Lacroix had to believe Corbin was buying into his spiel, not ready to snap off the nearest chair leg and stake him with it, if this was going to work.
“Corbin and I haven’t spent much time together,” I said to Lacroix. “Would you allow us a stroll through the gardens before you leave? He is my first progeny, and I have questions.”
“You will be able to maintain a relationship with him.” Lacroix smiled, and there was real cheer behind it. “I would never dream of keeping the two of you parted.” He grew wistful. “It is a shame you’re already spoken for, Grier. Just think of the children you two could give me.”
Progeny incest wasn’t really a thing, but that didn’t help me feel better about what he was suggesting, or the fact he wanted children from us. Not grandchildren. A slip of the tongue? Maybe. But I doubted it.
“Sadly, I’m engaged.” Thank you, marriage contract. “Those are only slightly less difficult to break than wedding vows.”
“Ah, well. You are still young, still fertile.” He made a gesture in the air. “The Lawson scion might not prove to be as long-lived as his mother. You can never tell about these things. A time might come when you consider the match with Corbin.”
The mask flaked off and left my face bare. I wasn’t as adept at this as Linus, and hearing Lacroix threaten him ignited a caustic blend of raw terror and panic in my chest that nothing short of setting my eyes on him would douse.
“Linus is very important to me,” I enunciated carefully. “Today, tomorrow, in a century, I would take the black if we married and he died.”
Dames and matrons who chose the black after the death of a spouse fell into two categories. Either they could afford not to wed again, and they led their family alone. Or, less commonly, their heartbrokenness and refusal to entertain marital offers drove their families into the ground.
“You’re young,” he soothed. “Hearts change with time.”
“Mine won’t.” I hadn’t framed Linus and me in that light in my mind. I still wasn’t sure how the future looked when I had been so single-minded in the past. But I knew I couldn’t lose him. Not to Atlanta, and not to my grandfather. That had to be enough until we figured out the rest. “I hope I’m never given occasion to prove I mean what I say.”
Temper sparked in his eyes, but he kept his tone civil, even if the tic in his cheek betrayed his fury.
“You are young,” he repeated. “You do not know what you say.”
“Sir,” Corbin said, calling Lacroix’s attention back to him, “if you don’t mind, I would like to escort Grier to the gardens now.”
Pleased one of us had manners at least, Lacroix chuckled. “Go on.” He smiled. “Have your walk.”
Corbin cocked his elbow and presented his arm to me, and I looped my hand through. The move was one I had come to expect from Linus, and I wondered if that’s what had given Corbin the idea. I clung to him like a lifeline, and he escorted me past Hood and Lethe, who stood posted on either side of the door but peeled aside to follow us.
We didn’t wait for our vampire escort to set out, and that explained how we ended up at the entrance to a room I had never seen from this angle but would have recognized anywhere. The paintings, I realized, hung on the opposite wall had given it away. I remembered them from all the desperate glances I shot in the hall each time Lena entered or exited my room.
Cletus, who had waited in the hall, drifted to the door and tapped his finger against it three times.
“You want us to go in there?” I bumped against the far wall before meaning to take a step.
The wraith tapped three more times, then he lowered his bony hand to grasp the knob.
The gwyllgi exchanged glances, but they kept their mouths shut.
I bit back a whimper when the door swung open on a room I remembered all too well.
The covers were thrown back, the French doors left open onto the patio. Leaves and other debris littered the floor, and the gauzy curtains danced in the breeze. Cletus drifted out into the small garden enclosed by stone walls. He paused at the patio furniture and pointed a damning finger at the concrete.
I drifted out, aware of what I would find but not understanding its significance.
A perfect seashell had been pressed into the concrete along the farthest edge. During my captivity, I had oriented myself by its curve. The patch of dirt beyond it was where I hid the porcelain shard I used to open my veins to ink on the sigils used during my escape.
I hadn’t reached the shell before the wraith crossed to me and tap, tap, tapped my front pants pocket.
“What does it want?” Corbin crowded in, looking around in confusion. “What is this place?”
“Remember the difference of opinion between me and Grandpapa? It started here, when he let his protégé, a Last Seed named Danill Volkov, kidnap me with intent to marry me. This is where they held me after a panic attack incapacitated me in my original room, which I later discovered was my nursery. Turns out my personal jailer was my nanny back in the day. How’s that for irony?”
