Release Me When the Sun Goes Down

by Lisa Olsen

  “You don’t even know if it would work.”

  “It’s a risk I’m willing to take and I think she’d want me to.”

  I stared at the man who knew my sister in a way I never could, but the idea didn’t sit right with me. “I’m not. Say we go ahead with this plan and best case scenario is that she’s able to shake off Lodinn’s compulsion – what good will it do when he can compel her again after she turns? He can compel any vamp he wants at any time.”

  “Not if we get her away from him. Turn her and then I’ll take her out of here. If Lodinn never sees her again then he can’t compel her.”

  “I can’t do that, I can’t be the one to take her life.”

  “Then I’ll do it,” he volunteered. “I should be the one to do it anyway, I’m ready to take that step.”

  “Do you even know what you’re saying right now? You’ve only known her for how long? A few months?” It wasn’t like going steady or even getting married. It was a bond that lasted for an eternity.

  “Six is more than a few months. You did it for Rob and you’ve known him just as long.”

  “That’s not the same thing at all. For one thing he was dying right in front of me, and for another, that’s a different kind of commitment.” It hurt to tell the lie, but what else could I say? “You’re talking about a serious bond here and you’re talking about making that decision without Hanna being involved. That sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. How did you feel about it when you were turned? You weren’t consulted either, were you? Or am I wrong?” From what he’d said about killing his Sire, I was willing to bet on it.

  “Fine, then we can ask her if she’d rather live a lie in servitude or become a vampire. That shouldn’t interfere with his compulsion and we’ll get an honest answer from her.”

  “I don’t know…” It felt like too important an issue to skirt around.

  His expression was so twisted with anguish, it hurt to look at him. “Don’t you see, Anja? It’s only a matter of time before he gets bored and kills her, or turns her himself. Either way, she ends up dead or enslaved to him. Do you honestly want to see him as her Sire?”

  Knowing full well the benefits and ties that came with having an Ellri for a Sire, I knew the answer to that without even having to think about it. “Look, I heard everything you said tonight, but I don’t want to rush into anything. Let’s go at this again tomorrow night, maybe something will break by then. I don’t want to make things worse.”

  “Not much chance of that,” he muttered, downing his drink and stalking away.

  *

  There wasn’t any good news when Rob stumbled in a few hours later, though I was just glad to see him coming home under his own steam with Gunnar gone. I put him to bed with a brief kiss goodnight and checked up on my sister, who snored like a bulldozer in the middle of my bed. Jenessa hadn’t come back from packing yet, so I headed back upstairs to get some neglected work done before dawn.

  I had an email from Marcus. It made me feel strange opening it up, like it’d come from beyond the grave, which was ridiculous. It was clearly time stamped much earlier in the day, probably before he’d run into Lodinn at all, and contained the background information I’d requested on Oliver Bassett. Oliver and his wife Sylvia had a pretty hefty mortgage payment on the house they owned in Sausalito, and about fifteen thousand and change in their joint savings account.

  He pulled in a decent wage working at the morgue, but her income was hit and miss. An elementary school teacher, Sylvia didn’t appear to have a steady position, picking up substitute shifts and supplementing by working as a barista at the local Java Hut. There was a claim pending with their auto insurance company, but since it was a single car accident, the chances were it wouldn’t pay much beyond the replacement of the car and some of the funeral expenses. He did have life insurance through his employer for twice his yearly salary. Definitely not enough for a single mother to live on for very long.

  I had to do something more than feel bad about the situation. Maybe money was a crass way of trying to compensate for ruining their lives, but it was the only thing I could think of. Tired of trading emails with Felix, I dialed him direct, and he answered on the third ring.

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Hey, Felix. I hope I’m not calling too late.”

  “Naw, just hanging out with my girl. Say hi, babydoll.”

  “Hey!!!” Bridget yelled on his side, bringing a smile to my lips. I really missed having her around to hang with and hated that Felix didn’t like living in San Francisco, but I couldn’t make them live where he didn’t want to for my own selfish reasons.

  “Hey, Bridge,” I said back, before turning my focus to Felix. “I’ll try to keep it brief so you can get back to her. Have you read my last email update on the situation here?”

  “Sure did, boss. It sounds rough. Maybe you should think about bugging out for a while. Lay low until things blow over. I could have the jet prepped for you in less than an hour, you say the word.”

  “No, something tells me the trouble would just track me down. It’s better to face it from here where I can see what’s coming at me.” Not that I’d done a great job at spotting it so far. “Listen, I have a problem…”

  “I know, but let me handle replacing Marcus, okay? You’ve got more than enough on your plate right now. I’ll have some candidates lined up for you in a jiffy.”

  It wasn’t what I’d been about to say, but it was worth discussing. “You don’t think it’ll be hard to fill the position considering what happened to the last two magistrates in this territory?”

  “Hey, it’s the price of position. The higher you rise through the ranks, the chancier it gets. I feel confident I can find you some good options. And I’m happy to pick up the slack on any other projects you have going for as long as you need me to.”

