That left JDPR. Caro? Tom didn’t trust her, but Eric’s gut told him Caro was a clear no. He shuddered at the thought of Caro and Frieda meeting. The two were like oil and water. Worse. Flesh and knives. Keep checking through that list. The vampire receptionist, Estelle? Perhaps. Julien?
Yes, Julien. Eric leaned back in the chair and stared at the gaps in the ceiling planks. Yes. There was something slimy about that guy. Maybe he’d have someone keep an eye on him.
Frieda’s visit destroyed any chance he had of concentrating on what he was going to do about Iverson. Instead, his mind drifted to Caro. Stephan had given him a lecture in the car home from the JDPR office yesterday, pointing out that: one, Caro was not a masquerada, and therefore had no need to answer to him, and two, she had a job, a profession, and responsibilities. “What she doesn’t need is a four-hundred-year-old Hierarch coming in and playing caveman,” he’d said.
Eric had defended himself half-heartedly, but he knew his lieutenant was right. He’d been out-of-line possessive and heavy-handed in a way that was totally unacceptable. It’s not like he had any say over what Caro did, nor should he. He couldn’t give her orders, as if she was one of his subjects, and he couldn’t worry over her, as if she were his woman. That would never happen, he reminded himself, because she wasn’t a masquerada and it would be a disaster. A total, unmitigated disaster.
Nevertheless, no other woman had captured his attention like this. How different things could be if she was one of his kind. Could she be? She was able to enter the cavern in his mind and it would seem logical. His heart pounded. He had to know.
He lay his head on the table and didn’t bother raising it when Stephan came in. “Frieda was here,” he said into the oak slabs.
Stephan snorted. “I know. I saw the faces on the men working outside. They were still recovering.”
Eric raised his head and in a few sentences, he filled in his second-in-command on the conversation, glossing over the attempted seduction.
Stephan raised his eyebrows. “This works better than I thought. We can use Frieda to help us keep track of Iverson. She’s perfect.” He strolled over to the windows, which, like the ones in the house, were made of bulletproof glass. The enmity between Eric and Franz Iverson had lasted a long time and Stephan and Eric were under no illusions about how deadly the man was. There had been several close calls over the years, although nothing that could be connected to Iverson. He was cunning. Eric eventually learned that every time he thought, There’s no way someone would be crazy enough to do this, he should prepare for Iverson to try it.
Eric nodded. “She’s getting me some information about convergence, so I’ll keep the lines of communication open.”
“Did she say anything about what we can expect from what happened to you?”
“No side effects,” Eric lied. There was no need for Stephan to know that some couldn’t shift again. It wouldn’t happen to him. He fought off the chain that seemed to tighten around his chest. “What’s Iverson doing?”
Stephan looked at the tablet in his hand. “Not sure. Tom will be happy to get some reliable intelligence about Iverson’s plans. His support is growing. We’ve got a few people planted and he’s having no problems getting new converts.”
Eric grimaced. “No surprise.”
“Not really,” Stephan agreed. “Never hard to get people to hate others. We’ve seen it happen often enough.”
“Watch the young ones.”
“We are. We know the ones who are attracted to Iverson. We think his focus is here in Toronto, but we’ve got people out along the eastern seaboard and the west coast. Those are usually the more restless areas.”
It’s always the young ones, thought Eric with a touch of sadness, knowing that he himself might have been susceptible to Iverson’s message of power and dominance over the statics when he was young. The transition process was difficult for some masquerada and left successful ones with an unfortunate superiority complex. Iverson had never grown out of his. He hated latents, despised half-bloods, and barely tolerated the rest of the arcane world. Iverson was a chauvinist of the highest degree.
“Still the same story?”
“Masquerada should claim their birthright as a superior species and lord it over the humans and everyone else on this green Earth, yadda yadda. You’re a pawn of the statics and he’d be a masterful ruler.”
“Yeah. That’s the usual.”
