by Ranae Glass
Mom pulled a letter out of her pocket and handed it to me, explaining, “Sarah just got a new scholarship. Isn’t that wonderful? She doesn’t have to pay back a single penny and it covers everything. There’s even a stipend for food and books.”
Mom beamed as I read over the letter. “I’ve never heard of the Marie San Lucas Memorial Scholarship.”
“Neither had I. Apparently, it’s relatively new, set up by a family member who came into some money and wanted to put it to good use,” she said.
I whistled when I got to the bottom of the page where it outlined the total amount of the scholarship. “This is a lot of money, Mom.”
She snatched the paper from my fingers and tucked it back in the pocket of her apron. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, Isabel.”
I was momentarily stunned. The relief was slow to sink in, but once it did, it warmed me all over. This freed up a huge chunk of my money, enough that I could go on a real vacation. I hadn’t been on one in years, since before Dad died. And I could get a new car if I wanted. I could fix up the house a bit.
I was still daydreaming when Mom snapped her fingers at me. Blinking, I looked at her.
“Rude, isn’t it?” she said in her mom tone.
“I’m just so… happy for Sarah.”
“Uh-huh. I’m proud of her too. She’s doing so well.”
I spun, resisting the impulse to run to the table and sing the good news to Shane, and took a step before turning around again. “Oh, I almost forgot. Can we get some lunch?”
Mom smiled, sliding the check back across the counter. “On the house, kiddo.”
i
Lunch turned into a bit of a celebration during which Shane and I came up with all sorts of impractical ways to spend my newfound money. It really wasn’t that much money, but it was a hefty chunk that would rack up very quickly if I was careful with it.
“You could take a trip to Hawaii?” Shane suggested. “Or buy a new car. Ooh, I know, a big-screen TV. The kind that comes in 3-D.”
“Or I could put a pool table up in the attic. You know, we could move your bed into a nice dank crypt somewhere.”
He shuddered. “You are a cruel woman, Isabel.”
I took a big gulp of soda, knowing I’d end up tucking it away for a rainy day. Not fun, but responsible. Shane did convince me to take the first check, the one I was going to give to my mother, and use some of it to buy myself something nice.
A reward for being such a great sister, he told me.
But before I could do any of that, I had to play chauffeur and take Shane to the Conclave.
The Charleston Conclave was a sprawling, pre-Civil War estate nestled on a rolling hillside. It was every bit a southern mansion. Pulling up to the front steps in my beat-up Taurus, I waved at Cage, an overly muscled guard who’d once stepped between an angry she-vamp and me. He didn’t wave back, but he acknowledged me with a nod.
“You have everything you need?” I asked, taking stock of the grounds. There were a lot of guards, a lot more than normal.
“Yes, Mommy.”
“Hey,” I motioned to the extra bodies on patrol, “what’s with the extra security?”
Shane puckered his lips. I could tell by his pained expression that he was debating how much to tell me.
“There have been some threats since the incident with Pastor Marlowe,” he admitted finally.
“What kind of threats?”
“The kind I’m really not supposed to talk about, much less share specifics on. Sorry, Izz.”
I swallowed the nasty comment fighting its way up my throat. I had been the one who discovered Marlowe was setting up the vamps for murder and using vampire blood to experiment on his daughter. Hell, I’d risked my life trying to stop him. At the end of the day, I’d been the one to kill him too.
Lousy, ungrateful vampires.
“Fine, whatever,” I finally managed in a clipped tone.
Shane opened the door and looked back at me with one eyebrow raised. “Those are two of the most dangerous words in a woman’s vocabulary.”
I gripped the steering wheel tightly. My mood had quickly gone from excited to ticked off, and it really wasn’t his fault. He’d sworn an oath of loyalty to Xavier and the Conclave. He was just keeping his word.
So why did it hurt so much?
Just as I was about to peel gravel outta there, my door swung open and Xavier was standing there.
