Sugar Plum Spies

SUGAR PLUM SPIES

CHAPTER ONE

CHARLOTTE

You could always tell the criminals by their toys.

Fancy cars, enormous yachts, private jets, expensive art. In my experience, most criminals loved showing off their ill-gotten goods. To many, it was a badge of honor, a not-so-subtle way of showing everyone else, especially their rivals, just how smart, rich, strong, and successful they were. But paramortal criminals—those with magical abilities—tended to be a little flashier and more boastful than most, with toys that were much more lavish.

Like Tannenbaum Castle.

I stood in the back of the grand ballroom, which took up a good portion of the sprawling castle’s second level. Crystal chandeliers bathed the ballroom in a soft, warm glow, highlighting the white marble floor and colorful wall tapestries, while thick strands of fresh evergreen garland studded with silver bows swooped along the second-story balcony like ribbons of icing on a tiered cake. High above the decorations, silver leaf swirled through a gorgeous ceiling fresco of a snow-crusted forest before dripping down onto the evergreen-tree-shaped crown molding like metallic icicles.

The pictures I’d seen of the ballroom didn’t do it justice, but what made it truly special was the theatrical stage that dominated the front of the cavernous space.

Detailed mosaics of stars, snowflakes, and evergreen trees had been set into the base of the mahogany platform in a mirror image of the ceiling fresco, and bits of stained glass gleamed like diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds in the dark wood. The stage was framed by white marble columns wrapped with red ribbons that twirled up like peppermint sticks to support a broad stone cornice studded with even more white stars, blue snowflakes, and green trees that capped the entire area like a sparkling crown.

Stairs at either end led up to the performance platform, and the heavy blue brocade curtains had been drawn aside to reveal a lovely holiday scene, anchored by a thirty-foot-tall Christmas tree at the back center of the stage. Thousands of white lights snaked through the branches, which were adorned with silver stars, blue snowflakes, and red bells.

Oversize gold presents trimmed with blue, red, and green bows were clustered around the tree, while six-foot nutcrackers clutching everything from candy canes to silver bells to pine-cone wreaths were lined up along the night-sky backdrop. A single twelve-foot nutcracker grasping a real silver sword was positioned on the right side of the stage, while smaller nutcrackers were spaced along the ballroom floor as though they had leaped off the platform and frozen where they landed.

A ballet troupe was set to perform scenes from The Nutcracker as part of tonight’s Christmas Eve party, and the castle’s decorators had fully embraced the theme. I eyed a cluster of three nutcrackers standing a few feet away. With their shiny black hats, painted-on mustaches, fluffy beards, and oversize teeth, the holiday figures looked like grinning, maniacal monsters that would cheerfully bite anyone who got too close to them—

Fingers snapped in front of my face, startling me out of my snide reverie, and a man wearing a black chef’s jacket glared down his nose at me. He was about ten years older than me, in his mid-forties, with dark brown hair and eyes, ruddy skin, and a thin mustache that bristled with annoyance.

“Pay attention,” Jacques Cadieux said, a faint French accent coloring his deep voice. “You’re here to work, not gawk at the furnishings.”

“Yes, Chef,” I replied.

Jacques gave me another suspicious glare, then moved on to critique the rest of the waitstaff. In keeping with the Nutcracker theme, we were all dressed alike in short royal-blue jackets trimmed with gleaming silver buttons, along with tight white pants and knee-high black boots.

I slid my index finger underneath the chin strap that secured a black brimmed hat to my head, then reached up and dug that same finger into my hair. I hated hats. They always made my head itch, but disguises were a way of life for spies like me. At least the boots were somewhat comfortable, although I would have preferred to wear my usual sneakers. You never knew when you might have to run away from an enemy.

Chef Jacques finished his inspection, then stabbed his finger at a swinging door in the back wall that led into one of the castle’s many kitchens. In the distance, the light, cheery tinking of glasses sounded, along with the louder, deeper rattling of pots and pans, and the delicious aromas of warm butter, sweet vanilla, and spicy cinnamon flavored the air, overpowering the sharp scent of the massive Christmas tree on the stage. My stomach rumbled, a painful reminder that I hadn’t managed to snag any food from the kitchen when the waitstaff had been escorted through there earlier.

“You are to serve the guests promptly and professionally,” Jacques barked out. “Not simper and flirt and make fools of yourselves. I will not have my food grow cold and my reputation be sullied by your collective laziness. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Chef!” the waitstaff shouted in unison.

The woman next to me rolled her eyes. I winked at her, and she giggled. Jacques spun in our direction, and the woman pressed her lips together to stifle another giggle. The chef eyed us for a moment, then marched over to a table along the wall and started issuing orders about how the towers of crystal champagne flutes needed to be rearranged.

The woman turned to me. She looked to be in her mid-twenties and was quite pretty, with short dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and light brown skin. “I’m Maria Basu.”