One of Iverson’s big beefs with Eric—besides the fact that Eric was Hierarch and Iverson wasn’t—was that Eric wasn’t waging an all-out war of domination against the statics. The Iverson Hierarchy of The World placed masquerada at the top, other arcana well below, and humans at the bottom. Eric had known from the moment he became Hierarch that those ways of thinking were too damaging to be allowed to continue. Intolerance was killing the masquerada from the inside, making them vulnerable.
Stephan checked his phone. “Hey, Tom sent the background work on Caro.” He paused and stared at his phone, rapidly scrolling through the text. “Curious.”
“Oh?” Eric raised his eyebrows.
“Apparently she moved here last year. Could have been to take the job with JDPR because she started the next week. Lives quiet. Never goes out.”
It actually sounded quite boring, except it probably meant no husband or boyfriend. That was good. He cheered up. “Where did she move from?”
“Can’t tell. Tom can’t find a trace on her. It’s driving him crazy.” Now that was interesting. It was impossible to hide information from Tom’s team. He had some of the most creative investigators in the country.
“JDPR only hires arcana.”
“Yeah, full or with some blood. Why?”
“What’s Caro?”
Stephan checked his phone. “Whoa. Latent half masquerada. Tom got access to JDPR’s hiring records.”
“Seriously?” Eric stared at him. Caro was a masquerada? His heart thumped.
“Apparently. Came in with the rest of the files and I’m looking at them now. I’ll admit, though, I didn’t feel a goddamn thing off the woman.” Stephan looked chagrined.
“Me neither,” Eric said thoughtfully. “With most latents, you at least get a bit of something. She was blank.” Caro must be consciously repressing her masquerada nature. He frowned, his initial euphoria that she was one of his kind now tempered by the knowledge that she had some serious issues about it. At least this helped explain how she was able to get into his mind and stop the convergence. It didn’t explain all of it, though. Why hadn’t she said anything to him, identified herself as one of his people?
“Tell Tom to call it off,” Eric decided. “He’s wasting his time on this when I need him focused on Iverson.”
“He won’t like that,” Stephan said. “He thinks Caro’s too close to you.”
Eric liked the sound of that, but he was a realist. “I’ve seen her three times and as you pointed out, she wasn’t too pleased with me the last time. Tell him it’s an order.”
Stephan mumbled something that Eric didn’t catch, then changed the subject. “Are you going to tell the other Hierarchs about Iverson?”
Eric was happy to leave the subject of Caro behind. He didn’t like how irrational he was becoming about the woman. Now that he knew she was a masquerada? He wrested his mind from the possibility that something could happen and focused on the problem of Iverson. “No. You know we don’t like getting involved in each other’s squabbles. Iverson’s nothing we can’t handle here, and he’s no threat to the others.”
“I also know that they don’t like surprises.”
“They’ll live.”
“Yes, but not happily.”
“We’ll tell them once we have a better idea of what’s going on.”
“That’s reasonable.” Stephan paused. “I’m following a few rumblings.”
Eric looked up sha
rply. “What’s the matter?”
“There’s something different about how this feels,” Stephan admitted. “I don’t know. I don’t like it.”
Eric flashed back to something Frieda had said. “It’s because this is the last round,” he said, confident he was right. “Iverson’s going to play his final hand.”
Stephan stroked the heavy black stubble that covered his chin. “It could be it. I’m getting a sense of ruthlessness.”
“He’s planning on ending it,” Eric said. A surge of expectation ran through him and he grinned. “All or nothing.”
Stephan clapped him on the back. “We’d better not disappoint him. Too bad he’s going to get nothing.”
Chapter 12
It took a while for Caro to simmer down enough to consider actually relaxing on her mandated week off. Then she chilled out with a vengeance. Regular meals involving vegetables were the first to be abandoned. Frequent showers were next, quickly followed by changing into fresh clothes every day. Instead, she sat on the couch binge-watching shitty TV shows in a ratty pair of pajamas until her mind felt lobotomized to the point of calm.
