Laura shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.”
“You’re right, though,” I said. “This really does suck.”
We both sighed.
“What do we do now?” Laura asked. “Looks clear. I don’t think anyone’s been here for a while.”
“No, they haven’t,” I said. “I guess we should go find the others. Come up with a game plan.”
Laura nodded. She didn’t want to stand here in this room, dwelling on the things of the past any more than I did.
Chapter 9
I decided on the dining room for our meeting. I was going to have to face my fear of this place if I had any hope of getting through it. Byron was dead. His house, while filled with reminders of him at every turn, could not hurt me anymore than any other building could. I shoved aside my irrational aversion for the room. The emotions were running high, but I didn’t want to dive into them all that deeply. If I did, I might not come back out.
Everyone was sitting, the table flipped back over by Mill and Iona, the chairs all righted by us. There were enough still intact to let us all have a seat, which was good, because to my surprise, I sank right in like all the life had left my legs. Everyone else seemed eager to sit, too, adrenaline finally wearing off after a long night.
Except for Mom, who was still standing near the wall, eyes on the pile of black goo heaped onto the carpet. “So…how did that happen again?” she asked.
I rolled my eyes. “A stake.”
“Like a T-bone? Or a ribeye?”
Dad had apparently had enough with Mom and her inability to accept the situation we were in. “We need to get on the same page, dear. Wooden stake. These are vampires.”
Mom gave him a quelling look before turning her dangerous gaze on me. “We never should have left New York.”
I was sitting with my back to Byron's puddled remains so I didn’t have to look at it. One step at a time. I figured that the only way I would really feel contented in this house was if I could be sure where he was, even if he was nothing more than a dried pile of glop on the floor. “Obviously the question that is on all of our minds is what are our next steps?” I asked.
Eyes moved around the table. Nobody said anything. Looks were traded, but I couldn't decipher many of them.
“All of us are out of a home now,” I said. “Mom, Dad, and I don't have a house. Mill, you can’t go back to your condo. Laura, same for you, and Iona, well…”
She nodded her head. “Yeah, yeah, I’m homeless, too. Thanks for that. Pretty soon I'll be a smelly bum, living on the streets, just like the rest of you. Do I have to pick up a heroin habit now or can I wait a few weeks?”
“Ouch, harsh.” Laura said. “And very stereotypical. You know—”
“I don't care, cheerleader,” Iona said. “Save your self-righteousness for someone who does.”
“Gregory's still in danger, too, isn’t he?” Laura asked.
“He is,” I said, “But probably not much. Seems unlikely Draven is going to start randomly going after my neighbors, though who knows with him. He says he's fine, I'm not going to fight with him.”
Mill’s brows turned into one, thick distressed line. “What about your other friend?”
“Xandra?” I asked. “I was just thinking about her. I need to get a warning to her somehow. I don’t know her number off the top of my head…” I looked at Laura. “You wouldn’t have Xandra’s number, would you?”
Laura frowned, and shook her head. “Is that the girl with the emotional support wombat that she brings to school?”
“No, she’s the one with the blue hair.”
Laura’s eyes narrowed as she scratched her chin in concentration. “I don’t think I know her.”
“She’s in our grade,” I went on. “I know we have like three hundred kids in our grade, but still. I think she’s the only one with blue hair. Let me correct myself. She’s the one with blue hair all the time, and blue hair that actually looks good on her.”
Laura shook her head. “No, sorry. I don't think blue hair looks good on anyone. There's some shades of magenta and pink I can get behind, but blue just doesn't work with most complexions, in my opinion.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. “Her mom owns that noodle shop over on—”
“Oh my gosh, yes. I know that shop. Yes, okay, I know who she is,” Laura said.
“She also helped us save your life,” I said, finishing the thought.
Iona was counting on the tips of her fingers.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She looked at me. “Xandra. That’s only six letters.”
Laura gave her a questioning look.