  “Thanks, Felix, I knew I could count on you. I sort of let the Order take over my offices for a while, and I’ve been practically living like a hermit with this Lodinn thing going on, so your help is definitely needed.”

  “You want I should fly up for a while to help out?”

  It was tempting, but I couldn’t risk him like that. “No, but I’ll have to suspend my office hours for a while, at least until things settle down. Right now we’re focusing all our efforts on finding Jakob, but the longer it goes, the more it’s starting to look like he might’ve taken off entirely.”

  “Yeah, about that. It don’t look good, him going underground like that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I’ve already heard rumblings all the way down here. Jakob made us some pretty lofty promises about guiding the West to power and now, at the first sign of trouble he bolts. It don’t look good is all.”

  “This isn’t your usual trouble.” It wasn’t like he’d run scared from one of the Elders.

  “Still, either he’s hurt bad, which makes him look weak, or he ditched us all to save his own skin, which makes him look weak.”

  Trying to save Jakob’s reputation wasn’t my first concern, heck, it didn’t even show up on the list. “Well, considering I never wanted him to take an active role in the West, that part doesn’t bother me in the slightest. What bothers me is what we’ll do about Lodinn if Jakob is completely gone.”

  “What do you mean? You can’t do squat about Lodinn on your own. He’s an Ellri. It’s the highest code in vampire society. You don’t do nothing against the Ellri, no matter how bad news they are.”

  “So that’s it? We give up and live under his reign of terror?”

  “It ain’t the best plan, I give you that, but what else can we do?”

  “Move somewhere else…” I muttered. I expected most of the vamps in town wouldn’t change much in their daily lives if Lodinn officially took over the territory. But for those of us exposed to his intimate circle, the entire fabric of our existence could change on his whim.

  There were other more immediate things to worry about though. “Anyway, the
re’s no sense in borrowing trouble where that’s concerned. I actually had a more specific reason for calling you. Did you notice the part in the email where I mentioned killing a guy in the morgue when I first woke up?”

  “Yeah, why? Didn’t the boys take care of that for you?”

  “No, they did. They made it look like an accident, but I need you to do a favor for me. I want to do something for his family. Can you have one of our lawyers draft up something that gives them a chunk of money? Maybe they can make it look like some kind of extra insurance policy or a trust fund for the son? And it should take care of all funeral expenses too.”

  “Sure I can, boss. But why?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do. I just don’t want the money traced back to me. Can they do that?”

  “Sure, I’ll make some calls tomorrow night, will that work for you?”

  “Yes, that’d be great, thanks.”

  Bridget grabbed the phone. “You want me to come back and lay a smackdown on the guy? I don’t give a fuck about vampire law. Nobody messes with my girl.”

  Her bravado made me smile again, and I could totally picture her going up against Lodinn. It was funny until I got to the part in my imagination where he broke her with a flick of the wrist. “No, you stay put, we’ve got it covered. Thanks though. But you should definitely come up for a visit when this all blows over.”

  “Screw that, let’s meet up someplace good. Like… Modesto.”

  “Modesto?” I had to have heard her wrong. “That’s your idea of someplace good?” Not that I had anything against the city, but it wasn’t high up on my fantasy destinations.

  “Duh. We go to Paris and everything costs an arm and a leg. We go to Modesto and I’m a fucking queen on my allowance, you feel me?”

  It made sense in a weird way. “Yes, I feel you there, Bridge. We’ll definitely have to do a girls’ weekend to Modesto one of these days.”

  “No doubt. Listen, I gotta go, Felix is giving me the eye, you know?”

  “I sure do. Have fun.”

  “Laters.”

  It was starting to get late, and I shuffled into the kitchen to make myself a cup of cocoa before I tackled the rest of the paperwork. I almost screamed when I heard the creak on the back stairs in the dark, but it was only Maggie who snapped on the lights, blinking in the glare.

  “Sorry, did I startle you?”

  “A little,” I admitted, shaking it off. “It’s late, shouldn’t you be asleep?”

  “I already slept much longer than I should have, really. Now my clock is all wonky.” She sure didn’t look it – there were dark smudges under her eyes and she looked paler than normal.

  “How are you?” I ventured, not sure if she was up for talking.

  “To be honest I’m a bit numb. I’ve cried all I can for now and I just feel… hollow,” she said after a long pause for the right word.

  “I’m so sorry. I wish there was something I could’ve done to stop him.” It seemed so inadequate in the face of what she’d lost, but Maggie shook her head, waving my apology away.

  “I know that, Anja. I know you’d have traded your own life for his if given the chance. I don’t blame you at all.”

  That absolute faith made me want to tear up, but I did my best not to give into it, not wanting to make it any harder for her than it already was. “Can I get you anything? A cup of tea?”

  “No, I can manage it myself, thanks,” she said, reaching for the kettle. “Truthfully it helps to have something to do. I’ll make myself a cuppa and then get back to work if that’s alright.”

  “Sure, whatever you want.”

