Lacey shook her head. “No. I wouldn’t have forgotten. It was in the safe, in a box, and now the box is empty.”
“And who else had access to the safe?” I asked.
“No one,” she replied sharply. “Matthias and I are the only ones with the combination. Jupiter doesn’t even know it, and I trust her with my life.”
“Does it look like someone tampered with the thing?” Adam interjected.
“No!” Lacey raked her fingers through her hair and began pacing to the bottom of the stairs and back. “This can’t be happening. We have to find it!”
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands. “Hold on. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Did you set the wards last night?” Lacey demanded. “Could someone have gotten inside?”
“I set them before I went to sleep,” I assured her, not taking her snappy tone personally. “No one would have been able to step onto the property without me sensing it.”
Lacey’s eyes narrowed. “Even in your sleep?”
“Yes. I’m a light sleeper anyway, and there’s no way I would have slept through a ward triggering.”
“We need to find everyone,” I said as I kicked off my low slingback heels and piled them with the other shoes arranged by the door. I’d take them upstairs later. “Someone has to have seen something. Right?”
Lacey opened her mouth, seemingly ready to object, then closed it and nodded. “Right.”
“Okay. So, let’s split up. The manor is big, but we couldn’t have lost five vampires.”
At least, I hoped not.
“I’ll go look outside,” Adam said, giving the box of chocolate torte a mournful look as he set it on the nearest table.
“I’ll check the other guest rooms,” Evangeline said as she started up the staircase.
I looked to Lacey for direction. “Is there anywhere in town they might go? Maybe McNally’s or the bar down by the docks?”
“Holly, can I speak with you in private?” Lacey asked, jerking her chin toward the hallway leading to the study and the bedrooms on the first floor.
“Uh, sure. I mean, of course.” My brows furrowed as I glanced around the empty foyer. No one else was around. How much more private did we need to be?
Lacey led the way to the study. It had once been quite cramped, but in the renovation process we’d expanded it quite a bit. We’d kept the old-world charm with mahogany woodwork details and the stone fireplace, but pushed the room out a ways and installed a long bench seat under the bank of windows, perfect for stargazing or reading on a rainy afternoon.
Once inside, Lacey closed the door behind us. “Holly, the necklace is more than just a pretty bauble,” she said, her voice hushed.
“I kind of figured. What with the safe and all that. What does it do?”
As the guardian of a piece of antique magic jewelry myself, I wasn’t shocked to find the stone Lacey had worn came with its own magic. Vampires didn’t typically possess magic of their own, but as beings from the supernatural realm they could still take advantage of magic artifacts and experiment with other forms of magic.
Lacey flicked a nervous glance toward the door before bringing her focus back to me. “The stone on the choker is … it’s not what it appears. And in the wrong hands—” Her words choked off as she swallowed hard. Her skin was as white as chalk, making her blood-red lips look all the more striking. “Holly, we have to find it. Before it’s too late.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Well, what does it do? What kind of power does it have? Is it something we could track with a spell?”
“No.” She cringed. “It was made to be hidden.”
She paused and licked her lips. “Do you know who Lilith was?”
My eyes narrowed at first, then popped open wide as it dawned on me. “Lilith Lilith?” I hissed. “As in mother of demons?”
“There have been many stories about her. The truth is that it wasn’t demons she birthed, it was vampires. People think Dracula or Vlad was responsible, but in truth, it was her,” Lacey said, her tone reverent. “Lilith.”
I wasn’t sure what this had to do with the pendant in the choker, but I listened quietly as Lacey spoke.
“As the mother of our kind, all bornling vampires can trace their roots to her lineage, and for millennia she ruled over all of our kind. Everyone knows that magic-wielders and vampires and shifters have long been at odds with each other, ever since the dawn of time itself. There was a rumor, in wizarding circles, that said that if Lilith were destroyed, all vampires would follow her into the void. Of course, this was nearly impossible, but many threw their lives away in the quest. Eventually, people stopped trying and she faded into something of legend. Lilith let her guard down. She put her trust in the wrong people. Enough so that a witch was able to trick one of her guards into falling in love and giving up the location of Lilith’s summer residence. The witch killed the vampire lord and attacked Lilith directly.”
