by Barb Hendee
He tried to smile at her in the mirror. He didn’t blame her—or any of them—for focusing on tasks at hand and for avoiding any open discussion of what they’d just been through.
That Christian had planned several murders.
That Ivory was gone.
That Julian was dead.
Wade leaned back against the seat, and his thoughts seemed filled with a mix of the trivial and nontrivial. For the former, about halfway home he remembered they’d left all their luggage behind at Vera’s. Everything. He’d lost his canvas jacket with the plastic buttons and his favorite Blue Öyster Cult T-shirt.
Eleisha was still wearing that pink evening gown—stained with Julian’s black blood—but she’d lost some of her favorite clothes, too.
In light of everything else, he had no idea why this would bother him.
In less trivial matters, he thought about Vera, whom he’d left in an unnaturally induced sleep on the top level of the mansion in an art storage room. But he knew she’d be all right. Christian was no danger to her, and she’d eventually wake up confused but safe.
Far less trivially, he wondered where Ivory had gone, and then he closed his eyes, trying to stop wondering.
“We’re here,” Eleisha said, pulling up to the curb right in front of the church. “Philip, do you need help?”
“No,” he answered sharply.
They all climbed out of the car, and Philip glanced at Eleisha’s stained dress, but she still hurried to see if he needed help.
“I’m all right,” he said, his voice softer this time.
She opened the gates, and the church loomed ahead of them. “Thank God,” she whispered.
For some reason, Wade found this an overly ironic thing for her to say.
But just then, the church doors banged open and a slender figure jumped off the steps, nearly flying toward them. He stopped about two inches in front of Eleisha, his face alive with eagerness, like he wanted to grab her but didn’t know how.
“Maxim,” she choked, and then she gripped the sleeve of his shirt, briefly touching her forehead to his shoulder. “You look just like home to me.”
“I am home,” he said.
“Yes, you are,” she whispered.
Right on his tail came a heavy trotting sound, and Mr. Boo came straight to Wade. Dropping to his knees, Wade reached out and scratched behind his tattered ear. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I missed you.”
Boo grunted.
The air shimmered and Seamus appeared. Without even a greeting, or noticing what a mess they looked, he blurted out, “You’re here? Where’s Mary? Did Christian send her back?”
Wade had no idea what he meant, but he said, “I don’t know.”
“You’re home,” a breathy voice called from the front doors. Then Rose was hurrying toward them, taking in the state of them all. “Eleisha, are you injured? What are you wearing? Oh, Philip, you’re so pale. Wade, did you cut your wrist? Come inside.”
She didn’t ask why they were alone or why they’d brought no lost vampires back, and Wade felt a quick rush of gratitude. She simply ushered them all inside.
They were indeed home.
Wade glanced back once into the empty night, wondering where Ivory had run.
A week later, Eleisha knelt by a white rosebush in her garden, pulling weeds and still trying to process what had gone wrong—what she’d done wrong—up in Seattle.
Their mission had been a failure.
Or had it?
Christian had no place here, but he knew the laws and fed without killing, so they hadn’t left some untrained vampire murdering mortals in order to go on existing. She felt no guilt about leaving him behind. Because of them, Ivory had managed to break away from him, and although they hadn’t been able to convince her to come back here, at least she was free.
And Julian…
She knew that outcome was the only one possible, and if she had to do it over again, she’d still help kill him. Yet she couldn’t close her eyes and see his headless body there on the floor without a flash of sadness.
But tonight she was dressed in a long cotton skirt and a gray T-shirt. Her feet were bare, and she was pulling weeds in her own garden.
That was something.
The back door opened, and she looked over to see Wade coming toward her with Mr. Boo at his side. She couldn’t help smiling at the sight of them, Wade with his long strides and Boo trotting on his shorter, stocky legs. She was glad Mr. Boo kept him company. She knew this time around Wade was the one who felt he’d lost something on the mission, and she knew he was still thinking about Ivory.
