I arrived at my mother’s mansion just before nine, and a bit of a surprise greeted me. All of the outdoor lights were on, and the parking area was absolutely cluttered with cars. I stared for a moment, the Fiesta idling loudly, and wondered what exactly was going on.
A sharp rap on the window startled me, and I saw the comfortably weathered face of James, one of my mother’s staff.
“Quite a to-do tonight, Mr. Scott,” he said with a broad wink. He’d known me since I was in diapers, and every time he looked at me, I had the impression that he was remembering wiping my nose or confiscating my crayons. “A few of the boys and I are valeting the cars, so we’ll tuck yours away where it won’t be a bother.”
“A bother or an eyesore?” I asked, shifting the car into neutral and getting out.
James smiled widely, showing teeth browned by a lifetime of black coffee and lack of fluoride treatments. “Now, now. I have a snug little spot where it’ll be nice and safe. You have to be careful with a car like this—one tap and the bumper will probably come right off.”
He wasn’t wrong. Last year I’d spent a month and a half with the Fiesta’s bumper attached by wire ties following a low-speed bumper collision. I’d been short on money at the time, and it had taken a while to save enough to get my mechanic to spot-weld the bumper back where it belonged. I’d left the wire ties on, figuring that it could use the help.
Inside, the house was bustling with women in a mixture of sleek evening wear and professional business dress. Madeline’s staff cruised among them in black-tie tuxedos, male and female, holding trays full of wineglasses or hors d’oeuvres.
Prudence appeared at my elbow, looking smug. Her crutches were gone, replaced by a rather dapper ivory cane that she leaned on heavily. Her matching dress was long, and the fabric was stiff enough that I couldn’t be sure of what kind of bandaging was currently on her leg. “Why, hello, Fortitude. I see you’ve come to admire my ladies’ networking party.”
“Is that what you’re calling it?”
“Yes, it seems to be quite popular.” She linked her free arm with mine and tugged me toward a quieter part of the room. As we crossed, I noticed Chivalry standing in a knot of women, listening politely as one of them was saying something about how the artwork on the stairway reminded her of some fancy house she’d seen in France. The interest in her eyes as she flirted at my brother was clear, and at a casual glance, Chivalry seemed to be responding. But his eyes were just a little too bright under the light from the chandelier, and there was a keen, assessing look on Chivalry’s face that flicked from the woman speaking to the others surrounding him. The situation should’ve been annoyingly reminiscent of a sultan checking out new applicants for the harem, but instead it reminded me very uncomfortably of Discovery Channel footage of a wolf inspecting a deer herd.
Prudence followed my gaze and gave a very satisfied smile. “This has been quite a successful evening. I’m thinking of throwing a few more of these this week—of course it’s so short notice, but I’ve gotten compliments from the ladies all night, saying what a lovely idea it is to bring together so many clever and successful women to network.” To my relief, she slipped her arm out of mine, snagged a wineglass from a passing tray, and took a sip. Then she shot me a calculating look. “Do you remember any lady professors from Brown who would be suitable? Very few women in this day and age seem capable of turning down a couriered invitation.”
“Um, one, we just call them professors now. Two, I’m not getting involved, and neither should you.”
Prudence rolled her eyes, though whether it was over my correction of lady professors or my very deep discomfort over the thought of having any part in Chivalry’s dating process was unclear. “Don’t be such a child. Whoever Chivalry selects and weds will be in our lives and home for years, and I refuse to suffer through the fiasco of Sybil again.”
“Sybil?”
My sister took a longer drink of her wine and her face darkened. Apparently this memory still had the ability to nettle her. “1909. She was an anarchist, a follower of Emma Goldman. Constant rallies and arrests. We couldn’t get through a single meal without being lectured about the ravages of capitalism. I thought the woman would never die.” Prudence shuddered. “She actually lasted for fourteen years, wretched thing. Constitution of a rhinoceros.” Her expression lightened as she reflected on the past woman’s death, then finished her wine again and surveyed the room, looking more pleased. “The trick of the thing is to make sure that Chivalry is given enough of a selection. For years I kept trying to surround him with debutantes, but that was a mistake. No, he needs a variety of women—professions, ages, backgrounds, interests, all of that. But it’s just important to screen out the ones who would be a bother to sit across a dinner table from.”
That my brother was busy reenacting his personal Bluebeard routine was bad enough, but the idea of trying to steer certain women toward him for the sake of pleasant dinner conversation while they slowly expired was fairly awful. “I’m not getting involved,” I repeated bluntly. “Now listen, Matias Kivela was just murdered, and I’d frankly really prefer talking about that for a while.”
