Ildaria halted and turned on her sharply. “Marguerite’s pregnant?”
“Yes. But maybe don’t mention it to her. She hasn’t told everyone yet. I only know because I heard Lucian talking about it to Mortimer and warning him not to involve her in anything stressful until the baby is born,” Sam said quietly and explained, “She was pregnant a year or two ago, but lost the baby and Lucian is sure it had something to do with stress so wants to be sure we keep her stress free this time.”
“Oh,” Ildaria murmured. She had been living with the woman for more than a month now and hadn’t picked up on her delicate state. Although, Ildaria had noticed that Marguerite was consuming a lot of blood, which was a necessity for an immortal female to carry a child to term.
“In fact,” Sam continued, “Lucian’s so determined to keep Marguerite relaxed and stress free you almost had to stay with us when they dragged you here from Montana . . . which I would have loved by the way,” she added sincerely. “But Marguerite had already got wind of your situation and insisted you should stay with her. She worried that your staying here would be uncomfortable. That the cells out back would feel like a constant threat to you of what could happen if you misbehaved.”
Ildaria grimaced at that comment, because here she was, in trouble again and probably going to end up in those cells Sam had just mentioned.
“It will be fine,” Sam murmured again, patting her arm. “And here we are.”
Ildaria glanced around to see that they’d reached Garrett Mortimer’s office—or Mortimer’s office, since everyone seemed to address Sam’s husband by his last name. Officially, Mortimer was the head of the Immortal Enforcers in North America, or rogue hunters, as they were often called. But Lucian Argeneau was the head of the North American Immortal Council and often stuck his nose in and usurped Mortimer’s position.
As he was apparently doing in this case, Ildaria decided when she saw that the ice-blond Lucian was seated in Mortimer’s chair behind the desk while Sam’s dark-haired husband was perched on the corner of his own desk. The two men had apparently been discussing something, probably her, but stopped at their arrival.
“There are brownies and cocoa waiting in the kitchen when you’re done,” Sam said lightly as she released the hold she’d had on Ildaria’s arm and urged her into the room. Ignoring the scowl Lucian gave her, the slender brunette then disappeared down the hall, leaving Tybo and Valerian to enter the room as well.
“Sit,” Lucian said firmly when the three of them stood stiffly in front of the desk like naughty children in the principal’s office.
Ildaria sat, taking the nearest chair, which happened to be the middle of three in front of the desk. It left Tybo and Valerian to take up chairs on either side of her.
Once the three of them were seated, Lucian turned the portable computer on the desk toward them. A frozen image of an obviously running Tybo and Valerian was on the screen.
Both of her escorts immediately began to speak, but Lucian held up a hand for silence. When they snapped their mouths shut, he hit the play button on the computer. They were all silent as they watched the action play out; Valerian and Tybo were as fast as cheetahs as they raced across the parking lot. Unfortunately, the parking lot was huge, and despite their inhuman speed, the attacker had dragged the woman into the van, slammed the door closed and somehow subdued her and got in the driver’s seat before they arrived at the van.
Reaching the vehicle just as it started to pull away, Valerian leapt onto the roof like a monkey leaping into a tree and ran along the top of the van toward the front, probably intending to swing in through the front passenger window. It ended up being unnecessary, however, because instead of joining him on the roof, Tybo—just a couple of steps behind Valerian—caught the bumper and lifted the back of the vehicle off the ground in a beautiful display of superman strength that had the tires spinning in midair and brought the van to an abrupt halt.
Valerian then jumped off the van roof on the driver’s side, reached through the window to turn off the vehicle and pulled the hulking driver out with one hand to let him dangle in the air. Meanwhile, Tybo set the van back on all four wheels and moved around to open the side door and retrieve the unconscious young woman inside. Valerian was still holding the would-be kidnapper by the neck and Tybo had just brought the girl back to consciousness when the campus police showed up on the scene.
“We didn’t know she was filming,” Tybo blurted when Lucian hit the button to end the recording. Turning a scowl on Ildaria, the dark-haired Enforcer added, “I still can’t believe she did. She knows we aren’t supposed to draw attention to ourselves.”
“This is not Ildaria’s footage,” Mortimer said when Lucian remained silent. “It’s by someone who goes by T.O.eyes, and their caption was Holy shit! Superman times two in Toronto.”
“Shit,” Tybo muttered, slumping back in his seat.
“Ildaria’s video was from a different angle,” Mortimer continued. “And hers was captioned, Special project for Film class. Awesome job peeps! Looks so good even I almost believed it was real.”
When Tybo and Valerian both blinked in surprise and then turned to her, Ildaria shrugged irritably. She’d been rather enjoying their chagrin and anger, but the jig was up. “I thought I should do some damage control.”