“Okay, we still need a plan,” I said before Laura could answer back. “I’ll worry about Xandra later. Besides, Jacquelyn never had contact with her.”
“We’ve been on the defensive,” Mill said, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair. “They’ve forced us to run, and until we can figure out what's going on, we have to keep out of Draven's sights.”
“I agree with the mighty forehead,” Iona said. “It isn’t like we can fight back. Not against Draven.”
“We sort of did tonight,” I said.
“Yeah, but could you do that again?” Iona asked.
I looked at Laura. “No, I don’t think so. We had the element of surprise. We won’t get that chance again.”
“Who's this Draven that you keep talking about?” Dad asked.
“Oh, you cannot be serious, Mike,” Mom said. “You're buying into all of this?”
Dad craned his neck to look over at her from his seat. “At this point, I'm willing to believe what my lying eyes have seen.”
Mom clicked her tongue in disgust. “This is just some…bizarre dream. I have more important things to be dealing with right now. I have clients to call first thing in the morning, I have a court appearance the day after tomorrow that I have to prepare for.” She shook her head, her lawyer face on. “I don’t have time to be going on some wild adventure, running from fake vampires.”
“How about real ones?” Iona asked. “Because trust me, I wouldn't waste time running from the fake ones.”
“There are fake vampires?” Laura asked.
Iona moved a hand in front of her mouth. “You know, the Halloween kind. With plastic teeth that can't even sink into a neck. I mean, unless you bite really, really hard.” I felt a pause as everyone seemed to take a deep breath at that. “What?” Iona asked, looking around. She bared a canine, pointed and sharper than a normal human's tooth. “Look at these babies. These were made for tearing through the skin and into the vein.”
Laura cringed and did not follow up on that. Mom just glared in the silence.
“Okay, thank you, Iona, for that...horror,” I said, glancing back at my mother. I didn’t know what it was going to take to get her to listen. Dad was quiet, but I could see the wheels turning as he looked from her to me. He had been silently observing our conversations up until that point. He was trying to make everything fit.
I understood. It’s like trying to shove the square toy in the circle hole. Vampires just didn’t make sense.
Dad looked at me again. “Can you answer me about who this Draven is?”
“He’s a vampire… With a lot of power,” I said.
“He's the vampire Lord of all of western Florida,” Mill said.
Thanks, Mill. Ever the blunt one.
“What happened?” Dad asked. “How did you get his attention?”
I fought the urge to glance over my shoulder at Byron’s remains, just to make sure that he really wasn’t going to wake up. I licked my lips. “Well, I was dealing with Byron. Iona stepped in to help, gave me directions to a vampire party. I was supposed to find out more about him, but instead, I kind of…killed one of his underlings, and he took it as a personal insult.”
Dad’s jaw hung open.
“Well, you can’t really blame the guy,” Laura said, holding her hands out, palms upward and shrugged. �
�You killed someone at his party.”
“In his house, no less,” Iona said. “If you killed someone in my house—back before this happened, when I had a nice, comfy, cozy home, you know—I would have taken it personally. I would have gone all bitey.” She stroked a finger idly over her tooth.
Laura looked at her sideways. “Is there a reason you keep touching your teeth?”
Iona sighed, theatrically, since she had no need to breathe. “Yes. You interrupted me in the middle of making dinner. I'm hungry.” She made a show of looking at Laura's neck. “Any chance you'd like to donate some blood?”
“Why did you kill that person, Cassandra?” Dad asked, adjusting his glasses. He was staring at me as if he was just seeing me for the first time.
“He was a vampire,” I said to him in as reassuring of a tone as possible. “He was trying to kill me.”
“Draven? Or the vampire you killed?” he asked.
“Both,” I said. “But the one I killed... His name was Theo.”
“Just for the record, I sent you to that party to get information,” Iona said. “Not to kill people. Why is it always violence and fire with you, anyway?”