By day five, though, she felt gross and as blobbish as a jellyfish. The human body was simply not designed to thrive on that much sloth and crap food. She dragged herself to the shower, and feeling slightly virtuous, ate a bowl of instant oatmeal. It was a start.
I need out of this apartment. Except I don’t want to bother actually getting on shoes and moving down the stairs. I need motivation. Wait a minute. She had a rain check for drinks with Estelle. It was Friday—maybe the vampire would be free for brunch tomorrow. A date with a friend would get her going. Estelle was thrilled to hear from her and happily agreed to midday drinks in Kensington Market. “If, and only if, you tell me what’s got Julien’s panties in a knot,” she said.
“What makes you think I’d know?” Caro asked innocently.
“Please. I’m a hundred years old. You can’t put one over on me. Let me put it into my calendar.” Caro heard Estelle hunting through her purse, then curse. “Or I will when I find out where that fey thief Julien’s put my phone.”
Caro hung up, feeling depressed even by this brief and relatively pleasant contact with JDPR. Maybe it was time to think about another line of work. Ugh. The mere thought of hunting for a job made her tingle, and not in a good way. She went into the bathroom to grab a hairbrush and glanced in the mirror, then looked back in dismay. God, her face looked different. Wider, somehow, her chin more prominent and about ten years older. She rubbed her eyes. No—that was her face. She must have been seeing things.
It was definitely time to get out of the apartment. She settled back on the couch. Tomorrow.
* * * *
As always, Kensington was a varied mix of hipsters, suburban kids, families, and hippies all wandering in a blissful mass around the specialty food stores and secondhand shops. A driver would need nerves of steel to take a car down those narrow streets, clogged with oblivious walkers holding bags containing silk-screened cat T-shirts or cheap guavas. These little nestled neighborhoods were one of the things Caro liked best about her adopted city and she looked around with real pleasure before turning back to her companion.
“You seriously have no problems with the sun?” Caro was now three mimosas into her brunch with Estelle and it was the second time she’d asked the question. It was overcast but warm and they sat out on the patio at Last Temptation, their tiny, dented café table—spray-painted hot pink—behind a group of graduate students who were passionately and loudly debating some obscure political theorist. The muted sunlight turned Estelle’s bare shoulders a creamy, opalescent pearl that Caro eyed enviously. Not a freckle in sight.
Estelle gave a crooked smile and held up two fingers to the waiter, who nodded and darted off to get fresh drinks. “Lucky, huh? I always thought it would suck to be one of the other kind.”
“Incredible.” Caro sat back and nibbled on the slice of mango that had decorated the rim of her drink. Two types of vampires. She hadn’t known. With occasional checks to see if anyone could hear them, Estelle had patiently explained the difference between her own clan, and those she called the lithu, vicious night beings who could eat nothing but blood. They were extreme forms of the same mutation, she said. Vampires of Estelle’s sort were not immortal, though extremely long-lived, and could eat food, though they couldn’t digest it. They could go out in the sun, but couldn’t shift into invisibility.
The waiter arrived with the fresh drinks and Estelle drained half of hers in a single sip. “I’ve often wondered if they’re envious of our freedom,” she mused. “The lithu.”
“You could ask,” Caro suggested as she dipped a tofu fry into a spicy dip.
Estelle shuddered. “No, thanks. They’re a bad combination of touchy and lethal. They like to be left alone so we stay out of their way. Luckily there’s not many of them.”
There was a companionable silence until Estelle said, “Now it’s your turn.”
Caro wriggled uncomfortably on the seat. “My turn for what?”
Estelle rolled her eyes. “You don’t get to come out, feed me a bucket of OJ and champers and not expect me to ask questions. What did you do to Julien? He’s been a monster all week.”
Caro snorted. “Not my fault. He was being completely out of line about something and got mad when I set him straight. Typical male.”
