by Lisa Olsen
“Please… don’t kill me.”
“That’s to be seen,” Rob replied, bending down to get right in his face. “If it was up to me I’d start popping off parts of you beginning with the ones you like the best, but the lady wants a word with you first. You’d better think long and hard about cooperating. You need to earn your life back, you filthy nark.”
“How did you know this?” Isak’s eyes bulged wide.
“Know what?” I interjected, feeling a bit lost. He hadn’t asked any questions yet. “What’s going on?”
Rob ignored my question, disgust curling his lip as he cuffed Isak across the cheek. “You’re too stupid to think of betraying her on your own. Someone had to put you up to it, didn’t they? I’ve got a good guess of who it was as well.”
“Who… who do you think it was?” I wondered aloud, but Isak just shook his head miserably.
“He will kill me if I talk.”
Rob picked up a rake and snapped it in two without breaking a sweat. “What do you think I’m going to do, give you a manicure?”
Isak’s eyes bulged as Rob held the broken shards of wood to his neck, but his lips remained firmly pressed together
“Right then, I gave you a choice.” He pressed hard enough to break the skin, and the scent of Isak’s blood wafted to me on the evening breeze.
“Rob…” I said cautiously. Hadn’t we agreed not to do it this way?
“It’s not me, it’s him. Soon as he tells us what you want to know I’ll stop hurting him. If he don’t, he’s only gonna need half a pair of sunglasses from now on.” To emphasize his point, he removed the rake from Isak’s neck, trailing it up the side of his cheek to the hollow beneath his eye.
“Byrne, it was Byrne who paid me to spy on you! I swear to baby Jesus, it was Byrne!” Isak babbled, doing his best to scoot backwards, away from the press against his eye socket.
“There now, that wasn’t so tough, was it?” Rob smiled, letting up on the rake, giving Isak’s cheek a smack. “What did Byrne want with Anja?”
“He ask me to report on her activities, who comes and goes, nothing that couldn’t be discovered by anyone outside the house at first.” Isak licked his lips, eyes still on the broken rake in Rob’s hand.
“And then?” Rob prompted.
“Then, he ask for more private details on what was said behind closed doors. He couldn’t figure out why you made the friends with members of the Order when you were so publicly against them.”
I tried to think back to the conversations I’d had with Mason, Jenessa, even Frost. Had I said anything Byrne could use against me? Definitely during the conversations with Jenessa, but I didn’t think Isak had been privy to those. “What did you tell him already? About us?”
“I told him that you shielded peoples from the Order once or twice and you’re working on helping fugitives find forged documents.”
“What else?” Rob cuffed him on the back of the head. “Is that everything?”
“I… maybe mentioned I suspect you are secretly Ellie’s Sire.”
“What?” I gasped. Where in the world had that come from?
“Why else would you take such a close interest in her? And where is her Sire if not you? No one would willingly leave their progeny before she is able to fend for herself.”
“He has a point. You do act sorta parental around me,” Ellie chimed in, but I shushed her, a sinking feeling developing in my stomach.
“Why did he want to know about Ellie?”
“He thinks you faked her papers, and that might be the proof he needs to bring you down.”
Frak… It was true, but not for the reasons he thought. “That’s it, my goose is cooked.” I threw up my hands, pacing back and forth on the plastic covered flagstones as the world spun out of control. “If Byrne goes to the Order with that info…”
“It’ll be his word against ours.” Rob stopped my nervous pacing, grabbing hold of my shoulders. “Relax, there’s nothing to prove you’ve done anything wrong, I’ve seen to that.”
“Right,” I nodded, looking him in the eyes until my panic started to fade and I felt less like flying apart at the seams. “I trust you.” I breathed slow and deep. “You’d never let anyone hurt me.”
“Too right,” he smiled, giving my shoulders a brief squeeze before he let them go. “Now then, anything else you spilled to the magistrate? Did you keep your gob shut about Jakob at least?”
“I said nothing… I couldn’t, even though he ask about your personal life extensively.”
