"Reah, you are related to the Queen of Kifirin." Aurelius' golden-brown eyes searched my face.
"Really? How can you tell?" I tossed off my blanket, slid off the bed before Aurelius could put his hands on me and walked into the spacious bathroom and its adjoining closet.
"Things are not that desperate, love. You are blowing this out of proportion." Aurelius came up behind me as I sorted through the meager wardrobe hanging in the closet. The clothes were quite fine, but I still hadn't learned where they'd come from and there weren't many outfits. I blew out a breath and selected a black tunic and trousers. Black—to match my mood. Closing the door to the bathroom and shutting Aurelius out at the same time, I dressed, slipped on soft-soled shoes and walked out running a comb through my short hair. It didn't really matter with my hair—there wasn't enough length there to do anything with it.
Saying nothing to Aurelius, we walked out the bedroom door only to find Gavril waiting. "Reah, I waited for you." He was doing some pouting of his own.
"I'm sorry, Chash." Chash was a nickname—an endearment on Tulgalan. Mostly it was reserved for young males—it was a common name for a very tall, curious bird. I was explaining the nickname to Gavril as we walked down the hall toward our dinner. Gavril was quite happy with having a nickname, once he learned what it meant. He and I had an arm around each other as we walked into the dining hall.
That night, I learned that Lissa had a daughter who was working as a Master Wizard at Grey House, along with her first husband named Toff, who was also a Master Wizard. Lissa had a foster son named Trik at Grey House, too. Trik, Nissa's second husband, was classified as a First-Level Wizard. I saw Toff's father—he came to dinner for the first time. His name was Roff and I was shocked when I saw he was a Winged Vampire. No, he was not ugly or ill-formed—quite the opposite, in fact. He was beautiful to see and moved gracefully to take his chair. I envied him a little, I think. I always felt out of place and awkward when I came to the Queen's table.
"I have to report for duty tomorrow," I said unhappily when Gavril asked if we could do more research. "I don't know what I'll be doing or if I'll be sent out right away. If I have free time, I'll let you know."
"Grandfather, will you let me know if Reah is all right when she is away?" Gavril looked around me at Aurelius.
"I will do what I can, young one." Aurelius offered Gavril a warm smile.
* * *
"Norian, if you didn't have her conscripted, I'd ask her to stay and keep Gavril company," Lissa poked Norian in the chest with a finger.
"Breah-mul, we need her. More and more drakus seed is making its way into the Alliance. Those fools who crush it and drink it like tea are killing themselves in droves. They keep using more and more of it for the visions it brings, until it is too much and they are dead. We have to stop it and your sons and Reah will help us in this."
"Because they are young and look the part of the ones who use it?" Lissa didn't know whether she liked this or not.
"Lissa, you gave permission for them to work with me, as did their fathers. Reah is a recruit and will go where she's sent. That is the rule of Alliance conscription. I know Aurelius doesn't like it—he's already made his feelings known."
"Then I don't want to be anywhere near you if that girl gets hurt again, Norian Keef."
"Funny, Aurelius said almost the same thing," Norian grinned.
* * *
"Reah, there are many things I want and many things that I cannot ask," Aurelius stopped outside the bedroom door with me, brushing back his shoulder-length hair absently. "If I come inside with you, I will not leave. Therefore, I will stay outside. We will find a place for you to live. A place where you will feel comfortable while you are here. You needn't fret over this, my love."
Aurelius placed his hands on my face and bumped his forehead against mine. When he kissed me, it was a deeper kiss—a more sensuous kiss that left me breathless. A sharpness nipped at my lower lip, too—and that was something I hadn't experienced before. My body tightened when Aurelius did that, and I almost asked him to come inside anyway. A shiver of fear held me back. I'd never done anything like that before and wasn't sure I'd be prepared for it, now.
* * *
"The house next to Bryan's is empty." Lissa told Aurelius. He'd come directly to her after leaving Reah. He was afraid he'd turn right around otherwise and work his way into Reah's bed.