That was finally enough to break Prudence’s focus on her creepy party, and very effectively. With a few muttered excuses and a promise that he’d be back shortly, she extricated Chivalry from the situation that frankly made me suspicious about her previously professed disgust with dating-themed reality shows (or perhaps she was actually disgusted, but at the same time took notes), and the three of us quickly relocated to my mother’s sitting room.
Madeline was ensconced in her favorite padded sofa, and from her elaborately brocaded robe to her Turkish slippers (complete with little curls at the toes), it was clear that she had planned a very quiet night away from the fuss downstairs. Upon seeing the three of us, she immediately turned off the TV (some CNN exploration into the latest scandal of a senator who liked his power to come with a side order of illicit sex) and motioned us to sit. Prudence and I settled on opposite settees, the heavy silk of my sister’s dress rustling against the upholstery, but Chivalry began to pace around us. It was a strange inversion—usually Prudence was the one who acted like a large cat on a leash—but I found myself unable to look away from him even as I brought everyone up to speed with the metsän kunigas situation. His clothing was loose, even though I knew that every item he ever purchased went straight to his personal tailor, and there was a prominence to my brother’s cheekbones that hadn’t been present a week ago, suggesting that he’d dropped weight.
My mother’s brilliant blue eyes narrowed in irritation when I finished my summary. “Inconvenient, this. Matias was steady, and could’ve easily ruled another ten, perhaps even twenty years.”
“Disruptive,” Prudence noted. “We’re still mopping up after the elves had their little rebellion, and now a murder like this?”
Madeline gave a small wave to indicate that Prudence was deviating from the topic at hand, but that she didn’t disagree with my sister’s underlying point. “It needs to be handled, and quickly.” She turned to me, and the iron in her voice brooked no disagreement. “Fortitude, you will look into this, and you will find the culprit.”
I couldn’t help but feel a little nervous, here. After all, to this point I had, with Suzume’s help, managed to solve a grand total of one murder. “I’ll work on it, but—”
“No, not work on it, find it.” Madeline’s annoyance was clear. “This won’t be like those times you’ve gone Nosy Parkering with that fox and fallen rump over teakettle into a palaver. You’re my agent in this, Fortitude, working in my stead. You have resources, for heaven’s sake, and a responsibility.” There was a very icy practicality and ruthlessness in her voice, one that she usually hid behind her silly little-old-lady act. But there was no mistaking how seriously she was taking this situation. “You will find a perpetrator promptly, my son. And if you do not, you will find an acceptable scapegoat.”
My mother in these moods scared the crap out of me, but my head was shaking immediately. “I’m not going to railroad anyone,” I said.
Prudence couldn’t contain her reaction to my statement. “Oh, for the love of—”
I interrupted Prudence, but I was still focused on my mother. “Suze and I have leads, and we will find the killer.” I sounded a lot more confident than I felt at the moment, but if it meant the avoidance of creating a setup and a fall guy, I was willing to use Fake It Till You Make It as my personal motto. “The metsän kunigas suspect the elves, so I’ll call up Lilah Dwyer and start looking into it.”
My sister gave a loud and wholly unladylike snort. “Well, brother, if the bears have focused on the Ad-hene, I doubt even you could shed a tear if we have to execute one as an example.”
I deliberately ignored her. “We’ll find the killer,” I assured my mother. And Prudence wasn’t wrong—I didn’t know much about the bears, but I knew much more than I wanted to about the elves, and if the evidence led to Underhill’s doorstep, I wouldn’t be bothered in the least.
Madeline had calmed down, and now she even looked amused. “How confident you suddenly sound, my pet. Such music to my ears. Now, do you have everything you need? Clues, information, murder weapon, all of those things they yammer about on procedurals? Such a dull genre. Though I do regret that I have no laboratory of gadgets or brilliant scientists to offer you. They always seem so useful on those shows.”
I relaxed a little as my mother slipped back into her usual patter. That was always a good sign. “The ghouls are performing an autopsy, so we should at least find out a little. Suzume thinks that a knife was used, and there’s one missing from the karhu’s kitchen, so if we find that, it might be useful.”
Chivalry was still pacing the room, but now he spoke quietly, his voice sounding like he was straining for normalcy. “You should talk with our retainer witch—she’s fairly reliable. Loren Noka can give you her information.”