“Going to leave without saying hello?” he asked, feigning insult.
“Hey Xavier. How’d you know I was here?” I asked, not yet ready to surrender the safety of my car.
He smiled, leaning his backside against the inside of the door, propping it open. “I heard you pull up. I was just in my office.”
I tried very hard to remember exactly where in the mansion his office was located. As I remembered, one window faced out to the back of the property.Oh, vampire hearing, I reminded myself as I finally shifted into park and turned off the engine. Apparently, I wasn’t getting out of there that easily.
“Would you care to join me for a walk?” Xavier asked, holding out one perfectly manicured hand. I shrugged and accepted it, letting him gently pull me out of my seat.
Behind me, Shane bristled and slammed his own door. He gave me an over-the-shoulder wave as he dutifully marched up the stairs and into the foyer. I couldn’t help but notice his posture as he moved. He was angry, that much was obvious by the rigidity of his shoulders and back. What struck me as odd though was the fact that he didn’t look at me. Not even a glance over his shoulder as he held up a hand. It was less a wave and more of a dismissal. Like he was releasing me from something. It was ado whatever you want but don’t say I didn’t warn you wave.
“Um, I suppose I have time for a quick walk.” I hesitated as the large, wooden doors closed, swallowing Shane whole.
With one graceful maneuver, Xavier took my hand and wound it around his arm, closing my door with his foot as he led me toward the rose garden in the side yard.
Whatever threats he was getting must have been serious to have security so on edge. He didn’t acknowledge them, but they seemed to be working like bees buzzing around the queen as we walked. It might have looked like unorganized chaos to someone at a glance, but I had always been good at spotting patterns. The guards who stood on the balconies swept the grounds with a long glance every three minutes on rotation beginning with the one nearest to the front door. He would glance, and then the next guard would look, and so on, all the way around the building. The guards walking were stepping in long, slow steps that, had they been moving any faster, would have looked like a waltz. Each man moved in a grid pattern around us, never face to face but always back to back with each other. Once I recognized the pattern, it began to make me very nervous. Sure, everything looked calm, but it was like surface tension. Beneath the calm exterior, something big was churning. I listened to Xavier ramble about the weather and the flowers for only a few minutes before I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Alright. What’s the deal?” I demanded, sliding my arm out of his and resting my hands on my hips.
For the briefest second, a look crossed Xavier’s face that smacked of guilt, but he recovered it quickly, putting back on the façade of calm neutrality that he wore like an expensive suit.
“I only wanted the pleasure of your company,” he said, turning on his charming smile.
I folded my arms across my chest and raised one eyebrow, not buying the act for a second.
Now he sighed and raised his arms in defeat. “Fine. You are right. As always, you are disturbingly perceptive for a human. I only want to properly thank you for coming to Devon’s aid last night.”
I shook my head. “Still not buying it, but for the record, you’re welcome. And…” I paused, taking a sharp breath. Something had occurred to me, just in that moment. As the drone bees continued to circle us, I wondered if I really wanted to kick that particular hornet’s nest.
“And?” he ask
ed, his voice light.
I bit my bottom lip. Fine, in for a penny, in for a pound, my mother always said.
“Well, it’s just that…how far can you hear?” I asked, hoping he might put the pieces together himself.
“A few hundred yards very clearly, and a bit beyond that if I strain. Why the interest in my auditory abilities?” he had quickly gone from amused to suspicious.
“It’s just that, well, I was thinking. Devon obviously got himself in trouble with someone. A human someone, judging by the fact that he wasn’t, you know, eaten or anything. But then, if someone had cornered him across the street from your club, where I found him—I mean, that was what, maybe one hundred yards from the club? If someone was beating the shit out of him, don’t you think that one of the vampire guards outside would have heard something? Seriously, or even you? If you can hear that far? I mean, unless he was just as quiet as a mouse during the whole thing—and I would have been calling for help if it were me—wouldn’t one of you freakishly audio-capable vamps have heard something? Unless…” I let it trail, hoping he would pick up what I had laid down.