“He can’t talk about Jakob, he compelled them all not to,” I volunteered, grateful for that at least. “So, what do we do now? If we let him go he’ll go running straight to the magistrate and sell us out.”
“No! I won’t, I promise,” Isak jumped in. “I won’t tell him anything. I won’t even tell him you found out about me, I swear. Only let me go and I will leave this place.”
“Pull the other one,” Ellie scoffed. “You know you can’t trust a word out of his lying mouth, right?” She looked nervous about something, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. I’d almost expected her to lunge for him when Rob cut him with the rake, but she’d remained fairly subdued for the most part.
“He has to die, there’s no two ways about it,” Rob said, his eyes cold. “We can’t take the chance he’ll go back to Byrne, and he knows too much about all of us to be set free into the world.”
“Now hold on, we’re not talking about killing anyone.” I stepped between him and Isak. “I admit, we can’t just let him go, but we’re not really standing here talking about killing this man, are we? He’s been a part of this family.”
Rob’s face darkened. “Don’t you get it, Anja? He’s been playing you, playing all of us this whole time. He’s not family, he’s nothing to us. He don’t deserve your pity.”
“That’s not the point. We’re not killers, any of us. At least we shouldn’t be, not anymore.”
Gunnar had remained silent throughout the entire conversation, but he laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder now, speaking in a low voice. “I will take care of him.”
“No, I won’t let you kill him,” I insisted, holding my hand out. “Give me the stake, right now.” I wiggled my fingers until he placed it in my palm. “Right now I don’t care what the magistrate thinks he knows. Like Rob said, it’s all his word against mine. You go ahead and tell Byrne what I’ve been up to, I don’t care.”
Rob’s brows drew together so tightly, they bunched into hard ridges between his eyes. “Anja…”
“No, I mean it. Gunnar, cut him free.”
“Thank you! Thank you for your mercy, mistress,” Isak all but wept, but as Gunnar’s knife opened with a cool snick of metal, he brought it across Isak’s throat, slitting it from ear to ear.
“Oh my God, what are you doing?” I squeaked, too shocked to move, but Ellie lurched forward like a shot, too overcome by the sight of all that blood to resist. What happened then was almost a comedy of errors. Rob, Gunnar, even Maggie struggled to pull Ellie off of Isak, all of them slippery with blood and crashing into each other. I stood by impotently, transfixed by the slick display, until something snapped inside of me, and I strode forward, grabbing hold of Ellie by a thick handful of hair. “Stop!” I thundered, and she went slack in my arms, completely still.
“Maggie, take her inside and get her cleaned up. Ellie, you get a hold of yourself and go with Maggie. No more blood for you tonight.” The girls left without a word and Gunnar immediately began sawing at Isak’s neck again where the wounds started to heal.
“I said no killing,” I bellowed, only afterwards realizing that might not sound so spiffy to the neighbors.
“I am not killing, I am bleeding him,” Gunnar replied, nursing a deep gash where Ellie had bitten him in the melee. “It will make him easier to transport.”
“Transport where?”
“I must contact our Sire, tell him of this betrayal and leave the penalty to him.”
I looked to Rob, who gave a short nod. It would take care of the problem, and take the morality of his punishment out of my hands. “Alright, but next time say so instead of slitting throats. Actually, no slitting next time. We can think of something better.”
“Next time…” Gunnar blinked in confusion. “Then you wish me to return?”
“Of course, unless you don’t want to.”
“But Isak has shamed our name. Why would you want me to stay on?”
I laid a hand on his shoulder, noting that my hands were just as covered in blood as his were. “Isak shamed his own name, not yours. You had no idea he gave in to the dark side of the force. I don’t hold you responsible for his actions.”
“I’m not worthy of your forgiveness,” he said, head hanging in sorrow.
“You haven’t done anything to forgive. You always have a home here, remember that.” I let go of him, noting how sticky my hands were in the night breeze. “I’m going to go clean up myself. Rob…?”
“I’ll handle it. You go on inside.”
