Ouch. “Last Seeds can eat food. Most don’t. It’s so plebian.” I snorted. “All this means is you’re more like them than made vampires.”
“Last Seeds? What are those?” He looked at me funny. “Aren’t all vampires made?”
“They didn’t tell you anything.” I groaned, letting my head fall back on my shoulders. “No wonder you’re so confused.” Linus stood in the doorway, giving me the floor, but I waved him in. “You’re better at lectures than I am. You’ve had a lot more practice. Would you care to fill in the blanks for him?”
Linus smiled a tiny smile that told me he was aware I was teasing him. “I’m happy to be of service.”
While he began outlining Vampire 101, I slipped onto the back porch and squinted into the darkness. Hood and Lethe hadn’t been with me long, but I had grown to rely on them so much. I would have felt braver with one or both by my side, but I had to do this right. That meant I had to do it alone.
I walked until my spine tingled, took a breath, and stopped where the garden ended in a copse of trees.
“I need to speak to my grandfather,” I said in a cool voice. “Tell him the matter is urgent.”
“Yes, mistress,” two voices replied in tandem.
Keeping my shoulders squared, I walked back to Woolly as Amelie opened the carriage house door.
“Any news?” she ventured, her gaze sliding past my shoulder to the trees. “Did you find Odette?”
“Boaz was right. The house has been cleaned out.” And doctored to screw with the gwyllgi, meaning we couldn’t track her using our best resources, but I couldn’t tell Amelie that. “There were complications, so we just got back. I was going to text you before bed.” At least that had been the plan up until I had forgotten with everything else going on. “I’ll update you in a few days, unless we find her before then.”
“Okay.” She attempted a smile. “I’ll do the same. When I hear back from Boaz.”
“I’d appreciate it.” I hesitated before producing the shell from my pocket. “Does this ring any bells for you?”
“You’re joking, right?” She sobered upon realizing that no, I was not. “There are a million of these on Tybee, holes and all. It’s where a moon snail—”
“—drills a hole with its radula so it can slurp out the clam.” Odette had taught us that when we used to spend the summers gathering shells and stringing necklaces on her porch. “Just thought I would check.”
“Send me some pictures in better light,” she said after a minute. “I’ll look them over and see if it shakes anything loose.”
“Sure.” I waved then rocked back on my heels toward Woolly. “Night.”
Guilt prickled my nape as she watched me go, but I had nothing left to give her.
Linus strolled out the back door, hands in his pockets, as I hit the steps.
“You didn’t run screaming into the woods after me,” I observed. “Impressive.”
“I did consider it.” He swept his gaze over me. “Any minute now, I was going to start flailing.”
“Just make sure you wait until I have my phone ready and my camera on.” I climbed the stairs to meet him. “Can you imagine the boost in your rep when the denizens of Atlanta see their potentate shrieking and doing the ants in my pants dance?”
A tic in his cheek betrayed the smile he was hiding. “Evildoers will tremble with fear.”
“Hey, it’s my duty to send you home in better shape than when you arrived.”
The joke fell flat, and I gritted my teeth to avoid apologizing or compounding the faux pas.
“I have to go back,” he said softly and gathered me in his arms.
“I know, I know.” I rested my cheek over his heart. “I don’t want to think about it. Or talk about it. Which is why I’m amazed it keeps popping out of my mouth.”
“Corbin is ready to discuss his options.”
Grateful he didn’t press the issue, I packed away all those messy emotions and nodded. “Good deal.”
I pulled away, and he let me go. I tried not to read anything into the moment, but panic beat against my breastbone every time I thought of him packing his bags.
Lethe had advised me to give him a reason not to go.
She never explained what would happen if I wasn’t enough to make him stay.
Five
Corbin looked resigned to his fate when I reentered the kitchen and claimed the stool next to his.
“You have a couple of options,” I started. “You can stay here and haunt my attic, so no one will ever find you. You can run and take your chances on your own. Or you can go live with my grandfather, and he can teach you how to vampire.”
“How would that work?” He canted his head to one side. “There are no vampires like me.”
