“I received orders through official channels to report to the Grande Dame a week ago.” He stole the fork out of my hand. “I’ve been in town ever since.”
Leaning forward, I glared at him. “Doing what?”
“Promise not to get mad?” He stabbed a piece and shoved it into his mouth. “Whoa, this is good.”
“We used Mallow,” Lethe told him. “Same folks who made that tropical wedding cake you loved.”
Leslie Dunn, the head baker at Mallow, had customers for life in Lethe and me. And, it seemed, Corbin.
“Get your grubby mitts off my cake.” I stole my utensil back. “And, in case you can’t tell, I’m already angry.”
“Hormones,” Lethe mouthed to him. “She’s our little ray of sunshine lately.”
Linus circled the desk to stand behind me and rested his cool hands on my shoulders.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhallle.
Exhallle.
“I didn’t expect to see you until next week,” I said, forcing calm into my voice, “so you can imagine my surprise when Lethe noticed you had paid a visit to the Grande Dame first.”
Wiping the corners of his mouth, he bought a moment to consider what he said next. I could appreciate the move, but I also wanted to stab him in the thigh with my fork if it got things moving along.
“The Grande Dame asked me to keep an eye on you,” he said slowly, deliberately. “She had reason to believe you were in danger.”
“How is that different than any other day of the week?”
“She received a credible threat.” Lips thinned, he hesitated over his words. “We took every precaution.”
“Where does Boaz come in?”
“For what it’s worth, I told her to bring you both into the loop.” He frowned. “She refused.”
“I’m not surprised.” I exhaled. “We’re all here now. Tell us everything.”
And tell us everything, he did.
Six
Linus dug his thumbs into the knots of spasming muscles in Grier’s lower back the way Hood had taught him. It caused the tension to leak from her shoulders as she leaned against him, but his own unease continued to climb.
Corbin wasn’t lying, exactly, but he wasn’t telling them the whole truth. Linus trusted him, but not his prevarications.
There was a simple answer to the conundrum, but Linus had to observe him longer to be certain.
“Boaz was in Savannah when I got here, but I didn’t know that,” Corbin said offhandedly. “Until I bumped into him yesterday, I didn’t realize the Grande Dame had us both on retainer. He was patrolling as I was headed in for my nightly report, and he stopped me to chat.”
Grier asked the question gnawing on Linus. “Why was he there?”
The thought his mother had trusted her wellbeing to Boaz and not her own son made the void howl through his head as old insecurities threatened to rear their ugly heads.
“I’m a sentinel. He’s Elite.” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture that conveyed layers of meaning. “What he does, and who he does it for, is above my paygrade.”
“Did you learn anything from Boaz?”
“He believed you would be the target. I got the sense he was the one who requested me brought in.”
Confirmation Mother had taken Boaz’s advice without so much as hinting to Linus she might be in danger honed his anger into a blade, and his voice cut when he asked, “Why didn’t you come to us when you noticed Mother had gone missing?”
“I didn’t grasp the situation until I went to check in, shortly before Grier called. The Grande Dame wasn’t there. I waited around to see if she got detained at the Lyceum, but she never showed. I tried Boaz, but he didn’t answer his phone. I checked the barracks, but the captain says Boaz is in Pennsylvania.”
And he couldn’t ask the staff without revealing both her absence and his presence.
“Boaz must be with her,” Grier said quietly, and he felt, for his benefit.
“They would have made contact by now if they had been able.” It was a hard truth, but one he couldn’t avoid. “We can’t assume she’s safe, wherever she is. Or that he’s with her, however grateful I would be for it.”
Grier leaned her warm cheek against the top of his hand. “We’re going to find her.”
Bending down, he kissed the top of her head. “Where do we go from here?”
“I’m going to ask Neely to stay over. Cruz too, if he’s interested. They can monitor the landline during the day in case we receive ransom demands or other conditions for her safe release.”
The old house had her own phone line so that they could call direct and communicate with her, but only family and friends knew that. To the rest of the world, it was an affectation, a way of shunting callers to the house without granting the immediate access of cellphones.
As much as Woolly enjoyed taking simple messages, she relished hanging up on telemarketers that much more.
“Our top priority is now locating Boaz,” Grier decided. “Do you think Addie can reach him?”
“They should have contact protocols in place,” Linus allowed. “It’s worth asking, but how will you explain the sudden and immediate need to speak to him without tipping her off that something’s wrong?”
Adelaide was practical, and she understood Grier occupied a special place in Boaz’s heart and in his past. She wouldn’t worry he was relapsing if Grier asked her to activate the couple’s emergency protocols, but she would fear he was in danger if standard channels hadn’t worked to contact him.
“There’s not much time left until dawn.” Linus gazed out the window. “I can make the call if you prefer.”
“I’ll handle it.” She waved off his offer of taking the easy way out. “Addie is a friend, and I don’t want her to think I’m doing an end run around her.”
“Involving another person is a mistake,” Corbin said. “Let me try one thing before you take that step?”
“All right.” Grier yawned wide and then growled to herself. “I am not sleepy.”
