Brendan shook his head. “Nope. Audit’s done. Once the Breathers lost power, it all evaporated.”
“We got a notice we’ve been cleared.”
“That’s good. Maybe now you can start paying more attention to Drawn.”
Both men gave her a scandalized look.
“How dare you!” Brendan said with faux indignation. “We slave over that storyline.”
“Yeah, but it’s not my storyline anymore, is it?” Rose put on an endearing smile though she knew deep down some of the accusation in her voice was real. “You’ve got America broken up into three parts by a civil war, succubi and incubi serving as super soldiers for all sides, and me struggling to stitch it all back together.”
“You know the best part?” Luke pushed at Rose’s arm the way a girlfriend with juicy gossip might. “All three think they’re the only ones who know about the super soldiers. They’ve got vampires fighting all these midnight battles, and they don’t seem to notice the other side is employing the same creatures.”
“It’s not my story. That’s not what’s happening in the real world.”
Brendan, who was sometimes more empathetic than his brother, lost his grin, his face going at once serious. “You’re really upset about this?”
Rose shrugged. Despite herself, she couldn’t keep the disappointment off her face. “Maybe a little. I miss it, you know, seeing all my exploits in your pages. Somehow, and I know this sounds crazy, but I feel less real now without that in my life.”
“Rose, darling.” Brendan put his hands on her shoulders and met her gaze with his steely blue eyes. “I’m sorry for that, and for what I’m about to say next.”
“What?”
“You’ve gone straight.”
Rose slow-blinked at him. “I was always—”
“Not that sort of straight. Straight like straight-laced, dull, boring as a social media game app. We’ve tried to spice up your regular life, but it’s all attending fundraisers for Torres’s campaign and trying to convince some elite Society assholes to accept slinkers when they’ve been prejudiced against them for hundreds of years. You’re basic, girl. I’m sorry, I said it.”
Coming from anyone else, that might have stung, but Brendan’s flamboyance made Rose smile. Being around him and Luke felt like a family reunion. Besides, hadn’t she said much the same to Matt a few weeks ago? She had become basic. Without the Indrawn Breath to fight or the fear factory to track, she had settled into a mundane life, one fraught with its own sort of perils no doubt, but none so dire as combating hordes of gun-toting succubi in lonely Mexican villages.
“As for you feeling less real,” Luke said, “I think some of that might be attributable to losing votaries. Our readership has fallen off a bit. That always happens as a comic matures, but there’s more to it than that.”
“I’m losing votaries because they no longer recognize the real me in Drawn.” Rose shrugged. “I get that. The comic me is diverging farther and farther from me in the flesh.”
Luke nodded. He made no pretense about consoling her or assuaging her feelings. Rose appreciated that.
“It’s not like you’re going to lose all your votaries though,” Brendan said. “Hardcore fans remember the original comic, and they still love that Rose. In fact, they love both. Those folks aren’t going anywhere. You’ll be able to draw from them for years to come.”
“Draw from who?” asked a voice from the other side of the table.
Rose turned expecting to find another fan, and she did after a fashion, but this one she recognized.
“Grace!” It was a struggle, but Rose managed to lean far enough across the vendor table to give Piper’s youngest daughter a faltering hug without ripping her outfit.
“What are you doing here?” Olivia scanned the crowd. “Where’s mother?”
“She’s coming—said she wanted to wander around a bit. I heard you were with the twins and I wasn’t about to waste time shopping. How are you guys?”
“Grace, you grow more beautiful every time I see you, girl.” Brendan pushed the table back to make space for her, opened his arms, and Grace flew into them to give him a hug.
“I doubt that. I stopped aging three years ago,” she said, as she transferred her hug from him to Luke.
“What prompted a visit?” Rose forced a smile. She was always happy to see Grace, and her mother too for that matter, but Piper’s blasé attitude toward their treaty irked her.
