“Darion…? Oh! That’s his name?”
“It is.”
She made a quick note in a small floral notebook that sat open before her. Her computer was making the most unfortunate humming sound, or perhaps it was the vents; Christina did not seem bothered by the sound, but the electric whirring of whatever was not working properly was enough to set my ears ringing.
Christina looked up at me. “Are you okay, Bram?”
“Your devices are hissing at me,” I responded irritably.
“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” She gave something under her desk a solid kick, and the noise mostly ceased. “My computer is super old. I need to get it replaced, it’s bothering everybody, and I work in HR. So, you know, this is supposed to be a welcoming environment, Deborah.” This last bit was directed at the ceiling, presumably to a superior on the second floor with whom Christina was having difficulties.
“If not for the offending sound, your office is quite welcoming,” I offered, perhaps in response for the fact that she had seemed so pleased to see me.
“Sit down,” she invited, and I obliged. Two chairs faced her desk at angles. They were those odd, square wooden things with gray-green cushions of surprising plushness.
“So, how do you know Darion?” Christina asked conversationally, as if Darion and I were old school mates.
“Dagan paid me a significant sum of money to smuggle himself and Osenna out of Dromir.”
“Osenna,” Christina repeated, sounding only slightly surprised.
“Has Agent James spoken with you today?” I asked.
“No. He sent me an email, but I haven’t opened it yet. You ran into Casey last night?”
“I did, and I spoke to him a bit regarding this… mess. The email might contain the small bit I shared with him.”
“Well why don’t you share it all with me, just so I have it right from the horse’s mouth.”
Christina, Christina. So infuriatingly efficient. “This is why Melchior was so fond of you,’ I said.
If that comment smarted at all, she did not allow it to show. Instead, she turned a page in her notebook and poised her pen over the paper. “Please, tell me what you told Casey.”
I sighed inwardly. I had half a mind to abandon this visit entirely and strike out to find Darion on my own—but ever since Meg’s little detour in Washington D.C., my network of underworld colleagues had grown somewhat slim. Frankly, allowing Christina to find Darion would be less trouble.
And she had seemed pleased to see me...
“Here is the abridged version,” I began. “I smuggled Dagan and Osenna out of Dromir six years ago.”
She raised an eyebrow. “That was very kind of you, Bram.”
Quickly, I shook my head. “Kindness was not a motivation. Payment was.”
EIGHT
Bram
Christina frowned but returned to scribbling in her journal, probably pronouncing me as quite the selfish cock. Which was mostly correct.
“Three weeks ago, Dagan returned to Dromir in order to retrieve a scarf,” I told her. “He has not yet returned. Osenna—”
“Wait,” she interrupted, gazing at me with confusion. “What?”
“Yes, you heard me correctly.”
“A scarf?”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “Why would Dagan risk his life by going back to Dromir for a scarf?”
“Why does Dagan do half of the things Dagan does?” I asked rhetorically. “Because he’s a twat.”
“Language, Bram,” Christina reprimanded me and frowned.
“Apologies,” I said with a huff, sincerely hoping she was still pleased to see me.
“Okay, keep going.”
I nodded. “Where was I?”
“Three weeks ago, Dagan went to Dromir for a scarf. He’s still there and Osenna...”
“Oh, right,” I continued. “Osenna found you, and then she came to see me when she learned Darion was here, and that he had broken into Dagan’s home.” I paused for a moment to allow her scribbling to catch up. “Osenna is now under my protection, because, quite frankly, I do not trust you to contain her.”
“Because she’s a siren?”
“Precisely.”
Christina dropped her pen on her notebook and studied me with interest. “And you can resist her?”
I smiled, pleased with myself. “I am four hundred years old, Miss Sabbiondo. Osenna is not yet thirty.”
“Yeah, but she’s still a siren.”
I glanced at my fingernails and appeared wholly unimpressed. Then I sighed before returning my gaze to her. “A siren is no threat to a vampire of my advanced age. In fact, there is hardly a creature who can compete with the level of power I possess. Unless, of course, said creature is a demon king from Dromir.” I sighed again and returned my attention to my fingernails as I shook my head. “This is quite the situation.”
“You’re so dramatic, Bram; you should have been an actor.” She did not wait for my response, but turned to her notebook and jotted something down before looking back up at me. “This is probably obvious, but I have to ask for the record: did you have a previously established relationship with either Osenna or Dagan? Or was the nature of your relationship exclusively that of criminal and client?”
I was stunned into silence for a moment. “Are you inquiring as to whether my relationship with Osenna and/or Dagan was of a sexual nature?”
She colored a bit and appeared slightly embarrassed. “Yes.”
“Perhaps I am not offended by your question regarding my… history with Osenna,” I began, glaring at her. “But Dagan?” I made a face of disgust. “How is such even a consideration!” I could not help the rise in my tone.
“I’m not trying to offend you, Bram. I’m just doing my job.”
“You really imagine that I… I could have a… a sexual relationship with Dagan?! With that… dimwitted outcast of society? That… paragon of sexual perversion?!” I was so outraged, I found myself standing up.