"Bryan Riley?"
"Yes. He can help keep an eye on her when she's not on assignment."
"Will he have time? He's always buried in those news programs he produces."
"Bryan is hyperactive and can do fifteen things at once. Stop worrying, Aurelius. I know you don't want to push her, but maybe you need to make your feelings known a little better."
"Lissa, she's only nineteen. I'm over four thousand. If my heart didn't squeeze in my chest every time I see her, I might be questioning this relationship. I don't think I can live without her. Sometimes I have to force myself to stay away so I won't crowd her and frighten her more than she is already."
"Well, if Gavin got his possessiveness from you, then I feel sorry for her," Lissa sniffed.
"I am a little possessive," Aurelius sighed and raked a hand through his mane of dark-gold hair.
"Did you tell her how nice she looked tonight?"
"I didn't."
"Aurelius, what are you doing? Cheedas was at the table tonight and he didn't take his eyes off her."
"I hope I don't have to compete with every vampire on Le-Ath Veronis for her affections." Aurelius covered his face with both hands.
* * *
"We'll be sending you to Tulgalan in two days." Only one of those words made me cringe. I'd hoped not to go back to Tulgalan—at least for a very long time. Ry, Tory and I sat in front of Vice-Director Lendill Schaff in his office at ASD headquarters. We weren't far from the palace, actually—a quarter click's walk got me there. Ry and Tory showed up in their usual fashion. "Drakus seed is finding its way there," Lendill Schaff continued, "and we want to learn how that's happening and shut the sources down. It's easy enough to find the dealers—we need to find their suppliers. Hundreds of deaths have occurred in the past three moon-turns."
Drakus seed—Drakus meant dragon in the old Alliance languages. An old myth said that dragons brought dreams. Drakus seed reportedly brought dreams and visions to life. I'd heard tales that the experiences felt real and brought the user's most desired fantasies to life. That's why it was so popular among those who sought any kind of drug—and the most expensive as well. It might be a competition with the young and wealthy—to see who could afford it most often. This held no allure to me at all, and merely the thought of being immersed in the drug culture on Tulgalan made me want to shake.
"Reah, here is your back pay—I understand you don't have an account anywhere." The Vice-Director pushed a credit chip across his desk toward me. "I suggest you spend the afternoon getting a bank account set up; your new name and information are all contained on the chip." I watched Vice-Director Schaff—he was quite good looking. Perhaps not as handsome as Ry, but then few were. "You have the next day and a half to pack—transport will be waiting at the space station at six bells on fifth-day. Don't be late."
It wasn't Ry or Tory I took with me to the bank—I invited Gavril. He was excited to go with me, already had an account and walked me through it. The Vice-Director had been correct—everything I needed was on the credit chip. I only had to give my thumbprints and an eyescan and we were done. My pay had been increased, too—I saw that when the amounts were deposited from the credit chip. I suppose being a special agent for the ASD had its advantages. Lissa had given Gavril permission to go to Casino City with me afterward—it was one of the two very large gambling cities on Le-Ath Veronis and the reason that tourists flocked to the planet.
"Every application to visit has to be checked and approved—Mom doesn't want anybody here who has a criminal background." We were eating ice cream inside Niff's. I'd only heard
of the sweet shops before; I'd never had an opportunity to visit any of them. Niff's franchises were scattered across the Alliance, but those owners had also been carefully vetted. Niff's was quite particular about the product they served, much like Desh's. The difference was that Addah would never allow a restaurant to open under the Desh name that wasn't in the hands of family. I sighed. I was no longer a member of the Desh family, by my own choice.
"This is exceptional," I licked my spoon.
"Mom owns Niff's, with her assistants Grant and Heathe. They make a ship load of money off it." Gavril was also enjoying his ice cream, scraping up the last of it from the bottom of his dish.
"Your mother owns Niff's." It was as if he'd said his mother owned Desh's to someone from Tulgalan.
