“See everything you needed to?”
The voice startled me enough that I sat up despite the splitting pain in my skull. Dahlia glared at me, her eyes accusing slits, but she did not move. “Get out.”
“Tell me what ‘the cause’ is, and I’ll consider it.” I reached into my back pocket for the stake I’d brought for protection.
“I’m not going to tell you anything.” Even her voice sounded tired. “I want you out.”
“Are you going to make me leave? You don’t seem to be in any position to fight me off.” I climbed on the bed and pressed the point of the stake into her chest, making sure she could feel it through her clothes. “What’s ‘the cause’?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Fuck you!”
“You leave me very little choice.” I raised the stake as though I was going to plunge it through her heart, hoping she would change her mind and tell me.
I should have known better. She just glared at me while I hesitated with the stake in midair. Then I felt something at my back, and turned to see Clarence there, brandishing a crossbow.
I dropped the stake. “Clarence, what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry, miss. But I can’t let you kill her.” He kept the bow leveled at my chest to show he was serious. “I think it’s about time you leave now.”
“Wait, wait.” I shook my head. “She knows you drugged her. She knows you worked with me. She’ll kill you once it wears off.”
Dahlia laughed behind me. “Damn straight I will.”
“She can’t kill me,” Clarence said, and he sounded as if he truly believed it.
“Think about what you’re doing. She’s a vampire.” I raised my hands, my gaze flitting between the point of the bolt aimed at me and his face. “Besides, you can’t kill me, either. I don’t have a heart in my chest.”
He shook his head. “Oh, I might not kill you outright, but I can put you out long enough to stoke up that fireplace and toss you in.”
“Fair enough.” I looked at Dahlia, then back to Clarence. “Fine. I’ll go.”
“You know your way out,” he said. “I won’t be seeing you around here again.”
“No, you won’t.” I paused at the door. “Why are you protecting her?”
“Because I come with the house. And she’s better than some of them that’s been here.” He nodded in the direction of the door. “Like the old master and his father.”
The Soul Eater? I wanted to ask more, but he dropped the bow and turned to tend his mistress. I didn’t want to make him any more of an enemy that I already had, so I left.
Exactly how old was Clarence, and how long had he worked in the house? I knew he had a peculiar affection for it, so much so that he would not escape his vampire employers even when he had a chance. It was a riddle I would probably never know the answer to.
I was crossing the foyer to the front door when I stopped. The doors to the study were closed, but I knew they would not be locked. I don’t know how I knew this, but I moved toward them automatically and pushed them open.
Maybe it was the lingering influence of Dahlia’s blood in mine, maybe it was my own memory, maybe it was just instinct, but when I opened the doors, the first thing my gaze rested on was the spot where I’d killed Cyrus. The pain and sorrow of that night rushed through me, as fresh as the moment it had happened. I’d kissed him and plunged a knife through his heart. How could I have done such a thing? It was the blood tie between us now that caused me pain. Then, I’d understood what had to be done; now I was horrified by it.
I tore my gaze away and there it was. Lying on the leather sofa, beside a Cosmopolitan magazine, of all things, was the leather-bound book I’d seen Dahlia reading on the night she’d given Max the mysterious elixir.
I looked over my shoulder. Clarence must have still been upstairs. I clutched the book to my chest, gave one last scan of the room, and tore into the foyer and out the door.
I didn’t stop running until I reached the street, then doubled over, panting. I slipped the book beneath my shirt and hugged it tight all the way back to the apartment, certain at any moment I’d turn and Clarence would be there, ready to kill me for stealing from his mistress.
But I was equally certain that whatever was in the book was the missing piece that would make all the others fit.
Fifteen:
The Cause
N athan wasted no time at all delving into Dahlia’s handwritten notes.
