High Stakes (Codex Blair Book 6)

by Izzy Shows

  But I couldn’t ignore those things, and they only amplified my missing him.

  And complicated the situation with Emily. Because those things didn’t dampen my feelings toward her. They existed in an entirely different space of my mind. They were their own entity.

  But it wasn’t fair to her that I was pining after a demon while I explored a relationship with her.

  I caught myself before I could let out a frustrated sigh. Now wasn’t the time to be thinking about any of this. How had I even gotten on that subject?

  “Sorry, I missed that,” I said. Dudley was looking at me with his eyebrows drawn in an irritated expression. He’d said something, but I had no idea what it was.

  “I said things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, and you need to get over your soft feelings. There’s no room for them in this business. I thought you knew that by now.”

  Now, it was my turn to be irritated. He had no right to talk to me like that.

  “Terribly sorry, sir, but I’m not going to stop being human just because I’m working with vampires. Humans worry about the balance of life and what they’re getting themselves into, and I’m not too happy with what I’ve gotten myself into.”

  “You should have thought of that before you agreed to this,” he said, shaking his head and shifting his gaze away from me.

  “You didn’t exactly give me a choice,” I said, my words icy. “It was either do this or let the vampires run wild. You should be able to take care of things yourself. They’re your vampires.”

  “I am taking care of things, by utilizing all the tools I have at my disposal.”

  My eyes widened, and anger vibrated through me. “Are you implying that I’m one of your tools?”

  “At the moment, yes, you are.” He picked up a paper from his desk and began to peruse it, all but dismissing me.

  I wasn’t happy with that at all. “I’m not a tool for you to use,” I said, gritting my teeth. “I’m a human being. You may not be used to working with humans and treating them as equals, but that’s what you signed up for.”

  He grinned, flicking his eyes over to me. “There’s that fire. You need to keep hold of that.”

  He played me, I realized.

  “I’d like to officially present you to the vampires as my enforcer. They’ve seen you in action, but they don’t know what to think of you right now. We need to correct that.”

  “That sounds like a personal problem to me,” I said, taking the seat now and crossing one leg over the other. “Deal with it.”

  His eyes glittered dangerously. “I am dealing with it. I’m going to present you, and you’re going to behave.”

  “What’s wrong, Duds? Can’t keep control of your tools?” I smiled pleasantly at him, the expression on my face completely at odds with my mocking words.

  He ran a hand through his thinning hair. I could tell he was working to keep hold of his temper. Maybe I should have been grateful for that, but at the moment I didn’t have the necessary sense of self-preservation to care what he thought.

  He had insulted me, and that didn’t sit well with me. He needed to remember who and what I was, and he needed to take care with his dealings with me.

  I wasn’t a thing for him to use and put away when he wanted.

  Leaning forward, I spoke. “I don’t do things just because you tell me to. I don’t want to be presented in an official context to your vampires.”

  “You seem to think you hold all the cards here, Ms. Sheach. Allow me to remind you that this is not the case,” he said, leaning back in his chair. There was no expression on his face now, and that was more frightening than if he’d looked pissed. “I don’t think your Order would be very happy to hear that you’re working hand in hand with the vampires they turn a blind eye to. Oh, certainly it’s no problem if you do the same as them, but working with us? Tsk.” He shook his head. “No, I don’t think they’d like that at all.”

  My mouth went dry, and for a moment it was difficult for me to draw a breath. That arsehole. He was blackmailing me.

  I looked down at the floor to the right of my chair, my eyes narrowed as I thought about what he’d just said to me. If it had come from anyone else, I might have launched myself across the desk and slugged the person. But Dudley wasn’t someone to be trifled with. He was the oldest vampire I knew of, and therefore incredibly dangerous. He could take me in a fight, no doubt, and I didn’t want to put any theories to the test there.

  He had me between a rock and a hard place, and he knew it. There was no option for me to get out of this. I had to do as I was asked, otherwise he’d report me to the Order and I’d have to find out what the punishment was for working with vampires.

  There wasn’t a rule against it, per se, but I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be something good.

  “You’re a cunt, you know that?” I finally looked back at him, hatred simmering in my eyes.

  “I don’t have to be. You just need to be more compliant.”

  “This isn’t going to work forever, Dudley,” I said. “You’re not going to be able to hold that over my head indefinitely. I’ll find a way around it, and then you’re going to have to resort to actually working with me.”

  He shrugged. “I’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “You might find that I don’t want to work with you at all.” I stood and headed for the door.

  “Don’t lose sight of what’s important here for the sake of your pride, mage. London is at stake, and you have to protect your city just as I need to secure my power.”

  My shoulders stiffened, but I didn’t turn to look at him. “You can present me to your vampires, Dudley. Don’t ask for more from me.”

  We’d entertained a good working relationship together up until now.

  But as far as I was concerned, he had just severed it.