“Let me guess. It involved Eric Kelton?”
Caro kept her cool. “What makes you say that?”
“Those shoji screens in the boardroom need to be shut all the way to block the sound.” Estelle gazed at her with wide, innocent eyes.
“Oh my God.” Caro blanched. “The office heard what he said.”
Estelle nodded. “Everyone. Even that weird witch in accounting.”
“It’s not true.”
“Sure.”
“Estelle! Seriously. I’m not involved with Eric Kelton. I don’t want to be involved with Eric Kelton. He’s not my type.”
Estelle goggled at her. “Sorry. I think I misunderstood. The man is gorgeous, smart, and rich. Not to mention a supporter of almost every charity in the city. Did I mention a king? Your Hierarch? He’s not your type? Girl, he’s every woman’s type! Did you even look at those arms? That ass?”
She had indeed. “I prefer someone not quite so…” So what, Caro? Magnificent? Exciting? Who doesn’t make you think of him all the time? “Shifty,” she finished lamely. “He’s nothing but a client. An ex-client, since the work has been done, and if I know Julien, was immediately invoiced. May I also say he’s not my Hierarch.”
“Caro, no one believes Julien. We know you’re a good professional.” Estelle’s voice was soothing and Caro remembered she’d mentioned that her clan had good compulsion abilities.
“Are you voodooing me right now?” she demanded.
Estelle burst out laughing. “Haven’t heard it called that before. I was, a bit. I’ll stop.”
“Good, because nothing is happening. Eric Kelton is completely out of my league. Big shot masquerada? Rich guy? I bet he’s got half the women in town after him.”
“Oh, way more than that, but don’t sell yourself short. I saw how he looked at you when he came in. It was like you were a tasty hamburger and he was starving.”
Caro made a face, though her heart leapt. “I’m not into him,” she lied.
“Really?” Estelle wore an expression of polite disbelief.
“It doesn’t even matter,” Caro said. “I don’t date masquerada. Ever.”
Estelle slapped the table, making their drinks dance on the surface. “Don’t be prejudiced. And who said anything about dating? Go have some fun. It’s not like Eric Kelton would be looking for anything else.”
“What do you mean?” The question was out before Caro could stop it.
“Your man isn’t the com
mitment type. So I hear, anyway. Hasn’t had a long-term relationship in decades and he never dates anyone but masquerada. Not sure about halfs.” Here she nodded as if in recognition of Caro’s heritage.
“Wow. Really?” Although she knew Eric was nothing but an unobtainable fantasy—plus, she reminded herself, she had a no-masquerada rule—disappointment still lanced through her. The, uh, interlude in his mind had affected her more than she liked to admit. Even though he’d called it an unfortunate occurrence.
If it was unfortunate, what was with that look he gave her in the office? Dude was messing with her head.
“Of course, then you’d have to deal with the usual masquerada I’m-the-best stuff.” Estelle wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know where they get off thinking they’re better than vampires, that’s for sure.”
“You don’t?”
“Fine. I’m exaggerating. All arcana think they’re amazing so we hate that masquerada are definitely at the top. There’s more of them, for one, and they’re organized. Smart, too. But they know it.”
“Annoying.”
“You got it. Anyway, if you don’t succeed there, you’ve always got Julien.”
“What do you mean?” Surely Estelle was kidding. Please let her be kidding.
She wasn’t kidding. “Julien’s got a thing for you. He wasn’t pissed about you dating Kelton because the agency would suffer. He’d probably offer you naked on a silver platter covered in Cheetos if he thought it would get more business. He’s jealous.”
“There’s nothing to be jealous of,” Caro protested weakly.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” The vampire drained her glass. “That doesn’t matter because, to Julien, it’s only what he thinks that matters.”
Caro buried her head in her hands. “I don’t need this.”
“Agreed, so let’s not waste time talking about him. Tell me about you.”
Caro took another sip of her drink. “What do you want to know?”
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