Corbin stared at me, lips parted, but my family drama appeared to have stumped him.
When I considered how a hunter must have been raised, I wasn’t sure how that made me feel.
Until I decided, I awarded the contents of my pocket my full attention.
The ark shell from Tybee filled my palm, its sharp edge pressing into my fingertips. I withdrew it, running my thumb over the ridges, and when I could no longer resist, I knelt and placed it on the concrete beside the one embedded there.
“I don’t get it.” Corbin scratched his cheek. “What does your shell have to do with that one?”
“I’m not sure.” I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture of them side by side. “Maybe nothing.”
“Your wraith seems to think otherwise.”
“Wraiths don’t think,” I lied. “They’re nothing but spirit and bone.”
Disbelief was written across his face, but he elected not to argue with me.
Breathing out his frustration, he said, “I can’t stay with him.”
“Hush.” Eyes darting around, I pricked my finger then drew the privacy sigil that had worked so well during the carriage ride with Linus on the back of my hand. Pressure filled my ears, and they popped as a bubble of silence enclosed us. Any vampires we encountered would smell the fresh blood and assume I had been up to something, but they wouldn’t know what. That was as much a guarantee as we could ask for. “Okay, go ahead.”
Taking what must be peculiar magic in stride, Corbin repeated, “I can’t stay with him.”
“He’s willing to teach you, protect you. You’ll have a clan at your back.”
“You heard him,” Corbin growled. “He wants me to kill humans.”
“He wants you to live up to your potential,” I countered, keeping my tone neutral.
“I won’t do it.” He set his jaw. “I’ll figure out another way.”
“You’re willing to risk your life to save others? You would rather die than kill a single human?”
There wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in him. “Yes.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” I admitted, tossing aside my Dame Woolworth mask. “We need to figure out his endgame. He’s splintering the Undead Coalition. Why? He’s folding the most powerful members into his own clan rather than killing them. Why? Others are allowing their clans, some centuries old, to vanish beneath the Lacroix flag. Why?”
Corbin exhaled a slow breath like he was sorting through everything I had thrown at him.
“The vampires have been under Society rule through the Undead Coalition for as long as anyone living can remember. As far as necromancers go, anyway. Lacroix is old enough to recall what led to the Society founding the Undead Coalition. He’s old enough to know what they gave up by existing under the ruling Grande Dame’s thumb. He reemerged after I was released from Atramentous. I wondered why for a long time, but I understand now. For the first time in my life, I had no protector. My mother is dead. Maud is dead. The Grande Dame…has never cared for me. She didn’t lift a finger to liberate me until you.” I hadn’t realized it was true until the words hit my tongue, but “You saved me as much as I saved you.”
Maybe that was why, despite his past, I wanted to save him back. Second life, second chance.
“What if he wants me to…?” He rubbed his face. “I can’t hurt others, not even to live.”
“You don’t have to kill anyone,” I assured him. “Blame me. Tell him our bond compels you to admit the complete truth when I ask you a question. He can’t be sure it’s a lie. How many goddess-touched necromancers are walking around with their Deathless progeny for him to ask? Better yet, tell him I forbade you to kill. He holds power over his subjects. Why shouldn’t I?”
A fraction of the tension eased in his shoulders. “I can do that.”
“I can’t promise his intentions are any more nefarious than rebuilding his own clan from the ground up, but I have to believe if what he offered them was anything they wanted, he wouldn’t have to use compulsion to get them to defect. He cast his net for new clan members wide, and there might be innocent vampires tangled in the mesh too.”
“Compulsion?”
“Do you remember when Lacroix put his hand on your shoulder?”
“Yeah.” He rubbed the spot. “Pretty sure he left bruises.”
“He was trying to nudge your mind.” A shiver rippled down my spine. “He almost succeeded with me, but you appear to have a natural immunity.”
“We always assumed vamps got in their victims’ heads. It was the only thing that made sense. Hearing it confirmed, having a name to go with it—a lure?” He shook his head. “I saw a jogger almost break her ankle once to stop and follow a man dressed in baggy jeans and a hoodie off the track, away from the streetlights, into the shadows. I saw a guy on his way to his daughter’s ballet recital stop on the last step, smile at someone I couldn’t see, and walk off without entering the building. There have been kids too. Out playing basketball in the street after dark. They just got this look in their eyes and walked off without a word to their friends.”