CHAPTER 21
I DID NOT WANT OTHELLO’S job, as I said. I knew how to manage the turned, or I used to until they decided to go psycho and kidnap my friend, but I also knew enough about the Born to know that managing them, compared to the turned, was the difference between raising a pig and raising a cat. The turned being pigs that are usually docile, and the Born being cats that are preening divas. Plus, the Born liked the idea of being managed by their leader, but it didn’t mean that they liked someone else making their decisions, or telling them to do things they weren’t on board with. And I now had the authority to do so. I could literally tell anyone in the Order to do anything and they would have to do it. A manicure, killing someone, making me biscuits, having a tweet war with Anna Kendrick. I was the master now.
The master of the Order was lying in her bed, rubbing her ever growing belly and staring at the embossed ceiling when there was a knock at her door.
I had barely slept the night before, my mind too consumed with the knowledge that I could no longer be lazy and I’d have to actually work again. I’d have to learn how to do a job I had no experience in, and be an authority figure over people I either barely knew or disliked. Or they disliked me.
“Open the door, Lisbeth, or I’ll use the master key,” Olivier said from the hallway. I got up and put a robe on over my pajamas, passed Cameron on the couch still muttering Japanese swear words in his sleep, and opened the door to Olivier with a hand on her hip looking at me like I was late to my own party.
“I’m the boss now,” I reminded her in a sarcastic tone. “You can’t barge into my room.”
“Technically, you’ve always been my boss., and I get your job if you’re abducted too, so….” She shrugged with an excited grin so I flicked her arm with my finger. After I changed my clothes, I followed her downstairs to my new destiny.
Marie was there to greet us when we reached the business hallway that contained Othello’s old office, now my office. She was blocking the way, as if I was surprised, clutching a blue folder to her chest like I was going to take it from her.
“Madam Lisbeth,” Marie said respectfully. She tipped her head and did a short little curtsey bow. Then she gave my simple black dress a disapproving once over.
“I’m Madam now?” I asked her, genuinely curious since I’d never called Othello ‘Master Othello.’
“Othello never preferred the prefix, but it is standard protocol for a leader.” Her fingers were gripping the blue folder so tightly I could see her starting to rip it on accident.
“I prefer to not have it either, if that’s fine,” I said. She tipped her head at me again.
“I was hoping…” she said quietly, her eyes darting around so she wouldn’t have to look at me. “I was hoping that I could keep my position as the leader’s assistant. I know that we aren’t exactly close, but I’ve been the assistant for two hundred years, and well… I don’t really know anything else.”
“Ummm…” I said awkwardly. “I mean, I wasn’t aware that I had the right to reassign the position?” Her silent glance was enough to say that I did. I shrugged. “I don’t want anyone else. I don’t know this job. One of us should know what they’re doing. Might as well be you.”
She smiled in relief and loosened her grip on the folder before it could be truly torn. “Arthur has requested a meeting with you as soon as you’re ready.”
I glanced around the small waiting area, but he wasn’t there. “Can’t he just come find me?”
Marie gave me a superior look, and I could tell she was making an effort to be nice since I’d saved her job. “Your schedule doesn’t work like that anymore.”
Yay me.
Olivier left me to get acquainted with my new office. A quick scan of it said I would need some serious redecorating if I was in fact going to keep this position, which I very much so hoped not. Marie led me up to my desk where she placed the blue folder and adjusted it until it was perfectly straight, minus the deep finger marks she’d made on one corner.
“Othello left this for his successor, in case someone ever became the leader without him here.”
I eyed the folder with more scrutiny than I’d had when I was staring at the finger marks. “He knew this would happen?”
“No,” she said with a mournful giggle. “He was very thorough. He wanted to make sure everything would be taken care of for any scenario.” She bobbed low to the carpet and twirled around before exiting my office.
I picked up the folder and opened it to find a handwritten note from Othello addressed to me.
CHAPTER 22
“Dear Lisbeth,
I am aware that the requirement behind writing this letter is to address it to my successor. I have no way of knowing if that will be you, however, I remain hopeful that it is you reading this. Especially since most of what I say will not make sense to anyone else.
Change is coming to our people, whether we want it to or not. In a way, I’m glad you’ll be there to guide them through it, because if any of us can, it’s you. You can expertly navigate through the waters of the masses until they have all sided with you, and trust you to bring them to a safe harbor. They don’t need to know whether or not you know what you’re doing. All they need to know is that you believe you can come out the other side into a better world.
We are an old race. We don’t like to change, even if it means our destruction. Any resistance you find should be met with confidence. If someone tells you ‘we don’t do it like that,’ tell them, ‘we do now.’
The letter was written on old aged paper with a quill and ink, even though the wording suggested he had written it recently. Othello was nothing if not old fashioned. His words were deep and meaningful, and I didn’t deserve them, but I would try my best to earn them. I opened the top drawer to my left and slipped the letter into it.
Marie burst in unannounced with Arthur right behind her. She sashayed up to me and dropped an envelope on my desk.
“Arthur is here to see you,” she said smartly before turning around and going back out.