Grace shrugged as she thumbed through a box of old comics. “Mom said she wanted to speak with you. I’m not complaining. It’s my first time at a con. Can you believe that? I swear, we never go anywhere fun.”
Movies had given Rose a specific image of how vampires should look and act—an image somewhat reinforced by her time in close proximity with a Mexican vampire named Clemente and his coven. Clemente’s people had gone out of their way to act mysterious by showing little to no emotion, standing still for long periods of time only to rush about when they did deign to move, and speaking with no expression whatsoever.
Piper and her children had shattered that Hollywood image. They acted like everyday people. They got their hair and nails done, they went shopping, they dressed in the latest fashions. Of course, they drank blood, but they did so discreetly, and rarely if ever killed their victims. Doing so would make no sense because vampires wove their networks of votaries from the blood ties they created. Biting someone tied that individual and, to a lesser degree, every member of the victim’s family, to that vampire. From that moment until the victim’s death, the vampire could borrow traits from their family like healing, eyesight, speed, and many more. Piper and her children cultivated vast networks of blood ties amongst their neighbors, spreading out the breadth and depth of their votary bases like farmers seeding land. And they did it without anyone in the community catching on.
Not everyone appreciated Piper’s activities, no matter how clever she might be at hiding them. But like it or not, both her fellow vampires and Society could do little about Piper’s unprecedented family. This was partially due to their sheer numbers, but also because of their simple ability to get along with one another. Her children remained unified long after other vampire offspring would have abandoned their mother’s coven to seek their own path. Whether by design or simply love, Piper had built an army, one her peers could not match.
Allying the Order with Piper’s coven hadn’t been an easy choice for Rose. She did it cautiously, and only because she saw it as the best means to overthrow the Indrawn Breath at the time. It had been a marriage of convenience, and one fraught with ill consequences, some she foresaw, others that blindsided her.
Succubi tended to hate vampires, a feeling Rose shared when it came to Clemente and his ilk, but she doubted many of them knew vampires like Piper. They considered their blood-drinking cousins evil and treated them as such. Gone were the days when succubi hunted vampires like vermin, but not long gone. From what Matt had told Rose, that sort of thing had been happening well into the 1960s, a time not so far removed for vampires who could live millennia.
The vampires remembered, and so did the succubi.
“You think something’s wrong?” Olivia asked.
Rose realized she must have looked preoccupied, maybe even worried. She schooled her expression and grinned. “I doubt it. I guess your mother was in the area and decided to pop by.”
Olivia, who had been Rose’s guest now for several months, shrugged one shoulder, a sure sign of her anxiety. She glanced at Grace, who was having an animated conversation with the Pruett twins, and bent her head close to Rose, voice low. “You think she’s come here to ask for your help with another fight?”
Rose saw no reason to lie. “Could be. That thing with Felix, it wasn’t right. It wasn’t time.”
“I know.” Olivia turned away, seemingly unwilling to meet Rose’s gaze. “I wish Mother would have some patience. The other covens aren’t going anywhere.”
“I have a question,” Grace sai
d, catching Rose’s attention.
“Shoot, kid,” Luke said, transforming his voice into that of a gunfighter straight out of an old western.
“Why did I hear you call the Drawn movie an anime? Drawn is a graphic novel, not a manga. You don’t make animes from graphic novels. That’s bad fandom.”
Brendan cupped the young vampire’s cheeks with both hands and planted a kiss on her forehead before backing up a step to place a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “You are a precious angel, girl. Precious!”
“Okay...” Grace lifted her eyebrows. “But I’m right? The Drawn movie is not an anime. I mean the style is all wrong.”
“Of course, you’re right,” Brendan said. “You’re dead right. We call it an anime around plebes—” here Brendan waved vaguely to encompass Rose and Olivia. “They don’t know the difference between a graphic novel adaption and anime. To them, anime is synonymous with cartoon.”
“Are you crying?” Grace put a hand on Brendan’s shoulder.
