We were almost to the coffee machines, but I stopped walking and turned to stare at her. “Seriously? I mean, I’d love to have you here, but you and John spent all that time doing long distance. Now you’re ready to move here?”
Sashi pushed the hair behind her ears again. “It’s not just for me, although this row between Grace and me has hurt, and I’d like to repair it.”
Oh, right. I’d momentarily forgotten that Will was Grace’s father. I blamed the comprehensive exhaustion. “Will.”
She nodded. “He wants to get to know his daughter, and she has three more years here at CU.” She turned to grab a cup and began filling it with light roast.
“How does Grace feel about that?” I asked.
“Right now, she’s resistant. She doesn’t understand why she hasn’t heard from this man in nearly twenty years, why I never told him I was pregnant.”
“You never told him?” I hadn’t meant to say it, at least not in that tone, but it was too late to take it back.
Sashi winced. “I was only twenty when I got pregnant, and Will . . . Will was a different person. It’s not really something I’m able to talk about, but he went away, for a very long time, and I didn’t have the means to find him. Even when I did, I wasn’t sure I could trust him. So I chose to do things myself.”
“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t help but wonder what she meant by “went away.” Will hadn’t struck me as a former soldier, or an undercover cop. I wondered if Sashi was talking about prison. He hadn’t seemed the type for that either, but the only other thing I could think of was witness protection, and that seemed sort of implausible.
At any rate, I could be as curious as I wanted, but I wasn’t going to push her.
“Anyway, we’d like to spend the next few years in Boulder,” Sashi went on. “We both want to show Gracie how important she is to us, and we can only do that by being here.”
I nodded. “I’ll talk to Maven, but you should know she’s not very happy with me right now.”
Sashi smiled, squeezing my arm. “I have complete faith that you’ll do your best. That’s all I’m asking.”
I called Elise, but my parents had already stopped by and picked up Charlie, after giving her an update on John. “You made it sound way worse than it is,” Elise accused. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“You’re right,” I said, smiling internally. “My bad.”
Katia had to stick around the hospital for X-rays, and she assured me she knew how to use my Uber account to get to the cabin. I went back to the Jeep and drove home, where I opened the garage door for Tobias and bade him a bleary goodnight. “Do you want to hang out?” he said hopefully. “I’ve got some time to kill before Maven’s up for the night.”
“No offense, Tobias, but I’ve been up for a very intense twenty-four hours,” I said, yawning. It was after eleven a.m. “Help yourself to food or whatever. Go hiking. Catch a movie. Imma go to bed.”
I waved and trudged into the house. The dogs were ecstatic to see me—except for Stitch, who hid. I wasn’t a detective, but I suspected this had something to do with the new stains on my living room carpet. I let everyone outside to do their business, cleaned up the mess, set out food and water, and even checked on Mushu. Katia had dropped him off in his old tank on her way north to rescue me, and luckily she’d brought along a few crickets. “Hey, grumpy old dragon,” I said as I dropped them in the cage. “Remember me?”
Mushu ignored me. Just like old times.
When the dogs were back inside, I locked up, zombie-walked to my bedroom, and eyed the bed, facing what seemed like the hardest choice of my entire life: Collapse right then, or force myself to shower off the cave grime and dried blood first?
I fell onto the bed without actually making a decision.
Chapter 49
Someone was brushing hair from my face with cool, assured fingers. Quinn.
I smiled, though I wasn’t ready to wake up yet. I rolled onto my back and stretched. I had gotten up twice, just long enough to stumble to the bathroom and pee. “Hey. Come to bed with me.”
“Lex . . . honey . . .”
Even those two words were so solemn and formal. It was the tone you use to deliver bad news.
I opened my eyes and sat up. Quinn had turned on the bedside lamp, and was sitting next to me fully dressed. There were no dogs draped over me, so he must have put them in the back bedroom. I hadn’t even heard them bark. “What happened? Where’s Katia?”
“Asleep in the back bedroom.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after midnight. We just finished at the Pellars’.”