“This is amazing,” he murmured, his dark head bent over the pages as he sat at the kitchen table. Cyrus and I stood in the doorway, watching in tense silence. Sometimes, when lovers fight, the guilty party will bring flowers home. To appease Nathan, all I had to bring home was the notebook of a notorious witch. I wondered how I’d top it the next time he nearly kicked me out.
“Just amazing,” he repeated, turning a page.
Cyrus was the first to snap. Thank God, because I’d been on pins and needles, but I hadn’t wanted to be the one to break Nathan’s reverie. Cyrus, however, had no problem doing so. “Well, what is it?”
Nathan looked up and gave a weary sigh. “It’s a grimoire. A spell book. Haven’t you seen this before?”
“No,” Cyrus sniffed. “I didn’t really take much of an interest in what Dahlia did.”
“You should have,” Nathan said, a little smugly, as he looked back to the book. “There are things in here that would interest you.”
Now Cyrus looked at the pages. “Like what?”
“Aphrodisiacs, love potions, all things she apparently used on you.” Nathan snorted and read aloud, “‘Tried this and he couldn’t get it up.’”
“I was probably very tired!” Cyrus snapped.
“I’m sure you were.” I patted his head condescendingly. “What do you know about ‘the cause’?”
Cyrus ducked my hand and smoothed his hair with an annoyed glare. “What cause?”
I shrugged. “Dahlia said it. It’s why she had sex with Max.”
Nathan looked up sharply. “She had sex with Max?”
“Believe me, I was as surprised as you are.” I suppressed a shudder of revulsion. “I thought he had better taste.”
Cyrus reached for the book. “Did she tell you any thing else?”
As I tried to remember, pain ripped through my head, either from the blood or the poison. “She was making something…a potion. It smelled like burned cloves….”
From somewhere faraway, I heard Nathan say, “Grab her, she’s going to fall.” When I opened my eyes I was on the couch, and it felt as if someone had hurled an ax into my head. Nathan leaned over me, his face full of concern.
And anger.
“How did you get this information from Dahlia?” His stare seemed to cut through me and blanket me in his worry all at once.
“She…told me?” I wasn’t a good liar on my best day. Nathan saw through my words easily.
He laughed, a tight, humorless sound, and I got the distinct feeling he was close to losing it. “She told you? You walked into the mansion, sat down over tea and she said, ‘By the way, I had sex with your friend and I’m working on a shadowy purpose I’ll only call ‘the cause’? Now, please leave my home unhindered so you can tell all your friends?”
“Of course not,” I snapped, trying to sit up. I caught sight of Cyrus through the kitchen doorway, his fair head bent over the spell book. His lips moved silently as he read, making him look more boyish than I’d ever seen him, and my heart swelled at the sight.
“Carrie, focus.” Nathan sounded tired and irritable, and I realized I hadn’t shielded him from my feelings for Cyrus.
I wanted to reach out to Nathan and assure him I still loved him best, but something in his stiff, annoyed demeanor suggested that would be a bad idea.
“You knew Clarence was helping me,” I hedged. Then I sighed, my brain too fuzzy to keep up a convincing lie. “He drugged her, and I drank her blood.”
Nathan recoiled in horror. “Why would you do something like that?
”
“Nostalgia?” Cyrus suggested blandly from the kitchen.
Nathan ignored him. “Carrie?”
“I drank your blood, mixed with Cyrus’s, and I saw your…history. I thought if I drank her blood…” How could I have been so stupid? If I drank her blood, and she had been drugged, I’d ingested the drug myself. “It’s hard to believe I ever passed the MCATs.”
“It’s hard to believe you lived past the age of ten!” Nathan stood and stalked away, then turned and paced back to the couch. “For someone smart enough to be a doctor, you have remarkably little common sense!”
“Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!” Why did those words always follow an abysmally stupid action? “Besides, it bought us some information!”
“That might be false!” Nathan paused in his agitated pacing and sat at the end of the couch, elbows braced on his spread knees. “When you drank our blood, you saw what you did because we’d both been blood tied to you. We couldn’t lie to you because we didn’t have the capacity to control what you saw. But Dahlia has no tie to you. She could have shown you anything she wanted.”