  Nineteen

  We were standing in the great ballroom again. Weylyn was in his full wolf form, and I was standing at attention with staff in hand. I figured I looked pretty bloody Wizard at the moment, with the staff. It wasn’t something you could ignore when you walked past it--the thing glowed all on its own. It wasn’t inconspicuous, and it took concentrated effort on my part to have it look like an ordinary walking staff when I went out with it in public.

  But I wasn’t doing that now, because I needed to look the part of the Great Enforcer, as Dudley wanted from me.

  The room was full of vampires. The oldest were seated, while the younglings were forced to stand around them. There was no space to move in the room, save for in front of Dudley. He was once again on his throne, and I was standing to the right of it. Weylyn was on my right.

  I took in a deep breath, drawn through closed teeth so no one could see me do it. I didn’t want them to think I was nervous. Didn’t want to give them a reason to think they could put one over on me.

  You have to be the Big Bad, I told myself. You have to put the fear of God in them.

  This wasn’t something I was good at, on the most basic level. I was used to hiding in the shadows, getting my work done without drawing attention to myself. Those days were very much over now--I could never go back to being an unknown once this was over. I’d always be known to the vampires, and they were sure to tell all the other monsters about me.

  I’d been infamous, once. I’d had a title that was whispered through the ranks--Hunter--but it was one that no one had ever connected to me on sight. I’d been able to hide in plain sight because of that, but that was all gone now.

  I was known to them, and there was no taking that back.

  It didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t want to be known. I didn’t want to be feared. I just wanted to be Blair, the girl who did what she had to do and went home to her imp without having to worry about anything coming after her.

  How long would it be before these monsters figured out where I lived and came after me? How long before they came after the ones I loved?

  Another breath
. I had to settle myself. I had to remember that there wasn’t anything I could do to prevent the future from happening. I could only deal with the present.

  Dudley stood, and the small amounts of chatter that had been happening in the room fell away. There was nothing but silence now, and it lasted for a solid minute.

  I was ready to scratch my ears off if only to hear the sound of my nails against my skin when he spoke.

  “Many of you have wondered about the presence of the human Wizard in our midst,” Dudley said, gesturing to me. My gaze flashed to him and then to the crowd, watching as they all shifted their weight from foot to foot. Whispers began, but Dudley held up a hand, and they quickly fell silent. “I have decided to share her purpose with you. The Hunter is here to assist me, as it has been brought to my attention that some of you are...shall we say, dissatisfied.” I glanced at him and was surprised to see emotion in his eyes--pure anger. Not a single one of them spoke. “If anyone so much as thinks a traitorous thought, I will not hesitate to allow the Hunter full access to your lives. And we’ve all seen how little she values your lives.”

  He took a seat again.

  Everyone shifted their gaze from Dudley to me. I saw anger and fear in the crowd, and it was very hard for me to stand still. I was suddenly aware of an inch on my nose. But I couldn’t move, could barely breathe, because I had to keep up the appearance that I was above them. That I’d kill them without a moment’s notice, and with little provocation.

  Well, at least that’s true. I wouldn’t hesitate to kill a single one of these creatures.

  Dudley cleared his throat. “You may bring your grievances forth.”

  The night settled into a rhythm again, much the same as the first one had. Several vampires came before him with one complaint or another, but they were much quieter about it now.

  They didn’t speak as loudly, they didn’t fight back when Dudley announced his sentence, and they didn’t look him directly in the eye.

  In fact, a lot of them were looking at me when they spoke to Dudley. They couldn’t seem to take their eyes off me. I guessed they were trying to figure me out. Trying to figure out what to think of me.

  Good luck with that, I thought. I don’t even know what to think of myself now.

  There was nothing they could do to get rid of me now, not after Dudley had publicly proclaimed me a member of these proceedings. They’d have to put up with me until such time as Dudley decided I was no longer needed, or perhaps when Dudley was no longer in power.

  I had the sudden sinking feeling that they wouldn’t want to wait for the former.

  Perhaps we’d been too hasty with our decision to bring me in.

  It was entirely possible I’d made things worse.

  Twenty

  “Blair!”

  Diego’s sharp voice woke me up. My head had smacked into the book I was supposed to be studying. I groaned, rubbing at the mark on my forehead, and looked up at him.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Save your sorries and focus,” he replied, turning his back on me to pick through the bookshelf behind me.

  I bristled, but I didn’t say anything. He had every right to be upset with me. I’d skipped lessons yesterday to spend time with Emily, and then I’d been up all night with the vampires, so I kept falling asleep.

  I was letting him down, and that hurt worse than anything else possibly could. I wanted to make him proud. Wanted to live up to what he thought I was capable of.

  If only the book in front of me had been interesting. It was bad enough that I was bloody exhausted from staying up all night--that nap hadn’t helped at all--but the subject matter was boring.