“What a waste of time,” Prudence snapped, disgusted. “How many times over the last decade has the witch been able to offer you the slightest help?”
Chivalry’s voice stayed measured, but I noticed that his pacing picked up some speed. “Rosamund isn’t often able to contribute, it’s true, but when she does, it is useful. And anything that involves a body is worth asking a witch about.”
“Seems odd to say the word worth in a conversation about witches,” said Prudence. “Useless little headliners.”
My sister looked ready to start a monologue on the subject, but she was cut off by Madeline’s smooth interjection. “Yes, precious, you’ve made your opinion clear many times. Now Fortitude will find either the murderer or a murderer”—she smiled at me, flashing her very long, fixed fangs—“to mollify the bears. Once this happens, who will the new karhu be?” She looked expectantly at my brother, but Chivalry was circling restlessly and didn’t seem to notice his cue.
There was a short, awkward silence, which I broke. “Chiyo Hollis asked them. Apparently Matias had mentioned his niece, Dahlia, but I’m not sure how certain that is.”
Madeline was still watching Chivalry, and despite my effort, now looked annoyed. “Chivalry? You know the heirs.” Her voice was stern.
That got Chivalry’s attention, and his forehead creased as he considered. “Somewhat.” He sounded distracted. “The nephew would rock the boat and be disruptive, and Matias felt that his daughter was too young to be considered when we discussed it a month ago. Dahlia seems to be the best choice.”
Distracted was not a good response for our mother. I spoke up again, hoping to distract her from Chivalry. “Gil is definitely not a fan of our rules. I don’t know about Dahlia—she plays everything really tight to the chest. Carmen is twenty-one, though, so not incredibly young. She’s maybe ten years and change younger than the other two.”
To my surprise, Prudence responded by agreeing with me. “Twenty-one is not too young.” She kept talking to me, but I noticed that she was watching Chivalry out of the corner of her eye. “Keep an eye on them, Fortitude. And remember that whoever becomes karhu is the one we have to deal with for the next three or four decades. Best to avoid anyone extremely annoying.” She raised her voice and pitched to Chivalry again. “Wasn’t that why we didn’t want Ilona?”
Another awkward pause, and I did my best to set the question up again. “Ilona?” I asked. It wasn’t just to try to help cover for Chivalry—I had no idea who we were talking about, and my confusion was clear.
That finally brought Chivalry back into the conversation, even though he now sounded very annoyed with me, which he normally saved for when it was the two of us on our own. Usually in a group setting he spent most of his time covering for me in front of Prudence. The disruption of our normal family dynamic was almost enough to make me dizzy. “Matias’s older sister,” Chivalry explained curtly. “Dahlia and Gil’s mother. Their father wanted her to inherit, but I thought she would be too difficult. She always questioned everything, never just followed an order. Matias claimed that she’d mellowed with age, but it figures that her son would be a problem as well.” He gave a small shrug. “You can get to know Carmen better if you want, but Matias said that Dahlia had the right temperament.”
Having watched all of this interplay closely, Madeline now gave a very heavy sigh. “It’s just like dogs. You finally get one trained just the way you like, and it dies. Then you have to housebreak a puppy all over again.” She gave a grumpy wave of her hand to dismiss us. “Well, enough of this. Prudence, you can’t abandon your guests much longer.”
Prudence used her cane to pull herself awkwardly to her feet. “Come on, Chivalry. I know they’ll be missing you.” The implication in her voice was so clear that I was sure that the women downstairs must’ve somehow felt the reverberations.
Chivalry didn’t respond, but simply offered Prudence his arm with the gentlemanly antebellum manners that had been drilled into him over almost a century and a half ago. There was a fixed and intent look on his face as they left, and Prudence glanced over to meet my eyes, lifting her eyebrows in some expression that I couldn’t quite interpret.
I stayed behind with my mother and watched as she fussed with the sleeve of her robe. I normally didn’t go out of my way to spend more time with Madeline, but unfortunately this afternoon had shown that I couldn’t put the feeding off any longer. After a moment it became clear that I wasn’t leaving, and my mother made a small noise in her throat and looked up at me. “Don’t judge your brother harshly, Fortitude. At least, not for his manners. It’s a bit like when our Patricia decided to go on a cleanse. She was in an utterly wretched temper all week, and when she finally gave in, she nearly devoured an entire roast.”
That was not a very visually reassuring metaphor, but it did at least offer a segue into my own issue. It seemed odd to have to find a way to bring the topic up—usually it was my mother who offered to feed me (and offered, and offered), and I would either accept or put it off. Asking for it seemed weird. “I suppose that’s the thing, Mother. I’m feeling a bit . . . edgy.”
