“Men like Volkov are not for keeping, not for loving,” she agreed sadly. “They are for savoring during the time we possess them and then releasing them when we can no longer hold them.”
Nice of her to gloss over the bits where he would remain forever young while I aged. Slowly, yes, but no less surely. What woman’s pride could survive waking one day and realizing your husband could pass for your son? Your grandson? Not that children would be an option for us.
Maud had never hinted at planning an arranged marriage for me, but such mutually beneficial unions were the threads that bound High Society families. You couldn’t walk through an assemblage without rubbing elbows with the victim of a marriage of convenience.
“There’s more I haven’t told you.” I started with the hinky wards, segued into vampire stalking me for his friend-deficient master, and ended with his implication the Grande Dame had a vested interest in me. “None of this makes sense.”
The old seer inclined her head, eyes distant. “We are limited to what the goddess reveals to us.”
“What the vampire said…” I linked my fingers in my lap. “I didn’t know if the Grande Dame signed my pardon.” Talking to Odette, with her hazy eyes and dreamy voice, helped loosen the words that wouldn’t come when I was around Amelie and Boaz. “The drugs used to subdue the inmates, to keep us quiet and content to lie in our own filth, drove us quietly insane.” Bile splashed the back of my throat, but I forced myself to keep going. “When the sentinels came for me, I didn’t believe they were real. What they promised sounded too much like a fever dream. One I’d had a million times since I was assigned a cell.”
“Oh, Grier.”
“I signed whatever they put in front of me without reading it. I tried, but my brain wasn’t working right. When they tossed me into detox, the clock on the wall in the clinic gave me some sense of time. I was confined to a bed for a month while they flushed the drugs from my system. I wasn’t allowed to leave until the withdrawals stopped, and for a while they weren’t sure they would.” A bitter smile curled my lips. “I wasn’t meant to leave. They weren’t as careful with my doses as they should have been.”
Odette wept beside me, her thin shoulders hunched with sobs. I should have gathered her in my arms, comforted her. But Atramentous loomed too dark in the shadows gathered in this room for me to do more than fight the instinctive scrabble of my lizard brain to lock down those memories, tuck them in a corner of my mind where no one would stumble across them again, least of all me.
Weak. I was so weak. Worthless. I couldn’t face the memory of the punishment, let alone the crime.
“I have to go.” I shot to my feet. “It’s late. I should be getting home before Woolly worries.”
“You don’t have to rush off.” She wiped her cheeks dry. “You could stay the day in the guestroom.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I can’t.” As much as confiding those memories of Atramentous hurt her, enduring my night terrors might break her. “I’ll come back soon. I promise.”
“All right.” She followed me to the door in a whirl of sandalwood and opened her arms. Despite the fact she stood inches away, the distance was too great for me to close. “Oh, bébé, what they have done to you.”
This frail woman with one foot in this world and one in the next was the last remaining bridge between the two most influential figures in my life. But instead of her embrace recalling happier times—walking the beach, the gulls crying overhead, the surf nursing my toes—her pity burned hotter than those extinguished summer suns. Touching her would have burned me and my fragile pride to ashes, so I fled to Woolly, where I could hide behind my tattered wards in the comfort of my own home.
Much to my relief, no vampires lurked on my property when I arrived. The visit with Odette had stretched into early morning, and sunlight had burned the shadows from the porch. That didn’t stop me from carrying the stake, which I noticed Boaz had sharpened after meeting Volkov, at my side while I walked from the garage to the front door.
The locks snapped open for me in quick succession.
“Sorry I’m late.” I patted the doorframe on my way in. “I drove out to Tybee and visited Odette. I figured she might be able to shed some light on the Volkov situation.”
Somewhere a floorboard groaned with apprehension.
“You’re the one who let him in,” I reminded her. “Now it’s up to me to figure out what to do about him.”
Boaz swung around the corner with a half-eaten sandwich in his hand. “Who are we doing what about?”
The door slammed shut behind me or else I might have stumbled right back out onto the porch in my shock.
Drawing myself up taller, I squared my shoulders. “What the heck are you doing in my house?”
“Figured turnabout was fair play.” Boaz took another bite. “Why should you have all the fun? I didn’t even break in. I asked Woolly if I could wait until you got back, and she opened the door.”
