BY THE TIME we got back to the office, it was twelve-thirty. I had spent about an hour of time, at least on our side of the portal, in Morgana’s company and another hour to get there and back. I leaned across the counter, staring at Angel who was eating a peanut butter and jam sandwich.
“So, I found out a lot of serious stuff about my background.” I glanced around. “Where’s Herne?”
“He and Kipa are in his office, talking.” She blushed.
I knew what that meant. “You think he’s pretty,” I teased.
She waved me off. “Right. Like I’m going to take a chance getting involved with someone like that. I can smell trouble coming a mile away around him.”
“Um hmm. You say that now but wait till he invites you to go out somewhere. Just you see.”
She stared at me like I was a wayward child. “Will you stop? He’ll hear you.”
“You can tell me you’re not interested now, but we’ll see.” I relented, though. “Seriously, I found out what kind of Fae I am and it scares the hell out of me. I need to talk to Herne. I’ll tell you tonight, when we can discuss it in depth.”
“Are we going back to the house tonight to work?” She didn’t sound too enthusiastic.
“I think Herne has something work-related planned for this evening, doesn’t he?”
“What are you talking about?” Herne asked as he abruptly opened the door and strode out of his office. He sounded a little harried. Kipa leisurely strolled out behind him.
“I wondered…weren’t we going to do something tonight on the case? I’m all topsy-turvy after my meeting with Morgana, and I need to talk to you about it. It’s important.” I gave him a long look, hoping he’d hear the underlying message. I did not want to talk about this in front of Kipa. I still didn’t know him well enough to trust that what I said would be safe.
Herne paused in mid-step as he stared at me. I wasn’t sure if it was the look on my face, or the tone of my voice, but he abruptly handed Angel a file and motioned for me to head into his office.
“I’ll be back as soon as I give Angel the rundown on what she needs to enter into the system.” He glanced at Kipa, who was leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest, with an amused smile on his face. “You can wait in the break room. Angel, ask Viktor to take Kipa to the hospital to have a look at Kamaria, would you?”
As he flipped open the file folder and began to point out what Angel needed to log into the files, I headed into his office and shut the door behind me.
HERNE LISTENED SILENTLY while I told him everything Morgana had said. When I finished, he remained silent.
“You’re so quiet that I’m starting to get nervous.” I had been pacing while telling him the story. Now, I pulled one of the leather chairs over to his side and sat in it, cross-legged.
He licked his lips. “I’m processing all of this and trying to figure out how best to help matters.” Again, he paused, then he reached out and took my hands, sitting there, facing me. “The Leannan Sidhe truly are deadly. So are the Autumn Stalkers. You know that I never sugar-coat anything, love. You were born with a recipe for death and destruction in your blood.”
Somehow, coming from Herne, the announcement seemed more ominous.
“What do you think I should do?” I asked.
“What my mother tells you. Call the teacher today. The Cruharach is a turbulent time in every Fae’s life. For some reason, I thought you had been through it already.” He gently squeezed my hands. “We’ll get you through this.”
“I’m afraid,” I said, not wanting to admit it. “I don’t know what to expect. It’s like being told you have some condition that’s going to manifest as you go along, but you’re not sure what to expect or how it will change your life. Is it wrong that I’m hoping whatever I inherited from my parents is limited? I don’t want to feel the urge to become a psychic vampire or a bloodthirsty hunter.”
“I understand. And that aversion to those aspects of your parentage is what will help keep you from acting them out.” He brought my hands up to his lips and kissed my knuckles. “Ember, we’ll all help you. The others will have to know about this. We can help keep watch so that if the Cruharach starts without you realizing it, we’ll catch it early.”
“You make it sound like I’m going to go crazy,” I said, half-joking. The truth was, I was worried about that myself.
“Aren’t we all a little crazy?” Herne said, a smile spreading across his face.
I slowly nodded. “Yeah, I guess we are. I’ll go call Marilee now.”