She was about to slide off her chair onto the floor. The shower, Mother’s abduction, and the magic Grier had expended in the search at Lawson Manor as well as the physical toll had sapped her energy. The gift, and her pregnancy, hadn’t helped matters. She was pushing herself too hard, but he didn’t know how to ask her to slow down.
“You need to prop up your ankles,” he reminded her. “We need to get the swelling down.”
“I know what you’re doing.” She stabbed him with a frown. “You’re tucking the cranky pregnant woman into bed so you can get down to the real work.”
“That’s not—”
“It’s the right thing to do.” She braced her palms on the desktop and leveraged out of the chair. “I’ll hold down the fort.”
“I don’t want to—”
“You should be out there, getting your hands dirty. Not in here, holding mine.” She started toward the stairs. “There’s plenty for me to do on the admin side while you handle the fieldwork.”
“I don’t want you to feel like I’m stepping on your toes.”
“I can’t even see my toes.” She took his arm and leaned on his strength. “You’re fine.”
Once they managed the stairs and he got her propped up in bed, he hovered. “Are you sure…?”
“Go find your mom.” She flicked her wrist at him. “LJ deserves to have a living grandparent.”
“Thank you.” Linus bent to kiss her softly. “I love you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She shoved him back with a smile. “Nothing says I love you like churros. Just sayin’.”
“Your wish—” he bowed with a flourish, “—my command.”
“On your way out, can you ask Lethe to bring Keet in here?”
“Of course.” He ought to be going, but still he lingered. “Any particular reason why?”
“I have concerns that our baby’s first word will be pfft.” She reached into her bedside snack drawer
. “I’m going to introduce Keet to the wonders of educational television and pray the alphabet song sticks.”
Laughing softly, he exited the room to prepare for what must be done.
Seven
At the bottom of the stairs, Linus found Corbin waiting on him and quirked a brow in question.
Eyes downcast, almost guilty, the vampire slung a backpack over one shoulder. “Give me a ride?”
Palming the keys for Moby, Linus nodded thanks to Woolly when she opened the front door for them. “Where are we going?”
While social cues often stumped Linus, he felt the casual question had been posed as an invitation.
“There’s a bunker under the city.” Corbin scratched his jaw. “Your mother commissioned it after the fire.”
The void, never far from his thoughts, began to yawn wider. “I wasn’t aware.”
“Not many people are,” he said, apology clear in his voice. “For good reason.”
“Mother built a safe haven should there be another vampire uprising,” he realized, and he hated how it didn’t surprise him. “I should have anticipated she would do something like this to insulate herself.”
“Ah, no.” Corbin rubbed the back of his neck. “She built it for three: you, baby you, and Grier if your mom couldn’t get there in time.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he couldn’t picture that phrase coming out of his mother’s mouth, but the intent behind it… Yes. She would think in terms of protecting her son, and her grandchild, with merely an afterthought for his wife’s safety. As much as he wanted to believe it was a testament to her belief Grier could protect herself, he knew his mother too well for that. Her attention was laser focused. On him. And soon, on LJ. “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?”
“I love Grier, I do, but we both know if I told her there was a secret hidey-hole under her city that she would be the first in line to go explore it.” Genuine concern pinched his features. “I hated skirting the truth with her, but it’s a long way down, and it’s hard walking.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Twice.” He rolled a shoulder. “It makes for a good rendezvous point.”
Corbin was meeting his mother at her estate, which meant he was meeting someone else there. “Boaz?”
Hand to his nape, he rubbed the base of his neck. “No.”
Waiting for details, he gave Corbin a full minute before grasping he had shared all he intended.
“Grier will want to know about this.” He cast his gaze up the stairs. “I promised her no more secrets.”
Besides, the situation with Corbin made it good common sense to let her know where he was going and with whom in the event he was wrong about the reason behind Corbin’s twitchiness.
“The strain could induce labor,” Corbin said gravely. “It’s my understanding that baby isn’t coming out the way God intended. Do you really want to risk it?”
Safety concerns aside, Linus had almost lost her to his lies once before. “I have to tell her.”
“Tell her, or ask permission?”
“This is her city.” Linus ignored the dig to his masculinity. “They’re one and the same.”
“Linus—”
“You heard the man,” Lethe growled at Corbin. “Grier isn’t just your mommy, she’s the Potentate of Savannah. Give her some credit. She’s pregnant, not a moron.”
Hands held up in surrender, Corbin backed away from the angry gwyllgi.
“That said…” Lethe fixed her stare on Linus, “…I would call her from the car.”
The nuances between an outright lie and omission often blurred for him. His upbringing was mostly at fault for his willingness to erase lines in the sand when it suited him, or when it protected others, but Grier was his wife.
All other titles aside, he valued husband most, and he owed her his absolute loyalty. She had stuck by him, in no small part because of his vow to share everything with her going forward and to do his best to explain the things from the past he had no choice but to keep from her.