“Crap!” I flipped off the covers. Hadn’t I set an alarm? I’d meant to . . . “Okay, I’ll take the world’s fastest shower, and then we have to go see Maven. I need to talk to her—”
“Lex.” It was his turn to interrupt. “She’s here.”
I froze, already halfway to the bedroom door, and looked back at him. “Here here?” I said. “At my house?”
“Well, outside, at the front door. You have to invite her in.”
I looked helplessly at myself, my room. I smelled . . . I didn’t even want to put words to what I smelled like. “Quinn . . .”
“It’s fine,” he said firmly. “She doesn’t care.”
I dug up clean clothes to wear, at least, and hurried to put them on. Well, I tried to hurry, but I was sore all over, and when Quinn saw my arms and legs, he almost had a cardiac event for real, vampire or not. He helped me get a sweater dress over my head and told me to skip the pants until I could clean out those cuts, for God’s sake. I was too nervous about making the cardinal vampire wait to argue with him.
As I shuffled toward the front door, I could see through the glass that the snow was falling again. Big wet flakes dotted the neon-green hair of my former—and hopefully, future—boss. She smiled tentatively at me through the window, and I tried to move faster.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door. “You changed your hair.”
She touched it, as if she’d only just remembered. “Yes. It was time.”
I opened the door wider. “Sorry—come in.”
Maven stomped the snow off her boots and came in, looking around with interest. “You have such a nice home,” she said.
It was such a normal remark that I fought down a chortle. “Yeah, well, it’s not usually quite this messy. I . . . got in late.” I gave her an apologetic look. “And I haven’t showered. Sorry.”
She waved it away. “I understand.”
I led her into the living room and checked the armchair for dog hair before she sat down. Then I perched on the edge of the couch, while Quinn settled down on the next cushion.
I knew I should really let her speak first, but I was dying of curiosity, and hey, I didn’t actually work for her at the moment. “So you guys were at the Pellar farm?” I said, looking back and forth between them.
“Yes.” Maven smoothed her skirt, a thick denim number that wouldn’t have been flattering on anyone. She had dropped the “corporate human” disguise and was back to her usual look. “We’ve been there since sunset. Things got . . . heated.”
“Is everything okay?” What a stupid question.
“Not really.”
“What happened with Morgan?”
Maven’s face darkened, and Quinn looked away from me. “What?” I asked. “Mary didn’t—”
“No, no, it wasn’t her fault.” Maven sighed. “As you know, the witches had a meeting, which ended up starting early this afternoon given all of the developments.”
“Okay . . . ?”
“I don’t know the details of their meeting, but the leaders of the witch clans left a message requesting that I come out to the farm to parley. I got the message at sunset, at the same time Mary arrived at the coffee shop with Morgan.” A tiny smile. “Who was still rather sedated. At any rate, I asked Mary and her friend—Tobias?—to go ahead to the farm with Morgan so I could eat first.”
&n
bsp; There was a look on Maven’s face that I hadn’t seen before. Was it . . . guilt? “I suppose I thought if I made the concession of coming to them,” Maven continued, “and we could get the truth out of Morgan . . .” She trailed off, her hands dropping to her lap.
I looked at Quinn, whose face was grim, but he waited for Maven to speak. “Twelve armed men arrived at the farmhouse just after Mary,” she said in a detached, robotic tone that terrified me. “They wanted to recover Morgan, even had silver shot for the werewolves. I missed them by perhaps three minutes.”
Unable to help myself, I blurted, “Simon and Lily—”
“Are fine,” Quinn assured me. Then his eyes darted to Maven, as if to apologize for interrupting.
She just nodded. “They are.”
“Mary? Tobias?”
“Injured, but alive,” Maven said formally. “Thanks to your friend Simon. He had a spell that pulled the silver shot out of them like a magnet.”
I relaxed a little. Yeah, that sounded like something Simon would come up with in his spare time, especially after Mary had saved his life.