He whisked a tear from the corner of one eye. “It’s just such a pleasure to speak with a real aficionado of the art, you know?”
“We’re usually stuck with that one.” Luke, grinning, pointed at Rose. “She thinks anime is something mimes do.”
“I do not,” Rose said, hands on her hips. She winked at Grace.
“You mean it isn’t?”
Rose and the others turned to find Piper Ross standing on the other side of the table. The petite vampire wore a frilly dark green blouse matched with hip-hugging jeans. Except for her height, she might have been a supermodel straight from the runways in Milan with her silky black hair, knockout figure, and golden brown eyes.
“Mother.” Olivia started to move the table aside, but Piper stopped her with a brief hug.
“I need a few minutes with Rose, if y’all don’t mind.”
“Only if she promises to dish later,” Brendan said. “Our two alliance leaders show up at the same con? I smell story material.”
Piper made a show of rolling her eyes. “It’s not like you’d use anything I do in the comic anyway.”
Luke feigned taking an imaginary arrow to the heart. “You wound us, lady!”
“Want to join me at the hotel bar?” Piper gestured toward one of the spacious room’s exits, her dark eyes searching Rose’s face in a way that set off alarm bells in her mind.
Without thinking, Rose drew discernment. Something about Piper’s demeanor screamed deception. Though Rose had never known Piper to lie, her heightened senses warned her to be on her guard. All at once, she had no desire to be alone with her supposed ally. Why? Rose couldn’t say, except that her gut told her Piper Ross didn’t have her best interests at heart.
“I think we’re fine here,” Rose said, giving Brendan and Luke side eye.
“Definitely,” Brendan said, catching on a little faster than his brother. “We’re all friends. Besides, the last place you want to hold a private conversation is at the bar. That’s where all the authors hang out. You’ve never seen a bigger bunch of eavesdroppers outside the NSA.”
The usually unflappable Piper appeared uneasy. She scanned the crowd for a moment as if she expected some random passerby to attack her. When they didn’t, she looked at her daughters and nodded.
“Is something wrong?” Rose asked as Olivia opened a gap in the tables for Piper to squeeze through.
“Yes.” Piper drew a long breath. “This doesn’t come easy for me, but I came here to apologize.” She glanced at the twins who, along with Grace, were busying themselves with a stack of comics. “You called on me, and I didn’t show.”
“You’re talking about the night Alice McAleese showed up at my parents’ house?”
“Yes. I should have been there for you. I wasn’t, and I’m sorry.”
Rose swallowed down her anger to speak in a calm voice. “Piper, that was two weeks ago. I haven’t heard a peep from you since.”
Piper’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s not true. I sent texts.”
Rose said nothing. Yes, Piper had sent all of two texts in answer to Rose’s many calls since that night. The first, delivered the day after the Irish encounter, had said: Sorry, was tied up. The second, which Rose had received six days later, and only after Rose had asked in a voicemail if Piper still had a treaty with the Order, had said: Yes.
And that was it. Two weeks, two messages. Olivia had done her best to defend her mother, but she had no more clue why Piper had gone radio silence for all that time than Rose. The two of them didn’t chat often since Olivia had become Rose’s guest. Not that Rose could blame either of them for that. She certainly didn’t speak daily with Valerie Satterfield, whom Piper had taken into custody as part of the prisoner exchange built into their peace agreement. Whenever Rose did speak with Valerie, they kept their conversations vague and never talked about Order business.
“Will you at least tell me what happened?” Rose asked.
“The night you called, I was in the middle of an important negotiation with a vampire named Louis Bancroft.”
“Is negotiation a euphemism for ‘battle to the death?’”
“Not at first, no,” Piper said, punctuating each word with a dip of her chin. “But...yes, things went south. I wanted him in my coven queendom; he wanted me dead. We came to a compromise.”
“You made him dead.”
“There was no way I, or any of my kids, could have gotten to you in time. I needed everyone for that fight.”
