by Barb Hendee
This was new.
Whatever had happened in Denver, it had altered Philip.
Eleisha, on the other hand, hadn’t said a word about the entire journey. And Wade knew better than to press her. After Robert’s death, she’d disappeared inside herself for a while, but she’d eventually come out of it.
She just didn’t handle failure well, and she always blamed herself.
Tonight, she’d gone into the churchyard to weed the gardens. That was good sign. She always liked working in the garden.
Wandering through the maze of couches and bookshelves in the sanctuary, he walked outside to go find her.
Julian put his horse inside the stall and brought it a bucket of fresh water. Then he put the saddle away and headed back toward the manor.
His mind drifted as he walked, and he was taken unawares by how quickly he reached the mudroom. Stepping inside, he couldn’t help remembering a time when this room was filled with barking, wriggling spaniels and men pulling on their coats and loading guns for a shooting party.
In truth, the memory was a welcome distraction. For the past two weeks, he’d been torn over what to do about Mary.
She’d not only disobeyed him in Denver. She had forced him into action.
After encountering Simone, he’d finally understood a few of Mary’s desperate speeches. Her instincts had been good, but it would be dangerously wrong to simply let her behavior pass.
Yet what enraged him, what troubled him, was . . . even though he had to punish her, there was nothing he could think to do.
He couldn’t strike her. He couldn’t lock her up without food.
And he couldn’t send her back. That was the crux. Without her, he was blind. He could attempt calling another ghost, but the truth was, she fit his needs perfectly, and he might never find another like her.
He’d never found himself in this position before, and he hated it.
Walking to the study, he pondered this dilemma. Then he opened the study door and started slightly at finding Mary inside, next to the round table. She was waiting here for him?
“Mary,” he said before he could stop himself.
She looked at him warily. They hadn’t spoken much since that night in Denver. He’d decided not to punish Jasper—who’d believed he was only following orders—and so Jasper was back in San Francisco.
But what should he do about her?
“Yeah, I came to report,” she said. “Wade was back at his computer tonight. He took notes and looked at some maps. I think he’s getting ready to send Seamus out again. I thought you’d want to know.”
“Where to? Are they focusing back on London?”
“I’m not sure yet. He was working alone.”
Beneath this tense exchange flowed a volume of words they had not spoken.
“All right,” he said. “Just go back and keep a close watch. Let me know as soon as you have a location.”
“Okay.”
He expected her to vanish. But she didn’t. Instead, she floated closer.
“So, we’re just going to keep acting like nothing happened?” she asked. Her eyes were challenging, but she wasn’t stupid enough to dare him to send her back to the gray plane.
He straightened to full height, looking down his nose. “I have no idea what you mean.”
She stared at him and then floated backward as the silent truth became clear. No matter what she did, he wasn’t going to send her back.
This changed everything.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I learn anything,” she said.
She vanished.
Alone in the study, he thought about those last words and her apparent willingness to still assist him. Perhaps nothing had changed after all.
Eleisha sat beside Robert’s grave, pretending to pull weeds.
She’d been struggling these past weeks to try to understand everything that had happened in Denver.
She’d failed Maggie.
She’d lost Maggie’s child.
But to her shame, she was not in mourning. The emotions passing through her did not feel even close to the pain of Robert’s loss.
Worse, the same scene kept replaying in her mind: of Julian taking Simone’s head off.
Julian was the enemy. He’d plagued their footsteps and murdered his own kind. She viewed Robert as a paragon on the other end of the spectrum. But what would have happened if Robert had walked into that hotel room and seen Eleisha locked out on the balcony?
He’d have done the exact same thing that Julian did.
In her heart, she knew this.
She had gone to save a lost vampire from loneliness and from Julian. In turn, he’d saved her, and she couldn’t even bring herself to blame him for killing Simone. The lines were growing too blurred. Her purpose, which had once been so clear, seemed a dark muddle.
“What do we do now?” she asked Robert.
