Finally, Toven emerged from the cockpit. As if sensing my nerves, he was instantly by my side, cuddling me close to him. “It’s going to be all right. I won’t let anything happen to you,” he cooed in my ear.
“I know. And I know I’m much more likely to get killed driving my car than in this airplane . . . I just can’t help it.”
He pried my fingers apart then laced his with mine. “I’ve survived a plane crash once. The odds of me being involved in another plane crash have to be astronomically low,” he tried to use reason to calm my rising nerves.
“I know it’s totally unreasonable. I’ll be fine once we take off . . . for the most part. Until it’s time to land.”
The seatbelt sign lit up as the plane’s engine revved. Toven fastened his then tightened mine. The jet taxied down the runway, making my heart race.
My heart took flight as the aircraft left the ground.
“You have to breathe, baby,” Toven murmured in my ear.
I smiled up at him over the endearment. The plane leveled out while I was focused on the expression in his eyes. I wanted to know what it meant. What everything between us meant. With a ding, the seatbelt sign went off.
With a click, I unfastened the buckle strapping me down. “How about that distraction?” I asked with a flirty wink.
Before he could unfasten his seatbelt, Ms. Busty from our first flight rolled a cart laden with food in our direction.
“Today I have some fruit and veggies. Oh, and some éclairs.”
“We’ll take a little of everything,” Toven said.
“Great. I just need to cut up the fruit.” Sarah slid a knife from the drawer and started slicing the apples and strawberries. The angle at which she leaned over the cart put her prominent cleavage on full display like a flashing neon sign.
In a flash, Toven unfastened his seatbelt so he could shift me closer to him.
Sarah cut her eyes at me, narrowing her gaze to a squint. Her lips tipped up in an evil sneer. The knife in her hand slipped and sliced her palm. Blood dripped as she held it up.
Toven didn’t even flinch. He barely glanced her way as he whipped the towel from the handle of the cart and tossed it to her.
“I think we can manage the rest on our own. Why don’t you go take care of that? We won’t be needing anything else during the flight.” His dismissal was curt and absolute.
Sarah wrapped the towel tightly around her hand and stalked up front. Toven cleaned up the blood on the cart and stashed the knife away. Then he fixed us a plate to share. After settling it on my lap, he stood and stowed the cart safely away.
Toven plopped down next to me, swiping the biggest éclair from the plate. I giggled as he took an indulgent bite. He held the other half up to my lips. The pastry was sweet and flaky, and the chocolate was decadent.
“So . . . I’m curious, but it might be none of my business. No, it’s definitely none of my business. Forget it,” I stammered, licking the cream off my fingers before plucking a strawberry from the plate.
“Ask anyway.” His thumb brushed across my bottom lip, capturing the juice that lingered there. He licked it off.
“I was wondering . . . about Cassandra,” I admitted shyly. I was curious about the stunning woman who had a hold on Toven I couldn’t compete with. Master or was it mistress? Creator?
He sank back against the cushions. “By the time I met Cassandra, she’d already been a vampire for over a hundred years. She was like a chameleon, moving from country to country, adopting new identities as she did. The woman is a genius. Anyway, when I met her, she was married to the Imperial Count, so a station above my adopted father. She heard me play at one of my parents’ parties and struck up a conversation with me. I was mesmerized by her and saw an opportunity in knowing her. She understood my passion in a way no one else seemed to. Just talking with her about my future made me high. Then she hired me to play one of her parties. It was going to be my chance and would open all the doors I wanted to waltz through. For weeks, I prepared, even composed a couple new pieces just for her party. The night of the party was when my life was supposed to start. Instead, it was the night my life ended.” He cracked open the lid on his bottle of blood and took a swig.
I squeezed his hand.
“She was so seductive. Hypnotic. It’s a gift my kind has perfected quite well. I had no idea when she offered to be my patron what all it would entail. I didn’t know what I was agreeing to. I only knew that I wanted what she seemed to be offering. An avenue to pursue my musical aspirations and become renowned. The sex she presented was just a bonus—I’d lusted after her for months. It was like a dream come true.” He gave a wry laugh. “My first time with her was when she turned me.”
“Did she help your career at least?” I asked, not wanting to discuss the earth-shattering sex I was sure they had. I mean, a woman like her who’d lived as long as she had must know things.
“She did do that at least. The doors she opened for me got me into places I never would’ve gone on my own. There’s no doubt she was instrumental in putting me in front of the right people. But then I began to resent her ownership of me, of my talent. Just because she gave me a chance didn’t mean I was nothing without her. But she convinced me of that for a long time. The longer I was with her, following whatever depraved whim she had at a given moment, the more of myself I lost. It’s what eventually sent me to Father Elmo.”
He grew silent as we both contemplated the reprieve Father Elmo had given him. Not to mention the impending end of that amnesty.
“And where does Circe fit into all this?” I asked.
