Linus took my elbow to help me out of the van. “Do you want to nap first?”
“Yes.” I rolled my shoulders to ease the ache. “But we don’t have time for that.”
The first twenty-four hours were the most critical in any missing persons case. I was holding on to the hope that Boaz had, for whatever reason, relocated her. Without letting anyone know. The next best scenario was whoever had taken the Grande Dame wanted to ransom her back to either her son or the Society. Had it been an assassination attempt, of which there had been many, Marco would have found a body and not an empty foyer. She was too hot of a commodity to hang on to for no good reason.
We just had to find out what these people wanted and hope like heck we could give it to them. Preferably before anyone found out her business trip was a fib.
“You don’t have to do this alone.” He noticed my pain and massaged my shoulders. “I can help.”
The balance between our professional and personal lives had a few bumps left in both roads. After being his apprentice for two years, I had a tendency to take on all the work to prove I could do it. Now that I was off probation and official in every sense of the word, I no longer had to fear impressing my tutor. Except I was married to him, and I got a giddy thrill each time I earned his seal of approval. It was a heady thing for a man as educated and intelligent as Linus to be impressed by little ol’ me.
“Can you handle the call to Tisdale?” I wheedled. “She’s always liked you better.”
“She blames you for luring her daughter away from home.”
As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. Tisdale knew that no one could force Lethe to do anything she didn’t want to, but she was also Lethe’s mother, and she missed her daughter. She had expected Lethe to inherit the Atlanta pack, but Lethe had uprooted her life after meeting me and started her own three hours away in Savannah. I was an easier target for blame than her daughter’s inherited alpha tendencies.
Upon exiting the van, I noticed a large gift left on the bottommost step of the front porch.
Woolly flashed her lights in welcome, but there was a dimness to them I didn’t trust.
“What’s up?” I slid out of the van and started across the lawn. “Who dropped off the present?”
It had to be from someone who couldn’t make the party earlier, but Woolly had strict instructions not to allow delivery drivers onto the porch when no one was home to receive packages. This one must have piqued her curiosity in some way if it overrode her caution.
“I’ll take care of it.” Lethe prowled over to it. “I wanted to beat Grier to the leftover cake anyway.”
“Lethe.”
“Oops.” She placed a hand over her mouth. “Did I say that out loud?”
Forgetting to annoy me for a second, she hesitated near the box and inhaled slowly, brow crinkling.
“What?” I took a step closer. “Lethe?”
“You are not going to believe this.” She bent down and wrinkled her nose. “I’m going to open it.”
“Actually, I can believe you would open it, if it contained food.”
“No,” she muttered, distracted, and ripped into the tape. “I don’t want you to…”
The wad of foam, swaddled in tape, held no particular shape as she lifted out the parcel. I couldn’t guess at its contents, so I waited while she unwrapped its layers, almost dropping it in the process.
“Linus,” she called, cradling the gift in her hands. “Get an evidence baggie. A big one.”
“That’s my job,” I growled. “I’ll get it.” I started for the stairs. “Sheesh, you people.”
“I’ll get it,” Linus countered. “You can handle the rest.”
The steps were a bear to climb. All four of them.
“Fine,” I grumbled. “Why does no one remember I’m still potentate around here?”
“We remember.” Linus handed me off to Hood. “You forget you’re pregnant.”
“Really?” I massaged my belly. “You think I could forget this?”
“You’re making history.” Hood dug his thumbs into the small of my back, giving a massage guaranteed to make me shut up and hold still. “There are no female potentates on record who were pregnant during their tenure. You’re still active, and you’re two weeks away from maternity leave.”
Since I had a former potentate in residence, I would get eight weeks off work to bond with LJ while Linus took over my duties. Not gonna lie. I hated the idea of handing over the reins, even for two months. I had grown possessive of my city in the way of all those who bonded to their lands, and it was hard for me to trust someone else to care for her in my absence. Petty as it made me, I couldn’t have done it for anyone other than Linus.
The city, sensing my agitation, thrust a single dandelion stem through the grass and made it bloom.
Words didn’t mean much to her, not yet, but I pushed gratitude toward her through our bond.