“Good idea. But first, give me a kiss.” He stood, pulling me up. As he wrapped me in his arms, I realized that I was breathing easier. And at that moment, it dawned on me that I had been terrified that Herne would find my bloodlines distasteful, that he’d think I was too high maintenance and break up with me.
I froze. While we had exchanged “I love yous,” the full impact of how much he meant to me hadn’t hit home yet, until now. Until when I thought maybe he would turn and walk away. Our chemistry had hit hard and quick, with no signs of slowing down, but sometimes it took me longer to process emotions.
“Is something wrong?” Herne stroked my cheek, pushing my hair out of my eyes.
I wasn’t sure whether to tell him what I was thinking.
“I see the indecision in your eyes,” he said, whispering. “Tell me. You can tell me anything.”
“It’s just that…” I paused, trying to put into words what I was feeling. “Mortals—whether human or Fae or shifter—our lives are messy and unpredictable. I suppose I’ve been secretly fearing that one day you’ll wake up and say, ‘I’ve had enough.’ That you’ll get tired of all the issues that surround me. Today, when Morgana told me about my mother and father, it terrified me in so many ways. I find out I’m a ticking bomb—two monstrous bloodlines wrapped into one. I’m near a transformation point and nobody knows just what I’ll become. That scares the hell out of me. And then, I thought, what about Herne? Will he want to cope with this? Will he have the patience to stay with me as I go through this process?”
Herne placed his hands on my shoulders and rested his forehead against mine. I fell into his gaze, deep and hard, my heart racing. I was sure he could hear it, thudding in my chest like a runaway locomotive.
“Ember, you know I love you. What you may not know is that I don’t say those words lightly. I would never say them to someone who I was just dallying with, and I never have.”
I gave him a long look. “You are telling me that in all the time you’ve lived, you’ve never used those words to bed a woman?”
He flushed, then gave me a sheepish look. “All right, maybe I have. But it was long ago, when I was young and tearing it up in Annwn. If I were just in this for a fling, I would have told you. But from the beginning you fascinated me. I’m here for you now, and I’ll be here for you during the Cruharach. I don’t know where we’re headed, but I want to find out.”
I placed my hand on his chest, feeling the beating of his own heart. It was calm and rhythmic, and I closed my eyes, breathing slowly as I marched my breath with his. As my pulse began to slow, a calm descended over the room.
“I believe you. And it’s not easy for me to believe and trust in others. Angel is the only one who has never done me wrong.”
“I hope to earn your trust enough so that you can say the same about me.”
“Before we move on, I have to ask you something. Why me? Why did you choose me?”
He gave me another little shrug, and this time his smile widened. “Why me? Why anybody? I don’t know if any oracle in the world can analyze what draws two people together. I suppose you could call it fate, or destiny. Or maybe our biorhythms match or it’s written in the stars. Possibly, we just fell hard for each other. Does it really matter?”
I shook my head. “No, I suppose it doesn’t. I suppose that all that matters is we know what we have. Thank you for being here. For being you.�
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He kissed me then, long and deep, wrapping me in his arms. I felt safe in a way that made me dizzy. I wondered if Herne felt the same, but decided not to ask.
After a moment, he broke away. “I’d love to continue this, but it will have to be later. We’re going to pay a visit tonight to Nigel’s roommate, since Nigel isn’t answering the phone.”
“Nigel? Oh, the waiter—that’s right. His roommate is a vampire, isn’t he?”
“Yes, so we need to be polite, and we need to be professional.”
I hadn’t had a lot of dealings with vampires. Our last big case had brought them up close and personal for a brief time, but otherwise, I steered clear of them.
“What’s his name again? The roommate? And why would a vampire room with a human?”
