by Devon, Cat
“They work just fine,” Daniella said firmly. “I’ll see you then.”
After disconnecting the videocam, Daniella snapped her laptop shut and turned to confront Nick. “What is it with you and video cameras?”
He shrugged.
She wanted to hit him but didn’t. He knew his shrugs aggravated the hell out of her but he did it anyway.
“I was just trying to be helpful,” he said.
“Sure you were. Well, let me tell you, buddy, I don’t need that kind of help.”
Nick lifted one dark eyebrow. “Buddy?”
“It’s not a term of endearment and it doesn’t mean we are BFF. Best Friends Forever.”
“Right. I’ll be sure to note that in my tweet.”
“You’re on Twitter?”
“No, but that reminds me. No more marketing specials on social media until we get this situation resolved. You cannot go around making open invitations. It’s much too dangerous.”
“Is that what happened today? A vampire came into the shop?”
“Tried to come in and failed. The costume idea didn’t help, either. So tell Xandra to stop. Tell her now.” He handed Daniella her smartphone. “Text her. No more special promotions. No more inviting everyone to come on down to try your cupcakes.”
“I’m trying to run a business here, you know.”
“And I’m trying to protect your life here, you know,” he retorted.
“Fine.” She sent off the text. “I’m going to bed now.”
“But it’s only six PM.”
“It’s been a long day. And remember, my dad is back tomorrow morning. You cannot be here then.”
“I cannot leave you unprotected. That vamp’s appearance today proved you are still in danger.”
“Then you’ll have to stay out of sight.” Her voice was curt as she turned and walked away.
“Wait.”
Something in his voice made her stop.
“That night-light you always keep on in your bedroom. Is that because of me?” His voice was gruff.
“It’s because I’m afraid of the dark,” she admitted a bit self-consciously.
“I didn’t know if you were using it because you’re afraid of me,” he said quietly.
“No, I’ve been afraid of the dark since I was a little girl.”
“Any particular reason?”
“The usual ones. Monsters under the bed and the fact I grew up above a funeral home.” She was not about to reveal her unspoken fear, a sense of menace that someone or something was out to get her. “Good night.”
“Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” he teased her.
“Or the vampires, either,” she said before walking away.
* * *
Daniella was up early the next morning despite the fact that her shop was closed and this was her day off. Nick remained unusually quiet, his attention focused on his smartphone and whatever he was doing on it. Her dad showed up by eight. Nick heard him coming in plenty of time and stepped into her bedroom, partially closing the door.
“Welcome home, Dad.” She greeted him with a big hug. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I missed you.” He gave her a pair of his customary bear hugs because two hugs were better than one.
“How was your trip? You look great. Tanned and fit.”
“The trip was life changing. In fact, I have some news for you,” he said.
She had news, too, but she was sworn to secrecy.
“I asked Franny to marry me and she said yes.”
Daniella was speechless.
“I can’t wait for you to meet her. I thought we could have dinner tonight.”
“It’s Halloween.”
“I know it is.” He reached into his jacket pocket. “I have something for you.” He handed her an envelope.
“What’s this?”
“You mother made me promise to give this to you Halloween morning the year you are twenty-nine.”
She stared at the sight of her name written in her mother’s perfect handwriting. “You held on to it all this time?”
“Of course. You know I don’t break promises.” He glanced at his watch. “I’m sorry but I have to get back to the funeral home. I’ll let you read your letter alone.” He hugged her again. “We’ll talk later.” Then he was gone before she could say anything further.
“You can come out now,” she told Nick, who sauntered out of her bedroom.
“Aren’t you going to read that?” Nick asked when she set the letter on the table.
“Not now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s waited over a decade. It can wait a little longer.”
He studied her face. “You have a feeling about it, don’t you? A premonition. Do you think it’s bad news? Are you afraid what it might say?”
“I’ve got big bad vampires chasing after me,” she said. “Being afraid of a little letter after that seems silly.”
“Silly, perhaps, but true.”
“Not true,” she said. “I’m not afraid.”
“Then open it.”
“Fine. I will. But don’t expect me to read it out loud to you or even share what it says with you. Some things are private.”
He made no comment.
She carefully opened the envelope and removed the page.
The sight of her mother’s handwriting brought sudden tears to her eyes. Seeing her name on the outside of the envelope was one thing, but to see it on the page was incredibly powerful.
“Dear Daniella, If you are reading this it means that I have passed on before Halloween on your twenty-ninth year. I had hoped to be there personally to share what I’m about to share with you. I’m not sure how to put it so I will just be direct. You know I always told you how special you are. It’s true. More than you know…”
As she kept reading, Daniella gulped and sank onto her chair, stunned by the words blurring before her eyes. “No,” she whispered unsteadily. “It can’t be true.”
Chapter Seventeen
“What is it?” Nick’s voice was laced with concern.