  “Would you like a cup as well?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  The silence stretched between us as I took a seat at the kitchen table and she puttered around, getting the cups down and such. Until she took a seat opposite me and I got the distinct impression that she wanted to say something.

  “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?” I prompted, when she blew across the top of her tea for the fifth time instead.

  “You know me so well,” she smiled faintly, setting the cup back down again. “And I know you. Which is why I have to say something before it’s too late.”

  My stomach flopped over like a pancake at that. “That sounds ominous, what’s wrong?”

  “You have to see it… you have to see the way he feels about you, can’t you?”

  “What?” I blinked, not quite sure what or who she was talking about at first.

  “It’s in the way he looks at you and the way he touches you and the way he’s always there when you need him to be. Tell me you’ve noticed.”

  All at once I understood she was talking about Rob. She’d always known he was sweet on me, even when I was too stupid to see it myself. But what could I say? I shook my head, prepared to deny it, and she kept on talking.

  “I know you feel more for him too, though you’re both too stubborn to come right out and acknowledge it. Maybe you don’t want things to change, or you’re afraid. But you have to say something before it’s too late.”

  “It’s complicated,” I said, my standard deflection.

  “No, it’s simple actually,” she insisted. “You just have to decide if you’re willing to live with regrets or not. That’s the worst of it, you know. I never had a chance to tell Marcus that I loved him.”

  Was that where this was coming from? “I’m sure he knew, Maggie.”

  She shook her head, staring sadly into her cup. “I was too much of a mouse. I didn’t want to be the first one to say it and not hear it back. But if I had it to do all over again, I would gladly take the risk to have said it at least once.”

  I reached out to cover her hand with mine. “Whether it was said or not, it was plain to see how he felt about you.”

  “Be that as it may, I would give anything for the memory of it. Don’t wait too long, Anja. Complications or not, you deserve to be with who you want to, not who you feel obligated to. If you can’t be together, at least have had the conversation about it. You must know that Rob feels more for you than he lets on. If you search your heart, I know you’ll find you feel the same.” She looked so earnest, so desperate for me to find my happiness, I couldn’t resist letting her in on the secret.

  “I… we have.” My voice dropped. I knew I wasn’t supposed to tell a soul, but she’d obviously already figured out we had feelings for each other. If push came to shove, she could still damn us to Jakob even without what I was about to say. “I’ve known how much he cares for a while now.”

  Her pretty hazel eyes flew wide with surprise. “But you never let on… I thought Bishop was courting you again.”

  “He was, and I took advantage of that to paint the picture of distance between Rob and me.”

  “But… why? I don’t understand. If you both know how you feel, then why be apart?”

  “Because I’m not as free as you might think. If Jakob found out about it, there’s no telling how he might react. He almost killed Bishop when he first found out about us, and with Rob we’re worried he might see that as an even bigger betrayal.”

  “So that’s it then? You’ve given up?”

  “No, not at all. Jakob might control who I can see, but he can’t control how I feel and Rob knows what I feel for him is real. For now we’re in a holding pattern, but someday I have faith we’ll be together.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  It wasn’t sadder than her story, but I didn’t feel like pointing it out. “It’s alright, Maggie. Forever is a long time, we’ll sort it out eventually.”

  “But that’s just it, you don’t have forever. Either one of you could be taken at any time. Rob almost died, then Marcus and…” She was getting all worked up again and I did my best to soothe her with a gentle touch.

  “Maggie… it’s fine. I don’t know what the future will bring, but for now it has to be enough.” It wasn’t fair and it sucked, but what else could we do about it? Rob and I
both knew that we loved each other and that was more than some ever found. “But at least we won’t have to pretend around you now,” I smiled, giving her hand another pat.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

  “Actually, I do have something you can help me with.”

  “Anything,” she promised instantly.

  “Can you watch out for my sister during daylight hours?” I could see that wasn’t what she’d thought I would ask her about, but she was intrigued nonetheless. “I hate to say it, but for all we know Lodinn’s programmed her to kill us all while we sleep.”

  “Surely not,” she scoffed.

  “I’m not taking any chances. I’ve got Mason watching over her at night, and she should be mostly nocturnal too, but on the off chance she’s up and around during the day…”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” she vowed and I could see by the tilt of her head that it was a good thing for her to have something else to focus on.

  “Thanks, Maggie. I knew I could count on you.”

  The sound of someone at the front door startled me before I remembered that Jenessa was still out there. Sure enough, she came in, arms laden with suitcases. Just how long was she planning on staying?

  “I’d better get back to work, it’ll be dawn soon. Thanks for the talk, Maggie. I hope you know you can always come and talk to me, no matter what.”

  “I do,” she smiled, offering me an impromptu hug as I rose. “And have faith. I’m sure that other matter will work out in the end.”

  “I hope so too.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  One thing I’ve learned since becoming a vampire – despite the ginormous cloud of crazy flying around in a person’s life driving them insane, regular old boring life keeps marching along, oblivious to your personal discomfort. Even though I had half the people in my employ out there looking for Jakob and the other half trying to keep the people I loved safe, most of the world didn’t give a rat’s behind.