“Circe was an unfortunate casualty in Cassandra’s battle for my heart. As time passed, I became more and more miserable with Cassandra. She’s a proud woman and cannot accept defeat under any circumstances. It was unfathomable to her why I’d be anything less than ecstatic being her most favorite plaything and bedmate. Cassandra thought if I had someone of my own, then I’d be happier. She thought my resentment was because I had to share her . . . attentions with all the other people who she toyed with. She couldn’t grasp the concept that I hated her and myself. Anyway, she found Circe in her travels and brought her to me half-dead. Cassandra planned for me to turn her, so I’d be Circe’s master. I refused. I thought the kind thing would be to let her die. Cassandra turned her anyway as a gift to me. It wasn’t Circe’s fault, and for a time, I did try to make things work with her. I just couldn’t. My self-loathing grew because Circe was a monster because of me. I couldn’t live with myself. That was ultimately the limit for me. It wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back. But it did set things in motion. I started actively seeking ways to end everything then.”
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Circe blames you,” I offered, wishing I could erase the misery from his face.
He gave me a sad smile. “I don’t think she does anymore either. But I still do.”
27
Toven
I needed a change of subject. “Tell me about your family,” I asked, equally desperate to know more about her as I was to stop talking about my screwed-up past.
Her eyes took on a faraway look. “My mom and I always had so much fun. She was a stay-at-home mom until I started school. I remember us having tea parties every day. She’d braid my hair and let me wear my princess dress. I’d help her make her special brownies. We’d dress up my dolls. She made me feel like our parties were the most important part of her day.” She took a deep breath. “Once I started school, she still managed to find time to be the room mom even though she went back to work. We were a happy family. She died before I hit the teenage years when girls seem to hate their mothers. I suppose I should be grateful for that at least . . .” she said wistfully.
“How did she die?” I asked quietly.
“Car accident. A drunk driver ran a stoplight one afternoon when she was on her way to pick me up from my piano lesson. I was twelve. I stopped playing after that. If I hadn’t been at those stupid lessons,
Mom wouldn’t have died.” Her eyes filled, and she blinked rapidly, trying to keep the tears from spilling.
I laced my fingers between hers, lending her quiet support. “So, did your dad work all the time?”
“He did work a lot. And sometimes he was stressed. But he tried really hard to leave work at work. And he always made an effort to be home by dinnertime. My mom would make these elaborate meals. She always said the way to show your husband that you loved him was to take good care of him. Make him feel like a king. And he certainly treated Mom like a queen. Sending her flowers just because or buying her a new scarf. Mom had this obsession with scarves. Even though we lived somewhere warm, she just loved them.” Celesta smiled at the memory.
“So, after your mom’s . . . accident, did your dad work less?”
“No. But by that time, he’d been with the company he was with for a while, so they allowed him to work from home for a while. It really helped those first few months after—”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to me. “I’m glad he was able to be there for you. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for him—losing the person he loved with all his heart plus being solely responsible for a child. It couldn’t have been easy.”
“You know, as an adult, I can look back and see there were times when he was barely holding it together. But in the moment, Dad never made it feel like a chore to take care of me. He changed up his work schedule so he could be more present in my life. He never missed any of my award ceremonies or teacher conferences. He easily could’ve retreated into himself, but he didn’t. He tried so hard to make me not feel like I was missing out by not having my mom there for things. But it was still hard for me to appreciate that sometimes. There are things a dad just doesn’t understand. My best friend’s mom helped out when things got desperate.” She giggled at some memory she wasn’t sharing.
I quirked my brow at her. “Oh really?”
“Yeah. Dad was not so good with bra shopping. Or the talk.” A loud laugh erupted from her lips.
“I can only imagine.” I smirked at her. I’d never given much thought to a parent’s role before. The age in which I grew up, parents were uninvolved. At least that was my experience. And once I was old enough to consider becoming a parent, it was some abstract consideration. And now . . . well, now there was no need for those thoughts.
“As I got older, I withdrew from him a little. But my friends were doing the same with their parents. It was normal. But I feel guilty now,” her voice cracked with her admission, and tears spilled from her eyes.
I pulled her onto my lap and hastily wiped the moisture from her cheeks. “Shh, it’s OK.” I rocked her against me.
“Maybe if I’d been around more I would’ve noticed him spiraling. Maybe I could’ve stopped him,” she choked out.
“Stopped him from what?” I asked.
“Fr-from k-killing himself.”
“Oh, my star. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” I didn’t know what else to say. In all the years I’d been on the Earth, I’d seen a lot of depressed people. Especially vampires.
“There was so much going on with him that I had no idea about. And I wasted all that time avoiding him because that’s what teenagers do. I’ll never get those moments back.”
I knew about regrets. I had plenty of them. And I was determined not to add to my long list of them. “How about we watch something?” I suggested, needing the distraction for both our sakes. Standing, I carried her to the bedroom and settled her on the mattress. With the press of a few buttons, I turned on the TV. After I toed off my shoes then slipped hers off, I climbed onto the bed with her. I offered her the remote so she could find something for us to watch.
She scrolled through the options, finally settling on season one of True Blood. I guessed it was time to see Hollywood’s latest interpretation of vampire life.
28
Celesta
I rolled over and cracked one eyelid open. Toven moved silently around the room in the dim light, pulling on his clothes.