But Maven’s face was still grim, and I realized there was more. “The gunmen almost got away with Morgan,” she continued, “but the Pellars, and a few of the other witches, fought back.”
“Don’t tell me Morgan escaped again,” I said.
“No, she was too wounded to run fast enough. When the witches put up a bigger fight than was expected, the men began to retreat. They shot at Morgan, likely to silence her.”
Maven, who had been a frickin’ queen of some country that didn’t even exist anymore and who had probably seen a hundred thousand people die, was actually too choked up to continue. She gave a little headshake and glanced at Quinn.
“Hazel pushed Morgan out of the way, Lex,” he said quietly.
“Hazel is . . . dead?” Hazel Pellar was an institution. It seemed impossible, like saying the buffalo statue on Pearl Street had suddenly galloped off to greener pastures.
“Morgan, too,” he replied. “Another gunman shot her as they made their escape.”
“Oh, God.” I clapped a hand over my mouth. It was my fault. I’d gotten Hazel to drop her wards to let Morgan back into Colorado; I’d sent Morgan with Mary—hell, I’d sent everyone to a meeting place without stopping to consider how vulnerable they would be.
Jumping up despite my sore muscles, I patted my back pants pockets for my phone—only I wasn’t wearing pants, and I didn’t have any pockets. “I need my phone, I gotta call . . .” I mumbled, looking around.
Maven cleared her throat. “You don’t, at least not at this moment. There’s nothing you can do right now, and your friends need to deal with their dead.”
I stood there for a moment, swaying a little, but dropped back onto the couch. She was right. I would call Simon and Lily, of course, or probably just go out to the farmhouse, but a few minutes wouldn’t make a difference. “I should have let Mary shoot Morgan in the fucking head,” I blurted, looking at Quinn. “God, I’m such an idiot; I should have been at that fucking meeting—”
“And you probably would have been, if you hadn’t quit my service,” Maven finished. “It’s possible that you could have helped, but given the odds, I suspect it’s more likely that you would have been shot. Or lost control of your magic.”
She sounded matter-of-fact, but I flinched. “Maven, I know I crossed a lot of lines the last couple of days,” I began, but she held up a hand to stop me.
“Lex, I’m trying to apologize.”
Well, that brought me up short. “What?”
“I put you in a position where the only way you could do what I wanted was to defy me. That’s a pretty unforgivable thing for a leader to do.”
“I know you didn’t do it on purpose,” I said.
She gave me a weak smile. “But I did.”
I blinked, too surprised to be angry. “Excuse me?”
She was fiddling with her skirt, and I realized with a start that she seemed . . . nervous? Was that even possible? “You know that I am the last surviving member of the Concilium, the council that led the Old World many centuries ago,” she said. “After that group fell, I kept to myself for a long time. I fell out of practice with trust. These last few months . . . I haven’t been engaging you because I’ve been busy gathering allies again. Getting in touch with old contacts, trying to make new ones. I want things to change in the Old World, and I became so focused on my project that I paid no attention to the people I’m supposed to lead.
“When you called me with Ryan Dunn’s problem, I was distracted, and I didn’t think too much about it. Even when Dunn was killed, I thought . . .” She held out her hands, palms up. “I thought perhaps it would be a good test for you.”
“A test?” I remembered the way she’d quizzed me on the phone after Morgan’s town hall meeting. “People died for a fucking test?”
Maven sighed. “I’m so sorry, Lex. Part of my project would involve giving you more responsibilities. I thought dealing with a werewolf crisis more or less on your own would give you a chance to think and work independently, and I could observe how you handled it.”
“So you hung me out to dry,” I said flatly.
She didn’t break eye contact. “I did. I don’t need another sycophant, Lex. Every vampire in this state has already sworn an oath to me; they literally have to obey me.” She shot Quinn a small apologetic smile, then turned back to me. “I hired you because you can go places that I can’t, talk to people who would never talk to me. And during this . . . incident—I threw you into that without explanation, because I was too lazy to find another way for you to prove yourself.”