“Why is it always blood with you?” Laura asked.
“I told you, I'm hungry,” Iona said, rolling her eyes. “The motive is obvious. Cassie's—less so. Unless she's just psychotic and a pyromaniac. Which I don't rule out.”
“Escaping Draven's condo was how I met Mill,” I said, ignoring the hell out of Iona's little assertion.
“You met your boyfriend at a party?” Mom asked. “Not at school?”
“I haven't been in school in over a hundred years,” Mill said.
“Well, I guess we can just add that lie to the pile,” Mom said, eyes blazing.
“I never said we met at school,” I bristled, looking at Mom.
“I did,” Mill said, unable to meet my eye.
“It’s great to see that your boyfriend lies for you,” Mom said, her eyes narrowing. “You two are like peas in a pod.”
“I used to eat peas,” Iona said, a little dreamily. “Back when I was human. Loved the taste of them then. Now they taste like ass. Or ash.” She smacked her lips and looked at Laura's neck again.
“Can you blame me?” I asked. “How would I explain it if I had told you the truth? You never would have believed me, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”
“Cassandra.” It was Dad. He was using his Dad voice, trying to convince me to calm down.
Mom was glaring. She still wasn’t ready to see the truth staring her in the face.
“Unfortunately, Cassie is in the most danger,” Mill said, getting right back on topic. “The rest of us are too, of course, but she will be their main target.”
“And that means that nowhere in Tampa is going to be safe for her,” Iona said.
“It seems likely that Draven doesn’t know where we are, at least not yet,” Mill said.
“If he did, I assume that they would be kicking in the door?” Dad asked.
I nodded. “Yeah. Likely.”
A movement near the doorway drew my attention, and I looked up.
Lockwood was standing there, a rucksack tossed over his shoulder. He had returned to his human-like self, with his dark hair and startling green eyes, and was wearing a sharp navy blazer over a white button up and faded jeans. When he caught my eye, he smiled.
“How did you find us?” I asked, standing up.
“Who is this?” Mom said. “Another one of your friends?” Her eyes narrowed. “Your lying friends.”
“I cannot lie,” Lockwood said, holding out his hand to my dad. “So please take my word that it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, finally. My name is Lockwood. I count myself one of Cassandra's friends—and very fortunate to be in that number.” He inclined his head in such a proper way that I felt like I was in a fae court. I understood Lockwood so much better now, and his body language, always so formal, now held a lot more meaning than it ever had before.
Dad took his hand and shook it, mouth hanging open slightly.
“Long time no see,” I said to Lockwood.
“What has it been…” he said with a small smirk. “Three hours? Four?”
“In Faerie time, that's practically an eternity.” I smiled. I looked back at Mom and Dad. Might as well keep going with the honesty thing. “He’s a Fae,” I said.
Laura’s eyes were wide with awe again.
Mom just scoffed. “I really don't care about the sexuality of your friends right now, Cassie.”
“Fae, not... Never mind,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn't matter either way.”
Dad looked skeptical. Faeries might be a bridge too far now.
“Ah, so we are sharing all truths now?” Lockwood asked.
“Yes. I am so over lying after our last adventure,” I said. The prospect of being turned into the liar's version of an Avara—a pig-like evolution of greedy humans too long stuck in Faerie—had been the last straw in scaring me straight. No more lies for this girl.
Lockwood gave me a quick wink and moved to shake my mother’s hand. She leaned away from him, folding her own. He inclined his head toward, her, ignoring the snub, and turned to stand beside Mill.
“So, do you have some kind of like…Faerie GPS?” I asked. “Did you inject me with a tracker or something?”
“Mill shared his location via his phone,” Lockwood said, pulling his cell phone from his pocket. “Not everything is magic, Cassandra.” But he gave me a bemused smile.
I looked at Mill. “You should probably turn off your location on your phone in case Draven—”
“Already done,” Mill said. “And I brought Lockwood up to speed with... All this.”