“Sit back down. I’m only asking you because I have to.” She faced me squarely and the smile toying with the corners of her lips was impossible not to notice.
“I shall do no such thing for I am thoroughly offended!”
She started to laugh and hid it behind her hand. It took her a moment or two to regain control of herself. “Look, Bram, I know you aren’t… involved with Dagan. I’m just asking because I’ve gotta check off the boxes. Will you please sit?”
I sat back down and huffed in indignation, crossing one leg over the other at the knee before I realized the action might look… affected. Therefore, I very quickly uncrossed them. “I did not know either Dagan or Osenna prior to our arrangement,” I spat out. “And our arrangement was strictly business.”
“Then you were compensated for your assistance.”
“Compensated at the highest degree,” I responded with a clipped nod. “Minus any… bodily favors, mind you.”
Christina hid another smile.
The amount of money Dagan had been willing to pay me while begging for my services was truly absurd. When I had added two more zeroes, I’d expected him to spend the better part of the evening negotiating the fee back down again, but he had agreed at once. “Dagan was quite willing to pay anything to avoid a physical altercation with his brother.”
Christina’s eye widened a smidgeon as her expression revealed her confusion. “His brother?”
“Yes.”
“And who would his brother be?”
“Dagan and Darion Halsir are brothers,” I explained, surprised she did not already know this.
“Holy shit,” she said, and wrote something down.
“That was not very HR of you,” I grumbled.
“What wasn’t?”
“Holy shit.”
“Oh, sorry. Yeah, not very HR of me,” she responded though she was busily scribbling and I doubted she was paying me much attention.
“Dagan was not always his name,” I continued.
Christina stopped her scribbles and faced me with wide eyes. “What was it before?”
“Rogan,” I said, “but the only place you will find that name is in Dromir itself—and I suspect the government in Dromir, if such is what you care to call them, are not keen to share whatever meager archives they have with the Bureau.”
Christina sighed wearily. “No, they’re not. Did Osenna have a different name, too?”
“Yes. Jadra.”
I did not suppose that revealing Dagan and Osenna’s true names would endanger them any more than they had already endangered themselves.
“Do you know why Dagan and Osenna needed to be smuggled out? I mean, did Darion threaten them?” Christina asked.
“One can assume,” I answered drolly. “I was told only that they needed to keep themselves hidden from Darion. So that is exactly what I did.”
“Like they were war criminals or something?”
“Perhaps. Though Dagan was even more cowardly then than he is now; if he compromised his government in any way, it was likely in the vein of a whistleblower or an internal saboteur.” For all Dagan’s machismo banter and the acts one could observe in his odious club, Dagan was a remarkably squishy creature. The ones who make a show of themselves usually are.
“And you don’t know what kind of ‘physical altercation’ Dagan was trying to avoid with Darion?” Christina asked me as she bobbed her writing implement on her lips and studied me with interest. She was undoubtedly an attractive woman. If I were not so completely taken with Dulcie, I would have certainly considered this fetching little biscuit.
“Bram?”
“Excuse me, what was the question?” I asked.
“What kind of physical altercation was Dagan trying to avoid?”
“Ah, yes,” I answered with a brief nod. “Dagan said only that he wished to avoid all further interaction with his brother. I did not ask many questions.”
“Hmm…”
“Owing to the sheer animal terror that underscored the entire conversation, I assumed Dagan was fleeing some type of family violence.”
Christina nodded and continued to write—cursive, but all of her letters were perfectly vertical. Eventually, she stopped, in the middle of a sentence, and she looked up at me, some new and troubling thought screwing her lips into the corner of her mouth.
“Yes?” I prompted when she kept her silence.
“…Okay,” she said, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way…”
“Good God, are you going to offend me again by hinting to a potential homosexual relationship with a lunatic?”
She giggled, and it was a bright and lovely sound. “No, I promise I won’t offend you like that again.”
“Very well, proceed.”
She eyed me knowingly. “I was just wondering…”
“Wondering what?”
“Why are you so interested in finding out where Darion is?”
I smiled at her with understanding. “Very good question to ask, my dear.” She grinned broadly, as if appreciating my praise. “Because if Darion discovers that I assisted Dagan and Osenna in their attempt to flee him, Darion will attempt to kill me and will most probably succeed,” I explained. “Such would be a terrible inconvenience.”
“And that’s it?”
I squinted and tilted my head at her. “And that… is it.”
She pursed her lips.
“You appear unconvinced.”
“No…” she started, then trailed off.
“Are you accusing me of something else?”
“No, no,” she interjected quickly, “I just, I’m surprised you came here to tell me all this. This doesn’t really seem like something you would just… help out with, I guess.”
There was a question she was not asking beneath the surface of her comment. “What exactly do you think I am here for, Miss Sabbiondo?”
She sighed, but then apparently decided to simply come out with it. “Okay, I kinda… sorta… might be wondering if you’re here for Dulcie?”
I was unprepared for the sudden stab of irritation and embarrassment that swept through me. If the donated blood flowing through my veins were moving quickly enough to facilitate a blush, Christina did not comment on it.
