Must Love Hellhounds

with his uncle Colin.
    Geoff hadn’t known her name until his uncle had sent over her file for his records.
    And he didn’t know if she called the house she’d recently bought in San Francisco, not far from his uncle’s mansion, home. And whether buying it was defense against his uncle, or a signal that she was settling in for the ride. After all, she’d taken the job with his uncle, knowing what he was.
    And so Geoff held out hope it wasn’t just another job to her.
    Just going by appearances, the job suited her. Even Bils worth, the majordomo who’d lorded over the family’s British estate since Geoff had been in short pants, couldn’t have faulted the precise roll of pale blond hair at her nape, the starched white shirt, or the black waistcoat and jacket. The knife-edge crease in her black trousers had withstood travel and the New York humidity.
    There was something inhuman about that sort of rigid neatness, but Geoff couldn’t call it demonic.
    Calling her a Valkyrie might have fit, though. She was taller than he’d thought. Between her height and the hair, he understood why her fellow operatives had nicknamed her Bullet-Eating Brunhilda.
    Rather, he understood the Brunhilda part. He assumed the bullets were another story, buried in a classified file that he hadn’t yet seen.
    A man on the sidewalk glanced at Maggie’s face as he walked past them. Geoff couldn’t read her expression. Not once since they’d come outside had she shown any emotion.
    She had been surprised by his blindness, but by now she’d covered it. He could imagine what she’d been thinking: What the hell was a blind man doing here?
    There were two answers to that. The short explanation went: He wasn’t blind. He just couldn’t see through his own eyes.
    The explanation for that was the long one, about Lucifer and the demons who’d waged a second war upon Heaven, and the man who’d brought an end to the battle by killing a Chaos dragon with his sword. The man had become a Guardian, an angelic protector. There were more Guardians, but it was the sword that had shaped the Ames-Beaumont and Ramsdell—and eventually the Blake—families.
    That sword, changed by the dragon’s blood and imbued with the dragon’s power, had ended up in the home of Geoff’s ancestor. Two hundred years before, Uncle Colin and Geoff’s many-times-over great-grandfather, Anthony Ramsdell, had performed a blood brother ritual with it, and the sword had tainted their blood. Later, Geoff’s many-times-over great-grandmother—Uncle Colin’s sister—had also been cut by the sword. Both his great-grandparents had been slightly altered by the taint in their blood—and so had their children. Now and then, one of his relations was born with a bit of the uncanny in them, possessing empathic abilities, flashes of telepathy, telemetry, or foresight.
    Geoff’s parents had been distant cousins; both could trace their bloodlines back to the many-times-over great-grandparents. So the taint had combined, multiplied, and he and Katherine had ended up the uncanniest of the uncanny.
    Geoff had been born without pupils and with the ability to see through the eyes of anyone near him—but his connection to his sister was stronger. He could link to Katherine’s eyes whenever he wanted, no matter how distant she was.
    But her eyes hadn’t been open since the evening before. That likely meant she wasn’t awake.
    That likely meant she’d been drugged. Whether just to keep her quiet or because her abductor was aware of their connection, Geoff wasn’t certain. But considering that only their parents and Uncle Colin knew about the link between them, Geoff thought it must be to keep her quiet.
    When Katherine woke up, she’d find a way to let him know where she’d been taken. In the meantime, Maggie Wren’s expertise would be useful.
    If she hadn’t been involved in Katherine’s disappearance.
    Since receiving the picture, he had been hoping to see her again, just to see . He’d been fascinated by her. Had barely resisted the impulse to pepper his uncle with questions about her like an infatuated schoolboy.
    Not that it would have surprised anyone if he’d shouted his interest. The men in his family had a history of obsessing over women from afar.
    Geoff was the first who hadn’t even met the woman yet.
    And he hadn’t imagined their meeting would be like this. But it was probably best that he found out now if she’d betray the family.
    He watched her