“That probably means they were smarter than I am.” I leaned into the pressure of his hands, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that Lethe had trained him so well. “Balancing family and duty is tough, and it’s only going to get harder with another person to consider.”
Sometimes, during the early-morning hours, I tormented myself with the inevitabilities that my enemies would target our child. Linus hadn’t escaped his position unscathed either. Both of us had powerful people who wished nothing good for us. And we were about to present them with a pink-cheeked vulnerability.
“You’re not wrong,” Lethe sympathized. “Motherhood doesn’t play nice with others. Your focus will be, in the back of your mind, on your child and your family. You have to push through the fear, or else the paranoia takes tiny bites out of you until there’s nothing left.”
“You’re so comforting.” Massage ruined, I shot Hood a grateful smile then stepped away from him. “You know just how to reassure me everything will be okay.”
“Nothing is always okay,” she countered. “It sucks to hear, but it’s the truth, and you already know it.”
“Can’t we pretend?” I glowered at his mate. “I would like to pretend.”
About to burst my bubble yet again, I got a reprieve when Linus exited the house with a clear plastic bag in his fist. He took the steps with enviable ease then handed it to me.
“We will keep our child safe.” He kissed my temple. “Believe that.”
“What if we can’t?” A tremor wobbled through my voice. “What if we fail?”
“We won’t.” He nudged me toward Lethe. “Remember your breathing exercises.”
Inhale.
Exhale.
Inhallle.
Exhallle.
Mild panic attacks had been sneaking up on me and pouncing when I least expected since the six-month mark. I was familiar with the full-blown ones brought on by nightmares or memories of my past. I had dealt with those, more or less successfully, for years. This looming fear of the future, and how to keep our child safe in it, was uncharted territory. Needless to say, our babyproofing game was on point.
The breathing trick eased my worries enough I could award Lethe my full attention. “Here you go.”
Quick as a flash, she finished unrolling the object and dumped it straight into the bag. “Seal it.”
Fingers gone numb, I stood there, gazing into beady glass-blue eyes set in a porcelain face.
“Here.” Lethe took the bag from me. “Let me help.”
“Not this again.” I reached for Linus on impulse, and of course he was there, threading his cool fingers through mine, anchoring me before the fear swept me away. “It can’t be real.”
Real as in one of my childhood dolls returned to me. There had been so many at Lacroix’s estate. I still had nightmares about doll armies capturing Woolly from the inside, despite it being a doll-free zone.
“We’ll have to verify its authenticity.” Lethe sealed the bag tight and passed it to Linus. “It’s got Lacroix’s scent all over it. See its leg panty things? That’s the origin. The rest of the doll smells like mothballs.”
“The bloomers are linen,” Linus said, turning its body in his hands. “The fine weave of the fabric leads me to believe it’s of modern production. The pattern could have been cut from a shirt of Lacroix’s.”
Pretending would have come in handy right about now. Too bad I couldn’t afford to play make-believe.
It might have been a traditional gift intended for the female heir everyone would have hoped I carried, a dolly for her to play with when she got older, but I didn’t think so. This felt like a threat left on the steps of my home, within hours of the Grande Dame’s disappearance, and Woolly thought so too. As much as I wished I could sweep this under a mental rug until after LJ was born, I had learned a long time ago the only way to banish fears was to face them head-on.
“Woolly,” I checked with the house. “I assume it was hand delivered?”
The old girl flashed a series of images in my head: a black car, a man in a suit, a pair of wax fangs.
Communication with her was imperfect, but it gave us the broad strokes. It would have to be enough.
“A vampire dropped off the box. He was dressed in a suit and drove or was driven in a black car.”
Affluent vampires and necromancers alike employed car services and kept vampires on staff. This tidbit didn’t point a damning finger at either species, but it might prove important later.
“There’s no shipping label,” Lethe confirmed, turning to examine the empty box. “I’ll check with the pack, see who’s on patrol tonight.” She glanced toward the gate. “They would have called me if they noticed a suspicious person on the property. Either the vampire got lucky and missed the patrol, or he timed his entry to make certain he could get in and out before the gwyllgi circled back.”
Another fun thing about hormones? The plummet straight into depression. “There is no end to this.”