“Perhaps,” I said icily, “you could have let me actually apply for the job.”
Maven just nodded. She looked contrite, but I was still tempted to tell her to get the fuck out of my house. She had left me dangling while good people were dying.
But wasn’t that exactly what I’d done to my friends? Left them dangling in a dangerous situation? I had put Morgan Pellar in play and hadn’t bothered to see it through.
Guilt, hurt, and anger raged in me for a moment. I saw Quinn’s hand lift off his lap, reaching for me, but I could practically see him think better of touching me just then. Good call. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to control my breathing.
Steady, babe, Sam’s voice said. You did the best you could. The best anyone could, under impossible circumstances.
I wasn’t where I was needed, Sammy, I thought back to her.
There was a soft jingle, and I opened my eyes to see Dopey trot into the room, coming over to sniff at Maven’s ankles. She looked down at the little Yorkie with obvious surprise, then turned to Quinn. “She’s . . . not scared of us?”
“She’s very stupid,” he said fondly. “Go ahead, you can pet her.”
Tentatively, Maven reached down and scratched at Dopey’s ears. There was wonder on her face. “I miss animals,” she said softly.
I felt some of the anguish leach out of me, replaced by a bone-deep weariness. Maven was a person. A ridiculously powerful one, but still just a person. She’d made mistakes in this, yes, but so had I. “What happens now?” I asked.
“Now I make you a promise.” Maven sat up straight and leaned forward, staring into my eyes. I felt the intense crush of her power, as I always did, and was struck silent.
Luckily, there was nothing I needed to say. “Allison Alexandra Luther,” Maven said formally, “I swear to you, I will continue to consider Charlotte Wheaton under my protection until she reaches the age of eighteen. I offer this security to honor the service you have already given me, regardless of whether you ever work for me again. I give you my word and my oath.”
For a moment, I thought I felt something in the air, just a quick little shiver, and I wondered if it was actual magic. Swearing oaths was about the only magic the vampires could perform, so I supposed it was possible.
“Thank you,” I whispered. Quinn reached over and squeeze
d my hand.
There was a moment of awkward silence. I knew I should feel gratitude, and I did, but I also felt sort of panicky. If I didn’t have a covenant with Maven to protect Charlie, what was I working for? Why was I getting up in the morning?
Maven gave me a faint smile. “Perhaps this would be a good time to explain my . . . project.”
“Um, okay.”
“You were in Los Angeles during what they call the Vampire Trials.”
I blinked, but tried to roll with it. “Yes.”
“So you saw how Dashiell shares power with the witches and the werewolves. I respect that; it’s something I hadn’t seen before. I’ve decided to try something like that here.”
“You’re going to share power?” Oops. I hadn’t meant to sound quite so incredulous.
“Yes. With Lily, as the new clan leader now that Hazel is gone.” She hesitated a beat, then added, “And with Mary.”
“Uh . . . my Mary?” I said in disbelief.
Now her smile was wide. “I know. She’s a bit coarse. But she has proved her value in both helping you apprehend Morgan, and in showing her mercy—at least more mercy than the witches expected from a werewolf.” Was I crazy, or were Maven’s eyes twinkling? “I also believe the witches appreciate having a female alpha, as it suits their matriarchal way of doing things.”
I had to smile, because that part, at least, made perfect sense. “I think that’s a great idea—but what does it have to do with the mysterious phone calls?”
“In a few months, when we’ve got this statewide alliance worked out, I want to pursue an even greater one.”
My brow furrowed. “You . . . want to take more territory? I thought—”
“No, not that. I want to start a new Concilium: Dashiell, myself, a few others.”
I was momentarily horrified. “You’re not asking me to join!”
Quinn made a choking sound, and Maven let out a small, but very genuine, laugh. “No, no. I considered it, but—and I mean no offense—starting the group with a boundary witch onboard might not send the desired message.”
Boundary Broken (Boundary Magic Book 4) Page 31