My mouth dropped open. I’d gone up against vampires before and couldn’t imagine the courage—or maybe sheer recklessness—it would require to dare take on the mother of all vampires herself.
“Both the witch and Lilith died that day, but before Lilith’s body turned to ashes, a fragment of her spirit left her and penetrated a black onyx stone she wore as a necklace. A gift by one of her many lovers.” Lacey paused, her fingers grazing her own bare throat. “For centuries, no one knew the power the stone possessed. It was handed down to one of her first children, but somewhere along the way, as vampires were hunted and destroyed by magic-wielders, the stone was lost.”
A chill crept up my spine. The stone Lacey had been wearing mere hours ago contained the essence of the world’s most powerful vampire. It had been here, under the manor’s roof. And now, it was gone.
“Lacey,” I said, my voice a hoarse whisper, “what does the stone do?”
The vampire’s frosty blue eyes snapped to mine. “Everything.”
A bitter smile flashed across her angular face. There was an underlying fierceness to Lacey that was so often concealed by her beauty and almost passive expression, but when she smiled like that and her eyes flashed, she was downright terrifying. Even after years of friendship—stilted though it may have been at times—I couldn’t help recoiling from her.
“How—how did you even find it?” I stammered. Lacey liked buying expensive shoes and going to fancy parties. When had she turned into an undead Indiana Jones?
“It doesn’t matter how I found it,” she hissed. “All that matters is that I revealed the truth of the stone to the others last night—that was what the fight was about—and now, one of them has taken it.”
My head was swimming with too much information.
“I intend to turn the stone over to the Haven Council,” Lacey continued. “I brought the others here to inform them of my plan and ask them to be my allies in the fight to come. I hand-selected these lords and ladies, and now, one of them has betrayed me. I need your help to figure out who it was, before it’s too late.”
“And by too late, you mean …” I trailed off as my heart sank.
Lacey tensed. “War, Holly. The power of that stone could raise an army in a matter of days, one that would bend to the will of the beholder without question or thought to the consequences. An army powerful enough to overturn both the Vampire Council and the Haven Council, and in the process, uproot the entire world of man.”
“Stars above, Lacey!” My voice went shrill but I couldn’t rein it in. The sheer terror and helplessness had grabbed control of my brain and sent me into a spiral. “What were you thinking bringing that thing here, to Beechwood Harbor?”
“I needed to be far enough away from everyone back home,” she explained. “If my father gets so much as a whiff of what’s been going on, he’ll personally put a stake through me.”
I buried my face in my hands, if only to stop the room from spinning. Between the three Manhattans I’d had at dinner and Lacey’s apocalyptic b
ombshell, I was suddenly having a hard time staying steady on my feet. And I had a feeling I was going to need them before the night was over.
Chapter Ten
Voices sounded in the hall and both Lacey and I jolted at the sudden sounds. Lacey reached for the doorknob, then glanced back at me. I gave her an assuring nod. “We’re going to find it, Lacey.”
She pulled the study door open and we were greeted by two irate vampires. Nathaniel and Trish Ryson surged into the study, forcing Lacey and me to quickly backpedal. “You lost the stone?” Trisha screeched.
“No!” Lacey snapped. “It was stolen.”
“You should have had it on you at all times,” Trisha fired back, her nostrils flaring. Her pupils were huge, nearly blotting out her irises altogether. The tension in the air crackled with a chaotic and dangerous energy. The last place a mortal—such as myself—would ever want to be was trapped in a room with a trio of raging vamps.
And yet, there I stood, my back to a bookcase, hoping I could blend in enough to keep their dark eyes from me.
