I looked up at the Fae mistrustfully.
Rans sighed. “Zorah Elaine Bright, this is Albigard of the Unseelie Court. Alby, Zorah. And may I just add that both of you are currently serious pains in my lily-white arse.”
Albigard and I remained silent, still watching each other warily.
“Give me strength,” Rans muttered, barely audible.
“Am I to understand,” Albigard began, “That this demonkin has no control over her powers?”
“I’m still standing right here, Tinkerbell!” I snapped.
His face darkened, but he smoothed the expression an instant later. “My apologies, demonkin. You don’t have control of your powers?”
I swallowed, just now realizing that by pressing the point, it meant I’d have to deal with this Fae directly. I thought I caught a twitch of Rans’ lips, and silently vowed bitter retribution on him if he was in any way amused by this situation.
“I didn’t realize I had any ‘powers’ until just now,” I said cautiously.
Green eyes held mine for a long beat before Albigard gave a small nod, as if to himself. “Then I extend forgiveness for your violation of my person. Endeavor not to repeat it, or I may grow to be less forgiving.”
A smart-ass remark was on the tip of my tongue, but I swallowed it back upon realizing that I’d apparently just sexually assaulted a faerie so I could feed from him. “I honestly didn’t intend to do it,” I said instead. “Now, if we could just address the part where we’re still locked in a cell in your creepy dungeon-basement, everything’ll be peachy.”
I felt jittery… almost itchy, like I’d taken a hit of bad drugs. If this was my brain on faerie animus, I was never straying from vampire juice again. My eyes flicked sideways to Rans, and I looked away quickly.
“Seriously, Alby,” Rans was saying, “there’d better be a good excuse for this farce. When I suggested meeting at the airport, I didn’t expect us to be joined by a full squad of Chicago’s boys in blue.”
Albigard exhaled sharply and took a step away, running a hand through his fine, straight hair. The movement drained some of the tension from the atmosphere, as well.
“Something big is going on in this city,” the Fae said. “Big, and secretive.”
He waved a careless hand at me, and tingles rushed along my skin. When I looked down, my appearance had returned to normal.
“And whatever this big, secretive thing is, it’s tied up with the human man I told you about?” Rans pressed.
“Apparently,” Albigard said, sounding suddenly tired. “Of course, once the higher-ups realize you’re tied up in it somehow, they’ll be after you in force—assuming they aren’t after you already. You’ll be safe here for a bit, but I had to glamour you to make you seem like random prisoners. The human law enforcement officers I used at the airport don’t know enough to be a problem, but only one of the two guards here is trustworthy.”
Rans nodded. “I figured it was something like that. Though a bit of warning wouldn’t have gone amiss, you know.”
Albigard waved the words away as though they were a mere annoyance. “There may well have been listening charms attached to the automobile. You’re here; no one is aware of your presence for the moment. I fail to see the issue.”
“And my father?” I asked, ready to move past the bullshit even if Albigard’s proximity did still make me want to crawl out of my skin.
The Fae’s lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. “I will take you both to the residence that Darryl Bright is listed as owning, though we should not linger there.”
“Wait,” I said. “How are we going to sneak past your guards and get out of the house? I thought you didn’t want anyone knowing we were here.”
Albigard gave me a look that implied I was mentally deficient. “I will transport you there magically, of course. Though I suppose I should still refresh your glamours, first.”
I stared at him. “I have no idea what that means. But if it gets me to Dad’s condo, then let’s stop standing around and fucking do it.”
“You heard the lady,” Rans said, in the tone of someone who was about ready to be done with the day’s bullshit. I could sympathize.
Albigard summoned his glowy magic again, and moments later Rans and I were once again disguised. Presumably, this was the glamour he’d mentioned. I twisted my newly pale hand back and forth, fascinated.
My attention was wrenched away when the Fae described a large oval shape with a smooth movement of his hand. A blazing gateway formed in thin air, tall and wide enough for a person to slip through.
I gaped at the hole in reality. “Oh, my god. You can make portals? I had a friend in high school who freaking loved that game.”
“Come,” Albigard said, ignoring my words even though irritation practically rolled off of him in waves.
I couldn’t help casting a glance at Rans, trying to telegraph ‘Is this safe?’ without actually having to say it aloud. I had a sneaking suspicion that doing anything else to piss off the portalmaster right now would be ill advised.
“It’s fine, luv,” Rans said, taking my oddly unfamiliar hand in his.
