by A. M. Manay
“There are a number of reasons,” Savita began to explain. “There are many supernatural creatures who view us as superior to humans and resent the measures we have to take to preserve our anonymity. They resent having to enthrall people. They resent having to always feed without killing in order to avoid having bodies to hide. They resent having to follow laws made by humans in order to avoid attracting attention.
"Additionally, there are fairies who rather despise human beings, or at least human governments. They blame humans for their declining fertility and the diminishment of their race. There are those who think we were much better off when humans lived a more primitive life. There are those who would have us take over, rule the world to serve our own interests, manage the human population like livestock. There is also the fact that many of our young ones see little opportunity for advancement in our old-fashioned form of governance. If you are not born to a powerful family, it takes a very long time to acquire wealth, power, or respect. This is a legitimate complaint. Luka is extremely charismatic. He’s probably been working on this for decades. I must speak to my brother and our father. And you should take a break. Excuse me.” Savita packed up the evidence and sped out the door.
November headed up to the kitchen for lunch, listening to some music on her phone. She sighed, realizing for the first time that almost every pop song known to man is about sleeping with or breaking up with someone. After lunch, she settled down in the library with a book, rocking out to Lily Allen. Em found the singer’s attitude toward her exes rather empowering and hilarious. Adèle cheered her up a bit as well. Her rest was interrupted when a vision overcame her with a sudden violence.
Agnes rigs an explosive vest with an air of experience, packing the silver shrapnel while wearing thick, black gloves. Philemon sits across from her, talking on a cell phone. “Yes, the martyr is ready. He’s been working in the household over a year. They haven’t bothered to search him in months. They invited him to their ridiculous Thanksgiving party. Why Milton feels the need to celebrate a human holiday is beyond my comprehension.” He pauses, listening. “Yes, Agnes is finishing the vest. We’ll have it to him in plenty of time. Yes, sir. Of course.” He hangs up, turning to his compatriot. “The party’s on. No delay.”
November came around curled up on the couch, clutching a pillow hard enough to leave handprints. She leapt up and ran out of the library, frantically looking for Savita or William. She ran into Ben and Zinnia first.
“Hey, where’s the fire, birthday girl?” Ben asked with a grin.
“I need to talk to Lord William,” November said. “I need someone to find him for me.”
“Would have thought you’d be avoiding him,” he replied. “I heard there’s trouble in paradise.”
“Shut up, Ben,” Zinnia snapped. “I told you to lay off.”
“Yes, it’s over between me and him. That’s not why I need to see him,” the seer said with annoyance.
“What is it? What did you see?” Ben asked with evident curiosity.
“You know I can’t tell you that. Now where is he?” she practically yelled in exasperation.
“Is there a problem?” asked Pine, appearing out of nowhere. He was quite good at that.
“I need to talk to Lord William,” November explained.
“He’s in a meeting. He gave orders not to disturb him,” Pine answered.
“I know what he’s meeting about. He’ll want to know this, trust me,” she said.
Pine studied her face. “Come with me,” he said, leading her toward the official wing of the house. “Not you,” he commanded when Ben and Zinnia moved to follow. He shepherded her through several locked doors and into what could have almost passed for a normal office building were it not for the armored window shutters and overabundance of security cameras. Pine ushered her into a conference room then knocked on the door of the office across the hall. When the door opened, she could practically feel Lord William’s anger; it was like heat rolling out of an oven. Pine quickly explained the reason for the interruption. He then returned and led her into his master’s inner sanctum. Pine, ever discreet, did not remain to hear her secret.
The office was large and beautifully appointed, of course. Lord William, Savita, and Birch were huddled around a circular conference table that sat opposite the Lord of California’s desk. William had a look on his face that said, “This had better be important,” as he covered up the notes they had been making. November found this more than a little irritating, as the last place she wanted to be tonight was in the same room as William Knox. She would hardly fabricate a reason to wallow in humiliation.
Wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible, she cut to the chase. “I just had a vision of a conversation regarding a planned attack on someone named Milton that will take place at a Thanksgiving celebration.”
William then pulled out a chair for her. “Tell us every detail,” he directed, and she obliged him.
After a very thorough debriefing, November fled to her bedroom, Pine at her side, glad to be dismissed from their brainstorming session. She had no interest at the moment in knowing anything about the plans they were making in order to win this apparent internecine war. She was exhausted from her visions and from the strain of having to sit so close to William talking business when all she wanted to do was punch him in the face or jump into his arms, or perhaps both. She collapsed on her bed with a heaving sigh, running her fingers through her hair with aggravation.
Right on cue, Zinnia appeared at her door. “First human ever to set foot in Lord William’s office, eh?” she asked as she flopped down on the floor beside November’s bed.
“Yeah. I feel really special,” November replied sarcastically.
“How was it? Being around him?” Zinnia asked, gazing up at November with her electric blue eyes wide with concern, per usual.