The chandelier dimmed, its crystals tinkling.
“Didn’t mean to throw you under the bus, girl.” He placed the hand holding his sandwich over his heart, as true a vow as any man had ever made. “Grier, this is all my fault. I acted alone. Woolly tried to stop me, but I forced my way in.”
The lights warmed to normal levels, and all was forgiven.
I rolled my eyes at their antics. “Mmm-hmm.”
“That reminds me.” He extended an envelope stained with a giant, muddy boot print to me. “It must have been pushed through the mail slot after you left. I didn’t notice it had stuck to my foot until I reached the kitchen. I cleaned it up as best I could. I don’t think the card inside is damaged.”
The spidery scrawl across the front of the envelope would have told me who sent the card even if I hadn’t recognized the grapefruit essential oil Dame Lawson wore in lieu of perfume. “This can’t be good.”
“Who’s it from?” He continued stuffing his face. “There was no return address.”
“This is Dame Lawson’s handwriting.”
Boaz choked on his next swallow. “What does that old bat want with you?”
“I have no idea.” I smoothed my thumb over the sealed flap and wished it could stay that way. “I’m not sure I want to find out.”
Sandwich forgotten, he prowled closer. “Do you want me to open it?”
“It’s not a bomb. It won’t explode in my hands.” Unless she hexed it…
Boaz grunted once.
I replayed my words and winced. “I didn’t mean—”
“You can say bomb around me.” He chuckled. “Explosion. Boom. Bam. Blam. All good. I promise.”
Ducking my head, I took the out I was given. That’s when I noticed him scuffing his boot, the ribbon from the giftbox Volkov had given me trampled underfoot. Boaz must have been snooping when I got home and dropped it in his rush to pull together his innocent act.
“You’re lucky I wasn’t going to recycle that.”
“Volkov caught me off-guard.” He snatched up the grungy ribbon and slapped it across my palm. “I didn’t know there were other guys sniffing around you.”
His honest surprise that another man had shown interest in me stung my already smarting pride. Clearly the thought I might have a boyfriend had never crossed his mind. Had he believed all he had to do was open his arms for me to fall into them?
Though I had primed him to believe that, I still snapped, “I’m not a freaking fire hydrant.”
A snort ripped out of Boaz, and I briefly wondered how Amelie felt about being an only child.
Light as a breeze, he snatched the envelope from my hand and tore into the letter. I had fallen for his ruse hook, line and sinker. I ought to know better by now. Delighted I was such an easy mark, he lifted it high over his head so I couldn’t reach it even when I jumped, and read it out loud. “Your presence has been requested at the inauguration ceremony for…” A frown knitted his heavy brow. “The Society has named a new Grande Dame.”
“Who?” I snatched the invitation while he was too stunned to fight back. “Clarice Woolworth Lawson.”
Maud’s not-so-younger sister was rising to power, and Dame Lawson was offering me a front-row seat.
Learning I was indebted to the Grande Dame had chilled me to my marrow back when I’d thought the vampire meant Abayomi Balewa, the woman who sentenced me to Atramentous, had freed me. But the timing of his visit and now this announcement dropped ice cubes into my bloodstream.
Dame Lawson cast in the role of savior was as unlikely as Boaz taking a vow of celibacy.
“Come on, Squirt.” Boaz hooked his arm behind me and guided me down onto a couch in the living room. “This must be a formality. There’s no law saying you have to accept.”
“Accept.” Hysterical laughter bubbled up the back of my throat. “The last time I faced the Society…” I clamped a hand over my mouth and ran for the downstairs bathroom, where I emptied my stomach. I knelt there dry heaving for several minutes before a cold washcloth pressed against the base of my neck. “Go away.”
“You gave me the stomach flu when you were eight by throwing up in my face when I picked you up and swung you around the room too fast. We’re past this.”
“Privacy?” I rasped.
“Pretending you’re okay when you’re clearly not. Don’t do that. Not with me.”
The order would have rolled off me like water off a duck’s back had I not detected his genuine worry.
“I visited Odette.” I braced my forehead against the toilet seat. “I talked to her about…things.”
Our conversation—about Mom, about Atramentous, about Volkov—had lingered too close to the surface of my thoughts for me to keep them down at the mention of Dame Lawson’s big promotion.