“Someone answer my question before I just start screaming and don’t stop,” Cami suggested.
“You look like you have a headache,” the blond on the couch observed. “I don’t think screaming would help.”
“Right now, I don’t particularly care,” Cami told him. “Someone give me some answers as to what the hell happened, where the hell I am, and what the hell this is.”
“I’d recommend you sit down,” the short-haired blond told her. He gestured to the one empty couch in the room, another Chesterfield-style behemoth of furniture. Cami didn’t want to sit down; she felt more powerful, more imposing standing up. But if any of the men in the room stood up—much less all of them—Cami was certain that slim advantage would evaporate, since she was fairly certain they were all taller than her. She looked around at the four men, watching her with such intense interest that some of the more outlandish ideas about what she’d been plunged into started to seem more realistic.
“Answer one thing before I sit down,” Cami said. “Is this some kind of sex cult thing?”
“No!” all four men replied at once.
Cami raised an eyebrow. “You know, that is not really reassuring,” she said dryly.
“It isn’t a sex cult,” the short-haired blond said. “Just sit down, and we’ll explain what happened.”
“I have a pretty decent idea of what happened,” Cami said, crossing her arms over her chest. “That asshole drugged me somehow and brought me here.”
“I didn’t drug you,” Alistair said quickly.
“Really? Because I passed out in the car, and I know I wasn’t that drunk,” Cami said tartly.
“I promise you my cousin didn’t drug you,” the short-haired blond told her.
“Still not buying it,” Cami said. “I drank a lot last night, sure. But I’m not puking, and I only have a little bit of headache. So, I definitely didn’t drink enough to black out. And the last thing I remember is getting into the Uber, and justeverything going black on me.”
“Sit down,” the short-haired blond repeated. “We’ll explain as much as we can to you right now, and more later.”
“I’m not comfortable with the ‘more later’ part of that,” Cami said. “I want you to explain why the hell I’m in different clothes and what all you did to me while I was passed out, and then I want at least three good reasons I shouldn’t get the hell out of here and go straight to the police.”
The short-haired blond rose from his chair, and Cami’s impression that he was taller than her definitely bore out; he was easily as tall as Alistair, maybe one or two inches taller, and broader across the chest and back, muscular in a way Alistair wasn’t. Cami’s mouth went dry at the sight of him approaching her, and her heart beat faster in her chest.
“Sit down, please,” he said, his voice quiet—and unmenacing—but definitely firm. Cami couldn’t look away from him, despite her desire to glare at Alistair. She tried to think of a way to argue with his command but found that she didn’t have quite the nerve or the presence of mind.
“Fine,” she said, summoning up what little courage she had to walk past him and around the perimeter of the big leather Chesterfield without betraying the nervousness that had come across her. She sat down, crossing her legs at the ankle, and kept her head high as she dared. “But I’m still not sold on not going to the cops.”
“If we wanted to keep you from going to the cops, I’d like to point out that we outnumber you and are bigger than you,” the skinny brunet said.
“I don’t know, Dyl. She looks like she could probably take you out, at least,” the longer-haired blond said.
“If she could take me out, she could take Alistair out,” the skinny brunet—apparently named Dylan—said.
“Shut up,” the short-haired blond told them both, his voice quiet but no less commanding. “Our guest has questions.”
“You mean, your hostage,” Cami countered. “Or what do you call a kidnapping victim? Are you even planning on ransoming me?”
“You weren’t technically kidnapped,” Alistair pointed out.
“I was supposed to be going home,” Cami said.
“You did,” Alistair said brightly. “Just not your home.”
Cami scowled. “That isn’t a very good defense,” she said tartly.
“You wanted an explanation, right?” The short-haired blond sat down in his chair, leaning forward slightly and resting his elbows on his knees. “Do you want an explanation, or do you want to keep sniping at everyone?”
“I meanboth sound good,” Cami said.
The short-haired blond rolled his eyes. “You aren’t being kidnapped,” he said. “If you want to leave, you absolutely can. But before you go, my goal is to convince you not to leave.”
“Not starting off on a good foot here,” Cami told him. “Hey, before we start this whole thing with you explaining what the hell this is, could I maybe get some names?”
“You already know Alistair’s name,” the short-haired blond said. “I’m Nicholas. That—” he pointed to the skinny brunet, “is Dylan, and last of all Elijah.”
“Okay,” Cami said. She took a deep breath and realized that her anger was starting to ebb out of her. She was ready to get angry all over again, depending on what the men said, but for the moment, her curiosity was greater. “So, tell me what the hell happened and why you want me to stay here. And I should probably point out: you’re going to want to give me some damn good reasons to want to stay here.” She sat back but didn’t quite relax against the leather sofa.
“Alistair didn’t drug you,” Nicholas said. “He wouldn’t. None of us would.”
“I’m going to need something better than an appeal to your honor because I don’t know any of you,” Cami pointed out. “For all I know, you regularly go out, find someone to drug, bring her home, and repeatedly rape her until you get tired of it and then bury her in the backyard.”