Daniella was too stunned to answer. She was hit by so many conflicting emotions that they were a tangled mess as she continued reading the rest of her mother’s letter.
Your birth mother was my cousin Morgana. It’s true that she died when you were born. I was there. It’s also true that she was special. She was a druid and so are you. Actually you are a blend of druid and human. She claimed there was a tinge of vampire blood as well in your heritage, but I’m not sure about that. I find that hard to believe. Silly, I know, to believe in druids and nothing else. What can I say? I so wish I could be there to help you cope with this news. I can only imagine how difficult this is to comprehend. Believe me, I found it difficult, too, in the beginning. But Morgana always knew things about the future before they happened. She made me swear on her deathbed to tell you, but not until Halloween on your twenty-ninth year. I’m hoping you’ll know what to do with this information. Morgana said you would. She said that to tell you earlier would have dangerous consequences and I believed her. I hope you forgive me for keeping this secret. It never changed how I feel about you. Always remember that I love you.
Mom
Daniella had no idea how to deal with this. She tried to make sense of it all. But that didn’t seem possible at the moment. “It’s about my birth mother.”
“What about her?”
“This must be some kind of sick Halloween joke,” Daniella said. “There’s no way this—” She waved the letter in the air. “—can be true.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that this letter claims I’m some sort of weird druid–human hybrid with just a smidge of vampire blood in me.”
He stepped closer and sniffed. “You don’t smell like a vampire. You’ve never smelled like a vampire.”
“Excuse me?” She reared back.
“Vampires have a certain scent that is only discernible
to other vampires.”
“Wait a second. Is that why you sniffed me the first time we met?” she said.
“Yes.”
“Of course I don’t smell like a vampire—or a druid, either, for that matter. Because this is all ridiculous. I’m just a girl who loves to make cupcakes.”
“A girl who loves to make cupcakes who is also immune to being compelled.”
“That doesn’t make me a druid.”
“It makes you special.”
“That’s what my mother says in this letter,” Daniella said unsteadily, handing it to him. “It’s what she told me my entire life until the day she died.” Her throat closed up and she couldn’t speak for a moment. “I don’t understand any of this. Why wait so long to give me this letter?”
“Maybe it’s a druid thing,” Nick said. “I’ll check it out.”
“Don’t bother,” she said, “I am not a druid. There is no such thing. Druids do not exist.”
“That’s what most people say about vampires.”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?”
“Do not tell me to be logical right now,” she warned him.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said drily.
“I need answers.”
“Wait. Where are you going?”
“To talk to my father.”
“Remember, you cannot tell him anything about us.”
“No vampire talk. Got it.” She held out her hand for her mother’s letter, which he returned to her.
“I’m serious,” Nick said.
“Believe me, so am I.”
“I’m going with you.”
“I need to talk to him alone. You may accompany me, but that’s it. And not into his private office.”
“You may want to calm down first. Or not,” he said as she marched out of her apartment. He followed her, delivering a serious warning as he did so. “If you get upset, you may say something you shouldn’t. If you do, I am going to have to compel your father to forget and you will have broken your oath to us—which puts your brother at risk.”
“I’ve got news for you.” She paused to jab her finger at Nick’s black-T-shirt-covered chest. “This isn’t about you. Everything is not always about you.”
Nick took her hand in his and gently squeezed. “I know.”
“Are you trying to be nice to me now that you think I’m a druid? You believe it, don’t you? Well, don’t, because it is not true.”
“Trust your gut,” he said quietly.
She yanked her hand away. “Keep my gut out of it. And respect my privacy.” She headed into the funeral home’s back entrance but stopped as another thought occurred to her rattled mind. “Wait, do you have surveillance cameras in my father’s office?”
“Yes.”
Daniella muttered under her breath. Angry as she was, she knew better than to order him to turn them off. So she bit her tongue and walked into her father’s office.
Rattled as she was, now she had to be aware of the camera and the fact that she was being watched, which sucked. She supposed it was better than being taken in the blink of an eye by a hedge fund Gold Coast vampire.
She sat in the same brown leather wing chair she had as a little girl offering her dad a lopsided cupcake. His tan stood out in the indoor lighting, but he didn’t appear surprised to see her.
“We need to talk,” she said.
“You’re upset.”
“Damn right I’m upset. What did you expect?”
He sighed. “I realize the news about my engagement probably comes as a surprise.”
“You know what comes as a bigger surprise? The fact that my mother thinks I’m special. That I’m part druid.”
Her father’s eyes widened. “What? That’s just what her wacky cousin Morgana told her. Morgana was your birth mother and the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter or something strange like that.”
“So it’s not true?”
“Of course it’s not true,” her father said. “What even made you think it was?”
“A lot of weird stuff has been happening lately,” she muttered.
“Like what?”
Daniella shook her head. “I can’t talk about it.”