He led me into the gap in the air. I squeezed my eyes shut as I stepped through, a wave of disorientation passing over me. When I opened my eyes, I was… someplace else. Someplace that should have been familiar, except that a tornado had torn through the familiarity.
Albigard stepped through after us, and the portal shrank to a point before disappearing completely. I looked around the room, a sinking feeling taking root in my stomach.
“Is this the place?” Rans asked.
“Yes,” I whispered, not wanting it to be true.
My father’s home had been torn apart—furnishings upended and broken, personal belongings shattered and torn to pieces. It wasn’t immediately obvious to my untrained eye whether the wholesale destruction was the result of a struggle, or whether it was the result of a thorough—and callous—search for something hidden.
Either way, it was clear from the unnatural stillness of the place that my father wasn’t here.
In eight years, I’d only been here five times… maybe six. Each visit had been tense and uncomfortable, punctuated by low-pitched arguments and hurtful comments. I walked forward in a daze, my eyes trying to reassemble the broken objects around me into a picture of normalcy. My gaze caught on a corner of colorful cloth, faded from its original vibrancy by the passage of time. I leaned down to grab it, tugging it out from behind the overturned table where it had been largely hidden.
Shaking, I clutched the torn quilt—a crazy patchwork of pink, blue, and lavender that had always decorated my parents’ bed when I was a child. My knees went wobbly, and I sank to the ground.
My dad was the only family I had left. And now he was gone. Was this destruction my fault? It seemed likely. Why on earth had I ever thought it would be a good idea to call him for help?
Family members make excellent leverage, Rans had said. And, hey, what do you know? It turned out he was right.
“I’m going after him,” I said, looking up at the vampire from my pathetic hunched position on the floor. “With or without you, I’m going to find him and get him back.”
Rans drew breath to speak, but Albigard beat him to it.
“Until I can figure out a way to better disguise your presence in the city, you’re not going anywhere except back to the basement cell,” the Fae stated, clearly unimpressed by my incipient emotional breakdown.
“The fuck I am,” I snarled at him, my anger swirling dangerously.
Rans stepped between us, cutting off my view of Albigard. He crouched in front of me, sitting on his heels, covering my hands with his where they twisted in the fabric of the old quilt.
He was wearing a calm, rational expression that only pissed me off more. I figured I wasn’t going to like what he said next, and—surprise, surprise—I was right.
“We have no way of knowing the circumstances of your father’s disappearance, Zorah,
and the moment you start poking around and asking the wrong kinds of questions to the wrong kinds of people, the Fae will know you’re here.” His low voice was not without empathy, but I didn’t care.
I jerked my hands away, not letting go of the quilt. “The Fae already know I’m here!” I snapped, glaring at Albigard.
“One Fae knows you’re here,” Rans corrected, his tone hardening. “And he’s the one who put himself at risk to bring us to this flat so we could investigate. Now, are you going to do something suicidal in pursuit of your internal script that says you can only rely on yourself? Or are you going to accept help when it’s fucking offered to you?”
I stared at the vampire who’d done nothing but try to keep me safe, and beyond him, to the Fae who made my skin crawl. I let my gaze wander around the destroyed condo, the fear that my father had been taken against his will warring with the fear that he hadn’t been taken against his will.
Rans’ observation that only my dad and I had known I was getting a bus ticket in St. Louis pricked at me like a thorn embedded in skin. But either way, I needed answers and I was damned well going to get them.
“My only goal is to find my father,” I said, meeting Rans’ gaze again. “From this moment, that’s the one thing I care about. As long as it’s your goal, too, we’re good. If I get a hint that it’s not, then we have a serious problem.”
“Agreed,” Rans said after the barest hesitation, “on the condition that you listen when someone tells you you’re about to do something foolish.”
I turned my burning gaze to Albigard, who gave me a look that said he didn’t consider any ‘problem’ I might pose to be a serious one. When I continued to glare at him, he looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. I didn’t back down from that look, crawling skin or no, and eventually he gave me a careless nod of agreement.
“Good,” I said, my eyes falling on a broken picture frame on the floor near me. My mother and father gazed out at me from behind shards of shattered glass, smiling and happy. “So… where do we start?”
* * *
Zorah’s story continues in The Last Vampire: Book Two.
If you enjoyed this book, you might also like R. A. Steffan and Jaelynn Woolf’s other vampire series, Circle of Blood.
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