“Arthur,” I said with a respectful nod.
He looked as if meeting me in Othello’s office was completely normal. “I wish to remain at the Order and become your personal bodyguard.”
I blinked and shook my head a few times, making sure my ears hadn’t heard wrong. “You what? You hate it here. And I know you don’t exactly like me either, Miss Rule Breaker and all.”
He folded his hands in front of him in a military business-like manner. “Those days are past. Your position is not safe with Othello having been abducted like that under our noses. I know how to guard someone properly, as you’ve seen.”
He certainly did.
“Will I be on house arrest again?” I said, only half serious.
“No. But I will escort you to and from your office, as well as when you leave the castle. We’ll set up a security pad on your office door so that only authorized people can get in, same with your rooms.” I’d seen such things on the television, but never in our home. Change was good, though.
“I give you permission to do whatever you deem necessary to protect everyone here, not just me. And I accept your request to be my bodyguard.”
He relaxed just a smidge. “I’ll bring you an itemized report of all the changes I’ll be implementing.”
“Good.” I fiddled with my fingers and glanced down at the envelope Marie had brought. I didn’t recognize the handwriting.
“Marie should be opening your mail from now on,” Arthur commented when he noticed the letter.
“I’m not the president, for heaven’s sake,” I murmured. I picked up the envelope, a plain design like one buys in packs of 100 at the supermarket. I grabbed a fancy knife letter opener and slit it at the top, then pulled out the letter. The letter was nice paper with no letterhead, but embossed edges. I opened it and a 2-dollar bill slid into my lap. The paper had four things written on it.
“Congratulations on your new job.
&nbs
p; You’re not seeing things.
Where does that door lead to?
Signed, Sara the Amazing.”
CHAPTER 23
AT FIRST, I WAS SURPRISED she hadn’t mentioned my treatment of her, but she’d always seemed the forgiving type. Then I started giggling, going back and forth between the letter and the random 2-dollar bill. I kept laughing, getting louder by the second with tears pouring down my cheeks, until I noticed Olivier standing next to Arthur. I’d laughed so loud I didn’t hear her coming in. I set the letter and the 2-dollar bill down on my desk and wiped my cheeks clean.
“Yes?” I asked her calmly, a few giggles trying to escape.
She raised a curved eyebrow at me so I’d know exactly how weird I was acting. “I’ve put out feelers for the nearby rogue vampires, in case anyone has seen the turned or Othello.”
“There are rogue vampires?” I would’ve thought the Hunters killed rogue vampires.
She rolled her eyes and sighed like I was the stupid cousin she had to play with at family reunions. She kept her tone respectful, though, for a change. “Yes.”
“And?”
Her gaze turned irritated. “And nothing. They haven’t seen anything. No one has seen anything. Not the humans, not the rogues, not anyone. The turned disappeared into thin air.”
I leaned back in the enormous desk chair and thought it over for a few minutes. “What about the packs?”
Olivier and Arthur both gave me shocked looks, that I would even consider involving the Lycans in our problems. You’d think I’d just stripped naked for their horror. I rolled my eyes at them and sighed.
“Fine. Let’s ignore a completely legitimate alternative to finding Othello. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll find his corpse at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.”
Olivier frowned at me. “With all due respect, Madam Lisbeth, I would rather tear off my own head than side with the Lycans.”
“We mean this with complete reverence for your position, but your opinion on this matter is biased,” Arthur added, though with less venom than Olivier.
And there it was, my new life laid out so finely before me. People would no longer be willing to speak informally to me. It would be, with respect this, and Madam Lisbeth that. I wanted to curse Othello’s name under the burning sun for being kidnapped, and then curse myself for being the next oldest.
I slumped further into my giant chair and sighed again. My stomach jumped a few times as if the child inside was checking to make sure I was okay. I rubbed near where the kicking was going on to reassure her, and she calmed down.
“We apologize,” Arthur said with a more even tone. “We are causing distress to your child.”
I laughed a few times ironically. “This entire job is causing distress to both of us.” And magically, they both relaxed and the formal tone left the room. I rubbed my belly in thanks. “Look,” I started. “I don’t want you two acting like that around me. No ‘Madam Lisbeth’, or ‘with respect.’ Not when we’re alone. You’re both my friends.” I glanced over at Arthur. “Sort of,” I added. “Let me pose the question again. The Lycans could help us.”
“No,” Olivier said with a firm shake of her head. “We don’t need them. We’ll never need them. We can find Othello and the turned on our own.”
“And if you can’t?” I asked her.
Arthur crossed his hands over his chest. “Have faith in our skills.”
“Fine,” I answered in defeat.
CHAPTER 24
THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF MY attitude about their decision was pouting. I was pouting. I couldn’t say why, but I wanted relations between the vampires and Lycans to improve. Okay, fine. I could say why. Because maybe if our two species weren’t so against each other, maybe Knight would still be with me.
I couldn’t salvage what I had had with him, but I could fix the animosity between our people in memory of it. In theory, anyway. Asking for it so soon after becoming leader was probably not a wise choice. I was prepared to wait. I’d wait any amount of time for it to happen. As long as it did.
