Is she going? Alistair grinned at Dylan’s voice in his head. He took his phone out of his pocket; while Dylan could transmit telepathically, Alistair wasn’t adept at replying mentally. He found the text message thread between himself and Dylan and opened it.
She’s putting on sufficient clothes to go to the mall, Alistair replied, as he watched Cami put on a pair of shoes. I’m expensing the shopping trip to you, just so you know.
I’ll cover 25%. There was a pause. Eli and Nick agree to cover 25% each too. Alistair grinned to himself again.
“I don’t want to rush you, but we kind of need to go,” Alistair told Cami as she looked around the room.
“I was looking for my purse,” she said, and then shook her head. “Of course, you’re supposed to be paying for this outing, right?”
Alistair nodded. “Actually, you’re being subsidized by all four of us,” Alistair said. “No need for a purse or wallet—anything that takes your fancy, I’ll cover.”
Cami raised an eyebrow. “You don’t want to tell me that,” she said.
Alistair chuckled. “Let’s see how much damage you can do over a couple of hours,” he suggested.
Cami followed him down the hall and into the garage attached to the mansion, and Alistair chose one of the family cars at random, pointing it out for Cami to go to.
“This is your car?”
Alistair shook his head, plucking the keys off of the pegboard on the wall. “The family keeps some cars on hand,” he explained. “I have a personal car, but it’s parked somewhere else.”
“You said you’re not made of money,” Cami pointed out, opening the passenger side door when Alistair unlocked it.
“I’m not,” Alistair said. “The family is well-off. Pretty much all dragon families have at least some money.”
“So, my father’s family?” Cami asked.
Alistair nodded. “In fact, we should probably get you in touch with the executor of the estate,” Alistair mused. “You’ve probably got properties, money, all that kind of stuff.”
“So, the Overtons are wealthy as a family, but you’re not personally wealthy,” Cami suggested.
Alistair nodded again. “My branch of the family is doing okay,” Alistair said. “Nick’s branch is doing fair. Obviously, you know Dylan’s branch is doing pretty spectacularly; no shock there. Elijah’s part of the family was hit really bad by some issues, and then by the recession, so he didn’t have as flashy a lifestyle as a kid as the rest of us.”
“What do you consider not doing well, by your family’s standards?”
Alistair started the car and shifted out of park to get out of the garage and onto the road. “Elijah has a couple hundred thousand a year,” Alistair said. “Nick and I get about a million, a couple million a year. Dylan’s lowest annual income since he started getting money from his family’s trust was, I think, ten million?” Alistair shrugged.
“Okay, definitely gaining some perspective on my finances,” Cami said.
Alistair took a right turn instead of a left to hopefully avoid the coming representatives of the elders.
“So, wait—what do you think, ballpark, I could expect from my father’s estate?”
Alistair considered the question for a moment as he looked around, making sure the street was clear and there were none of the telltale signs of the people he wanted to avoid. “The Keane family was doing pretty well. Not as good as they used to be, but not as bad as some of the families have gotten,” Alistair mused.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t take anyone seriously who thinks that a trust fund with a few hundred thousand a year is ‘bad,’” Cami interjected.
“First of all, when you’re used to millions, a few hundred thousand a year is kind of a loss,” Alistair pointed out. “Second of all, there are some dragon families that are actually doing bad—no fortune at all, barely holding onto their properties.”
“Points taken,” Cami said. “Please continue.”
“Given that,” Alistair said, relaxing a little bit as they reached a point far enough from the house that the representatives were unlikely to see them. “I’d say you’ve probably got at least a couple million you can count on. Probably two properties, at least one of them a big place like ours.”
“Wait, so I’m potentially going to be a millionaire?”
Alistair shrugged at Cami’s question. “It depends on how your father did his will,” Alistair said. He turned onto a main road, headed in the direction of the closest shopping mall. “I don’t even know who was appointed executor, but we can look into it, if you want.”
