start from the beginning.”

He grimaced. “You were basically dead on your feet. I had to pour you into bed. That last case was exhausting.”

“Preach.”

“We received a call from Queen Regina roughly eight o’clock last night?” he eyed me as if expecting a nod of recollection. And didn’t get one. His brows beetled together a little. “She requested that we come in first thing in the morning because there was a very troublesome case. We’re being called in as Kingsmen Consultants for this one.”

“Ah. Okay? Do we have any other details?”

“She only mentioned that it dealt with the death of Countess Giada Barese.”

This was staring to make more sense. I’d read in the newspaper that Countess Giada Barese’s body had washed up on a beach yesterday and that it had caused quite a stir. She’d apparently been missing for about two weeks prior to her body being discovered.
This case smacked of a lot of political stuff going down, and that didn’t even cover the angle that she was presumed ‘missing’ now found dead and no one was sure of the cause. “So at this point, are we looking at possible homicide, suicide, or accidental death?”

He shot me a droll look. “Yes, that is indeed the question.”

“Great. Well, in that case, I see why Queen Regina called us in. The Kingsmen are not trained for this kind of case.” I pondered that as we went into Amelia’s Bakery and placed our orders. This case reeked of potential trouble and it wasn’t something that I wanted to do with just Henri. Besides, it was another good case to train someone on. A certain pair of Kingsmen came to mind. “Is this a done deal that you and I are going? We’re just meeting with her to get the proper authority to go and some details?”

“That’s my understanding. Why?”

“Figured I might as well give Niamh and Foster a head’s up to pack. I’m not losing a good opportunity to train them.”

“Fair enough.” Henri stirred his tea for a moment, looking thoughtful. “Weber, I imagine, will also be handy to request. I don’t know if I trust anyone else to look at a body that’s been at sea for two weeks and glean anything useful from it.”

“Good point. You handle contacting him, I’ll poke my ducklings.” It wasn’t like we had all the time in the world, so I made sure to eat my breakfast in between messaging people. But still, the atmosphere was nice here. We sat in the window, the cats laying on the sill and basking in the sun, purring away in contentment. Henri looked content, too, and I had the worst impulse to reach out and muss his curly dark hair.

I blame his reactions for all the urges I get to touch him. He makes fun squeaky noises.

We loaded into a taxi, went to the palace, and I barely caught Foster and Niamh up to speed with what I knew before we were there. They promised to start getting ready on their end, assuming we’d need to leave tomorrow. Which we likely did.

We did the routine of signing into the gate, with a palace guardsman escorting us in. Even as we walked, I caught Henri eyeing the palace wards with the same suspicion you would a sneak thief. I don’t know if he’d ever properly trust the wards again, not after having to ‘repair’ them so many times.

Queen Regina was not in her proper study, but instead in her private garden. It was more a conservatory, really, as it was glass enclosed on all sides with lush plants filling the interior. I’d been inside maybe a handful of times? It smelled amazing in there, with all of the exotic plants mixed together.

When we stepped through, a wave of warm air wafted over me, which felt really nice compared to the chill of the outside. Winter had hit as of last week, dumping a foot of snow on the ground, and no one had been really pleased to see it. The cold was why I had two cats lurking in my pockets like overgrown lint.

Phil, I noticed, was ensconced in the scarf around Henri’s neck and flat refusing to budge. He had found a warm spot on his person. It was perfection for kitties.

I had a formal greeting on my lips that died completely unspoken when I spied Regina with a Felix in her lap. Now, Jules had been playing around with color schemes ever since I showed him the cat encyclopedia book on my kindle. We now had calicos, Russian Blues, orange tabbies, you name it, all running around.

That said.

“That’s a freaking tiger!” I blurted out.

The cute as all get out little tiger turned its head, blinking large golden eyes at me. It seriously looked just like a tiger, the deep orange and black stripes on top, the white fur tufting out on the bottom, a tail idly twitching across Regina’s thighs. He wasn’t the size of one, though, more the size of Clint.

Jules Felix, mad genius that he was, had created a miniature tiger.

Regina beamed at me over the tiger’s head. “Isn’t he darling? Jules brought him to me last night and introduced us. We’ve spent the morning playing hide and seek in the garden and have had a perfectly lovely time.”