A twig snapped, and she looked over to see Wade walking toward her though the lilac bushes.
Wearing jeans and a gray T-shirt, he pushed his white-blond hair back with one hand as he walked. There was something different about him, but she couldn’t figure out what. Perhaps a confidence or determination she’d never noticed? He’d set up a gym in the congregation’s old kitchen, and he’d been spending a good deal of time there. His forearms were beginning to look harder and more defined.
“I thought you were pulling weeds,” he said, coming up and kneeling down beside her.
“I am. But I was just thinking.”
“Me, too. I think we should send Seamus to London.”
She looked away. She wasn’t so sure.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, and again, his voice sounded . . . different.
She wasn’t certain how to explain her doubts. “Julian’s tracked us down twice now, murdered a vampire we were trying to bring home, and then left me alone. He carried me in from the balcony and put me inside a bathroom so I’d be safe. Why would he do that? And how does he always know exactly where we are? And if he knows where we are, why hasn’t he ever attacked us here at the church?”
Her words were quite a speech for Wade to take in.
“I don’t know,” he answered, but he didn’t sound so sure.
“You think he’s using us, don’t you?” she asked, nervous that he might agree.
He was quiet for a while.
“The thought has occurred,” he finally said. “But we can’t just stop looking. There are still vampires like Rose, like Robert, hiding all alone.” His jaw twitched. “We do need to change tactics though, work together better, and make sure we get the next one home.”
She winced. “You think it’s our fault . . . mine and Philip’s.”
“You shouldn’t have split up,” he answered coldly. Then his tone softened. “But I don’t think anyone could have helped Simone. Not after what Philip told me. And that’s another thing. We’re going to have to be a lot more careful before we approach the next one. Every situation is going to be different. I don’t think I quite realized that before.” He paused. “I am sorry that Julian was so close and neither one of you had a chance to kill him.”
Her eyes widened. “Kill him?”
He seemed taken aback by her response. “If you had the chance, you’d take him out, wouldn’t you?”
She hesitated before answering. “Yes . . . yes, you know I would.”
“Good.” He nodded. “Because I’d put six bullets in his chest and let Philip take his head in a heartbeat.”
She studied his face. He was different.
He stood up. “I want to get started again. As soon as possible. Are you on board?”
“Yes.”
And she was. As he headed back toward the church, she realized he was right. No matter what, they couldn’t stop. Even if Julian was using them like bloodhounds, they couldn’t stop. What would Rose’s existence be like without the underground? Or Philip’s? Or her own?
She’d promised Robert that she would find any other
s and teach the laws and reinstitute the old ways. Reaching out, she touched his headstone. Then she stood up.
“Wade,” she called.
He stopped.
“Wait for me.”
Half turning, he watched as she hurried to join him.
Near the end of the wee hours before dawn, Philip stopped by his bedroom and gathered all the pillows off his bed. Since their return from Denver, his clothes had slowly migrated to Eleisha’s closet, but he’d decided to move some of his other things to her room.
It made him feel more anchored.
He’d been worried that she’d ask him again what had happened with Simone in Denver, that she wouldn’t be able to let it go. Although she was aware that whatever had happened was bad, she had no idea how bad.
But she hadn’t asked him.
For some reason, he’d felt an unfamiliar need to make up for his dark secrets by working harder at home, trying to be of more use to Wade . . . even to Rose.
He did not know how the future would play out, if he would be completely able to exist as Robert had, as Eleisha and Rose did now. But he was going to try. He wanted to become the person Eleisha thought he already was.
That was something else he’d learned since returning. He’d always known that Eleisha had a somewhat different view of him than Wade did, but sharing a mental connection with Rose had been even more eye-opening. During their sessions together, she’d tried to hide her opinion of him, but he’d caught several flashes. She viewed him as heartless, self-centered, violent, and childish. Worse, she had no idea what Eleisha saw in him.
This perspective was like a splash of cold water.
Maybe he’d been relying on his gift too long, which made everyone see him as perfect. He had learned a few hard truths from Simone, such as the dangers of believing his own gift.