After a week had passed and Olivier still had not found Othello, I was beginning to wonder if we ever would. I doubted his survival was high on the turned’s list of priorities. Still, no matter the odds of him returning, I was unwilling to move into his suite, which would’ve involved evicting Marie, nor was I going to redecorate his office just yet. The only new things in it were two letters I kept in the top drawer of my desk. The one from Othello stayed in the envelope. The one from Sara I took out every day to re-read and try to figure out what she was thinking when she wrote such a cryptic thing.
‘You’re not seeing things.’
Right. Of course I wasn’t. Because everyone sees their dead boyfriend chilling in their room when they get really sad. Why didn’t I think of that? Oh, right, because he only appeared when I wanted him to, which meant I was definitely delusional and needed therapy, or just stiffer alcohol, but that might make me see other things that weren’t there, like can-can dancers or Thomas Jefferson.
Even so, it wasn’t that line of her letter that was baffling me. It was the third line.
‘Where does that door lead to?’
Door? What door? Unless there was a magic door that lead to Narnia and only opened on the second Tuesday of every month, I had no idea what door she was talking about. But this was Sara. Half of what she said made no sense, and the other half was worth paying attention to. I figured the thing about me seeing things was the no sense part, and the door was important. That meant I had to figure it out.
So. Door. Hmm. I glanced around the room, but there was still the same number of doors are there had been the day before. Two. The double door entrance, and the one to the bathroom. No other doors. I had considered it might be a hidden door, but the wording in the note didn’t suggest that. Though, taking it at face value could be a mistake.
I stood up, balanced my heavy belly with a hand over it, and walked over to the wall on my left. My fingers found no hidden switches or buttons. I continued down the wall, stopping at the large marble fireplace to rest.
I rubbed my tummy. “Little one,” I said to it. “You’re making me out of breath. It’s embarrassing.” She kicked my hand in response. I couldn’t tell if she was being sassy, or just liked kicking me when I talked to her. I slumped down into one of the fancy chairs by the fireplace and studied everything absently.
Othello had fancy taste, more so than I used to. The trinkets on the fireplace ranged from Hercules to butterflies, but they were all made by very famous artisans. Their appeal was who made them, not what they looked like.
There was one with rough edges in the shape of ‘The Thinker.’ It didn’t look expensive, in fact it was made quite cheaply. I stood up and walked over to it. While the other trinkets were made from precious metals or stone, ‘The Thinker’ was made from plastic. I picked it up and expected a door to open in the wall, or a hidden passage behind the fireplace.
Nothing happened.
I glared at the cheap statue in disappointment and shook my finger at it as punishment. How dare you get my hopes up, you hunk of plastic? I took it with me back to my desk and set it on the wooden surface before leaning back into my chair with a huff. Stupid statue pretending to be a clue. Now I’d never find the door.
I stood up and pushed at the desk hard enough to move it, but it didn’t budge. That was weird. Why would Othello bolt down his desk? There was no reason to. I studied it for a clue and noticed there were two squares on the top of the desk. They looked like decorations, just part of the desk design, but one was sunken in with a lamp on top of it.
The squares were the same size as the statue.
I picked up the model and swiped away the pile of papers blocking the square. When I placed the statue onto the square, it sunk in and made a heavy clicking sound.
This was so super awesome!!
A panel on the left wall I’d just examined clicked and popped out. The seam was hidden with a line of wooden
trim, and would never have been noticed since the rest of the room had the trim. Very clever, Othello.
So. The big question.
Where does that door lead to?
CHAPTER 25
AS SOON AS THE PANEL popped out, I ran over and locked my office door. I needed to not be disturbed if I was dealing with secrets. I then opened the panel wider and found behind it an actual door. And it was locked. Like, even if you found the hidden door in the first place, you still couldn’t get in.
Astounding logic, Othello. Not.
I fingered the lock and considered picking it, but since Othello had gone to this much trouble, I figured it wouldn’t be that simple. So, I went back to the desk and examined the statue, and then the lamp in turn, which produced no key.
If I were a key, where would I be?
It would have to be a place no one would look, but easily accessible to Othello. I thought back to every time someone other than me had been in this room since my appointment as head.
The one place no one dared touch was my chair.
I found the key in between the top part and the seat cushion. I had to applaud Othello on his thinking skills. No one would ever look in the chair for a secret key.
I put the key in the lock and stopped. What was Othello hiding in here? Was it a slave? Was it his secret dirty magazine collection? Was it even important? Well, time to find out.
The key was turned and the door opened before me. I stepped inside and waited for a few seconds for my eyes to adjust before closing the door behind me. I could see the room well enough to see a cord hanging from the ceiling, so I pulled it.
The secret room was a very tiny space with volumes of books on the narrow walls, a lamp table with no lamp, and a dusty armchair
Books.
He was hiding books.
I had to pee, and I seriously was not digging this secret room of books. There were no books worth hiding like this. So, why had he? Othello wasn’t secretive. He was open about everything he did. This made zero sense.
Child of the Outcast (Born Vampire Book 2) Page 10