“We don’t know that for certain. I can almost guarantee Gramps has run across your kind during his life.” I twisted aside and leaned back against the counter. “The problem with that option is I don’t know him very well. He’s had me kidnapped, promised me to one of his Last Seed followers, and encouraged his clan to collect me and return me like a coat from the lost and found.”
Corbin waited, expecting a punchline, but I was already here. The joke was on him if he didn’t take me seriously. “You’re not selling me on that option.”
“We recently declared a truce. I don’t know if it will hold. I don’t know what it means exactly. But I can tell you there’s no love lost between the Grande Dame and my grandfather. He would protect you just to spite her.”
And because he wanted something from me. What, I wasn’t certain. But it was enough he was willing to bind me to his clan through vampire law by marrying me off to Volkov. It was enough that he smiled as I stepped all over his toes at the ball. Enough he had taken direct orders from me through a clenched jaw.
He would foster Corbin, and I would owe him a boon. What he wanted in exchange…would be nothing good.
At least he was aware Linus and I were a thing. Hopefully that ruled out any plans on his part for arranging a match.
A tiny voice in my head assured me this was yet another reason not to burn the marriage contract between Linus and me.
Bawk. Bawk.
I was such a chicken.
Cricket should have kitted me out as Yellow Belle instead of Blue Belle.
There were no nets to catch you when you fell in love. I learned that the hard way. The only thing waiting for you at the bottom after you took that leap of faith was the other person.
Choose well, and you lived happily-ever-after, or at least happily-for-now. Choose poorly, and you went splat.
Corbin considered me. “You don’t sound like you want to be on the hook for this.”
“Oh, I don’t.” I wriggled on my seat thinking about it. “The last place I want to be is between the Grande Dame and what she wants.” The second-to-last place was handing the Grande Dame exactly what she wanted, which I might very well be doing. “You’re a murderer.”
He opened his mouth to contradict me, I cut him off before the excuses started.
Undead people were still people.
“What you do might be viewed as noble among the mortal set, but a vampire was a human who paid a necromancer a small fortune to enjoy near-immortality, and you robbed them of that. I’m not saying all vampires are saints. Far from it. We’re all flawed: humans, necromancers, gwyllgi, etc. Vampires are no exception. But you’re in our world now. There won’t be any pats on the back or fang necklace stringing parties—whatever hunters do to celebrate their killing sprees—but there will be a whole heck of a lot of pissed-off vampires once they figure out who you are and what you’ve done. That means you need the protection of a vampire who can shield you from a stake to the heart until you can prove yourself to whatever clan takes you in.”
“You think your grandfather can do that?”
“I know he can, if he decides you’re worth the effort.”
“Worth the effort,” he repeated, unable to hide his disgust. “I won’t beg a vampire for shelter.”
“Then I’m glad we had this talk.” I saluted him. “You’ve just saved me the hassle of meeting with him to discuss your case. Thanks.”
Corbin shoved away from the counter and stormed out into the backyard.
“Kids these days.” I clucked my tongue at Linus, taking a moment to send the promised shell pics to Amelie. “What can you do?”
“I’m not sure.” Linus stared at the floor. “I’ve never maintained prolonged contact with my progeny.”
“I need to check in with Lethe, and then I’m going to bed.” I dusted my hands together. “Today was trash. Bag it, and set it at the curb.”
A flinch twitched his shoulders, so slight anyone else would have missed it, but I saw.
“I’ll keep an eye on Corbin,” he offered. “You go on up, shower, and dress for bed.”
The taste of foot clued me in to the colossal mistake I had made by painting today in such broad strokes with the same brush.
“There was one bright spot.” I slid off my stool. “This guy I know took me downtown and showed me this building he’s pretending he didn’t buy for me, but we both know he totally did. He even pitched me a business plan and let me use his shower.” I approached slowly. “FYI, the water pressure is ah-mazing.”
“You could have been attacked in that building, and that guy you know would have been too late.”
“I can take care of myself.” Not one hundred percent, but I was thinking in the sixty or seventy range.
“I hate that you have to, that it’s a skill you have no choice but to acquire.”
“I hate that you put your life at risk every night to keep others safe, but those are the breaks.”
“Yes.” His gaze shot up to me then, his surprise almost comical. “They are.”