“Charlie Darren. Yutani was curious about that, too, so he looked him up. Charlie was recently turned. He hasn’t had time to establish himself in the vampire community yet. Apparently, just being a vamp isn’t enough to secure yourself a good footing. Charlie worked as a baker in a doughnut shop before he ended up as a blood bag, so he didn’t have a lot of money. He probably let Nigel move in to make ends meet while he figured out his next steps. At least, that’s what we surmise.”
Herne glanced at the clock. It was almost one-thirty. “Why don’t you spend the afternoon sorting out paperwork. Then we’ll grab a bite to eat before heading over to their apartment. If we’re lucky, Nigel will be there.”
Once I was back in my office, I put in a call to Marilee. She set up a meeting with me for Sunday evening. After that, I got back to work, trying not to think about what I had learned from Morgana. There wasn’t anything I could do about it at this point, and if I worried about it, it would only drive me batty.
“OH YEAH, THIS is the way I like to spend my Friday nights,” Viktor said, rolling his eyes. He was in the back seat, with Herne driving and I was riding shotgun again. Yutani had begged off, and we decided that the three of us showing up on a vampire’s doorstep was enough.
“Does Charlie even know we’re coming?”
Herne nodded. “Yeah, I talked to him earlier and set a time. He sounded odd when I asked him about Nigel, almost guarded. Something’s not meshing, and I’d like to know what.”
“You’re probably going to get your wish,” I muttered.
Nigel Henderson and Charlie Darren lived in the Beacon Hill district, a tired part of the city where houses often came equipped with bars on the windows and doors. A lot of the streeps tended to congregate there, in flophouses run by slumlords who had found a way to fill a need at the expense of those they exploited. There were some flops that housed twenty to thirty people a night, stretched out on sleeping bags on the floor, for a few bucks each. Showers were extra, as was coffee in the morning and a few prepackaged convenience foods. But when the rainy season hit, a number of the streeps took refuge there, citing that it was safer than some of the shelters run by the city.
“People think this area’s dangerous,” I said, “but people here look out for one another. I wonder if those kids—Toby, Jozey, and Sha-Na—ever stayed here.”
“That reminds me. I need to talk to Angel. I called Rhiannon up at the Foam Born Encampment. She said they have someone who could take the boys in, as long as they adhere to the rules. They’ll see that they get the care and schooling they need, and will try to hook them up with savines who will help them integrate into their culture.”
“Good. At least we can give them a chance.” I thought about the street kids. If not for Mama J. and Angel, I might have been one of them.
“So Darren knows we’re coming?” Viktor didn’t sound all that pleased.
“Yes, he’s waiting for us.” Herne paused, then added, “I know you both have it in you to remain composed but remember, Charlie’s a young vampire. He might not be all that savvy with how he acts.”
“Young as in vampire, yes, but how old was he when he was turned? I don’t cut a lot of slack for grownups either, you know.” Viktor cleared his throat. “Never mind, I’ll be on my best behavior. I always am. Or try to be, at least.”
“Actually, young as in when he died, too. Yutani said Charlie Darren checked out when he was barely nineteen. So he wasn’t very experienced when his sire got to him. He didn’t want to be a vampire, as far as we can tell. Didn’t belong to any fangbanger societies, wasn’t a groupie of any of the local legends. In fact, he was a math student who was looking to put himself through college. He had the grades for a partial scholarship but was working to fund the rest of his ride when a rogue vamp got to him. The vamp’s name was Shelby Jones. Apparently, Jones was taken down by the Vampire Nation, so Charlie’s sire is dead. Jones had such violent tendencies that he was a liability for the entire community.”
I stared out the window at the houses passing by. “You know, the way the vamps police their own community puts the Fae Courts to shame. Hell, my people need an outside force to keep us in check, while the Vampire Nation takes care of its own.”
From the back seat, Viktor let out a snort. “Your people need a makeover, all right. At least as far as attitude goes. When Saílle and Névé were taking potshots at each other the other day, I was certain we were going to end up pulling them apart.”