“Thanks,” I smiled, turning back to Gunnar. “In case I don’t see you for a while, have a safe journey.”
“I’ll see that Isak pays what is owed,” he nodded gravely.
With a last glance between the pair of men, I tried not to look down at Isak slumped in the chair, clothes drenched with his own blood. As bad as I felt for him, he’d chosen his own path, and he had to pay the piper. I just hoped the path I’d chosen didn’t end the same way for me, or worse. Byrne had proven more devious than I’d thought, and I wouldn’t underestimate him again.
Chapter Twenty-Six
After the Isak debacle, I went inside for a shower, scrubbing furiously at his blood three times before I felt clean again. I kept seeing the look on his face as Gunnar slit his throat when only moments before he’d believed he was about to be set free. More people’s lives ruined because of me. It was enough to give a girl a complex.
After I’d changed into my pajamas (a black tank top with What Would Buffy Do emblazoned across the chest paired with a pair of pink shorts with ruffled edges and pink and black fuzzy knee highs to keep my legs snuggly warm), I went up to check on Ellie and Maggie.
Ellie was fine and cheery, probably feeling shiny as all get out after getting a hold of vampire blood. Maggie was still somewhat subdued, and I couldn’t blame her, my mood wasn’t the best either. She declined my invitation to join me for an Austen movie marathon until dawn, so I bade her goodnight and went back downstairs.
Only when I got there, I didn’t feel like watching movies all by myself. Instead I lit a fire in the library and sat down with a good book to wait for Rob to come home. I got so engrossed with witches and warriors, I didn’t even notice him come in until I looked up and saw him standing against the doorframe, watching me read.
“How long have you been standing there?” I asked, tucking my feet up under me.
“Not long,” he replied simply. “Don’t let me disturb you. I just wanted to see you’re alright.”
“I should be asking you that. Did Gunnar get off alright?”
“Yeah, he’s good.”
“Did Leila get settled in? I didn’t see her in any of the bedrooms upstairs.”
“Yes, she wanted to sleep in the attic, something about wanting to be at the top of the house,” he shrugged, well used to the eccentricities of his sister.
“Good. I hope she missed out on all the drama entirely.”
We both stared back at each other for long moments, the only sound the crackle of the fireplace. “Well… I should go get cleaned up.” He jerked his head towards the back stairs. I was well used to his withdrawals by now, so I didn’t offer much objection.
“Right. Goodnight then.”
“Are you going to bed?”
I held my book up. “No, I’ll sit up a while longer, wait for the dawn.”
“Fancy a bit of company?” His invitation surprised the heck out of me, but I nodded quickly enough. “Right then, I’ll be back in half a tic.”
I did a pretty good job of holding in my smile until after he left, but as soon as he was gone, I hopped up to my feet for a brief victory dance, Chandler Bing style. I made it back to my chair with plenty of time before he returned, a pair of steaming mugs in hand. A waft of cinnamon came towards me and I raised a single brow. “That’s not…”
“It’s hot chocolate. Do you need something with more of a bite to it?”
“No, I’ll be alright. I should probably go hunting soon though, before I get hungry. All that blood earlier… I’m surprised I didn’t lunge for Isak myself,” I grinned, accepting the chocolatey goodness with a murmur of heartfelt thanks.
“You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for,” he replied, settling into the chair beside mine. “You did good tonight.”
“I’m not so sure about that. I had no idea about Isak, and now Gunnar’s gone too for God knows how long. That means you might have to stick around longer than you’d intended. How does that make you feel?”
“Surprisingly content.”
Content… I’d take that. “Good, because regardless of how you may feel about trusting me, I trust you completely. There’s no one else I’d trust more to keep me safe.”
“Not even Bishop?”
Bishop.
There was still an inward sigh there, but it had faded from sharp longing to regret. “No, not even Bishop. As much as I loved him, there was always the Order between us. That and the fact that he could never be sure if he actually loved me or if I’d compelled him to. That sort of erodes at the trust level between a couple.”
Rob was silent for a few minutes, staring into the fire as I sipped my cocoa. “I trust you too,” he said quietly.