“I thought I’d find you out here,” he said.
His wrist was bandaged, but he tended to heal quickly for a mortal.
“And how did you know that?” she asked, still smiling.
“Because this is where you spend most of your time after we get back from a mission.”
“Is it?” Perhaps it was. “Do you need me for something?”
He shook his head. “No, but now that we’ve all had a little time at home, I wondered if something had occurred to you yet.”
She raised one brow and just watched him.
“With Julian gone, everything has changed,” he said. “Everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that we can look for lost vampires with having to worry about protecting them now. We never have to look over our shoulders again. We’re free.”
Seamus was downstairs in the kitchen when the presence hit him with a jolt. Rushing to blink out, he rematerialized outside in the garden on the north side of the church.
She was standing there, looking up at the stained-glass windows, just as he’d seen her a few months back that night in the rain. She looked sorrow laden. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone so forlorn.
“Mary,” he said.
She turned toward him.
“Don’t go!” he begged.
He’d questioned both Eleisha and Wade about what had become of Mary, but they hadn’t known.
She just floated there, with her sad eyes, until he asked, “What happened? Why didn’t he send you back?”
“He couldn’t,” she whispered. “He lied. He didn’t even know how.”
“Oh, Mary.”
But his pity for her was mixed with a guilty belief that maybe Christian’s ignorance wasn’t such a bad thing.
“You don’t belong there anyway,” he said. “You belong here, in this world.”
“Here?” she asked, incredulous. “Seamus, I have nowhere to go.”
He shook his head. “You could stay here with us, help us look for lost vampires. You’re not tied to Rose like I am. You can go hunting for a signature and keep looking as long as you like.”
“Stay with you?” Her expression of incredulity only increased. “Are you serious? You don’t really think Eleisha would agree to that, do you? I’ve been helping Julian. She’s watched vampires die because of me.”
Seamus frowned. “If that’s what you think of Eleisha, then you haven’t been watching her close enough this past year. She knew Julian better than you, and she’d served him herself once. She’d never hold that against you.”
Mary went still, but he thought he saw some of the desolation in her transparent eyes fade and a spark of hope ignite. “You really think that? You think she’d let me stay?”
“’Course she would. You’ll be more use to her than I am.” With his own sense of hope growing, he floated a few feet toward the church. “Come on inside with me.”
She hesitated just a few seconds, and then she floated after him.
Wade was walking though the sanctuary, heading for his office, when a knock sounded on the front doors. He tensed.
It was nearly eleven. He hadn’t ordered any pizza, and the only people who ever knocked on the door were deliverymen.
He was alone, and his gun was in the office. Even Boo was downstairs with Maxim. But the knock sounded again. Brac
ing himself, Wade walked down the long sanctuary floor, gripped a handle, and opened one of the doors.
His heart nearly stopped.
Ivory was standing on the other side.
She looked a little bedraggled, still in the red evening gown, which was a bit worse for wear, as if she’d been hiding too deeply to find money or go shopping for anything else. But he still wondered if he was imagining the sight of her until she spoke.
“Did you mean what you said back at the mansion? That you and Eleisha could keep Christian away from me?”
His mind went nearly blank, but he knew the right answer—and he wasn’t lying. “Yes.”
They both just stood there. Then she said, “I don’t want to be alone anymore. Can I come in? Could I stay for a while?”
He didn’t trust himself to speak, but he stepped back instantly and held the door wide open. Then he managed to say, “Stay as long as you like.”
Epilogue
Two weeks later, Eleisha came in from the garden and walked into the sanctuary to find Rose curled up on one of the couches reading Great Expectations aloud to Maxim. Mr. Boo was lying at their feet—which probably meant Wade was in his office with Tiny Tuesday, as Boo tended to avoid the cat.
“All right,” Rose said, “now you try reading this paragraph to me.”
Rose had a new theory that if she could reteach Maxim to read at his previous level, some of his gift might begin coming back. Eleisha couldn’t fault her logic…and marveled at her tenacity. Also, Maxim seemed eager to master the books, so neither Wade nor Eleisha had interfered.