She understood my meaning immediately, but there was a slight hesitation before she nodded. “Ah. My apologies, then, my dove.” Then she was rolling back her left sleeve with her usual businesslike manner, and I felt reassured. I moved from my current seat to next to her on the sofa, and tried to tamp down the eagerness that rose up inside me as my mother’s bony, age-speckled wrist was exposed. “Go ahead,” Madeline said, and drew her right thumbnail firmly across her wrist, slicing her skin.
The blood that rose to the surface of my mother’s wrist was much darker than a human’s, and thicker. I leaned down and latched my mouth over the cut, and as the first drop touched my tongue with a sizzle that sent a shiver down my whole body, I acknowledged at last the relief that I felt at feeding. My reaction to Gil in Matias Kivela’s kitchen this afternoon had disturbed me, and if feeding from my mother would stave off a repeat of that, I would embrace it wholeheartedly.
For most humans (barring those results of the creepy attachment parenting trend), the act of being fed directly from their mother’s body is one that is usually last performed before long-term memories begin to form. That I still relied on my mother in such a primal way, for sustenance, was always extremely disturbing to me when I thought about it in stray moments, but during the act itself the world seemed to close in around me until all I thought of and experienced was the taste of my mother’s blood, the pressure my mouth had to exert to get the thick fluid down my throat, and the deep, yawning hunger inside of me that I was finally able to assuage.
The blood from my mother’s cut was even thicker and slower in flowing than usual, and it felt like trying to drink a milk shake through a busted straw. I’d just taken my third full swallow when Madeline suddenly slid a finger from her free hand against my mouth, breaking my suction. Surprise rolled through me—never in my life had my mother ever stopped my feeding before I was ready. I sat up quickly and was appalled at what I saw—my mother’s naturally fair skin was so pale that I could actually see the tracings of blue and violet veins up her neck and jaw. She was slumping back into the sofa, not for comfort but from a lack of strength.
I was off the sofa so quickly that I stumbled and smacked my knee hard against the table, setting off a loud clatter of china suddenly shifting, but I didn’t even slow down and was already halfway to the door to call for help, when Madeline’s voice, weak but with that unmistakable steely command, pulled me back.
“Fort, don’t go.”
“I’ll get Chivalry, or Prudence, and—”
“Stop.” She couldn’t lift her lids all the way, but even that much was enough for her blue eyes to freeze me in place. “There’s nothing to be done, my darling.”
“No,” I snapped automatically, my brain rejecting the idea that my mother was somehow less than permanent.
“Yes,” she replied, her voice inescapable. She stretched her hand out weakly to me, and I saw that the cut she’d made for me was no longer bleeding, but it was still open and red when usually it would’ve sealed itself by now. “Leave your siblings be. Now, I’m very weary—help me to my bedroom. I think it’s best that I have a lie-down.”
I put my arm gingerly under her arms and around her back, nervous about how very tiny and breakable she seemed at the moment. It was a strange thing to feel that my mother was vulnerable when only a month ago she had beaten Prudence into a pulp on the floor. And even though it amused Madeline to play at being a harmless little old lady, there had always been that palpable sense of danger to her. But as I half helped, half carried her out of the sitting room and into the bedroom, I couldn’t help but remember what my sister had told me recently—that even for our mother, there was only one path that age would lead to. And Madeline was so very, very ancient.
Madeline’s sitting room was pink and frilled, with spindly antique furniture. It wasn’t my taste, but it did look like the kind of thing that a certain type of grandmotherly woman with a lot of money would create. Her bedroom, however, was full-on Versailles, with brocaded pink silk on the walls and the dominating force of a bed that could’ve easily slept four. It was massive, carved out of ash wood and completely lacquered and inlaid with mother-of-pearl to give it its own luminescence. All dressers, end tables, and even my mother’s baroque lady’s desk had been built to match. The bed’s high posters and frame were hung with old-fashioned gathered bed curtains made of pink silk and embroidered all over with silver thread, with a matching comforter, bed skirt, and at least a dozen extra-fluffy pillows. Overall, it was one of those rooms that seemed to go beyond a question of good or bad taste and just leave the viewer feeling completely overwhelmed.
I helped my mother onto the bed, where she leaned back against the pillows with a deep grunt of relief. For a moment she just breathed heavily; then she turned her head to the side and stared. Curious, I followed her gaze, and I noticed a new addition to her room. A very large portrait of four people in period clothing was resting on an easel.