They were all silent for a minute, and then Valerian frowned and asked, “This will not affect the arrest of the bastard who tried to take the woman, will it?”
“We read his mind,” Tybo put in with concern. “She wasn’t his first victim. The bastard’s a serial rapist. If the police think it was just a film class stunt—”
“No,” Lucian interrupted firmly. “I will see to it that he is brought to justice.”
The two men nodded, and then glanced from Ildaria to Lucian, looking like they wanted to say something. Whether it was to stand up for her, or thank her for what she’d done with the video, she didn’t know, and never would since Lucian turned to her then and said, “You have been naughty, Angelina.”
Ildaria noted the startled expressions on the other men’s faces at his use of her first name, but ignored them and said quickly, “I only did what Tybo and Valerian did on that tape. I just wasn’t lucky enough to have someone with me to do damage control. I promise I wasn’t playing the vigilante like in Montana. I wasn’t wearing my leathers and didn’t go looking for bad guys to beat up. I was just walking along minding my own business when . . .” She shrugged rather than say, “the shit hit the fan.” Which was what had happened each of the three times she’d stopped to save a fellow student. The first time it had been a girl getting mugged. Ildaria had chased down the culprit, got the girl’s purse back and returned it to her before walking them both to the campus police office so the man could be charged.
The second time it had been a drunken asshole beating up his less inebriated girlfriend. She’d taken them both to the campus police as well, having to control the girl to make her admit what had happened. Something Ildaria still had trouble fathoming. The minute she’d got involved, the girlfriend had sided with her boyfriend as if Ildaria was the bad guy.
The last incident had been a man who had attacked a student out for an evening jog and pulled her off the path into the woods intending to rape her. She suspected that was the one that had been videoed and got her in trouble. It was the only one where she’d been “tossing around” someone twice her size as Valerian had put it earlier.
Ildaria’s mouth tightened at the memory. She’d known she shouldn’t do it, but she’d been infuriated. She had a special hatred in her heart for rapists. She’d taken great pleasure in beating the man and wiping the path with his face before the campus police had arrived to take him into custody.
Unfortunately, while Ildaria had noticed that others had arrived at the scene, she hadn’t even considered someone might record it and post it online until she’d spotted it this morning. She’d known then that she’d probably be in trouble once Mortimer or Lucian saw it. Ildaria just hadn’t been sure when that would happen . . . until Valerian and Tybo had shown up at her class.
“Hmm,” Lucian said finally. “There appears to be a lot of crime on campus at night.”
Ildaria gave a small shrug. “It’s a university with loads of beautiful young women. It’s nirvana for perverts and draws them like flies to shit at night.”
“At night,” Lucian echoed thoughtfully.
“Si. Well, it’s generally safer during the day. More people about and fewer dark places to hide,” she pointed out.
“Yes.” Lucian nodded. “That’s the answer then.”
Ildaria tilted her head to the side, positive her confusion was showing on her face. “The answer?”
“You will switch to day classes,” Lucian announced.
“What?” she asked with disbelief.
Lucian considered her briefly and then said, “At Jess and Raffaele’s wedding your old captain, Vasco Villaverde, told me you were a trouble magnet, but had a good heart.”
Ildaria sighed inwardly over the fact that the man had tattled on her about her tendency to get herself into scrapes. She’d been in trouble several times in Punta Cana. In fact, if it weren’t for Vasco, she probably would have been executed long ago. He’d saved her hide repeatedly, and Ildaria would be forever grateful for that. She just wished he hadn’t felt the need to mention it to Lucian.
“It seems obvious to me that Vasco was right,” Lucian continued now. “If there is trouble around, you will find it. So, to ensure I do not have to execute you, it would behoove me to ensure you avoid situations where trouble might occur. That means no more night classes. You will switch to days. Immediately. You will never again be on campus at night,” he ordered imperiously.
Ildaria stared at him nonplussed for a moment, anger building slowly inside her, and then she burst out, “Are you kidding me? First you pulled me out of school in Montana and dragged me up here to Canada, making me miss my finals there and have to take those classes over again, and now you’re going to drag me out of my night courses and make me take day classes?” Scowling, she informed him, “I won’t be able to get into day courses now. The summer term will be lost and I’ll have to start again in the fall. Which means paying for them all over again, again. Do you know how expensive these courses are? Not to mention the extra blood I’ll need to consume if I attend day classes. I’m trying to save money to get my own place and stop being a burden to Marguerite and Julius. I’ll never be able to swing that if I keep having to pay for courses I don’t get to finish and extra blood to attend day classes . . . which with my luck, I again probably won’t get to finish anyway. I need those courses to get my degree.”