“Sure you can. I’m your father. You can tell me anything.”
Trust your gut. She heard Nick’s words in her head.
The ironic thing was that she’d always had a feeling that she didn’t quite belong. That she was different. She used to confess as much to her mom, who had always reassured her while telling her that she was special.
Daniella had chalked up her feelings to the fact that she was adopted, but now she wasn’t sure if that was truly the reason. She’d also chalked up the fact that she had occasional premonitions of the future to ordinary visualization techniques. She saw her cupcake shop as a success in her mind’s eye. Plenty of business owners had the same experience. Perhaps not as many actually saw their logo down to the smallest detail. The challenge had been making reality match her vision.
She always considered herself to be more of a planner than a free spirit. Yes, but was the druid stuff true? That’s what Daniella wanted to know. What kind of blood did she have?
Sure, she knew that medically she was type O, the most common type of blood. But what about this other stuff? The druid stuff? Not to mention that bit of vampire mixed in. Did that mean that at some point she was going to start craving blood? And if she did, would it be type O blood?
Overwhelmed by it all, she latched onto something else. “Did you know what was in the letter?”
“No, I never opened it.”
“Why give it to me today?”
“Your mother said it had to be today, Halloween the year you were twenty-nine.”
“Did she say why?”
“No. I assumed she explained why in the letter.”
Because Morgana told her not to let Daniella know until today or there would be “dangerous consequences.”
“I’m sorry if the letter upset you,” her dad was saying. “I had no idea your mother was repeating the make-believe woo-woo stories that her cousin told her. That really isn’t like your mom. She was a very practical woman.”
“You always told me mom was your soul mate,” Daniella said quietly.
“She was.”
“Yet you come home from a cruise, hand me a letter saying I’m a druid, and then tell me you’re engaged. You’ve only known this woman a few months.”
“I knew as soon as I saw her again. It was magical.”
Daniella didn’t want to hear about magical. She was sick of magical. Give her a recipe anytime with specific measurements, ingredients, and baking temperatures. Sure, you could tweak those things a little. But then you made a new recipe. It wasn’t all spooky strange hocus-pocus stuff.
She was still finding it difficult to cope with the fact that she lusted after a vampire who was her bodyguard. People who posted “It’s complicated” under relationships on their Facebook page had nothing on her situation.
And then there were the Gold Coast vamps after her. And the fact that the funeral home was some kind of fast-food outlet for the neighborhood vamps. It was all too out there for her.
She didn’t want to be special. She wanted her old life back. The life she had before all this chaos. The life where “Normal” was her default setting.
“When you meet Franny, you’ll see what I mean,” her father was saying.
She wanted her father to be happy, she really did. But this was all too much. Seeing her mother’s handwriting brought back so many memories.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Daniella muttered, jumping up from the chair and hurrying out of the room.
Nick was waiting for her outside.
“You probably had a live feed onto your smartphone from your spy cameras,” she said.
He made no comment.
“So you already know that I told him that my mother thought I was part druid. He said it wasn’t
true. That my birth mother was into that kind of thing but it wasn’t real. So forget about pursuing this paranormal stuff about my birth mother.”
“I can’t do that.”
“My father said it isn’t true. Are you calling him a liar?”
Nick just shrugged.
That did it. “We need to talk,” she growled. “Upstairs. Right now.”
Nick appeared amused by her angry order, but he didn’t protest. Given the fact that he was rarely far from her side, she supposed it figured that he wasn’t going to walk away. But it gave her a momentary feeling of control over the wild situation that was rapidly swirling into The Twilight Zone.
As soon as they were in her apartment, she got right to the point. “I do not appreciate you eavesdropping on my private conversation with my father. That was extremely private.”
“You know how important this all is. We need to figure this riddle out ASAP. And that letter of yours adds a critical part. While you were talking to your father, I had your birth mother’s ancestry checked out.”
“After I told you not to. And do not shrug,” she warned him, grabbing her silver tea strainer out of the kitchen drawer and waving it threateningly at him.
“That isn’t pure silver,” Nick said. “It’s silver-plated.”
“No, it’s not.” She turned it over. “It’s got the nine-two-five stamp on it.”
“Which wasn’t used until 1906.”
“Damn. The antiques dealer in London told me it dated back to the Regency period.” She tossed it onto the kitchen counter. “That just goes to prove that you can’t trust anybody.”
“Now that you know about your tea strainer, don’t you want to know what we found out about you?”
“Not really.”
He lifted a dark eyebrow.
“Okay, fine tell me,” she said.
“It’s all true.”
“Says the vampire.”
“Says the vampire with the plastic fish on the wall of his bar,” he noted drily.
The fact that Nick had just teased her brought tears to her eyes. “You’re trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?”
He nodded solemnly. “Apparently I’m not doing a very good job of it.”