“I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep, baby. It’s early especially since your body is probably still on California time,” he whispered as he walked over to me.
“Where are you going?” I rasped out in a sleepy tone.
“To the office. As much as I’d love to stay here in bed with you, I have some meetings this morning I can’t skip out on. Plus, I want to work on the music for Jim Gibson. Joe will bring you in later. So rest, my star.” He leaned down and pressed a soft, sweet kiss to my lips. Then he pulled the blanket more firmly over me, tucking me in.
After he left, I closed my eyes, willing sleep to take me back into its embrace. But the wound carved by my guilt festered and throbbed, preventing me from slipping back into oblivion. Talking about my dad yesterday reopened the barely scabbed injury.
Sighing heavily, I threw off the blankets and climbed out of bed. With an aching heart, I went to my room and tugged an unopened box of Dad’s files over to the bed. I couldn’t go back in time and spend more time with him. And I couldn’t force old me to notice little signs that I had to have missed. But I could find out who really stole that money. Then maybe some of the guilt would be assuaged.
I sat cross-legged in the center of the mattress and pulled a notebook from the box. Numbers and shorthand filled columns in Dad’s neat handwriting on the first few pages of it. It all appeared to balance to me. A page, halfway through the book, was folded in half. It was very odd. Dad didn’t fold pages. He didn’t even dog-ear pages in the mystery novels he read.
Carefully, I pressed the page open, running my palm across it to flatten it. It appeared to be a list of initials. Each set of initials had a string of numbers beside them except a couple at the bottom of the list. I couldn’t decipher anything from it, so I folded the page back down and hopped off the bed to go back to the stuff I was working on last. Maybe the answers to everything were in the list of discrepancies between Dad’s handwritten ledgers and the accounting files. Dad had killed himself before he finished making the list. I ran my finger down the list of dates. His list only contained the six months prior to his death, plus the entire year for 2009. That must be the year where he’d traced the first inconsistencies back to.
It was a tedious process to go through—each line item to match it up in the accounting file. I started highlighting the numbers in the file that were deficient according to Dad’s records and added the correct amount in an adjacent column.
After having dug through Dad’s notes for months now, I wasn’t any closer to figuring out where the money went or who framed him. And I was only just getting a handle on just how much money was unaccounted for. I threw my pencil across the room and huffed out a frustrated breath.
I stepped outside and found Joe waiting to drive me to the office. When he moved to open the back door for me, I stepped to the side and grabbed the passenger door handle.
“Can I sit up here, please?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied curtly.
I didn’t feel like being chauffeured around like I was someone important. I wasn’t.
Once Joe settled behind the wheel, I turned in the seat and examined the stoic man who I’d spent time with but knew nothing about.
“So, Joe, do you have a family?” I asked figuring it was a good topic for small talk.
A pained look crossed his face. “I do.”
Crap. Not a safe topic for small talk. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up a sore subject. I guess you outlived your family. I haven’t had a lot of practice communicating with vampires,” I rambled.
He chuckled. “It’s OK. I actually haven’t outlived my family. I honestly just try not to think about them because it hurts too much.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Ignore me.” I wiped my sweaty palms across my skirt.
“My wife . . . I guess ex-wife though we aren’t divorced, and my son, are still alive,” he offered quietly.
I didn’t know wha
t to say, so I remained quiet.
“Many years ago, I was a cop. It was just after the existence of vampires became public knowledge. Those were tumultuous times in a lot of places. Fear made people react poorly sometimes. Anyway, I came up on a mob beating a young vampire. She was in bad shape. I intervened and was fatally injured when one of the guys got my gun,” he spoke so softly.
“That’s horrible.” I couldn’t keep the horror out of my voice.
“It was. But the vampire saved me. Felt like she owed me. So she turned me. I feared what my family would think and for their safety. So, I let my death be reported to them.” He turned onto the busy highway.
“That must have been really hard.” I couldn’t imagine having to walk away from everyone I loved. Toven had to do that two centuries ago. My heart ached in a new way for him and Joe.
“It was. I watched them from afar for a few years. Seeing them grieve was almost unbearable. My boy, Joe Jr, was only thirteen at the time. Such a young age to lose his father and to become the man of the house. Then my wife, she finally met someone . . .. That’s when I left. I couldn’t stay for that.”
I reached over and rested my hand on his arm. I’m sorry seemed so inadequate of a response.
“My boy followed in my footsteps. I watched from the shadows when he graduated from the academy. He retired from the force and now is in private security. He protects some rock band or something. Guess he’s a lot like me, now that I think of it.” Joe shook his head, a tiny smile of pride on his lips.
“Of course, he’s like you. You might not have been there for his later years, but you were there for his formative ones. You were a hero in your son’s eyes. I’m sure he wanted to grow up and be just like you.”
“Maybe,” he said. He pulled into the parking garage. “You’re cleared to use your palm to go straight down to UG2.” The car stopped alongside the elevator. Joe hastily got out and zipped to my door.
Blood Song: Refrain (Blood Song Series Book 2) Page 26