“Oh, new painting?” My mother wasn’t a serious collector of art, preferring just to find pieces that worked for particular rooms, so new items usually appeared only to replace something that had broken or worn out, or as a harbinger of a complete redecoration on the horizon.
Madeline chuckled, but it was a thin, weak sound. “A very old painting, actually. One that I haven’t seen in quite some time. Look closer.”
I walked around the bed to get a better look. It was a group portrait of four people—three women, one old, one in the beginnings of middle age, and one young, with one man in about his early thirties. The gowns and sleeves were incredibly full and elaborate, with those antique necklines that fell low on the shoulder, dipped very low in front across breasts gathered together and up like a set of dumplings and made me feel nervous about a nipple-slip just looking at it, and then fell downwards in great sweeping drapes of fabric that must’ve been nightmarish to wear. The older woman sat in the middle of the painting, flanked by the middle-aged woman and the man, who both stood. Just off to the middle-aged woman’s side was the youngest woman, who was sitting on some kind of lower footstool, with a small spaniel dog resting almost bonelessly on her lap. There was a similarity in the noses and features of the sitters that suggested that they were family members, and while the old woman had iron-gray hair and the man’s hair was a darkish blond, the other two women both had waves of elaborately arranged chestnut curls. My eye was caught by the middle-aged woman—even in that kind of Vulcan-like stare that all people in older portraits always seemed to have, there was something very familiar and uncomfortable about the expression in her blue eyes.
As soon as I realized it, I felt like an idiot for not recognizing it immediately.
“Is this you?”
She smiled. “Yes, we commissioned it in 1650 from Sir Peter Lely. He was the portrait artist to Charles the First, and so much the rage that even after the king’s execution, he continued to get scads of work. One of those Dutch imports, but really quite good. Normally he would’ve just done our heads and left the rest to his workshop pupils, but he did our whole figures and the clothes, and just brought an apprentice in for the background.” Her smile widened, and a little bit of color returned to her face as she stared raptly at the painting, lost in memories from over three centuries ago. “Constance insisted on getting her favorite dog into the picture. Silly, really, since she had already had two portraits of him done, along with every other dog she owned. We practically had a whole wing of them, to say nothing of Edmund’s horse portraits. How Mother did complain, but I agreed in the end. Such a fuss over a pet whose name no one remembers now.”
“I’ve never seen this before. Was it in storage?” Until now I’d only ever seen one image of my oldest sister, who had died long before even Prudence was born. Madeline had a hand-size miniature of her that hung in her dressing room, beside matching ones of the rest of us. I knew that Prudence loathed her miniature, which had been painted at a time when her hair was stick brown and rolled into the most incredible sausage curls. Mine had been done when I was twenty-one and my acne finally under control, but Madeline had apparently instructed the artist to aspire to accuracy rather than flattery, and I was glad that I didn’t have to see it regularly.
“No, it was in England. It’s the only portrait of all four of us together. Constance died just eleven years later, and I came to America. Mother died soon after that, and it was just Edmund rattling around in that old and drafty castle. He began traveling then, and he wanted to send me most of the collection, but I didn’t like the idea of putting them onto ships—one good leak and the whole thing would’ve been at the bottom of the ocean. And then in 1830, the whole place was burned to the ground during the Swing Riots.”
“Your family’s castle?” Mother didn’t talk much about life before she’d come to America. Chivalry had told me once that he thought it was because of Constance’s premature death, and, looking at her now, I thought that he was probably right.
“Well, it was possibly a bit of a blessing—the whole thing was eleventh century and a misery to live in, but Edmund couldn’t just admit that it was far past time to pull the whole thing down and build something comfortable. It was a tragedy about the furnishings and the paintings, though. Edmund was in Russia when it happened—in those days it took almost two months for him to be notified. Fortunately this painting was on loan for a Lely retrospective, and there was one tapestry of my mother and me that was done in 1388 and that Edmund had had sent out for cleaning. It’s only representative, of course, not a true likeness, but it was a relief that it survived. After that I absolutely forbade Edmund to risk the painting to travel, and he put it on loan in a nice little museum where it would be safe.”
“But it’s here now.” I watched her closely.
“Yes.” There was a very unguarded look on her face—one of pure pleasure and delight. “It arrived late last week. Private plane, four lovely young curators fussing over it. So thoughtful of Edmund. It’s been so long since I saw my mother’s face, and Lely did a wonderful job on Constance. Really captured something of her around the eyes. Edmund sent a letter—he was thinking of coming as well, but he’s quite tied up in Brussels.”
