Fangs for Sharing (Supernatural in Seattle #1)

by Bella Jacobs

  I take a quick shower and dress in a sinfully soft, pale pink velvet tracksuit I find in my closet, leaving my hair to air dry as I pad across the hall to Leerie’s room and knock on the door.

  “Come in, Eliza,” she calls.

  I wrinkle my nose as I pop inside, shutting the door behind me. “How did you know it was me?”

  Leerie, decked out in a dark green maxi dress that sets off her fiery hair, is lounging in a padded armchair in front of her open windows, reading what looks like a very old book. She lifts her gaze, smiling at me over the top of the pages. “You knock like an Eliza, of course. How did you sleep?”

  “Good,” I lie, crossing to the sitting area and crawling into the overstuffed chair next to hers. “But something’s bothering me. Something Leo said last night while we were in the armory.”

  “How did that go?” She tucks a tissue into the book to mark her place and sets it on the table between us. “I assume he gave you a weapon of some kind? Something to help with the shifting? I’m so curious. Vampires have the best weapon collections, the Strife shiver, especially. I believe they even have a few fairy-forged defenses, which are ridiculously rare. My people usually keep all the good stuff for themselves. Did you see any glittering dresses? Something in silver or gold, maybe, with the power to make the person wearing it disappear?”

  “Maybe,” I say, even though I absolutely know what she’s talking about and could point her to exactly where the dresses are. But Leerie and I have been friends a long time, and I know better than to give my tight-lipped roomie information she wants before I’ve used it for leverage. “Want to play I’ll show you yours if you show me mine?”

  Her eyes narrow. “That’s nonsense. And no, I don’t want to play that game. Whatever it is, if Leo wanted you to know, he would have told you himself. And I don’t like to gossip.”

  “Not true. You love to gossip, as long as it’s something you want to gossip about.” I swing my legs up and over the arm of the chair, pointing my toes in their cushy white tennis shoes. “Like, enchanted fairy dresses I might have seen, for example…”

  Leerie grunts. “Fine. One question. That’s it.”

  Resisting the urge to clap my hands, I ask, “Leo said he learned his lesson about lovely, fragile things the hard way. What does that mean?”

  “He said that to you?” Leerie’s brows shoot up her pale forehead, and heat creeps into her eyes. “After I warned him and Rourke to keep their hands off of you upon penalty of penis chopping?”

  I grimace. “I don’t think you put that fine a point on it.”

  “That’s what I meant, and they both knew it. And yet Leo still decided it would be a good idea to come on to you while my back was turned.”

  “He wasn’t coming on to me,” I huff. “It was the total opposite. He was pushing me away.”

  Leerie’s eyes go wide, but I cut her off before she can threaten to amputate any parts of me, “I wasn’t coming on to him, either! We were just talking about how I should behave while I’m here, how to make sure the master realizes that Rourke, Leo, and I are never going to be more than friends.”

  She harumphs as if she isn’t quite buying that, but when she speaks her voice is more relaxed than it was a moment before. “That’s a good suggestion. Gloria already has enough ideas. No need to encourage them.”

  “Right,” I agree, nodding. “So…the lovely and fragile thing?”

  Leerie sighs. “Oh, that… It’s not a happy story, I’m afraid. Fifty or sixty years ago, before the shiver prince in line ahead of Leo was killed and Leo advanced to second-in-command, he was married to a mortal woman. Her name was Eleanor. She was a brilliant artist, a sculptor. The sort who could chip away at solid rock until it softened and gave up all its secrets.”

  I cross my arms, sensing that she’s talking about stony Leo as much as literal rock. “So she was good for him.”

  “Very good, at least from what I hear.” Leerie glances out the window, where the sun is beginning its leisurely, late-spring descent toward the horizon. “According to the gossip, they were very much in love and very happy and in the process of adopting a child. Leo using an assumed identity, of course, to explain why a centenarian was looking so spry.”

  My stomach twists. “But something went horribly wrong. Just tell me. Quick. Like ripping off a bandage. You know I hate bad suspense.”