  It was a history of the Order, and the fact that I was bored with it was saying a lot, because I usually loved history. Lived for it, save for all those dates. I couldn’t keep dates straight in my head, but I loved reading about what people had been up to in different time periods. Wars weren’t particularly interesting, but the reason they’d fought those wars was.

  But this book droned on and on about the wonderful qualities of the Order and all the reasons you should worship them.

  I didn’t worship at the altar of the Order, and the book wasn’t convincing me to change my mind.

  I snapped the book shut and looked at Diego, who had turned around at the sound of the book closing.

  “Giving up already, are we?” He scowled at me.

  “Why don’t you go ahead and get it over with?” I said, sighing and leaning back in the chair I was sitting in. “I doubt I’m going to earn my reprieve by reading a bunch of boring history.”

  He turned back to the books and ran his hands over several spines before pulling a book off the shelf. “That might be exactly what you have to do. If someone was interested in punishing you, they might want you to do the very thing that you appear to suck at.”

  I flinched. Normally, a remark like that would have been jovial in nature, something for both of us to laugh at. But Diego was pissed at me, so his words hurt more than they should.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I knew I was repeating myself, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I didn’t get any sleep last night.”

  “I know,” he replied.

  And that was all he said. I fought back another sigh and turned to look at Weylyn.

  “I am no happier about our late-night activities than he is,” Weylyn said to me.

  I scowled at him. “So, I have an enemy at both turns,” I said aloud.

  Diego turned to look at me, an eyebrow raised. “Weylyn agrees with me, does he?”

  The urge to lie jumped into my mind, but I pushed it back down. I needed to earn Diego’s forgiveness right now, or else we weren’t going to get anywhere with my training. Sure, it was possible that he might get over it in a few days, but I had a sneaking suspicion that that wouldn’t be the case. He hated vampires with every fibre of his being, though he wouldn’t share the reason with me. It was more hatred than one would normally assume a human could hold for a creature who preyed on their kind--I certainly wasn’t fond of the vampires, but I didn’t despise them the way Diego did.

  I recognized that they were sentient creatures, capable of good as well as bad, even if it was hard to see the good they did. They were no more evil than humans were, and humans had done a lot of bad to the world. That couldn’t be ignored.

  “Yes, Weylyn agrees with you,” I said, doing my best to keep my grudging tone to a minimum. “Everyone seems to think I’m the absolute worst person in the world for trying to keep the peace in London.” Ah, there it was, sneaking out without my permission--the snark I couldn’t hold back no matter how hard I tried.

  Diego didn’t look impressed. “Are you looking for sympathy, Blair? You won’t find it here.”

  “You could try to understand why I do the things I do. I’m certainly giving it my all to understand you, but you aren’t exactly making it easy on me, are you?”

  “Why should I?” He flipped through a few pages of the book, all but ignoring me now.

  I felt my temper rising, and I pushed it down. I couldn’t lose my cool now that Diego was finally talking to me. He’d been ignoring me all morning whenever I tried to strike up a conversation with him.

  It was pathetic, but I needed things between us to be OK. I needed to know he didn’t hate me like he hated the vampires.

  Taking a deep breath, I stood up and placed the book on the table in front of me. I walked over to stand beside Diego with my arms crossed over my chest.

  “I’m working with the vampires to keep London safe. You know that if I don’t cooperate, we’re risking a rebellion that could mean the deaths of thousands of innocents. Why don’t you want me to do that?”

  “You could prevent those deaths by killing all the vampires.”

  “And start a war like the one that’s raging in the States? How’s that going for you?” I shot back at him before I could think better of it.

  He flinched, and when he looked at m
e, I knew I’d overstepped. Pain flickered in his eyes for a moment, and then he turned away from me so I couldn’t see.

  Desideria hissed from her spot on the sofa. She was no doubt feeling Diego’s pain and responding to the source of it: me. I didn’t want to be the source of his pain, and if I could have taken it back, I would.

  But it was out there.

  I threw up my hands and paced away from him. “I really don’t know what you want from me, Diego. I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.”

  “You shouldn’t be working with the vampires,” he said, persisting in the notion that there was somehow another option. He was looking at me again. I guessed I should be grateful for that.

  Instead, I glared at him. “What are you going to do, Diego? Turn me in?”

  He softened. “You know I don’t want that. I just want to keep you safe. They’re going to turn on you.”

  My smile was tired. “Everyone does. I’ll be ready.”

  Twenty One

  The rest of the morning was quiet, with Diego and me keeping away from each other for the most part. At some point, he must have decided to forgive me, because he took the book right out of my lap and put it back in its spot on the bookshelf.

  “What’s going on?” I sat up straight, realizing that I might have gotten it wrong and he might be kicking me out now. It could be that I wasn’t looking at forgiveness but rather him giving up.

  “We’re going to work on spells,” he said, his tone implying that it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Pure joy flooded through me. Of course, this was the exact time that we’d transitioned from books to spellwork in the past, but I hadn’t put two and two together. Diego appeared to be a man who was nothing if not punctual.