I’d never met my uncle, and I’d never expected to, so the sound of a proposed visit surprised me. And after my last experience with European vampires, I honestly couldn’t fake any enthusiasm about the possibility. “Your brother does a lot of traveling. I thought vampires usually stayed inside their territories?”
“Yes, but Edmund is a bit of an activist. He’ll just go from one territory to the next, getting nest-mate privileges and then trying to change everyone’s mind for a decade or so before moving on.” Her happiness dimmed, replaced with an expression of annoyance. But not, I was surprised to realize, directed at me. For once.
“An activist? A vampire activist?” That was a word combination that I had honestly never expected to experience.
“It’s just like Al Gore and his silly little slide show. The topic is dull, the damage is already done, and all his work and effort isn’t helping a jot.”
“Mother, global warming is actually—”
“It’s a metaphor, darling,” she said wearily.
I let it go, and returned to the weird concept of a vampire activist. “What is his topic?”
My mother gave a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, Fortitude, but I’m utterly wrung out. Please ring the bell. Patricia will bring me a cup of tea and perhaps read to me for a bit.” Over the course of our conversation, she had seemed to perk up a little, but now she was once again looking exhausted. I apologized and did as she asked. When the house had first been built, it had a full set of the old-fashioned bell-cords that snaked down to the servants’ areas of the house and alerted them that their masters had some whims to be fulfilled. Madeline had renovated the house many times, however, and those were all gone, replaced by newer technology. In my mother’s room was a small toggle on her bedside table that she could hit and summon one of her staff—it was a bit like the button on a plane that you could push to call over a flight attendant.
I slipped out of my mother’s rooms when Patricia bustled in, all solid solicitude. I wondered briefly if Patricia would offer my mother more than just a cup of tea—at one time or another I’d seen many of my mother’s staff members with small patches of gauze on their wrists or butterfly bandages discreetly placed on their necks. It certainly wasn’t often—I knew that most of my mother’s sustenance came from the political hopefuls and powerhouses that she so carefully nurtured—but it had slowly become a more common occurrence over the last year. I’d wondered if my mother was becoming slightly lazier, but now I realized that it had been an indication of her flagging strength.
The party was still in full swing in the main hall, so I took a back staircase rather than the grand main one that swept downward in carved and gilded glory. Down a hallway where I passed staff members making their way back to the kitchen with trays of empty wineglasses and half-nibbled plates of food, I headed to the small butler’s pantry that concealed the entrance to one of the house’s nastier secrets.
A staff member was always stationed in the pantry, endlessly scrubbing and polishing the silver, and the one on duty tonight gave me a solemn nod as she unlocked the door partially hidden behind the woodwork pattern, revealing the basement staircase that, in sharp contrast to everything else in the house, was purely functional and industrial.
Until the murderous scene that my sister instigated a month ago when she tried to kill my host father and push me into full transition, the rooms at the bottom of the stairs and behind a steel door with a keypad lock had belonged to Mr. Albert. He’d been my host parents’ guardian and keeper since I’d been a small child, and I took a short moment before keying in the code that would allow me entrance to gather myself together.
The door released, and I pulled it open, entering completely transformed rooms. The main room, with its full-length one-way mirror used to observe Henry at all times, had previously been decorated like an old, comfortable sitting room. But Mr. Albert’s scuffed shelves and ancient armchairs were gone, replaced by a set of Spartan, functional furniture, with the showpiece being a long metal desk, looking like it was straining under the massive computer setup on top of it, with three screens, two towers, and a total of three battery backups daisy-chained together. I had privately dubbed this collection “Skynet.”
Sitting with his back to me, and looking steadily out the glass and into Henry’s holding area was the new keeper, Conrad Miller. Mr. Alfred had been a former wrestler and a big man, but Conrad had the kind of build and muscle mass that should’ve been illegal under the Geneva Conventions. I was a tall guy, but next to Conrad’s six-foot-five frame and easily two-hundred fifty pounds (none of it fat), I felt like a wet kitten looking at a Saint Bernard. His dark hair was trimmed into a jarhead’s buzz, and I knew that the even brown of his skin was natural, since he hadn’t left these rooms once since my mother had employed him a month ago.
“Hey, Conrad,” I said. “Are you AFK?”