“Allow me to point out that, while it’s probably a little jarring to wake up in pajamas with your makeup off, nobody harmed you,” Nicholas pointed out. “You can at least recognize that you woke up with no bruises and none of thesigns of being violated?”
Cami felt her cheeks burning. “Finding out that someone undressed me and took my makeup off while I was unconscious is still kind of leaving me feeling violated,” Cami said. “Even if nothing worse than that happened.”
“In our defense,” Alistair chimed in, “would sleeping in that dress have been that comfortable?”
“That isn’t the point,” Nicholas said before Cami could reply. “We had good intentions, but obviously we overstepped. Alistair and I apologize.”
“Sorry, Cami,” Alistair said. From that, Cami took the idea that it had only been those two men involved in cleaning her up and changing her clothes. They could be lying, she thought. But then, what would be the point?
“Fine,” Cami said. “I will say these are very comfortable pajamas, and I’m sure the slippers you left for me were comfortable too.”
“I could get them for you, if your feet are cold,” Elijah said.
“I’m okay,” Cami told him. “Let’s get on with this explanation.”
“Alistair brought you here because we need your help,” Nicholas said.
“All four of you?” Cami looked around the room, her thoughts once again returning to the more outlandish ideas she’d had about what she’d been brought into.
“All four of us, yes,” Nicholas said. “We’re family; all of us are cousins. We would like to ask you to stay for a week, and if you want to leave after thatwe’ll be happy to let you.”
“But if I want to leave before that, you won’t be happy,” Cami surmised.
“We’ll be disappointed, but we won’t stop you,” Nicholas replied.
“Okay, so. Big question here: Why?” Cami glanced at the other three men and then turned her attention back onto Nicholas.
“The answer is a complicated one,” Nicholas said. “Before
I start explaining why we need you, could you answer something for me?”
Cami raised an eyebrow. “Technically, I’m not really in a position to say no,” Cami said. “But I’m not going to promise to give you an answer because you’re either going to do something terrible to me or not, and I’m not all that sure my answer will affect that outcome.”
“Did you ever meet your father?”
Cami’s eyes widened. “Okay, you’re going to need to give me some context for why you need to know,” she said.
“Just answer: did you meet him, and do you know who he was?”
Cami stared at Nicholas for a second. Then, she turned her attention onto Alistair. “Meeting you last night wasn’t that random, was it?” she asked.
“No, it wasn’t,” he admitted.
“Answer the question, Cami,” Nicholas said.
“No, I’ve never met my father,” Cami replied tartly. “My mother left him while she was pregnant with me. Why?”
“Do you know who he was? Or at least his name?”
Cami scowled. “My mom told me his name but didn’t tell me anything about him,” she said.
“What was his name?” Nicholas asked, staring at her intently.
“She said his name was Finn Keane,” Cami said. “She didn’t put his name on the birth certificate, and they—I guess—never got married, so I just got her last name.”
“You’re sure she said he was Finn Keane?”
Cami nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Why is that important?”
“Because it means you are exactly who we need,” Nicholas replied. “And we really need you to stay.”
“At some point, are you going to get around to telling me why?” Cami asked. “Because you’re kind of weirding me out even more right now.”
“Alistair picked you up because we got your name from a prophecy,” Nicholas said.
“Oh, Christ,” Cami groaned. “This is some kind of sex cult, isn’t it? Or at least, some kind of cult?”
“It isn’t a cult,” Nicholas said.
“That’s exactly what people in cults say,” Cami pointed out.
“We have no plans to rape you, sacrifice you, or bilk you out of thousands of dollars,” Dylan chimed in from his seat. “Or any dollars. In fact, if you stay here, we’ll probably pay you.”
“Pay me for what?” Cami looked at all four of the men in turn.
“Pay you just for being here,” Dylan said. “I mean, I assume you’ve got some kind of job you’d be missing out on for the week, right?”
“If I just disappeared for a week, I’d probably be missing my job for a lot longer than that,” Cami said.
“How about this?” Elijah suggested, leaning forward and looking at her with avid, attentive brown eyes. “We’ll pay you a year’s salary if you stay here for a week.”
“What?” Cami turned her attention from Elijah to Nicholas, who shrugged.
“I’m just being practical,” Elijah said.
“He has a point,” Dylan added. “Our goal is to have her stay here a week. If we can accomplish that with money, I’m onboard.”
“I’d rather she chose to stay here because she wanted to,” Nicholas said.
“If money makes her want to stay, then why try the hard sell on any other reason?” Dylan pointed out. “I mean, she has no reason right now to want to help us. Or even trust us.”
“He’s right,” Cami said.
“I was getting around to explaining,” Nicholas protested.
“I’m not saying that money alone would make me stay here,” Cami said. “I am saying that if you can guarantee I will be financially fine for at least a year afterward, that’s going to pretty strongly influence my opinion on whether the other reasons are important to me.”
Nicholas sighed. “If you want to pay her, Dylan, then I’m not going to argue,” Nicholas said. Cami glanced at the skinny, long-haired man, wondering why Nicholas had singled him out; his tone didn’t suggest that he’d said it to shut Dylan up but instead that he fully expected Dylan to agree to it.