  “The Strife shiver can’t make new vampires until the curse is broken,” Leerie says, still watching the sun. “So Leo couldn’t offer his wife immortality or the enhanced strength and magic of a vampire. But even if he could have given her the Blood Kiss, rumor was Eleanor would have refused it. She wanted the sun, mortality, a human life, even though it meant she would eventually die, while Leo remained on this plane without her.”

  “So she died of old age?” I ask hopefully, though my gut is assuring me that’s not how this story ends.

  Leerie turns back to me. “No. She was murdered. By vampire hunters, they think, though they never caught the monsters who slaughtered the woman Leo loved and left pieces of her scattered through their home.”

  I cover my mouth with my hand.

  “They say there was an organ in every room,” Leerie continues, “and they found her head on a pike in the middle of their garden, in a patch of night-blooming jasmine.”

  “Oh God,” I whisper. “Poor Leo. Poor Eleanor.”

  “Loving a vampire is dangerous,” Leerie says. “And it isn’t just the vampire hunters or other supernatural species you have to worry about. It’s other vampires—from rival shivers, even from your own family—who decide to clear a path to the power or status they crave.” She pauses before adding in a softer voice, “A vampire prince is an especially appealing target for the ruthlessly ambitious.”

  Swinging my legs off the arm of the chair, I sit up straight, hands balled into fists on my thighs. “You think someone might want to hurt Leo?”

  “Kill him,” Leerie corrects. “And I’m sure more than one someone wants exactly that. Rourke isn’t safe, either. The Famine shiver isn’t as cutthroat as the Strife, but Rourke’s been the prince for nearly eighty years without finding a woman both he and the Strife prince can agree on. His superiors were understanding for a time—everyone knew Leo was grieving the loss of his wife and that a one-of-a-kind woman is hard to find—but patience is wearing thin. The Strife and Famine ranks are dwindling, and neither can replenish their shiver until the curse is broken. If Leo and Rourke don’t seal the deal soon…”

  “You knew that and you still let them come sniffing around our place,” I say, shocked at my usually kind-to-a-fault friend’s behavior. “When you knew for a fact you were never going to marry either of them? Let alone both of them?”

  “I didn’t let them do anything,” Leerie says calmly. “Leo and Rourke are their own people. If I said ‘never’ and they chose to assume I meant ‘maybe,’ that was their choice. We’ve been friends since long before I was the only living earth fairy princess. They should know better than to think that when I say’ no’ I mean anything other than just that.”

  My lips part, but words stick in my throat as I digest the information hidden in that confession. “What do you mean before you were the only living princess? You’ve never mentioned a sister.”

  She lifts one bare shoulder and lets it fall. “Tatiana and I were never close. She was younger, from a different mother, a bastard raised to believe I was the only thing standing between her and the status she deserved.”

  “What happened to her?” I ask, before adding quickly, “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. If it’s painful to talk about.”

  Leerie’s lips curve ever so slightly. “It’s not painful. Just sad. Like I said, I didn’t know her well. We only saw each other two or three times a year, at court festivals where it would have been an insult to my parents for any of the court’s children not to attend. Even the bastards were expected. My mother has two bastard sons, as well. Boys can’t inherit the
throne, so Soren and Bale and I have always been good friends.” She stands, crossing to the coffee bar beside the window. “But Tatiana was born bitter and jealous and the cousins who raised her encouraged it. They hoped to have her ear if she gained the throne and influence her to take our people in a direction less peaceful than my parents have favored for the past thousand years.”

  My shoes sink into the thick carpet as I lean forward. The suspense is killing me, but this story clearly isn’t easy for Leerie to tell, and I don’t want to rush her.

  “Everyone expected Tatiana to issue an official challenge to the line of succession sooner or later.” Leerie fills the coffee maker’s reservoir and drops a pod into place. “If she had, we would have fought to the death in front of the court. Whoever was still breathing at the end would have dethroned my mother and been declared queen.”

  “Jesus.” I press a fist to where my heart is beating fast. Not fast enough to force a shift, but enough that I wish I’d brought Pearl with me, just in case. I make a mental note to go grab her as soon as the story is finished and say, “But you didn’t have to, right? They didn’t make you kill your own sister?”