I was mesmerized by him, but so were my cats. They poked their heads out of my pockets, getting a good look at this new addition. Jules sat nearby, taking in my reaction with a proud smile, but I wasn’t paying much attention to him. I crossed to the tiger, sinking down on my heels, and extending a hand for him to sniff. For all that I knew, intellectually, that he was perfectly domesticated, I couldn’t shake off the feeling I approached a wild animal. “Hello. I’m Jamie.”

“Hello, Jamie,” he answered, and it was light, a child’s voice. “I’m Khan. My Regina named me.”

He’d already gotten the possessiveness down, I see. Cats, after all, do not belong to people. People belong to cats.

“It’s a good name,” I approved. Although I was curious on where it came from. I looked to the queen with a question on my face. “Khan?”

“I just finished reading the Jungle Book last week,” she explained to me brightly. “And that is a proper tiger’s name, isn’t it?”

Ah. Shere Khan. Got it. Granted, in her shoes, I’d probably have done the same. “It suits him well. Come meet your predecessors. This is Clint and Tasha.”

All three reached out, touching noses to each other, whiskers going like crazy as they picked upon things that the rest of us humans didn’t.

Henri dropped down and helped Phil untangle himself so he could say hello, too. Khan seemed quite pleased to meet potential playmates. I had no doubt that’s exactly what they’d become, too.

I went for the nearby chair, settling in and letting the cats sort themselves out, teasing Jules as I did so. “I see you finally got tired of being threatened with beheadings.”

“It’s not like I was dragging my feet on purpose,” he protested mildly. The Royal Mage looked unruffled in his three-piece navy suit, fair hair combed back into a low tail, like a Byronic poet in search of a stage. “But the Felixes were in very much the experimental stage over the past three years. I didn’t want to hand my monarch a prototype. And I learned so much from you, about what a creature of this design can do, that I had to modify things. It wasn’t feasible to hand her anything prior to now. Besides, when I learned of the tigers, and the size a cat could grow, it occurred to me that he could become a splendid bodyguard.”

I looked at that innocent expression and started to question things I normally wouldn’t question. “Jules. I ask because the suspicious side of me is suggesting this. But did you make it so this cat can change sizes at will?”

“Quite so. Just two, the size he has now, and the more full-sized version. He’ll max out at seven and half stone, roughly.”

So almost a hundred and fifty pounds, give or take a twinkie. Holy crap on a stick. I looked at the tiger with renewed respect. No wonder Regina had named him after the ferocious tiger of the Jungle Book. To the bad guys, that’s what he’d be.

“The energy consumption for that change must be exorbitant,” Henri commented.

Jules gave him a nod. “So it is. He’ll need to rest in the sun for a good hour afterwards to recoup, but it’s feasible. Also took me forever to figure out how to even accomplish it, hence the delay. Still, I’m quite satisfied at the results. I dare not say that my creation is now perfected, I’m sure there’s things I’ll learn along the way that I might want to adjust, but they’re very stable. And a benefit to society, so I’m quite pleased.”

Because we were on the topic, it reminded me of a question Clint had asked me the other night, one I had no answer to. I’d promised to ask the next time I saw Jules, and this seemed the right moment. “Speaking of, Jules, you never did tell me what their lifespan is.”

He stared at me like a deer looking straight into headlights. “Oh…dear.”

Wryly, I guessed, “You forgot to give them one, didn’t you?”

“Oh dear, oh dear.” He sat there, staring at the cats with a very perplexed, mixed emotion.

“Oh Jules, really,” Regina sighed. “You didn’t give them an age limit?”

Henri was trying to hide a smile and failing at it. Badly. “I’m sure that time will tell on that. It’s probably just as well. No one likes to live with death staring them in the face.”

True, but it’d be nice to know when ‘old age’ is for them so I can make adjustments accordingly.

Oh well. Henri was right, time would tell. I’d just have to keep an eye on them.

Henri cleared his throat and bailed Jules out. “Your Majesty, I believe you have a case for us?”

“Oh. Yes, so I do.” She shook herself a little, visibly changing tracks. “Thank you for coming in to meet me here. I wanted to give you the report personally as the one thing we don’t want at the moment are rumors flying about. I asked you in because Countess Giada Barese has died and we have no way of knowing if she was killed, committed suicide, or if her death was accidental.”

Um. Well, this should be interesting.