“Charlotte Heldin,” I replied, giving her my cover name. “Have you worked in the castle before?”

Maria brightened. “Oh, yes! I live in the village and often work here at the castle. Sometimes I babysit for the Eisen family, but usually I’m here in the ballroom, handing out drinks with everyone else. The Eisens love to throw parties, especially this time of year.” She giggled and rolled her eyes again.

Tannenbaum Castle was located on top of the mountain of the same name in the Bavarian Alps in southern Germany, while the village in the valley below was known as Tannenstelle. The village was as charming as the castle was grandiose, and the whole area looked like a storybook picture, especially given the holiday decorations and the several inches of snow that had fallen last night. Another storm was supposed to hit the region tonight and dump even more snow on both the mountain and the village.

I’d spent the last three days holed up in a village hotel eating copious amounts of pastries and preparing for tonight’s mission, which had included getting myself hired as part of the Christmas Eve waitstaff. Yesterday morning, I’d gone to the castle staffing office in the village and told the supervisor a sob story about how I was a down-on-her-luck waitress who needed money after a bad breakup with a German boyfriend. Back home in Washington, D.C., I worked part-time as a waitress at the Moondust Diner, so this particular spy legend wasn’t too much of a stretch for me.

The supervisor had just been through a messy divorce herself, and she was happy to hire me. She’d even tried to give me some money, which I had politely declined. Germans were such kind, generous, thoughtful people that way.

Earlier today, I’d gotten into a van with several other folks and had been whisked up the narrow, winding road that led from the village to the castle, while the more important workers—like Chef Jacques—had ridden in the far quicker and much less cramped gondola lift.

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.

But thanks to their moles inside Section, Henrika and Anatoly had been tipped off, and I had ended up trapped in a minefield that Anatoly and his men had planted in one of the hotel’s lawns. I’d used my synesthesia to figure out where the bombs were buried and escaped the minefield, but the resulting explosion had still decimated the lawn. Anatoly had been killed during a fight at the hotel, but Henrika had escaped, and I had been tracking her ever since.

London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna. Henrika had led me on a merry chase, jet-setting from one city to another.

The whole point of Section 47 was to quietly, discreetly eliminate threats, as well as to make sure that regular mortals remained largely oblivious to the existence of paramortals, so no formal arrest warrants or charges had been filed against Henrika. As far as the general public knew, and as reflected on her social-media accounts, Henrika was having the time of her life on a whirlwind European vacation. She had dramatically increased her security and never stayed in one place more than a few days, but for the most part, she had the intelligence, money, contacts, and resources to go on living her life as though nothing much had changed.

It was going to change, though. Henrika Hyde was going to wind up in a Section black site or in the ground. I didn’t particularly care which one, as long as I found out whether she had any more moles embedded in the spy organization.

That alone would have been reason enough for me to track her, but Henrika had also given me a personal reason to hunt her down. She claimed to know exactly what had happened to my father, Jack Locke, a Section cleaner who had been killed on a mission roughly fifteen years ago. I’d thought I had put my father’s death behind me long ago, but Henrika’s taunting had opened old wounds, and I wanted answers.

But to get those answers, I had to catch up with the bitch first.

Over the past few months, I had studied every single aspect of Henrika’s life, including social-media posts about her favorite holiday parties, and I’d even gotten hold of her private Christmas card and gift lists. Henrika always sent the Eisen family a lavish present, and she had often frequented their annual Christmas Eve bash at Tannenbaum Castle. Hence my hope she would show up tonight.

But even if Henrika didn’t appear, I still might be able to find her, thanks to Elsa Eisen.

My plan was simple. I would wait for an opportunity to slip out of the ballroom, avoid the security guards roaming through the castle, and make my way to Elsa’s office. Once there, I would hack into her laptop and copy her files, along with whatever other paper records I could find, then leave the office and slip back into the party undetected.

I was already itching to get my hands on Elsa’s files and see what details they contained about Henrika. Maybe if I was lucky, I would even find some information on the Syndicate, a shadowy group of paramortal criminals and terrorists who occasionally worked together to trade secrets, sell weapons, and increase their own wealth, power, and reach. Most people in the intelligence community thought the Syndicate was nothing more than an urban legend, but my father had firmly believed in the group’s existence, and now I did, too.

A finger jabbed into my left shoulder. “Why are you just standing here?” Jacques made a sharp, shooing motion with his hand. “The guests are arriving! Go, go, go!”

He was right. Elsa and Lina were now standing by the open doors, greeting their guests.

“Start handing out champagne,” Jacques ordered. “Imbécile!”

My fingers clenched around the tray, and I longed to smash the whole thing into his face, champagne flutes and all. But that would only get me kicked out of the castle, so I pushed the angry urge aside, drew in a deep breath, and let out a slow, cleansing exhalation, just like I would on my yoga mat. Then I plastered a smile on my face and moved toward the glittering crowd.

Time for this sugar plum spy to get to work.