  Leerie snaps the lid down onto the pod with a sharp click. “No, I didn’t. My father arranged to have her murdered in her sleep before she could issue the challenge.” She turns, her expression eerily calm as she adds, “That’s the thing Tatiana never understood. My father loved her, yes, but he loved me more. He’s a good man, but he plays favorites. So when my mother told him to take care of the problem…he did.”

  I stand, hurrying across the room to pull Leerie in for a hug. “Wow, mama, I’m so sorry. That’s just…awful. I hate that you had to go through that. That you’re still going through that.” I pull back, peering up into her face. ‘That’s why you and your mom aren’t speaking, I’m guessing?”

  She nods. “And why I don’t go home for solstice anymore. I think I could have talked Tatiana out of fighting to the death. Either before the challenge or during. At least I would have had the chance to save her. But now her blood is on my hands.”

  “That’s not true.” I shake my head. “You’re not to blame for any of that. Not one little bit.”

  “But I am,” she says. “I’m a princess, and with great power comes great responsibility.”

  “Isn’t that Spiderman’s theme song?”

  “It’s a motto, not a song,” she says with a sniff. “And yes, it is. You know I can’t get enough of men in tight red jammies.”

  Before I can suggest a Spiderman marathon to help while away the rest of the afternoon—and put our thoughts in a happier place—there’s a soft knock at the door and Leerie calls, “Come in, Jamal.”

  I frown, and she smiles, adding, “He knocks like a Jamal, of course.”

  I turn to see a curly-haired man with dark-copper skin, a jaunty black goatee, and kind brown eyes waving from the door. “Sorry to interrupt, princess, but I’ve been sent to fetch your lovely companion. Prince Rourke has a surprise for her in the annex.”

  I glance up at Leerie, but she shoos me along. “Go. Have fun. I’ll see you at dinner. I think the boys have something romantic planned in the garden. But their plan will fail, of course, now that we’re both immune to romance.”

  “Completely immune,” I lie.

  Leerie arches a brow. “Just keep one foot on the ground, pumpkin. And remember this is all temporary for us. We have simpler, easier, lovelier things waiting in our futures.”

  I nod, determined to be as grounded as Leerie. Someday. Maybe by the time I’m two hundred.

  I hug her goodbye and follow Jamal out of the room into the hall, headed for a surprise I can’t help but be excited about. Almost as excited as I am to see Rourke and Leo again once the sun finishes its seductive slip below the hills.

  Chapter 9

  If Sven is a glass of prune juice with extra lemon, Jamal is a fine pinot noir—one sip and you know you’ve found something you’ll want to enjoy for a while.

  He’s one of those effortlessly charming and efficient people who seems to light up the world wherever he goes. As we make our way downstairs, he texts the gardeners about a problem with the duck pond, pauses to adjust flower arrangements, and offers compliments to the window washers and household staff, all while making me feel like the center of his attention with frequent smiles and amusing stories.

  “And since that fateful day, not a single four-legged friend has set foot in the castle out of respect for Belinda’s sacrifice,” Jamal says, as we pause near the exit to the great lawn, in front of a portrait of a woman with long golden hair and a lap full of corgis.

  I nod slowly. “Wow. So…vampires can survive on animal blood?”

  “Survive, but not thrive,” Jamal says, “which is the reason only six of the twenty souls trapped in the castle during the Siege of Bethel’s Coven survived. Belinda, sadly, was not one of them. Couldn’t bring herself to feed on her babies.” He clucks his tongue. “I can’t say I’d be any different. My little Jezebel is my world. I’d rather chew off my own hand than harm a hair on my darling’s sweet head.”

  “What breed is she?” I ask, following him through the French doors and out into the warm evening.

  “Rescue mutt.” He flashes his almost impossibly white teeth, and I wonder who does his bleaching. My pearly whites could use an equally super shine-up before the competition. “With a heavy dose of miniature pinscher. She has the most adorable spindly legs. Like a fawn. So elegant and ladylike.”

  I grin as I motion toward his suit coat pocket. “I know you have pictures.”