“I thinkI think I can wait on that,” Cami said. “I’m kind of still in shock that my father was some kind of millionaire, and my mother just”
“What?” Alistair glanced at Cami as he stopped at a light, curious. Here was one of his own kind—latent, at least—who’d been raised completely outside of the society that dragons made up.
“She never even tried to go after him for money, at least not that I ever knew about,” Cami said. “She always just kind of said that he was into a bunch of weird stuff, and that she didn’t want me involved in it.”
“From what we’ve been able to gather,” Alistair said gently, “your mother heard something about the prophecy, maybe found out what Finn was. We’re not sure. It was later in her pregnancy, and she just sort of left him. The Elders wanted him to fight for you”
“I kind of get the impression that Mom sort of put the kibosh on that,” Cami said, giving him a wry smile.
“Yeah, he basically insisted that it was her right to raise you separately, that he would deal with it all in due course,” Alistair told her. “And then, once that sort of fizzled, they put pressure on him to find another mate, to make another kid.”
“Insurance for the prophecy?” Cami asked. The light turned green, and Alistair waited for the few cars in front of him to go.
“Something like that, I guess,” Alistair agreed. “The Elders don’t really explain their logic, but the only reason we could think of is that they figured that it was an issue of the Keanes having a daughter—not that it was you, specifically.”
“So, whether it was me specifically, or just a Keane daughter, I’m kind of it,” Cami said, not quite making it a question.
“At this point, yeah,” Alistair agreed.
Cami sighed. “I just kind of wish I’d gotten the chance to meet him,” she said.
“I think he would have been proud of you,” Alistair said.
Cami wrinkled her nose. “Why do you think that?”
Alistair chuckled. “Well, your reaction to finding yourself in a strange bed, not in your clothes, after being magically roofied was to try and find me to beat me up,” Alistair pointed out. “You’re strong. You’re quick. When you become a dragon, I’m pretty sure you’re going to be a damn impressive one.”
“I don’t know about that,” Cami said. “I’m not even completely convinced I’m ever going to be a dragon. This has all kind of been a lot to take in, considering it’s been—what—two days?”
“I brought you in on a Friday night,” Alistair agreed. “So, tomorrow will be day three.”
“And then, I’ve got until Saturday morning,” Cami said. She sighed. “At which point I’ll apparently be ‘active,’ whatever that will mean for me.”
“You’ll start noticing it before then,” Alistair told her. “Probably tomorrow or the next day, you’ll start feeling things.”
“Like what?” Cami frowned, and Alistair didn’t need his brother’s talent to know she was anxious.
“Your senses will start to get more acute,” Alistair explained. “You’ll start seeingmore colors, seeing things in the dark better. Hearing things you didn’t hear before.”
“I’m not going to start craving raw meat or like, gold, am I?” Cami asked.
Alistair laughed. “No,” he replied. “Enhanced senses, and you’ll be able to start tapping into your secondary traits, even before
you fully have the ability to transform.”
“None of you have ever really explained to me what my secondary abilities are,” Cami pointed out. “What does it mean, the ability to boost or remove other people’s abilities?”
“It’s hard to explain,” Alistair said. “But you’ll be pleased to know that for you, anyway, it means you can effectively be immune to our abilities once you get a full grasp of them.” He spotted the first signs directing drivers to the mall and got into the correct lane.
“That’s good, at least,” Cami said. She sighed. “So, tell me about these Elders.”
Alistair bit his bottom lip and looked at her for a moment. “There’s a lot of politics in that,” he said. “Let’s just leave it at this, for now: you don’t want to meet them just yet. And we don’t want you to meet them just yet.”
Cami raised an eyebrow. “I get the feeling that it’s much more you guys not wanting me to meet them than me not wanting to meet them,” Cami suggested.