Conrad didn’t even glance over at me, but as I walked closer, I could see him smile. The computer screens were covered in the saturated colors of World of Warcraft, and his character was on the center screen, as much at rest as a night elf with purple skin and greenish blue hair could get. I wasn’t sure how exactly my mother found her employees, but Chivalry had shown me Conrad’s background information, and he was pretty much a perfect fit for the job. After almost eight years in the Marines and three combat tours, Conrad had been honorably discharged. With his experience, he would’ve been great in the private security business—except for the post-traumatic stress disorder that was the remaining legacy of his service in war zones. Because of his PTSD, he couldn’t stand being in any location that he didn’t feel was secure. That included just about anywhere he would travel in private security, plus his local grocery store and most of the rooms of his own house. Madeline’s fortified bunker of a basement, with its restricted access and top-of-the-line installations, had suited him very well. A few pieces of exercise equipment and a reliable Internet connection to support his WoW habit, and he’d settled right in.
We were still in the getting-to-know-you phase, but he seemed nice enough, and despite how I sometimes teased him about multitasking with WoW, he was serious about the job.
“Do you mind waiting until Maire is out?” he asked, his eyes never wavering from the glass. “It’s safer to cover only one person at a time.”
“It’s okay. I just came down for a look, not a visit.”
I hadn’t talked to Henry since he’d killed Mr. Albert. I’d been told my entire life that my host parents were dangerous, and I’d accepted it on an intellectual level, but the sight of Henry tearing at Mr. Albert with his hands and teeth had finally forced me to realize exactly what he was capable of. That would’ve been easier if he was always the wild, vicious, ravening thing that he’d been when he attacked Mr. Albert, but the problem was that he wasn’t. The process that had made him capable of becoming a part of the vampire life cycle had twisted and warped his mind, but it hadn’t broken it. And in some horrible way, I knew that Henry loved me, which somehow made Mr. Albert’s death even worse.
But the events that had led to Mr. Albert’s death hadn’t left Henry unmarked. I looked through the window and watched the other new addition to Madeline’s staff, Maire O’Riley. Small in stature and with curling strawberry blond hair that even her no-nonsense short cut couldn’t stop from looking angelic, Maire had been a combat medic until her left leg was blown off in an IED explosion. I’d seen her use a prosthetic that mimicked what her old leg had probably looked like a few times, but whenever she was inside Henry’s enclosure, she wore a carbon fiber blade attachment designed solely for function and quick motion rather than any aesthetic sensibilities. Both she and Conrad had, as part of the interview process, been shown photographs of all of Henry’s victims, including Mr. Albert.
Seeing Maire inside the enclosure made me nervous. “Why don’t you go in when she does, Conrad?”
Conrad’s smile widened. “She says I hover and get in her way.” He didn’t break his alert observation, but he tilted his head slightly toward me. “Don’t worry about Maire. She’s tough, and she knows what she’s doing.”
Henry didn’t look dangerous anymore. Inside his clear plastic cube prison (the outsides now heavily reinforced with steel following Prudence’s attack on the original), Maire was changing Henry’s feeding tube—never a pleasant sight. In her attempt to kill him, Prudence had done severe damage, which had never healed or even closed. In the process that made him a vampire host, my mother had replaced his entire blood supply with hers, a process that was extremely difficult for a vampire and nearly universally fatal for the prospective host. Henry had survived, and my mother’s blood had fundamentally changed him down to the DNA level; among other things, it had made him far tougher and stronger than a human. Yet at the same time, it made him vulnerable, because his body was unable to make new blood or heal itself without my mother’s assistance and donation of more of her own supply. All of Henry’s wounds from his fight were neatly sutured closed, but they continually seeped fluid and required constant attention. Some of the damage to his upper body had necessitated the feeding tube, as well as a catheter, which required constant maintenance and attention from Maire. They also required Henry to remain still, which he’d been unwilling (or unable) to do, so now he spent his days and nights completely immobilized, strapped to a hospital bed. This enforced inactivity had caused the formation of bedsores, which also needed regular tending.
Until now, I’d thought that Madeline had made a deliberate decision not to make the blood transfers needed for Henry to heal. I’d assumed that she had been punishing him, much like her breaking and rebreaking of Prudence’s leg. Looking at his pitiful condition, however, and thinking about how my mother had interrupted my feeding, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it was highly possible that Madeline was currently unable to spare the blood that Henry would need to return to full, or even partial, health.
Inside the cube, Maire completed her work, gathered her tools, and left the cell, locking the newly reinforced door behind her. Conrad’s hand never wavered from his stun gun until she had entered the room where we were sitting. Then he returned the instrument to his belt and started up his game again.