“Another interesting adventure commences.” Lockwood looked across the table at me, green eyes glittering. “Have you ever considered giving yourself a break?”
“I don’t want to hear it, Seelie.” I said. “Getting my house burned down and having my old bestie turn evil vampire snitch on me wasn't exactly the 'Welcome Home' party I was hoping for after spending a week at war in Faerie.”
“Draven will be in his penthouse,” Mill said. “It'll be all-hands-on-deck, heavily fortified, he will be defended.” He looked at me with great significance.
“Are you thinking I wanted to go at him, like, head on?” I asked.
“Well... This is you we're talking about, Cassie,” he said, almost offering a shrug.
“You do tend to have a penchant for direct action in the face of trouble, Cassandra,” Lockwood added oh-so-helpfully.
“How come you let him call you Cassandra?” Laura asked. “I thought you hated that.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“I wondered that myself,” Dad said.
“He just…” I said, and then groaned in exasperation. “I don’t know. Listen to the way he talks. He's practically old-world British. It sounds endearing when he does it, okay?”
Mill’s lips twitched ever so slightly as if he was trying to smother a laugh.
“Anyway,” I said. “I'm not some kind of suicidal idiot looking to get herself killed, all right? I just spent the whole night trying not to die.”
“I'm just saying that a direct assault is not a smart move,” Mill said. “It's too dangerous. We need another option.”
“Which is what?” I asked. “This is where we keep hitting a snag. We don’t really know what to do.” All I got in reply was a bunch of blank faces as I looked around the table.
“We need to rest,” Iona said. “Well, at least you humans do. You’ve been awake through the whole night, right? Not to mention whatever this trip to Faerie cost you. I saw enough beds in this place. We can take shifts until someone has a bright idea about what to do next.” She smacked her lips together. “We can send someone out for food. Maybe have them make a quick stop at the blood bank...”
Mill frowned. “Every blood bank in the area is controlled by Draven. Why not just send them into his
condo?”
“So, you think that'd be suicide?” Iona asked, utterly casual. “I agree. It'd be a blood bath. Better they just give a little—y'know, straight to us and skip dying. Am I right?” She looked around and got no approval, though Laura gave her another wary look.
I leaned back in my chair and sighed. I didn’t like any of these ideas, except for maybe sending somebody out for food (but not to the blood bank). We were just sitting on our hands, hiding like terrified rabbits. How could any of us rest in a situation like this?
“I’m sorry,” I said finally.
“For what?” Mill said.
“For everything…” I looked at Dad. “For our house…and the one in New York.” I looked at Mill, and then Iona. “I’m sorry that you can’t go home, either of you.” I looked at Laura. “I’m sorry we dragged you with us.”
Laura shrugged. “It’s pretty much a good thing, especially if it is going to save my life.” She looked at Iona out of the corner of her eye. “Though, admittedly, there are some creepy aspects.”
“Still…” I looked at Lockwood. “And I am sorry about dragging you into my messes again.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have to apologize. You agreed to help me, even without knowing the full extent of my problems, and you saved my life more than once in the process.”
Mill gave me a sidelong look. What a lovely date night that was going to be, retelling the story of barely escaping death in Faerie. Magic and glamours and Unseelie…good times. I thought of Orianna and what she was doing for the Winter Queen right then. I wondered if she had forgotten all about me by now.
“I just don’t know what to do,” I said, head falling into my hand. “I don’t want to sit here and wait, but I know we can’t leave, either.”
“We need to be patient,” Mill said. “And hunker down for now.”
“I do believe we are safe,” Lockwood said. “I did a thorough search of the area before coming inside. There are no signs of surveillance.”
“Good to hear,” I said. I really was exhausted. I couldn’t remember when I had slept last, but I was so wound up being in Byron’s house and near what was left of his body that I knew there was zero chance I could actually rest here.
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