“The stone was locked in a safe, in my suite, to which the door was also locked,” Lacey said, her voice crisp. “Where were you two?”
“We went for a walk,” Trisha replied, glancing up at her husband. Nathaniel’s jaw was clenched tight as he stared at Lacey.
“You’ve doomed us all,” Trisha snarled, not waiting for her husband to confirm their alibi. “You should never have dug up the stone, let alone brought it here.”
Lacey’s eyes flashed. “Someone had to do something,” she snapped. “We all know there are hordes of baby vampires running amok in cities all around the world, feeding live and leaving an ever-growing trail of carnage and destruction in their wake. If someone doesn’t put a stop to it, we’ll all be destroyed. The Haven Council has given us leeway to deal with it on our own, but we’ve seen how well that’s gone. We’re running out of time.”
I blinked as the new bits of information smacked me in the face. So that was why the SPA hadn’t been interested in hunting the vamps in Seattle. They were waiting and giving the vampires time to deal with it. The question was why. Especially when it didn’t seem that the vampires were acting fast enough. Meryl and a small band of agents were working tirelessly to stop the chaos, but had been given little to no resources from the agency and were even obstructed altogether at various points in the investigation. Now at least I knew the reason behind it. Granted, it still didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Not when people were being hurt.
“They won’t exterminate us,” Trisha told Lacey, her expression pulled tight in an ugly sneer. “They couldn’t, even if they wanted to. There are too many of us now.”
“You think the Vampire Council will protect you?” Lacey scoffed. “They’ll be too busy saving their own hides to worry about us. They’ll see to it that their puppets are safe, even if that means turning on the rest of the court, whatever it takes to retain power. That’s why we need to get there one step before they do, exactly as I said. We cut a deal first and use the stone as the leverage. The Haven Council gets to break the Vampire Council once and for all, put a stop to the wild vampires, and the Court will emerge more powerful and solid than before. The way it should have always been.”
“But what’s to stop the Haven Council from using the stone against the Court?” I asked.
Three pairs of near-black eyes shifted to me and I shrank back.
“As I’ve said, there will be a contract,” Lacey replied, her voice cold but not angry. “The Haven Council will sign it and agree to all of its terms. Only then will I hand over the stone. I’ve been working on this deal for nearly a year now.”
“Then why even bring us into it?” Nathaniel asked, speaking at last. “You clearly didn’t think we were important enough to consult before striking this deal.”
I looked to Lacey. It seemed a fair question. Lacey had power in the East, but she was still only one vampire. If I were in Nathaniel and Trisha’s places, I wasn’t sure I’d be all that happy with it either.
Lacey’s eyes narrowed as she turned back to the other vampires. “You’ve seen how well the negotiations have been going since we got here. If I’d waited for the full Court to come to an agreement, it would be too late.”
“You haven’t even been a part of Court for more than a couple of years, after nearly a decade away. It’s arrogant of you to think you know what’s best for us,” Nathaniel told her.
“On the contrary,” Lacey replied. “If anything, my time away helped me see the weaknesses of the Court all the clearer. Everyone inside of it is too busy with parties and indulgence. They don’t see the problems happening outside their bubble of riches.”
“That’s not true,” Trisha insisted. “We know about the problems, but what do you want us to do? The Haven Council and the SPA want us to leave things to them, so that’s what we’ve done.”
Lacey shook her head and made a disgusted noise. “It seems I made a mistake in extending my invitation to you. I thought we would more or less be on the same page.”
Footsteps sounded, lightning quick against the hardwood floors, and Aretha pushed into the room. Her eyes locked on Lacey and she flashed her fangs. “You stupid girl!”
Aretha launched herself at Lacey. My reflexes lashed out before I could fully think through the consequences. An invisible shield flew up between the two vampires, and Aretha bounced off it like a bug from a windshield. Her black eyes went even wider as she reeled backward, struggling to regain her balance. “So, that’s why you insisted on meeting here,” the vampire snarled, directing her gleaming fangs in my direction, “you knew you’d need a bodyguard!”