They made a pretty picture, sitting there with Charles Dickens shared in their laps and a dog at their feet. Eleisha walked past quietly so as not to disturb them, and she moved behind the altar, opening the door to the hallway behind it.
Almost immediately, she heard Wade and Ivory arguing about desk placement in the office, and she tried not to smile. Ivory had quickly revealed herself as a woman who did not enjoy being idle. At the same time, she had zero interest in gardening or reteaching Maxim how to read.
No, she preferred Wade’s job, and she’d made it clear that her place in the household would be in his office, researching news stories and checking up on possible leads. Since he had no intention of giving up his own position, they’d ended up jockeying for time on the computer, and then finally, last night, Wade had ordered her a desk and a notebook computer.
However, rather than feeling threatened, he was quite taken with the idea of the two of them sharing an office, even though she argued with him openly and sometimes called him names when she thought he was paying too much or too little attention to a story he’d read online.
But he seemed to enjoy her feisty nature, and she seemed to thrive on finally being able to express herself. After two hundred years of Ivory being pressed under Christian’s thumb, Eleisha didn’t blame her.
“If we put the new desk here,” Ivory insisted on the other side of the office door, “for at least part of the month, I’m going to have moonlight reflecting off my screen. It has to go over there.”
“You can’t put it there,” Wade answered back. “We’d have to move Tuesday’s bed.”
“Well, I don’t think Miss Princess Kitty would mind having her bed moved.”
Smiling, Eleisha walked past the office, on down the hallway.
Wade was having the time of his life.
She reached the stairs and headed down into the apartment below. The sounds of gunfire echoed in her ears before she stepped into the living room. Philip, Seamus, and Mary were all watching Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger on Philip’s big flat-screen TV.
Only Seamus seemed less than thrilled with the choice of film.
“I just don’t see why we can’t watch an old John Wayne Western sometimes,” he said.
“Yuck,” Mary answered.
The corners of Philip’s mouth twitched. Philip had never been comfortable with anyone besides Eleisha or Wade. He was decent to Rose, and he tolerated Maxim and Seamus, but to Eleisha’s pleased surprise, he actually liked Mary. Like him, she was easily bored, and they had a similar taste in films.
Of the two newest additions, Mary was the most damaged, even though she had great potential to help the group. For now, it was good for her to just hang around with Philip and Seamus—and heal a bit.
Both Seamus and Mary appeared to be in cross-legged sitting positions, floating a few inches off the floor. Eleisha was not surprised when Mary suddenly turned her transparent head toward Seamus and said, “I’m just kidding. You pick the movie next time.”
She was clearly grateful for her place here in the underground, and she gave the credit to him.
Philip’s long body was stretched out on the couch, but his eyes flicked toward Eleisha as she walked into the room, and he motioned to the empty space on the couch beside him. She smiled but didn’t sit down and just kept going, passing through into the kitchen.
There, she stopped and looked down at a porcelain teacup someone had left on the table. The kitchen counters were somewhat cluttered by herbs that Rose grew in various colored pots, along with Wade’s Crock-Pot and microwave. The place looked just like anyone else’s kitchen.
Her mind drifted back to the previous spring when she’d first become determined to make this empty, lonely church into a home…and she’d dubbed it the “underground.”
Nothing since then had worked out the way she’d imagined, but in just a year, the church had gone from being empty to being filled with five vampires, one mortal, two ghosts, a small cat, and an old pit bull.
And there were more lost vampires out there who didn’t even know they had nothing left to fear.
Julian was gone.
Eleisha walked back into the living room and went to the couch, curling up against Philip’s side. But she kept thinking on Wade’s words out in the garden a few weeks before. They could look for vampires without fear now. They never had to look over their shoulders again.
“What are you thinking?” Philip asked.
“I’m thinking that…we’re free.”
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Epilogue