"Yeah. The cookie recipes are all hers. You'll have to try those, sometime."
"I will. I love cookies. I just don't get them very often." I wanted to ask Gavril how it came to be that his vampire mother and father ate like anybody else, and if they ever consumed blood or blood substitute. I'd seen bottles of the substitute stocked in a cold keeper inside the kitchen the night I'd sneaked in to cook.
"Ask Mom when she's not busy sometime. She'll make you some."
"If she makes dessert, I'll make dinner," I promised, smiling at Gavril. He was my friend—perhaps the first real one I'd ever had. I didn't know what to call Aurelius. Or Tory and Ry, although I liked both of them. I found myself staring at Tory sometimes. He was so tall he towered over everyone else, although he didn't seem self-conscious about it.
"Re," Gavril looked at me seriously for a moment.
"Chash?" I blinked at him just as seriously.
"Re, you have to promise you'll always be my friend. I've never had a friend that I could just talk to about anything. Nobody's ever helped with my homework before. Not like you. Dad will go over my math homework and tell me where I went wrong, but that's not the same."
"Well, do you have free time before dinner?" I asked, giving him a grin. "I have some homework to do now."
"Really? For the ASD?" Gavril was excited.
"Yes. For the ASD. But you can't tell anybody, all right?"
"My lips are permanently closed on the matter," he placed a finger over his mouth.
"Good enough," I said. "Where do we catch the bus to get back to Lissia? And did they name the whole city after your mother?"
"Yeah." Gavril used a slang term at times that I hadn't heard before, but then Ry and Tory used it too. It was one of their mother's terms and meant yes. The term, I learned, came from old Earth. I didn't ask any other questions about that.
* * *
"Here—it says that the plants need plenty of water to grow." Gavril handed his comp-vid to me—there was an image of Drakus seed plants growing in a field. The plant had compound leaves—seven on a stem—which were rounded on the ends. The leaves were a grayish green and the seedpods were red nodules about the size of my thumb. One nodule would produce enough seed for five doses, according to the information Gavril and I found, so the seeds were potent. Our information indicated that five seedpods, called a hand, could sell for a quarter of a million Alliance credits. That sounded high to me—who could afford that? That would be ten thousand Alliance credits per hit.
Granted, one hit made a good pot of tea that might serve ten or more, but it was still expensive. I had nearly eight thousand Alliance credits in my account, which was four months' pay minus taxes. I couldn't afford the drug, even if I wanted it. Few people might afford the drug on their own, so users often collaborated with their friends to buy it.
The actual drakus seeds were tiny inside the pods—Gavril and I found pictures of those, too. They looked to be the same size as the seeds used to make seedcakes, but these seeds were red where the others were black. Sensitive scales were employed to measure out the right amount of seed for a pot of tea, so nothing would be wasted.
"I heard there was a problem with this stuff and it was getting bigger," Gavril lay on his stomach atop his bed—we'd gone to his bedroom to do our research. "It's all over the news vids, now. People taking too much and dying."
"Promise me you'll never touch this stuff." I used one of his slang terms as I leaned down and bumped my forehead against his.
"That's a promise," he agreed, his dark eyes staring right into mine.
My head was full of information as we walked down the halls to dinner that night. "You look like your father," I whispered to Gavril as we made our way into the dining hall. Gavin was there already with Lissa. I noticed that Gavin seldom smiled and wondered about that. Of course, Aurelius didn't smile that often, either. Vampires must be serious most of the time.
"Mom says he's handsome." Gavril looked up at me, the unasked question on his lips.
"So are you, Chash." I gave him a hug before he went to sit between his parents.
"We've been hoping you'd sneak into the kitchen again," Drake and Drew walked past me, headed toward seats on the opposite side of the table. Drake was the one who spoke. I could now tell the difference between them easily, although I couldn't explain it.
"I was told the guards were watching out for me, so I didn't try," I said, smiling back at Drake when he grinned.