“But I thought…”
“As much as I trust anyone,” he added.
“Ah,” I nodded. “I see.”
“That’s not nothing, you know. There’s precious few in this world who know half as much about me as you do.”
“Then I’m honored. You never did tell me about where you grew up with Leila. Do you have a big family?”
“No, not a big family. I’ve heard tell of many cousins, but not so’s I’d know them. Our parents were killed when I was twelve and Leila was going on nine. Just a bitty thing back then, all knees and elbows. That’s when I took to calling her Bits and it stuck.”
There were only three years between them? I could have sworn it was more like a ten year gap from the look of them. Then again, hadn’t he said he’d been working for Jakob for over sixty years? Cleary there was more to him that was apparent to the eye. “What year was this?”
“Ah… the year they died was 1933. We lived on a farm then, outside a small village in Kent.”
“Get out of town… you grew up on a farm?” Somehow I couldn’t picture that at all. He always seemed the type to have grown up on the streets. Then again, he’d lived long enough, so anything was possible.
His hand came up in a solemn pledge. “God strike me, I was born on the family farm, as was Leila.”
“What happened when your parents died? You mentioned cousins before…”
“None of our people came forward when my parents turned up their toes. We made a fair go of it on our own for a while. Then we were taken up by the services, bounced from foster home to foster home because people thought Leila was crazy.” His lips curved into a fond smile, even when describing what had to have been a difficult time. “She’d make such pronouncements, expose the most terrible secrets in people’s hearts.” He shook his head. “If we were born a hundred, even fifty years earlier, she might’ve been burnt as a witch.”
“That must have been rough on you two,” I ventured, my chin resting on my knee as I watched him talk. Rob was as relaxed as I’d ever seen him, kicking back on the chair in a white singlet and loose gray sweats. I had the feeling he was trusting me with a story that maybe even Jakob didn’t fully know.
“It wasn’t easy, but we ha
d each other and that was enough,” he shrugged. “One day a woman showed up, claimed to be our grandmother and took us to live in London, easy as you please.”
“Just out of the blue? Did she say why it took her so long to come forward?”
“Said she hadn’t heard about our parents’ deaths until we were already gone, and it took that long to track us down. I didn’t believe a word of it, of course, but Leila did. Warmed right up to the old biddy, right from the start. I didn’t want any part of her, but I couldn’t leave Leila behind, so we up and moved to London, and Bob’s your uncle.”
I was willing to bet it wasn’t that simple, but it was hard for me to picture Rob as a child; I couldn’t imagine him as an innocent country boy in the big city for the first time. “Still, it must have been nice to be with family again. And London must have been exciting after growing up in the country, right?”
“It was like stepping onto the moon,” he smiled, scratching absently at his jaw. “For all she cajoled me into coming along, Leila hated it once we got there. Complained all the time how she couldn’t feel the Earth beneath her feet. It was dirty and cold, but I adapted well enough and eventually, so did she.”
“And did you come to accept your granny?”
“Eventually, yeah. She was a piece of work, she was.” The smile was back. “Gran was a confidence artist, and she taught us the family trade. Thieving was the rule of the day. She was one of the best – after all, who would suspect a sweet old lady?”
“Shut the front door. Your own grandma taught you to swindle and steal?”
“God’s honest truth,” he said, crossing a finger over his heart. “Leila took to it surprisingly well. She could pick anyone’s pocket from across the room, but like as not she’d give it back if she thought they were worse off than us. Thieving kept us in trousers and tea, and when I was older, I took on some of my own enterprises so Gran could retire.”
I thought back to the apartment we’d stayed in back in London, trying to picture Rob and Leila as Oliver Twist and the Artful Dodger, presided over by a wizened old Gran as Fagin. Who was I to judge though? I’d done awful things in my afterlife (stealing blood had to count as thieving, and coming up with the whole Anja Gudrun identity was the biggest con of all). “So that was your childhood then, con-man in training? How did Jakob come into play? Or had you known him your entire life?”