I cast a sidelong glance at Cyrus, remembering his face as he loomed over Dahlia in his bed. “She was drugged. How could she have planted things in my head if she was unconscious?”
“She might not have made them up,” Nathan conceded. “But she may have left out crucial details that would have changed the order or meaning of what you saw.”
“She’s crazy, don’t forget. Some of what you witnessed might not ever have happened, even if she believes it did.” Cyrus interjected his comment in an offhand way. He was still absorbed in the book, probably wondering what exactly his ex-girlfriend had tried on him.
“There’s that, too.” Nathan seemed loath to admit Cyrus had said something helpful. “The point is, we still don’t know anything. We just have this book, and her convoluted memories. It wasn’t worth the risk you took.”
Underneath his anger, I felt his love. He worried about me. I reached for his hand, and he took mine willingly, giving a gentle squeeze.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I was just so consumed with wanting to find something, any sort of break to help us.” I shook my head. “It was so easy before.”
Nathan sighed. “You didn’t fail. You got us this book. That’s something.”
He leaned down to kiss me, and jealousy surged through me from Cyrus’s direction. I heard him push back his chair, then his footsteps as he came into the living room.
“Really, the only thing we need to know is where my father is going next. He won’t stay in one place too long. It isn’t his way.” Cyrus sat on the floor beside the couch, and I couldn’t help but lay my hand on his head. He leaned back, into my touch, and Nathan looked away.
I couldn’t take much more of this. Being the object two men competed for wasn’t as glamorous as it sounded in the movies. The two men who both wanted one hundred percent of my time weren’t dashing, international playboys. They were undead and surprisingly immature, considering the youngest was just over a hundred years old.
Oblivious to my distress, Cyrus went on. “That might be easier to find out than just charging into the mansion and drinking people’s blood.”
“Oh?” Nathan’s annoyance was practically tangible. “Why didn’t you mention this before Carrie risked her life?”
“Because you wouldn’t listen to me unless it was your very last option,” Cyrus retorted. “And you didn’t take the time to ask me when you were pummeling me the other night.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Nathan said quietly, and though there was a bitter edge to it, his apology sounded genuine. “What’s your idea?”
“My father travels rather conspicuously. A full retinue of armed guards, black sedans, a hearse. Do you think those things are easy to ship?” He raised an eyebrow, as if in challenge.
Nathan and I both shook our heads.
With a satisfied smile, Cyrus continued. “Do you know of many places you can rent a hearse? All we have to do is look up records for hearse sales in the last few days.”
“What?” I thought I could feel my eyes bugging out of my head at his suggestion. “How do you expect us to do that?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “They do it in the movies all the time. Someone always conveniently knows someone who can get the information.”
I smacked the back of his head and rolled my eyes. “I’m so glad we’ve reached the but-they-do-it-in-the-movies phase of desperation. It inspires a lot of confidence.”
There was a long moment of silence before Nathan spoke. “I know a way.”
“Whether you know a way or not, it’s stupid and we’re still screwed.” I shook my head. “It’s impossible.”
“I believe Nathan is alluding to another solution. One we have denied from the very start.” Ominous silence followed Cyrus’s statement.
Then Nathan turned to Cyrus, his eyes hard. He spoke, and his voice was as raw as the pain I felt through our blood tie. “Believe me, I’ve considered it.”
Cyrus contemplated him for a moment, then shrugged. “I’m merely stating the obvious. You’re all too eager to send Carrie out to do your spying, but when it comes to something that might endanger you—”
“Oh? I should expose her to the danger I pose when I’m under his influence?” Nathan shouted.