Lacey slid her narrowed eyes toward me and held out a hand, silently calling me to stand down. I tucked my chin in acknowledgement and her eyes snapped back to the other three vampire lords and ladies. “Things have to change, whether you like it or not. You can either sit down and help me to negotiate with the Haven Council, or you can get out of my way. I don’t really care which option you choose.”
Aretha’s mouth widened into a haughty smile. “And how do you propose you negotiate now that you’ve lost your bargaining chip?”
“The stone is out there, somewhere,” Lacey replied, keeping her eyes steady and focused. “I found it once, and I will find it again. Even if I have to do it alone.”
“You’re not alone,” a male voice said from the doorway.
Lord Sánchez strode into the tension-charged room as coolly as if he were wandering around a shopping mall on a lazy Sunday morning. “I’ve seen the destruction firsthand. These newly turned vampires are growing in numbers we’ve never seen before, at least not in this century. With technology and the population density … it’s only a matter of time before things get blown wide open. Exposed.”
The vampire glanced around the room until his warm brown eyes landed on me. “And if that happens, it’s not just a threat to us vampires, but to all supernatural creatures. We’d be forced to retreat to the havens entirely.”
My heart jumped. I never wanted to leave Beechwood Harbor, but he was right. If magic was exposed, and war broke out between the vampires and the humans, I would be naive to think Adam and me and the others would be able to stay out of it. Our lives could be torn apart as part of the collateral damage.
“If they would even have us,” Lacey muttered.
Aretha didn’t look convinced. If anything, her twisted expression looked more sour than before, perhaps over Lord Sánchez’s seeming alliance with Lacey. “And what happens if we hand the Haven Council the stone and they use it to make us all bend to their will? To abolish the Court entirely? The power the stone has could be turned against us just as easily as it could be used against the wild vamps.”
“That’s why we have a contract,” Lacey replied. “I asked you here to help me complete it, to make sure I am leaving nothing to the Council’s discretion.”
“They already have too much power over us,” Trisha sniped from the corne
r of the study. “They wanted to deal out justice, then blame us when they can’t rein in these nuisances. I say we let them lie in the bed they’ve made.”
“At what cost to the rest of us?” Lord Sánchez countered, turning to look at Lady Ryson.
This wasn’t going anywhere. Frustration showed on Lacey’s face. Matthias and Jupiter joined us in the study. Matthias took a position at his wife’s side, while Jupiter melted into the backdrop a few feet away from me.
“Okay, everyone, let’s take a quick break. I think we could all use a breather.” I pushed up from my chair and clasped my hands together. “Lacey, why don’t we get some refreshments for everyone.”
I didn’t dare accuse any of the vamps of being hangry, but I hoped that a quick snack would help settle some of the anxiety coursing through the room.
Lacey followed me from the room and into the kitchen. I immediately went to the fridge and began pulling out the boxes of faux blood. Setting one on the counter, I paused and shot Lacey a panicked look. “You think it’s okay, leaving them all in there?”
“Matthias will make sure of it,” Lacey said, reaching into the cabinet for some glasses. “He can hold his own.”
“I wonder where Adam and Evangeline are,” I said, pausing to look out the window over the kitchen sink. It was too dark though, and all I could see was my own reflection staring back at me.
Lacey huffed and set a pair of long-stemmed glasses on the counter for me to fill. “Isn’t there some kind of potion you could slip everyone?” she asked. She'd managed to keep herself together in front of the others, but now behind closed doors her confidence shattered. “There have been rumors about a new truth serum on the market. Have you heard of it?”
I scoffed out one corner of my mouth. “Stars, according to some of the SPA, I’m the one who created it.”
Lacey gave me a puzzled look and I shook my head. “It was a rumor. Not important. There is a serum, but one, I don’t know how to make it, and two, according to Agent Bramble it doesn’t work on vamps.”
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