I greeted Maire, who looked completely unsurprised at my presence.
“He knows you’re here. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. I paused and took a deeper breath. “No, just tell him . . . Tell him that I’m not ready yet.”
Maire gave a one-shoulder shrug and began unpacking her supply bag and pockets onto a small table. I’d seen this before—every time she left Henry’s cube, she always went through everything and checked it against a list to make sure that she’d brought back everything that she’d intended to, and that Henry hadn’t somehow been able to steal an item from her. Considering that my host mother, Grace, had died after stabbing herself a dozen times in the chest with a toothbrush that she’d managed to pocket and then sharpen to a knife’s edge, Maire’s habit was one that was likely to help keep both her and Conrad safe.
“You know,” Maire said conversationally, “my grandma used to work at the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston.”
“I actually didn’t know that,” I replied, feeling a little confused at the non sequitur.
“She worked with the big cats. One day one of the feeding cage locks got stuck, and a leopard jumped on her and scratched her up pretty badly. She got out alive, but she had some really bad scarring on her neck and arm. When I was really little, I asked her one day if she’d been mad at the leopard that did it. She said no, that the leopard was just doing what its nature made it do, and that was no reason to be mad at an animal.” She glanced up when she was finished, fixing me with her Irish green eyes to make sure that I had figured out the meaning of this conversation.
“Thank you, Maire,” I said, giving her a quick glare.
It was about as effective as glaring at a moose. “Just saying,” she said, completely undaunted.
“I’ll see you both later. Have a good night.”
As I pulled the coded door shut behind me, I could hear Conrad say, “Sleeping dogs, Maire. Why can’t you ever let them lie?”
Having no desire to talk to either of my siblings again, I slipped around the party by going out the kitchen. That put me in the direct path of Madeline’s cook, who cornered me to ask if I’d had dinner yet. I had to admit that I hadn’t. I knew that she would’ve preferred to park me in the dining room and serve a three-course meal, but after I insisted that I had a lot to do tomorrow and needed to head back to Providence, she grumbled but settled for making me a sandwich for the road and forcing me to accept a piece of cake from the party food. I finally made my escape, but got all the way to the parking lines of cars before I remembered that James had my keys, which meant turning around and going back into the house.
“When you’re just rushing around, you’ll waste more minutes than if you’d just taken your time in the first place,” James scolded me when I finally located him. It seemed my night for unsolicited advice, so I just nodded and waited for my car to be brought around from whatever hole they’d stashed it in.
I ate my sandwich on the drive home, my head full of everything that had happened today. There was plenty to brood over, and my mood was pretty low by the time I finally got into Providence. The apartment was dark when I entered, except for the weak light by the front door that Dan and I would leave on if the other person was out late, so I knew that my roommate had already gone to bed. I ate the piece of cake straight from the plastic container that it had been packed in, but I was still feeling fairly in the dumps by the time I had scraped the last forkful of frosting into my mouth. It was well after midnight, and while I had plenty of people to follow up with on Matias Kivela’s murder, they would all have to wait until a more reasonable hour.
I took a quick shower to finally get rid of the combination of dog rub and jogging sweat that I’d been carrying around since that afternoon, then brushed my teeth and took a quick stop at the toilet. I was pulling off a few sheets of toilet paper when I suddenly felt a weird bump in the roll, and I paused. A dark suspicion filled me, and I unrolled more paper quickly. There they were—two small googly eyes, glued to the toilet paper roll, staring at me.
It took me almost a full second to process what I was seeing, and then I laughed hard enough that I actually had to wipe my eyes when I was done. What was really impressive was not only that Suzume had decided to do that, but that the eyes were at least halfway down into the toilet roll, meaning that she must’ve unrolled the paper, glued on the eyes, and then rerolled everything neatly enough that she hadn’t tipped off any of the people who regularly used the apartment’s toilet. I was also impressed that she’d put all that effort into a prank that might not have even gotten to me—after all, Dan, Jaison, and even Suzume herself regularly made stopovers here.
Still snickering, I pulled the roll down and tossed it into the trash, then dug a fresh toilet roll out from under the sink and set it up. I tugged the first sheet free from its little glue adhesive, then unrolled enough to complete my business.
I paused for a second, then eyed the roll.
I had to check.
I started pulling the toilet paper again, this time not yanking off a few squares, but unrolling the whole thing.
Halfway into it, there were the googly eyes staring up at me.