“Awful. I just tried to keep my mind on the work, but I felt so awkward. I felt like everyone was afraid that I was going to make some sort of scene. So I just put on my stoic face.”
“That’s a stereotype we have of humans, especially young ones. We think you’re all about the histrionics,” Zinnia confessed.
“Histrionics got me committed. I go for hiding my feelings as much as possible,” November replied.
“That sounds healthy,” Zinnia commented sarcastically, finally managing to provoke a snort of laughter from her friend.
“Who all in the house knows what happened? Who knows about Lady Esther?” November asked. What she meant to ask, of course, was how mortified should she be and how much would she need to lie about what had occurred?
“Everyone, I think, knows that your apparent romance is over, but not everyone knows why. I think the cover story is that you weren’t fast enough about jumping into his bed and he got tired of waiting.” November made a face, but at least that story made him the bad guy instead of her, and discouraged others from thinking she was easy prey. “Lord William is still trying to keep Lady Esther’s condition secret, but that may be impossible now. Since the person who planted her necklace seems to know, it’s evidently not much of a secret.”
“How long have they been married?” November asked, torturing herself a little.
“Um . . . about 500 years, on and off,” Zinnia responded.
“On and off?” This new information only made November feel even more silly for her infatuation with Lord William. How could anyone compete with 500 years worth of love and trust and knowledge, a continuing marriage that had already lasted half a millennium?
“They had a few rough patches, I heard. Not uncommon, really, when you’re married for centuries. It’s been about 70 years since they were last separated.” Zinnia paused before adding, “The last time was when he made Agnes. It was after they reconciled that Agnes ran off with Philemon.”
“Oh. Wow.” November suddenly had a lot more sympathy for Lord William’s wayward daughter. She was amazed at William’s level of emotional cluelessness.
“Yeah. I think Lord William feels pretty guilty about it. I suspect that’s why he’s never really tried to hunt her down, despite her frequent provocations,” Zinnia said quietly.
“Is that why he hunts mostly animals? Was that over Agnes?” November asked. She’d been wondering about that. He seemed perfectly happy to drink her blood, but Philemon and Dogwood had made fun of him for drinking animals’ blood, which implied that this was a well-know eccentricity of his.
“That, I’m afraid, is a bit more complicated,” Lord William said, appearing suddenly in the doorway. Zinnia jumped up, chagrinned at being caught out gossiping about the boss. November just sighed. That super speedy, sneaking-up-on-me thing is getting really old.
“Give us the room, please, Zin,” he said, and her friend looked to November to make sure she was okay before high-tailing it.
Lord William turned the desk chair around and sat facing her with his arms crossed over the back of the chair. “I wanted to make sure you were alright, and to thank you for your work today.” He took a breath. “I am especially appreciative given how I have wronged you.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll get over it,” she replied frostily, ignoring the ache in her chest from being so close to him. She willed herself to hide her sadness. “As for the work, I don’t do the work for you. I was never doing it for you. You never had to go through that ridiculous charade,” she continued, with a little more heat.
“I can see that now,” he said, accepting her criticism without comment. “I am not used to trusting humans with such important things. I am also not used to having to take human feelings seriously. But it is evident to all of us that you are not dissembling or holding back information. We can tell when mortals lie, and you are no liar.” He was quiet for a moment before adding, “If not for me, then why? We kidnapped you and won't let you leave. We are practically strangers to you. A month ago, you didn’t know us.”
“That’s not exactly true. I knew that once day we’d be comrades of some sort, since you were at my pseudo-funeral. I do the work for the dead and the people who love them, and for the people who might be saved. I do the work because for the first time my gift actually matters for something important. My whole life, I have had to look the other way when I saw bad futures for people, because there was no way for me to save them.”
November was struggling to articulate something she was only herself beginning to be fully aware of. She’d been asking herself for weeks why she cared so much about this work, these people. “People almost never believed me. I had to learn not to care. But now, someone is doing something horrible to people, and my gift might actually be able to make some positive difference. I’ve always wondered why I have been cursed with this ability when it’s never done anybody any good, least of all me. I want all I’ve suffered from being born like this to finally be worth something. Now all those years of pain have meaning. Nobody wants their pain to mean nothing. Even Luka knows that. That’s how he gets people to blow themselves up.”
“He has always been good at taking advantage,” he agreed.
“Evidently it’s a family trait,” she replied bitterly. “Bu at least it appears that your cause is just rather than evil. If I find out that it isn't, you will wish you'd never found me," she vowed with a vehemence that surprised them both.
“I will bear that in mind. And I will miss our . . . whatever it was,” William admitted quietly.
“We’ll both just have to find other ways to amuse ourselves,” she said, turning cold again to conceal her heart.
“I was never laughing at you, for what it’s worth,” he replied.
“So why is it?” she asked, ignoring this thread, desperate to change the subject. "Why do you mostly drink animal blood? You didn’t seem to have any trouble drinking mine.”