“Did we lose people?” asked Olivia, a look of dread on her face.
“Four wights. Your girl fought with us, Rose. Valerie is hell on wheels when she gets going. She took out three of Louis’s minions on her own.”
Rose shook her head. “We’ve discussed this, Piper. Why the hell are you taking on the other coven kingdoms right now? It’s too soon. I thought after Felix, you’d slow down, maybe even listen to me and stop altogether until we can back you up. The Order isn’t in any shape to go fighting all the enemies you’re making.”
“Making?” Piper’s voice remained calm, but her face flushed pink. “I didn’t make these vampires my enemies. They did. The instant they heard I was allying myself with a group of succubi, they announced open season on my family.”
“You never told me that. Who is they?”
Piper shrugged. “I don’t know them all. It’s a network of coven kingdoms all woven together for one purpose, to kill my family.”
Something about Piper’s words rang false in Rose’s head. She glanced at Olivia, who had gone preternaturally still, her face like marble. Grace, whom Rose could see from the corner of her eye, wasn’t so practiced at hiding her emotions. Though the teenage vampire was supposedly chatting with the twins about their work, she was obviously following her mother’s conversation. A look of worry passed across her pretty features, there and gone in a flash.
Rose kept these observations to herself—something to file away for later. Right now, in the middle of a comic convention, wasn’t the time to call her vampiric ally out for lying. It didn’t take discernment to realize that might be a bad idea.
“That’s the sort of information you should share with us,” Rose said. “If you’re being attacked without provocation, I’ll do everything in my power to help you, and I expect the same in return. The Irish didn’t attack us at my parents’ house, but Melody was with them, so things could have gone bad.”
“I’m glad they didn’t,” Piper said. “And again, I’m sorry I wasn’t there. That won’t happen again.”
Rose nodded. “Are you going to have many more bad negotiations going forward? Do we need to rethink how we help one another?”
“I shouldn’t. Not for a while anyway. Felix and Louis were two of the oldest vampires on the east coast. The underlings who have been attacking me for the last several months got their marching orders from them. With our win over Louis, my family should be safe, at least for a while. I’ll need to travel a bit more over the next few weeks, make sure their mi
nions know I’m the boss now. Should be a cakewalk.”
Again, the discordant twang of discernment sounded in Rose’s head, Olivia froze in place, and Grace wrinkled her nose as if at a foul odor. If Piper wasn’t outright lying, she was at least stretching the truth beyond its limits, and her daughters knew it. So did Rose, but she had no idea what to do with the information. More and more, it appeared as though Piper would forever remain the Order’s sole ally. If that was true, it meant Rose needed Piper more than the other way around. Piper was already eliminating her competition without any assistance.
Question was, what would that mean for the future of the Order and the world at large?
7
Reunited
Rose got the call at 6 p.m. sharp. She and her team waited at an upscale convention center in Kennesaw, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, ahead of a campaign speech Gloria Torres would give in an hour.
Rose glanced at her phone. A blocked number. “Hello?”
“Ms. Carver?” said a feminine voice with a pronounced Nigerian accent. “My name is Ugo Ikande. I am Director Thandiwe Buhari’s personal assistant. I’m calling on behalf of the director. She would like to set up a meeting to discuss an alliance with the People’s Consortium.”
Rose had been expecting this call. After her failed attempt at wooing Renni and Lee’s Society friends to ally with the Order, Buhari’s Consortium became more attractive, if only marginally so. She still didn’t see how foreign succubi could benefit her people, and with the campaign ramping up, time was at a premium. Still, it paid to have a plan B.
“It’s good to hear from you,” Rose said as she climbed down from the SUV with Matt’s help. The temperature was a blissful seventy degrees, and the humidity was low.
Matt lifted an eyebrow at her phone, and she whispered, “Buhari.”
Matt nodded, slipped her free arm through his, and together they followed Tanner Watts toward the convention center entrance.
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