“Hey, don’t blame me. Neither one of them like me, and I don’t like them.”
But that brought me back to thinking about the meeting and my grandfather. Then it hit me—the Autumn Stalkers. My grandfather carried them in his blood, and probably my grandmother as well. Which made his nature more understandable. And of course they wouldn’t like that the Leannan Sidhe side from my mother might manifest. While it didn’t make me dislike him any less, I began to see the pattern of behavior. The fact that he and my maternal grandmother had worked together to kill my parents only highlighted just how violent and angry both sides of my heritage were.
“Enough about that for now,” Herne said. “Ember’s got enough on her mind without being reminded of what went on after the meeting. But look—ahead. There’s the apartment complex.”
As he pulled into visitor parking, I glanced over at the building. It was tall, at least fourteen stories high, and a grim gray brick. Perhaps long ago it had been red, but now it looked like a gloomy dedication to the soot and smog that had filtered through the city over the years. The bricks were weathered and chipped, and the windows that dotted the sides of the walls were barred on the outside. I wondered how the residents coped with the feeling of being trapped inside their apartments. A steep set of stairs led to the main front door, which was metal. An inset intercom hid behind bars, allowing visitors to punch the buttons but not reach the panel as a whole. I wondered how many times it had taken for some idiot to destroy it before they got the idea to provide some security. A glance up at the top of the stoop showed a security camera, also behind bars. The apartment owners weren’t giving vandals much of an option.
Herne scanned the intercom panel for a moment, then pressed a button. A moment later, the buzzer sounded and the door clicked. I pushed it open and we headed inside, on our way to ask Nigel Henderson why he had served tainted food to the Fae.
Chapter 10
CHARLIE DARREN WAS nothing like I had expected him to be. First, when he opened the door, he was wearing a polo shirt and a pair of jeans. His hair was longish, just down to the top of his shoulders, and he wore a pair of glasses, which seemed odd. Upon being turned, any old injuries were healed, including eyesight. Although if someone was turned who had an amputation, they wouldn’t grow back the body part that had been excised. He was carrying a bottle of blood with a straw in it, and in the background, I could hear the sound of a TV.
“Come in, please.” He smiled, his fangs descending. As if suddenly aware they were showing, he shut his mouth quickly, pressing his lips together. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…” He rubbed his head, his skin the pale alabaster that always marked a vampire who had been Caucasian during their lifetime.
; “Don’t worry yourself over it. I’m Herne, head of the Wild Hunt. Allow me to introduce Ember Kearney and Viktor Krason, two of my investigators.”
I blinked. I had never heard Viktor’s last name before and, indeed, hadn’t thought he had one. Following Herne’s lead, I held out my hand.
“How do you do?”
Viktor followed suit, and Charlie shook our hands, his fingers cold against our own.
He led us into the apartment. It was small, with gray walls and a smoky-colored sofa against the wall of the narrow living room. The other side was given over to two desks. One was neat and tidy, and the other was a shambles. The kitchen, which we could see through the doorway, was tidy as well, though it was so small it was only big enough for one person to stand in at a time. Three other doors led to what I guessed were bedrooms and a bath.
Charlie motioned us to the sofa. “Please, sit down. I’m afraid we don’t have room for a table, but will the sofa do?” He seemed to be good-enough natured and eager to please.
“Thank you. Is Nigel home, by any chance?” Herne asked.
Charlie shook his head. “No, and I wanted to talk to you about that. When you said on the phone that you’re an investigator, I thought you might be able to help.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“It’s about Nigel, actually. He went missing about two weeks ago, and I haven’t heard from him. I reported it to the police, and all they would say was that he’s an adult and will probably show up at some point. But I know something’s wrong. He never does this. He’s practically a recluse, except for work and when he goes to meetings twice a month.” Charlie sounded worried.
Herne frowned. “We couldn’t find out much on him. You say he vanished two weeks ago?”
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