“If you are suggesting that Devon allowed himself to be beaten… then for what purpose?”
I shrugged. “You said he wanted to be Chosen for the change. If his life were truly in danger, would you agree to it then?”
He looked at me, as if really looking into me, trying to figure out what made me tick. It made me squirmy inside.
“Look, Xavier. I’m just saying that it’s odd. I know that he’s your family and you want to believe whatever he’s telling you. But, you have to admit,he’s alot like you. I mean, not just physically. I know that when there’s something you want, you’d move heaven and hell to get it. I just think he might be capable of the same thing.”
“And you say this to me why? Because you are worried about me?” I couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark sunglasses he was wearing, but I could tell by the half smile on his face that the idea made him very happy with himself.
I bristled. “Pfft. No. But, I suppose, I wouldn’t want to see you hurt. And I think that Devon is probably the only person in this world who’s actually capable of that.”
Xavier stepped away, turning his back to me. For a second, I thought he was angry. He reached into the thick brush and pulled out one perfect purple rose. As he turned back, he held it out to me.
“Your concern for me is touching.”
I took the flower with careful fingers. Last thing I wanted was to bleed on vampire property. I carefully broke off the small thorns with the side of my thumb and tucked the flower into my hair comb.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it? That the people we love are so often the people who cause us the most harm,” he said, his voice just above a whisper.
I didn’t say anything, mostly because he was right. My thoughts drifted back to my wedding day. I stood in the rectory long after everyone else had given up and left. I was frozen there, unable to even relax my fingers enough to drop the bouquet of lilies I still clutched. It was like my heart had imploded. Inside of me, pieces of things—like faith and trust and hope—were tumbling into an abyss. A tremor ran up my body like an aftershock. The pain was blinding, paralyzing. I felt as if my soul had been ravaged by wolves. It still hurt as much now as it did then, on the rare occasions when I let myself think about it.
“Where did you go just then?”
A gentle voice called me back to the present. Xavier was looking at me with compassion, a rare and sudden human emotion laid bare across his face. I rolled my head, popping the tiny bones in my neck. “Just wondering when you were going to tell me what’s really going on around here,” I lied, motioning to the extra guards.
“Conclave business, that is all,” he said, turning away as he shut down his expression.
My phone rang, vibrating in my pocket as it played “Little Red Riding Hood.” Earning me a suspicious look from Xavier. I quickly hit the accept button and put it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Isabel? It’s me.”
“Heather? Why are you calling me from this number?” That particular song was set to play when Phoebe’s boyfriend, the occasionally furry firefighter, Duke, called me. Since he’d come out of the wolfy closet to her, he was quickly becoming one of my favorite non-humans. He’d even helped my mother install new carpet in her living room, a chore that otherwise would have fallen on me.
“My phone isn’t hooked up yet,” she said, as if that made any kind of sense, “and I need you to come over to my office. Like, now.”
I wanted to demand more info, but Xavier was studying me like a hawk, so I let it go, glad to have a reason to bail on the walk. “Fine. Be there in twenty,” I said, hitting the disconnect button with my thumb. “Gotta go. Sister stuff.”
Xavier nodded once and gestured me back to the car. “Before you go, there is one more thing. Mercy’s time in the vault is at an end. On the new moon, she’ll be released back into the Conclave.”
I turned, glaring at him.
Mercy was Shane’s vampire girlfriend. Actually, I wasn’t sure what their current status was, since I’d shot her and everything. We didn’t exactly get along before that, and now… In all fairness, she tried to kill me first. Probably would have succeeded too if I hadn’t shot her in the face a few times. Made a big mess on the carpet outside Xavier’s office. Since then, she’d been locked in one of the cages under the Conclave-run bank downtown as punishment for attacking a human. I’d kind of been hoping they’d send her to Siberia or something, but apparently, it wasn’t considered that heinous a crime. I mean, I’d survived after all. Now the crazy bitch was about to be back on the streets. Just what I needed.