“Everyone assumes that it is because I am too soft-hearted toward humans,” he said with a little smile. “They call me a self-hating vampire, a sorry excuse for a predator. The truth is, I’m terrible at enthralling. It’s rather embarrassing, and it has made it difficult for me to survive this long without betraying our secret. Vampires that defective usually die young. Or are culled,” he added darkly.
November gulped before asking, “But you enthralled my mother, didn’t you? I saw you.”
“Her mind was weakened by years of drug abuse,” he explained. “It was easy to make her forget, and any damage I did would be written off as due to her habit. And I despised her, so I didn’t care about harming her,” he admitted matter-of-factly. “Most of the time, if I bite a human and enthrall her to make her forget, or to make her serve me and keep our secret, she goes back to her daytime life noticeably mad. In addition to the ethical issues this might pose, accumulating crazy humans near my residence would not do anything good for our secrecy. The only other option is to always kill my prey, but accumulating bodies is also . . . problematic.” He shrugged.
“I should think so,” she scolded. It always unnerved her, this cold vampire practicality about death, though probably not as much as it would have were she any kind of normal human being.
“You, of course, already know of our existence and cannot be enthralled. You will eventually become one of us, it seems, and in any case you are in our possession, so my deficiency presented no obstacle to consuming your blood.”
“How convenient for you,” she said, drily, not particularly enjoying being described as in anyone’s possession.
“Yes, well . . .” he replied awkwardly, clearing his throat before continuing. “Because of these difficulties, generally, I only bite criminals who won’t be missed and whose death will cause no surprise due to the plethora of people who wish them dead, and even them I take only rarely. A few people know of my difficulty: my father, my sister, my wife. Sometimes we will feed together so one of them can assist me. But most of the time, it’s simply less trouble to hunt animals. And, very rarely, if I find a human interesting enough to turn, I will feed on her for a time until she becomes one of us.”
“Is that what happened with Agnes?” she asked, her face and voice carefully blank.
“In essence,” he replied with a sigh. “I thought I loved her. It turned out that I loved my wife more, and that fact destroyed my progeny. And, as I said, she did not have the temperament to make a good transition to our life.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He nodded. “I suppose you actually are. Most people in your position would not be so sympathetic.”
“You are lucky that I have a forgiving turn of mind,” she said, managing a brief, cold smile.
“Indeed, I am,” he said gravely. He stood. “I should let you have some peace. You look exhausted.” His eyes went briefly to her neck, and he opened his mouth to offer her a dreamless sleep.
“Don’t say it. Don’t even think about it,” November said, cutting him off, denying herself a comfort that would only accentuate her pain.
“Of course,” he said nodding. He halted, seemingly debating with himself before sharing his next words. “I must ask that you do not allow anyone else to bite you. It would undermine my authority and might be dangerous to you.”
“Yes, I figured that out already. People still need to see me as your human right now, even though we’re not . . . whatever,” she answered, rolling her eyes. “And we still don’t know who the spy is, and the last thing I need to do is accidentally exchange blood with whoever that is. I’m not an idiot, you know,” she added with pointed irritation.
“Yes, I figured that out already,” he replied with a small smile. And with that, he left November alone, with only her visions and breakup music for company.
Chapter 8
November slept fitfully, waking up again and again, tangled in her sheets, chased by bad dreams and visions all in a jumble. She felt trapped: trapped in the house whose grounds she hadn’t left once in nearly a month, trapped in her apparent future as a vampire, trapped in this spider web of centuries-old plots spun by cruel strangers. For a few weeks
, her infatuation with William had provided enough distraction for her to put out of her mind the fact that someone in this house was working for the enemy and intended her harm. No longer possessing that luxury, she found that she was afraid. She feared being taken, hurt, forced to help Luka do bad things. She feared failing in the use of her gift to help win this fight. She feared that when death changed her into a new creature, she would become a monster. She feared finding out the identity of the mole and the pain that discovery might cause, but she feared even more continuing to live with the viper in her nest.
It was afternoon before she finally fell asleep, so she was still dozing when dusk came. She was finally up and brushing her teeth, still in her nightgown, when Pine and Greg fairly flew into her room without so much as a knock on the door. That was the first indication that something was seriously wrong. The second sign came when Pine threw her over his shoulder as Greg moved faster than she could see, clearing her room in a whirl and hiding all obvious evidence of her existence. Previously unknown to her was a false wall in the back of her closet. It concealed a cubby into which Greg tossed all her personal belongings.
Pine rushed her out the door with Greg hot on his heels, moving so quickly that November closed her eyes tight with instinctive fear, her breath frozen in her throat. Her fairy bodyguard threw open the door to the linen closet down the hall and revealed a hidden trapdoor in the floor. He then murmured, “We’re going through the chase. Don’t scream,” and dropped dozens of feet straight down, landing lightly on his toes. And scream she certainly would have, had she possessed any ability to draw air into her lungs. Pine barely paused before racing along a barely lit, narrow hallway, Greg following close behind. Down a few more ladders they went, emerging finally into a slightly wider but similarly ill-lit passageway.