  Jamal laughs. “Oh, I do. But if we start that, I’ll never get you where you’re going. I’ll pull up my favorites tonight, and we can have show-and-tell tomorrow afternoon when I bring your breakfast.” He cocks his head, shooting me a discreetly curious look from the corners of his dark eyes. “I’m assuming you’ll be on vampire time during your stay? The better to enjoy your hosts’ company?”

  “Yes, I suppose so.” I twine my fingers together in front of me as we cross the wide, luscious lawn, bound for an outbuilding with a roof shaped like a circus tent. “Though, I’m hoping my stay won’t be too long. I’m so grateful for the hospitality and protection, but I have a life to live and bills to pay.”

  “Oh, the bills are taken care of, sweetie.” Jamal waves a breezy, heavily-ringed hand. “That was the first item of business on my list this morning. Mr. Poplov may be a prince with unlimited resources, but he remembers what it’s like to live a human life. You’re in good hands with him.” He clears his throat before adding in a voice almost too soft to hear, “Not like some of the others.”

  “Like who?” I ask. “Leerie was telling me this morning how dangerous vampire politics can be. Is there anyone I should be careful of? Avoid if possible?”

  “Oh everyone, darling,” Jamal murmurs, shielding his mouth with his fingers as he adds, “especially the people in charge. Don’t buy their folksy routine for a hot minute. They’re the worst of the worst. Agendas for days.”

  “Oh yeah?” I ask, chewing on the corner of my lip. “Not even the master?”

  “She’s definitely got her own priorities,” he says, the merry light fading from his eyes. “But if you keep your guard up and aren’t afraid to defend yourself, you’ll be fine. Survivors always survive, even during times of upheaval. At least, that’s what I’ve seen in the two hundred years I’ve been serving the castle.”

  My jaw drops, but before I can ask how he’s lived that long without being a vampire—that we’ve made it all the way across the sunny grass to the circus-tent building without him catching fire proves he’s not—he winks and wags a finger. “We’ll have time for gossip later. Now get in there and show this man what you’re made of.” He taps my chin lightly until my lips close. “There you go. Pretty as any picture and three times as lively. You’re going to slay those other pageant girls.”

  I blink. “How did you know? About the pageant?”

  “
I know a lot of things.” He sweeps aside his thick brown curls to reveal a third eye in the center of his forehead, this one bright blue instead of warm brown. “And from what I’m seeing so far, you’ve got an excellent chance at claiming that crown, girl.”

  I nod, playing it cool, pretending I’m accustomed to new friends revealing their extra body parts on first acquaintance. “Oh. Well. Good. That’s great. Thanks so much.”

  Jamal’s third eye winks at me with a sassiness in keeping with the rest of him. “Good luck.” He tugs his buzzing phone from his pocket. “Now, I’ve got to jet. Looks like those ducks have decided they don’t want to be relocated to the south side of the pond, after all.”

  “Thank you.” I wave as he backs away, waiting until he turns to walk briskly across the lawn toward the water glittering in the near distance before pulling my own phone and jabbing out a text to the man standing in the way of pageant gold.

  I almost died last night, Eugene, and I know that’s not what you want. You’re a good person, not a murderer. Please, let me meet you tonight, at the university lab or wherever you’ll be able to fix me without getting in trouble. I don’t want you to lose your job or your license, I just want my life back. We can move past this and be friends and no one ever has to know. Okay?

  I stare at the screen, willing him to reply. But there are no words, no bubbles, no sign of a response. My ex is clearly back to being an uncommunicative dickhead butt-face.

  The reminder of my poor taste in men makes me roll my shoulders back and lift my chin, determined not to get in too deep with any of the vampires in this castle, even the ones I call friends.

  Willpower ramped up to full strength, I push open the door of the building to enter a brightly lit hallway lined with teal tables topped with bouquets of pink wild roses and green herbs. It’s the most beautiful entryway I’ve ever seen—the paintings on the walls are clearly originals, heart-lifting Pacific Northwest landscapes that showcase the region’s natural beauty—and the flowers smell so delicious I can’t resist leaning in to draw the sweet scent of them into my soul.