Walking down the hallway with his armload of pillows, he used one hand to open the door to Eleisha’s room.
She was at her dressing table in a white cotton nightgown, using one of Maggie’s silver brushes, stroking it through her hair.
Smiling at him in the mirror, she said, “What are those?”
“Pillows.”
“I can see that. Don’t I have enough in here?”
“No.”
He didn’t need to use his gift on her. She already saw him as he wanted to be seen. He’d found ways to be more useful to Wade and Rose, but he most wanted to give Eleisha . . . something, and until tonight, he’d had no idea what.
He’d caught a few thoughts in Rose’s mind when her block failed briefly.
I wish Philip would let Eleisha talk to him about William, Maggie, and Robert. She can talk to me, but she wants to talk to him. I can feel it. He knew them all.
Philip had no objection to Eleisha speaking of her own past. He just feared it might cross the line into his own—and he didn’t want to talk or think about his own past.
He still did not understand Eleisha’s need to dwell on things that could not be changed, but he knew that in spite of Simone’s mania, of her madness, Eleisha still blamed herself for failing to bring Maggie’s child home. She blamed herself for too much.
Walking to the bed, he dropped the pillows.
“You’re using Maggie’s brushes?” he asked. So far, she’d only laid them out as some kind of shrine.
“Do you think she’d mind?”
“No.” He sat on the bed. “You cared for her.”
She turned, looking at him almost warily, as if unsure what he meant.
“It’s all right if you want to tell me about the time you spent with her,” he said. “Or about William. You can even show me memories.”
She stood up, walking to him. “You don’t mind?”
“No, I don’t. . . . I should listen. Just don’t ask me anything about myself.”
Her lower lip trembled, and he could see she found his offer momentous, which only made him feel more guilty that something so simple affected her this much. He should have offered long ago.
The sky was growing lighter.
“Close the blinds,” he said. “We can talk tonight.”
While she prepped the room for daylight hours, he stacked all the pillows against the headboard of her bed and then pulled his shirt off. When she came to him, he was half sitting with his back propped up. He’d sometimes slept this way in the past and found it comfortable.
But no matter what position he was in, she always seemed to know what to do. Joining him, she curled up in a ball and laid her head on his stomach with her face looking up toward his.
“Philip?”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
He put his hand on the top of her head. “Sleep now.”
Just past sunrise that morning, Wade walked through the sanctuary alone. He’d sent Seamus to London a few hours before, and now he was stuck in wait-and-see mode.
He made sure all the doors and windows were locked, and then he decided to go cook breakfast and watch the morning news. But after coming out the bottom of the stairwell, he turned left and went down the hall to Philip’s room, cracking the door.
It was empty.
The closet door was open, and half his clothes were gone. So were the pillows from his neatly made bed.
Wade walked farther down the hall and went into Eleisha’s room.
Philip’s clothes were hanging in her closet. But he’d also piled all his pillows on her bed, and he was sleeping in a half-sitting position. Eleisha was curled into a little ball with her head on his stomach. Wade had never seen them sleep quite like this before.
As he stood over them, he no longer felt like some unbalanced voyeur. He felt more like their watcher, someone to protect them during daylight hours.
Maybe this was just an excuse to himself, but he didn’t care.
Stepping closer, he took in the lines of Eleisha’s face, of her hair stretched out across Philip’s stomach.
Then he left the room.
Hopefully, Seamus would be back before long with some concrete news. Wade wanted to begin a new search as soon as possible.
But one thing was certain.
He was never staying behind again.
Not ever.
Barb Hendee grew up just north of Seattle, Washington. She completed a master’s degree in composition theory at the University of Idaho, and then taught college English for ten years in Colorado. She and her husband, J.C., are coauthors of the bestselling Noble Dead Saga. They live in a quirky little town near Portland, Oregon, with two geriatric and quite demanding cats. Visit Barb’s Web site at www.barbhendee.com.