“What’s your salary, Cami?” Dylan took his phone out of a pocket and unlocked it.
“Fifty grand,” Cami said, inflating the amount somewhat.
“I feel like you’re probably lying to me,” Dylan said, looking up from his phone for a second to make eye contact with her. “But I can do $5,500 a month for a year, easy.”
Cami tried not to let the surprise show on her face. “Seriously? You’re seriously going to pay me five-and-a-half grand a month, for twelve months, to stay here for a week?”
Dylan shrugged indolently. “I can set up the escrow account right now,” he said. “First payment a week from today, and then every four weeks after that.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth? That it’s not a scam?”
Dylan looked up from his phone, staring at her steadily. “If you want the first payment in cash, you’ll have to give me time to go to the bank,” he said. “And you won’t be allowed to leave with it until after a week.”
“Can we talk about this later?” Nicholas asked. “I want to get to the point here.”
“The point right now seems to be whether we can pay Cami to stay with us for a week,” Dylan countered. “And I can. If you can’t explain to her over the course of a week”
“That isn’t an issue,” Nicholas said sharply. “Cami, you wanted to know why we chose you.”
“I do still want to know that,” Cami said.
“Your father was a very important person,” Nicholas said. “It’s a shame that your mother chose to leave him, but none of us can really blame her.”
“Well, I mean, none of you even know her,” Cami pointed out.
“We know that she wasn’t prepared for the future you were meant to have,” Nicholas said. “That’s why she left your father; he probably told her what that was.”
“Getting the culty vibe again,” Cami told him.
“I have to admit, if I wasn’t on the inside, I’d probably think it was a cult too,” Alistair chimed in.
“It isn’t a cult,” Nicholas said again. “But the short version of things is that we need you to help save our kind.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Alistair
Alistair saw the look on Cami’s face when Nicholas blurted out the reason for their interest in her and rose to his feet.
“How about that pizza I bought you? You look hungry,” Alistair said.
“Christ! Is this some kind of weird white nationalist bullshit?” Cami glared all around, her jaw setting and her eyes almost glowing with indignation. “If that’s what this is, then no; you cannot possibly pay me enough to participate.”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with being white,” Nicholas said.
“I’m just going to go get the pizza and reheat it,” Alistair said. He started for the kitchen, where the pizza waited in the fridge.
“You’re going to have to get really detailed on what you mean by ‘our kind’ because that sounds like a huge red flag for a white ethnostate group or something,” Cami said as Alistair left the room. He left the door between the main living room and the kitchen open, interested to hear just how much Nicholas was going to tell Cami about why they needed her.
“You didn’t know anything about your father other than his name, right?” Nicholas asked from the other room. Alistair smiled to himself as he took the takeout box of pizza out of the fridge and turned on the toaster oven.
“No, I didn’t,” Cami admitted. “I’m kind of getting weirded out that you apparently know more about him than I do.”
“He belonged to the samesecret society that we do,” Nicholas explained.
Alistair took the slices of pizza out of the box and put them into the toaster oven.
“If you had wanted to convince me that this isn’t some cult or white nationalist thing, you’re not doing the best job,” Alistair heard Cami say, and he chuckled to himself.
“It has nothing to d
o with being white,” Elijah told her. Alistair leaned against the counter, thinking about what he would have done in his cousins’ place. Of course, that was precisely why he’d gone into the kitchen to get their guest some food: he hadn’t really wanted any part in trying to explain to Cami enough to convince her to stay, but not so much as to reveal everything, in case it made her run.
She needs to stay with us for a week, at least, Alistair thought, staring into the toaster oven and watching the pizza as it began to show telltale signs of heating up. A week would accomplish the first goal the Overton clan had for Finn Keane’s daughter: it would—in theory at least—activate her dormant genes. Once they knew for certain that she had the correct genetics, it would get a lot more complicated; they’d have to figure out how to slowly introduce Cami to the new world she would be in. But the week in their company was the important thing to start out with.
“basically, there are certain hereditary traits that members of our different clans have,” Nicholas was saying. “Your father was the last of his bloodline, and the only one to exhibit a particular trait. We need a week to do all the testing and verification to determine if you inherited it from him.”
It was, Alistair had to admit, a good cover; of course, they were going to have to take some of Cami’s blood to the Seer who’d delivered the original prophecy, just to make sure that Cami was the one they were after anyway. But the rest of the time they would likely be making up bullshit tests and procedures to justify spending time with her; proximity to them would activate the dormant genes, but it needed to be almost constant. They were going to have to get creative.
The cheese on the pizza began to bubble, so Alistair opened the toaster oven and took it out, sliding it onto a plate and giving it a moment for the crust, cheese, and toppings to set up. “She’ll probably want coffee,” he mused, glancing across the kitchen to the coffee pot. There was still some left, and a quick brush of his fingers against the glass told him it was still hot enough to be worth drinking, so he assembled a tray: pizza, coffee, a small pitcher of milk, the sugar bowl, and utensils.
House Of Dragons (The Cami Bakersfield Saga Book 1) Page 3