Alistair tapped his fingertips on the steering wheel, stopping at another red light. “It’s definitely some of both,” he said. “But trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to meet the Elders just yet.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dylan
“At least Alistair has her out of the house,” Dylan mused as he, Nicholas, and Elijah waited for the arrival of the Elders’ representatives.
“What I want to know is how they even heard about this,” Nicholas said.
Dylan could tell Elijah was trying to keep the leader of the clan’s temper under control and that Elijah’s efforts were not overly successful. “Obviously, someone told them,” Dylan said.
“Yeah, but who?” Nicholas scowled as he asked. “None of us would have told them, and Cami doesn’t even know about the Elders yet. It has to be one of the staff.”
“It doesn’t have to be one of the staff,” Elijah pointed out. “Someone might be spying on us.”
“The only way they’d be able to is with an informant,” Nicholas insisted.
“The important thing now is to get through this meeting,” Dylan said. “We’ll let them look through the house, they won’t find Cami because she isn’t here, and then we’ll have the rest of the week to prepare her.”
“They’re going to want to find her,” Nicholas said. “And they’re probably going to want to keep an eye on us, since someone snitched.”
“We’ll deal with it,” Elijah said. “We have to get through this without Alistair.”
“I still say it would have made more sense for me to be the one to take her out,” Dylan said. “The Elders don’t even like me.”
“The goal is to get them out of the house as soon as possible,” Nicholas countered. “That’s easier to do if Alistair isn’t here. They would actually want to talk to him, deal with all that.”
Alistair was the family’s representative to the Elders, their semi-official “mouthpiece,” chosen based on his abilities, even though the Elders had natural resistance to Alistair’s ability.
“You don’t think they’re going to be suspicious?”
Nicholas shrugged off Elijah’s question. “He’s out with a girl,” Nicholas said.
Dylan smirked. “That does explain why that guest room is occupied,” Dylan admitted. “Alistair brought home some strange, maybe she’s a prospective mate; we’re following in the Keane’s footsteps, broadening our genome a bit.”
“Exactly,” Nicholas said, nodding. “That’s our story, and we’re going to stick to that.”
Before they could argue the point any further, the doorbell rang. Dylan took a deep breath. When the messenger arrived, less than an hour before, it had sent a shockwave through the house. The Elders have been informed that you are keeping a dragon heir hostage in your home. This is a grave offense and has merited personal attention. Three of our representatives will be at your home to investigate the issue. Dylan watched as Nicholas got up to answer the door and thought to himself that if they had really wanted to investigate the situation, if they really thought there was any merit to the accusation, that they certainly shouldn’t have announced it.
But then, there are traditions and rights and forms to be upheld, Dylan thought wryly. The messenger had given them just enough time to get their story straight and to get Cami out of the house, far enough away with Alistair that there was little risk of the Elders’ representatives running into them. In a way, Dylan wondered if that wasn’t the whole point.
“Thank you for coming,” he heard Nicholas saying from the front door. Dylan braced himself. None of his interactions with the Elders had ever been particularly friendly; even as a child, Dylan had lacked any real sense of reverence for the most powerful—politically, at least—of dragon-kind. But, for the sake of the family, he would do his best to keep things civil.
Nicholas led the three representatives into the room, and Dylan was relieved that at least the group didn’t include any of the Elders themselves; they were sort of Elders-in-waiting, dragons over a certain age, from powerful families. The first to enter after Nicholas was Niall Eliot-Campbell, who came from the same bloodline that had produced T.S. Eliot. He had the same stern expression, though a few more generations of interbreeding with dragon elite families had given Niall a more otherworldly appearance than the poet, with eyes just a touch too large for his face and hands that had a slightly claw-like appearance, which Niall covered up with gloves when he was out in the normal world. Next was Adeon Davies, who looked much younger than his sixty-plus years with pitch black hair and wide-set blue eyes. Adeon was also the best-dressed of the Elders’ representatives, wherever he went. Dylan was fairly certain that the man had tailored suits even to sleep in, and Dylan would not have been surprised if the rumor about Adeon never wearing a pair of shoes for longer than a week was true.