"Those guards. Maybe we ought to have a word with them," Drew grinned, too. They had the traditional fold in their eyes that most Falchani had. Their eyes were dark and both had very long, very black hair they wore in a thick braid down their backs. It made me miss my hair.
"It will grow back." Aurelius was at my elbow and steering me toward a chair.
"Why does everybody around here read minds?" I grumbled as I sat.
"Because we can." A new male appeared and I knew immediately who he was. This was Ry's father. Ry looked so much like him it was frightening. Both of them were so handsome they might cause people to faint wherever they went.
"What do you do when someone mentally insults you?" I asked, smiling back at Erland Morphis.
"If we don't know them well, we keep it to ourselves until the opportunity for payback comes." Ry had come in right behind his father. "Hi, Dad. How's Em-pah?" Ry gave his father a hug.
"Your great-grandfather is irascible, as usual. Three rogue warlocks are giving him grief and he is so angry he is about to burn the palace down."
Those words made my eyebrows lift in surprise. Palace? Warlocks? Only one place fit the criteria. "You're Karathian?" I gasped before I thought.
"Rylend Morphis, have you not been forthcoming with your new friend and coworker?" Ry's father admonished. "I am employed as a Special Attachment to Wylend Arden, King of Karathia, who is my forgetful son's great-grandfather." Erland gave me the same smile that Ry was capable of giving. It was like the sun breaking through dark clouds.
"I didn't want to scare her, Dad." Ry was grinning right back at his father.
"Well, there's that," Erland agreed. "What's for dinner? I'm starved."
Chapter 13
"This fish isn't anything like what Reah can do." Ry was grumbling the moment he took his first bite.
"Not many can come near what Reah can do," Aurelius spoke up for the first time. "She made military rations taste like a night at an expensive restaurant."
"When we got the fresh fruit and vegetables from the desert villages," I said. "And if you have enough eggs. That always helps."
"If we get a place with a kitchen on Tulgalan, will you make yaris fish again?" Tory came in late, followed by his father—Gardevik Rath.
"If you want," I said. "Who's paying for the groceries?"
"The Alliance will give us an allowance for that, plus we'll be throwing a little money around. Mom spent the day getting extra clothes for you—you ran off to the bank and then holed up with the Squirt the rest of the day."
"Gavril and I had fun," I said, feeling huffy at his accusation.
"Don't be mad—we didn't want to disturb you or cut into your time with Gav. That's why Mom had the dress shops bring stuff in your size. She got Aunt Grace and Aunt
Devin to help."
"Karzac has other mates," Aurelius said quietly beside me when I'd blinked stupidly at Tory, who sat on Aurelius' other side, next to his father.
"We have an extended family; you should meet Great-Uncle Dragon and Great-Uncle Crane. Great-Uncle Dragon is Drake and Drew's dad. Get them to show you the tattoos, sometime," Tory was smiling.
I knew Falchani had their chests, backs and arms tattooed whenever they proved themselves in battle. A full set meant all those places had been tattooed. Yes—that race had fascinated me since I was in dayschool. I now looked up at Aurelius. "I want to go to Falchan," I breathed.
"No time now, but we'd be happy to take you when you have a couple of days off," Drake was grinning again.
"Maybe you should teach her bladework," Ry suggested, picking at his fish.
"Ry, it's not that bad," I said, nodding at his fish.
"It is after tasting yours," he muttered.
"Reah killed spawn with a skillet and a knife—I'm not sure teaching her bladework is a good idea," Aurelius was smiling for the first time in days.
"No kidding?" Drew laughed. "How did you do that?"
"And she was naked at the time," Aurelius was suddenly enjoying himself.
"You didn't have to tell them that." My face felt hot. "I was in the baths when the attack came," I defended myself. "I was wrapped in a towel inside the kitchen when two of the enemy came in. The first was humanoid so I cracked his skull with an iron skillet. He dropped like a sack of flour. The next one was spawn. He fell when I hit him with the skillet but he wasn't unconscious. When he got up it took me two passes with my best carving knife to take his head."
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