“For Dulcie?” I repeated with a frown. My words were noticeably clipped. I swallowed against the childish urge to set her stacks of paper on fire.
“Yeah.”
“Dulcie plays no part in my motivation for being here, I can assure you,” I insisted. “I am here for a former client, for whose incompetence I will have to suffer if Darion Halsir learns the name of the man who assisted Dagan and Osenna in escaping Dromir.” The words ran more smoothly, but the answer itself was clinical. And Christina could tell.
“Sure, you are,” she said, smiling in the way of mothers who think they know best.
“I assure you—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she waved me away with an unconcerned hand. “You already assured me.”
“Then perhaps you should believe me?”
She looked at me more closely. “Regardless, just so you know, Dulcie is in kind of a sticky spot right now.”
“Sticky spot?” I repeated and leaned forward. “Is she in trouble?”
Christina shook her head. “No, no. I meant a sticky spot… emotionally.”
I scoffed—though, with the abruptness and intensity of the noise, it was really more of a snort. “I am well aware,” I said, my voice dropping into an octave that was rather more threatening than Christina deserved.
“Okay, then you know that trying to… date her right now is probably a bad idea.”
“Who says I am trying to date Dulcie?” I asked, sounding quite blown away by the very notion.
Christina shrugged. “Aren’t you always trying to date Dulcie? I thought that was, like, a known thing?” I simply glared at her. She laughed. “Don’t get mad. I’m just giving you a word of advice.”
“Miss Sabbiondo, I am not a child.”
“I know you’re not,” she replied. “But I also know that you… you know…”
“No. Please enlighten me.”
“I know that you… have the hots for Dulcie and you guys have known each other for a long time, and she and Knight just broke up so you’re probably figuring now might be a good time to… try your luck.”
“To try my luck?”
She shrugged and folded her hands together on the table, looking very much like a school counselor. She lacked only the glasses, and perhaps the tight bun at the nape of her neck.
“And I’m pretty aware that when you want something, you tend to go for it, no matter what the consequences are for everyone involved.”
For a moment, I said nothing.
“Including Dulcie,” she added, nodding a little.
“Including Dulcie,” I echoed.
“I just want to remind you to think about what’s best for Dulcie right now.”
What I said next was not intentional. It spilled out of me like water from a broken dam—or perhaps a volcanic eruption would be a more apt analogy. “Miss Sabbiondo, if you intend to lecture someone about catering to Dulcie’s needs, it should not be me.”
Christina sat up a little straighter and leaned forward, just enough to show that she was ready to listen. She heard the unspoken accusation in my words.
“Okay,” she said. “Who should I be lecturing?”
I had no reason in the world to conceal the answer. If anyone in Dulcie’s world should know about what had happened to her, it should be the head of Human Resources—er, Humane Resources. “Mr. Vander.”
“Knight?” she asked, repeating his name back to me like an answer on a flashcard. She drew a line beneath the notes she had taken about Darion and began scrawling something else. “Why him?”
The moment of reckoning was upon me and I was quiet for a few seconds. There did not exist within me the struggle over whether to admit this information or not. My silence was reserved for the
fact of how best to relay such… sensitive material.
“Bram?”
“Vander forced himself on Dulcie.”
Christina froze. She looked for a moment as though she hadn’t heard me, or had immediately forgotten what I’d just said. Then she inhaled and exhaled very quietly. Her expression was perfectly placid, that of one who has mastered the art of listening without judgement.
But she could not stop herself from asking, “He what?”
I felt myself smile. “Oh, did Vander fail to mention that?” I laughed. “Perhaps because he did not want you to know the event took place in a company-issued vehicle and on company time, while he was acting as Head of the ANC and Dulcie was his subordinate.”
“How do you know this?” she asked, eyeing me narrowly as her expression turned angry. “If this is some gossip you heard or if you’re making it up, Bram…”
“It is true.”
“How do you know?” she repeated.
“I saw it,” I informed her. “And Vander admitted as much.”
“You saw it. As in, you were there when it happened?”
“Not exactly.”
“Explain.”
I nodded as I recalled the instance when I learned the truth about Vander’s character and the crime he committed. “When we were pitted against Meg most recently, whilst we were in Dulcie’s childhood home, Meg afflicted Vander and me with a vision. This vision was a retelling of the night Vander forced himself upon Dulcie.”
“Meg could have just made the whole thing up… just to pit you against Knight to give herself the advantage.”
I shook my head. “The same thought occurred to me. But in the aftermath of Meg’s defeat, Vander confirmed that the unfortunate event had indeed occurred as we both witnessed according to the vision sent us by Meg.”
Christina swallowed. “Can you tell me what you saw in the vision?”
The details as she required them were specific and unpleasant. Yes, Dulcie had been in Vander’s custody as an apprehended criminal at the time. Yes, the attack had occurred on the way to whatever hastily constructed building the ANC was using to house their ramshackle armies just before the death of Melchior. Yes, Dulcie had been handcuffed. Yes, she had told Vander to stop. Yes, multiple times.
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