His sudden change of tone startled me, and the motion sent another pain ripping through my head. Whatever Clarence had given Dahlia, I pitied the hangover she would have when she fully recovered. “Cyrus, he can’t open up the connection to the Soul Eater. He was possessed—”
“By a spell. A spell Dahlia probably cast.” When I didn’t immediately agree, Cyrus point toward the kitchen. “It’s in the book. You can see for yourself.”
With considerable determination, I pushed myself up and staggered to the kitchen. There, on the page he’d left open, were the symbols I’d seen carved into Nathan’s skin, some of which he still bore as nasty scars. Next to the neatly printed sigils, Dahlia’s handwriting proclaimed, “Cannibalized from various sources. My version works better.”
I should have staked her when I had the chance, the smug bitch.
“My father isn’t capable of something like this,” Cyrus said quietly. “Dahlia did it. In fact, if you look closely at this book, you’ll see she’s been behind most of the magic done on my father’s behalf. She even wrote the spell that brought me back from the dead. It’s all there. And I suggest we anticipate my father’s next move, as there are far nastier spells that she’s come up with.”
“Nathan?” I asked tentatively. “Nathan, do you want to come look at this?”
He gave a barely perceptible shake of his head.
“We’ve had the best tool for tracking my father right here the whole time,” Cyrus continued. “He just won’t use it, Carrie.”
What was I supposed to feel? In my heart, I understood Nathan’s reluctance to open up to his sire. The man had taken his wife from him, tried to take his soul. Nathan’s life, faith and dignity had been destroyed. Why on earth would he want to feel anything his sire wanted to give him?
Another part of me, though, was angry. Nathan had sent me into danger. Sure, he’d worried about me, but he’d been more worried about himself, about what would be easiest for him. I tried hard to keep my bitter feelings from the blood tie, but he felt them.
“That’s not it at all, Carrie.” He stood and walked toward the bedroom, adding a mental, You should know me better than that.
I looked helplessly at Cyrus. He touched my face, his fingertips skimming my cheek. “Talk to him.”
When I went to the bedroom, I found Nathan sitting on the edge of the bed, staring bleakly at the wall. But I knew he didn’t see it. He was in another time, another place entirely.
I knelt beside him on the bed.
“You think I was being selfish.” His voice sounded hollow.
I considered. “Yes. Out of
self-preservation. You don’t know what he’s going to do to you.”
“I shouldn’t have let you go to that house tonight.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. His eyes were raw looking. “I have the perfect weapon, and I’m too cowardly to use it.”
“It’s not cowardly. He has incredible power over you.” When Nathan scoffed at that, I took his palm and laid it over the place where my heart used to be. “Like you have power over me.”
“What power, Carrie?” He threw up his hands. “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to.”
Alarms went off in my head at that. “Why would you want to force me to do something I didn’t want to?”
“To keep you away from him,” he sputtered. “To keep you from constantly running to him for solutions, for comfort. To keep you from loving him.”
“I love you.” Stunned as I was by this unprovoked outpouring, it took me a minute to comprise a more intelligent statement. “I feel for him what I presume all sires feel for their fledglings. Am I wrong?”
Nathan’s gaze was so intense it could burn. “And what do you think that feeling is?”
He’d never come so close to saying the words. I was speechless for a moment. He took advantage of my state to continue. “If I open myself up to my sire, I don’t know what will happen. Maybe he’ll ignore me. Maybe we’ll learn everything we need to. But maybe I’ll get lost again, and this time you won’t need me enough to get me back.”
I pulled him to me, wanting to draw some of his fear into me, to relieve him of the burden of it. “How could you think that? I love you. When you were under his control before, I risked my life and my soul to save you. I would do that a hundred times more if I had to.”
“But I wouldn’t.” His throat moved as he swallowed. “I couldn’t go through that again. Not with what he has to use against me.”
Ziggy. “Nathan, he can only use it to control you if you still feel guilty. And what happened to Ziggy wasn’t your fault.”
“Wasn’t it?” he snapped, as if angry that I would even suggest otherwise. “I kicked him out—”
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