“What the hell, Xavier? You know as soon as her feet hit the floor, she’s going to try to kill me again, right?” He shrugged, and I gritted my teeth until my jaw hurt.
“It was really beyond my control. She told her defender that she smelled a weapon on you and that she was only trying to protect the Conclave, and me.”
“Defender? Like, attorney? What? She got a trial? Friggin’ vampire politics.” I mumbled. “Whatever. Just fair warning, if she shows up at my house, I don’t care if she’s with Shane or not, I will shoot first and ask questions never. I mean it, Xavier. Keep her away from me.”
“Do not let it overly concern you. She may be free, but I will be keeping a close eye on Mercy,” he offered coolly.
I shrugged. “Whatever. I’ll put it on my list.”
“What list?” he asked, tilting his head to the side.
“The list of shit I’ll worry about later. My plate is kinda full this week, in case you haven’t noticed.”
That made him laugh, not a chuckle, but a full belly laugh. It sounded warm. It sounded human.
When we got back to my car, he held out a piece of paper to me. “The information on Melanie’s Aunt.”
I plucked it from his fingers and tucked it into the pocket of my tan slacks. “Thanks. I’ll get right on it.”
He nodded and turned to head back to the house.
Heather’s new shop was downtown near the Haunted Tours office in a little indoor strip mall. She had secured the front space so she had one large glass window right on the street, but the door was actually inside the hallway. I’d passed by the place a million times in my life. It had been everything from a jewelry store to a travel agency to an exterminator, but now the glass proudly bore the words, “Psychic Emporium and Palm Readings” in bold, white letters. The actual window was covered inside by brown paper,signaling that they were not, as of yet, open for business. But there was a smaller sign with a phone number on it that read,Call to schedule your appointment today. I shook my head. Until recently, my flighty baby sister had been a teenage runaway. I always imagined her on the streets somewhere living like a homeless person, but the truth was much different. Heather had been traveling the world, exploring what she called her psychic gift. Since she was back, she’d been determined to open this sh
op. She was going to sell herbs, crystals, and other things as well as do palm readings and other sorts of weird psychic stuff.
Call me a skeptic, but it was all just a little out there. But she was home and she had an actual goal, so I wasn’t about to rain on her parade. Much anyway.
She still wouldn’t fess up to where she got the money for the venture, except to assure Mom that she didn’t rob a bank or anything else illegal. Tapping on the glass door, I heard a rustle of paper as her single brown eye peeked out. I heard the click of a key in a lock, and the door swung open. Duke and Phoebe were sitting in the middle of the floor strewn with brown paper as they devoured a meat lover’s pizza. There was a half-eaten thin-crust veggie pizza on the counter beside the antique register that had to be Heather’s. She was the only person in the family that would dare taint a perfectly good pizza with vegetables and what might have been chunks of tofu.
“Alright, I’m here. What’s going on?” I asked, eyeing the devastation.
The shop was supposed to be open by Monday, a Halloween grand opening, and there were only a few shelves up. They had obviously been painting judging by the smell and the pans of lavender-tinted latex near the big window.
“Duke and Phoebe have been helping me get ready for my grand opening,” Heather said, beaming.
Duke rubbed his hands on his light blue jeans, getting the pizza mess off. “Yeah, but there’s not going to be an opening if I don’t get the rest of these shelves up.” He leapt onto the balls of his feet, rocked forward to plant a kiss on Phoebe, who blushed furiously, and then wandered off to open a tall box of premade cabinets. It was hard not to watch him walk away, earning me a playful slap from Phoebe.
“What? I was reading the back of his T-shirt.”
“It says, thou shalt not ogle your sister’s boyfriend,” she said with a snort.
“I wasn’t ogling, I swear!” I held my hand up in a Girl Scout salute.