“I’ll be right back.” He took the stairs at a clip and entered their bedroom without knocking. “Grier…”
“I heard.” She was snacking on chips, watching the TV they had bought for their room for when she required bedrest to recover from the day’s exertions. “You guys should really work on your inside voices.”
The wraith at her side, passing her a candy bar, didn’t meet his gaze.
“You sent Cletus to spy on me,” he realized. “Why?”
“I might have been worried about you.” She set her snacks aside. “You hold a lot in when you get worried. I don’t think it’s a conscious choice. It’s reflexive. I get that, but I wanted to know if you were taking this harder than you let me see.”
There wasn’t much he could say to that. He tended to withdraw during times of stress until he could cope with the issue or, better still, solve the problem entirely. He thought, perhaps, he ought to be irked she had eavesdropped on him, but her drive to watch over him was matched only by his to protect her.
With dawn on the horizon, he itched to get moving. “You don’t mind me going to the bunker?”
“Corbin’s right.” She waved the chocolate bar at him. “I would only slow you down, and I don’t want to discover the miracle of drugless childbirth. I want the drugs. All the drugs.”
Smile twitching on his lips, he backed toward the door. “You shall have them.”
“I am sorry I was being sneaky.” She tore the candy wrapper into tiny pieces. “I hate being left behind, but I should have let you know what I was doing and not let you figure it out on your own.”
“Would you have told me if I hadn’t?”
“I would have forgotten to be sneaky and called eventually to yell at you to be more careful, yes.”
“Then you have nothing to apologize for.”
“Linus?”
“Yes?”
“I’m glad you told me to my face.” Her smile was radiant. “I love Lethe, but she’s a worrywart.”
“I made you a promise.” He took his vows seriously. “I fully intend to keep it.”
The ping of an incoming text drew her attention, and she held up a finger to keep him there.
“Cruz says your mom’s finances are clean. He had no trouble identifying all her expenditures.”
“That takes blackmail off the table.”
Mouth tight, she reminded him, “There are other means of compensation.”
Nodding that she was right, he turned to go. “Let me know if you discover anything else.”
“Aye, aye.” She snapped out a salute. “Captain.”
Smiling, he left their bedroom and descended the stairs where Lethe and Corbin awaited him.
Belatedly, he recalled Grier’s initial request and faced Lethe. “Can you bring Keet up to our room?”
“Not this again.” Lethe rolled her eyes and went to fetch the parakeet. “She’s going to end up with a bird who corrects our grammar if she’s not careful.”
Once she disappeared into the office, Linus eyed Corbin. “I’ll get my things.”
With the cleaners excluded from this investigation, it fell to them to collect evidence for processing.
“I have everything we’ll need.” Corbin pulled out a bottle of sunscreen. “I came armed for bear.”
Most vampires suffered intense sun allergies, but Corbin was an anomaly. There had been no trustworthy accounting of what the sun would do to him until he had walked in it. Aside from burning easier, his tolerance slightly worse than Linus’s, he appeared unaffected. Another boon for the Deathless vampire.
After Linus checked his pockets to ensure he had his modified pen and extra cartridges, he and Corbin exited the house into the coming dawn.
Linus noticed the driveway was empty, and so was the street. “How did you get here?”
“Based on Lethe’s scolding just now, and the promise she extracted before I left that I would come clean before she tattled on me, I
assume you already suspected I’ve been staying on the property.”
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who believed in giving Corbin a chance to level with them. “How have you been avoiding the gwyllgi patrols?”
They might not actively hunt him if they scented him, but they would have noticed him camping.
“A hammock in the treetops. It’s near Oscar’s fort. My scent is all over that area.”
Linus made a mental note to tell Lethe to inform the guards they might want to look up on occasion.
They got in the van, strapped in, and Linus waited for directions.
“Head to Olde Savannah Chocolates,” Corbin said. “It only has street parking, so we’ll need to park in the lot at the grocery store across the intersection to remain inconspicuous at this hour.”
Moby was a bit large to loom in front of a closed shop on a sleepy street. “All right.”
This particular chocolate shop was not Grier’s favorite—that distinction belonged to Mallow—but they did offer serviceable pralines and a variety of candy-coated caramel apples. Depending on whether the shop had opened before they left, he might stop in and have a basket made up and delivered to Woolworth House.
Perhaps it would do, given Esteban’s stand was closed until dusk, and exceptional churros were rare.
After he parked, they crossed the empty intersection. The scents of fresh caramel and popcorn swirled in the air as the shop prepared its delicacies for the day, and Linus breathed it in. He lacked his wife’s sweet tooth, but he enjoyed the smells all the same. “Where is the entrance?”
“Follow me.”
Corbin ducked between buildings and walked a short distance down an alley. There he lifted a manhole cover and set it aside. He distended his fangs and bit his fingertip. A ward must have created a hard surface for him to write on, because he set to work signing what appeared to be his name in thin air.
Vampires couldn’t perform necromancy, but they could be given keys that allowed them to “open” wards. The symbol they drew contained no real magic. It was all in the blood. Often, vampires used their signatures as makeshift passkeys.
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