The last, but the most important—in Dylan’s mind—representative to enter the room was Mairead Daniels-Egan. Dylan’s metaphorical hackles went up the moment he saw the woman; tall and slender, she belonged to the Egan clan, though she wasn’t in the main line, instead a second or third cousin. She didn’t have the family’s telltale dark hair or hazel-toned eyes, instead keeping her long, blonde hair in complicated Dutch braids and ringing her blue eyes with lots of kohl eyeliner. The inclusion of an Egan in the group told Dylan right away what the source of the complaint to the Elders had to have been; somehow, the Egans had heard about Cami, and they were making their move to try and disrupt what the Overtons were trying to accomplish. That explains why we got a warning, at least; someone among the Elders wanted things to be at least a little fair.
“You mentioned that Alistair is out,” Adeon said, looking around the main living room in boredom. “I have to admit, I’m disappointed not to see him.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Nicholas said. “Alistair is seeking a mate, you see, and he’s out with a prospective human woman, who he allowed to stay the weekend.”
“I see,” Niall said, looking at Dylan. “It’s good to know that he at least has some appreciation for the responsibilities your family has been shirking.”
“Oh, Niall,” Mairead said, sighing. “You know the Overtons have been seeking out the Keane daughter, hoping to make their fortune.”
“If they did find her, that would be very fortunate for them,” Adeon said. “But the first priority should always be to preserve bloodlines.”
“Of course,” Elijah said. “None of us want to neglect our duty to our kind.”
“I’m sure,” Mairead said, her voice cold. Dylan met the older woman’s gaze levelly, holding his tongue for the moment. Nothing he had to say would bring any good to the conversation, he knew.
“So, your family is accused of kidnapping a dragon heir,” Niall said, taking the lead in the conversation. “Perhaps the accusation comes out of Alistair’s potential mating interest? A case of mistaken identity?”
Nicholas shrugged off the question. “It’s possible,” Nicholas said. “All that I can te
ll you is that there has been no kidnapping, and we aren’t holding any dragon heirs hostage.”
Dylan resisted the temptation to mentally comment to his cousins on the subject of Nicholas’s careful phrasing.
“You’re welcome to search the entire home,” Dylan said, knowing he had to say something and wanting to keep his part of the conversation as brief and as basic as possible.
“I told both of you that it was folly to give any advance notice,” Mairead said, her cold voice taking on a whining note.
“It is proper procedure,” Adeon said. “We came as quickly as possible without bringing attention to ourselves.”
“If they were keeping an unwilling captive, certainly they wouldn’t have had enough time to get rid of all the evidence,” Niall pointed out.
“Let’s get this search over with,” Mairead said.
Dylan pressed his lips together to keep from speaking.
“Allow Elijah and I to accompany you,” Nicholas suggested. “We can make sure all the doors are unlocked and that you cover every room.”
Mairead clearly took issue with the idea, but Dylan watched the older dragon weigh her options and decide against making more of a fuss than she already had; whatever the Egans had had in mind, he and his cousins had managed to thwart them.
Dylan sat down when Nicholas and Elijah led the three representatives of the Elders’ council out of the room to search the house, closing his eyes. If the Egans were already aware that they might have Cami, they would have to move much more quickly in teaching her and in getting her on their side.
Alistair, make sure that you give her everything she could possibly want, Dylan told his cousin mentally.
He couldn’t be entirely sure that the message had reached its intended recipient; Alistair and Cami would be far enough away that his ability might not be strong enough. But Dylan stopped short of taking out his phone. There was the possibility that the Elders’ representatives would want to see their phones, and they’d already quickly cleared everything that might implicate them; there was no reason to risk any messages coming in that would give any clues.
House Of Dragons (The Cami Bakersfield Saga Book 1) Page 9
