They headed out the door, leaving Micah crown deep in his analysis. If Thomas knew his cousin, he’d be awake all night running numbers and rearranging the input. He probably wouldn’t even notice they’d left for a good hour.

Adam walked through the foyer and opened the front door. “Later. I’m off to meet Amy.”

“Amy! What happened to Elizabeth?” She waved a hand, cutting off Adam’s answer. “Whatever. I don’t want to know.”

Adam just grinned, shook his head and closed the door behind him.

“Oh, Lady, I don’t want to do this,” she muttered as they climbed the stairs to the second floor. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Thomas let his hand glide along the banister. “Maybe she’s here for you.”

Isabelle snorted. “That’s optimistic. Clearly, you’ve never met my mother.”

They walked down the corridor to the formal room they used to receive visiting witches from other Covens or members of the Council. She stood for a moment outside the door as if gathering her strength, then entered the room, Thomas behind her.

A thin, polished blonde with a ram-rod straight spine rose from where she’d been sitting on a wine-colored couch. She turned toward them, her gaze going from him and fixing on her daughter. Apprehension showed on her strikingly beautiful face for a moment before haughty pride took over.

He’d met Catalina Novak once before, years ago, at a Coven dinner. She still looked the same, five foot seven inches of woman who would have looked her age but for the wonders of modern plastic surgery. Catalina had spent a bundle on it, too. She passed for forty when her records put her age closer to fifty-five. Expensively dyed honey blond hair hung to her shoulders, framing a face with hardly a wrinkle or laugh line to be seen. It was a face that most men would fall for. It was a face most men had fallen for. Catalina Novak had made a fortune snaring wealthy men. She’d been widowed twice by rich elderly men and divorced once from an oil baron who should have insisted on a prenup.

It jarred him to see Isabelle’s eyes staring from that face, with its collagen-enhanced lips and artificially sculpted eyebrows.

Were Catalina’s eyes the only original part of her chassis?

“Mother.” Isabelle’s voice could have frozen the balls off a snowman.

“Isabelle.” She took a step forward and then stopped near the edge of a glass coffee table. “I came as soon as I heard.”

“You missed her funeral.”

Catalina looked at the floor. “A man named Micah tracked me down in Rome and got a message to me. I came as soon as I could.”