Stephan stared at his laptop. He was the guest. Eric was depending on him to make this relationship with the vampires work. Yangzei was a masquerada and the Dawning had its genesis with the masquerada. He had way more skin in this game than Estelle did, and it was his responsibility to be the bigger person and make sure the two of them could work together.
But fuck, man. She wasn’t telling him a thing.
Selene had harped on the value of honesty and communication, quoting every Bible verse and proverb imaginable. An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips. She had memorized the whole thing from the daily readings the slaves had been forced to endure. Stephan had blocked it out as much as possible, but it had been impossible not to absorb some of her belief in the power of openness.
“Look…” They both said it at the same time. Estelle nodded for him to go first.
Damn. He hadn’t really planned anything besides the opening. “This is a great library.”
“Right.” She tilted her head to the side, then reached behind her for a tablet that lay nestled in a nook on the wall. “This is the library catalogue. I can get one of the library pages to go through it with you.”
“No need.” He scrolled through, grateful for the distraction so he could get his thoughts in order. “I do a lot of research. Good. You’ve got human and arcane resources.” He fired up his preferred database and began to search. Estelle came up to stand behind him.
“You’re familiar with the system,” she said.
“Spent a lot of time with similar ones when I was working on my PhD.” He paused at recent arcane news reports. He started scanning, looking for missing people.
Estelle returned to the other side of the table. “You have a doctorate?”
“In International Trade.” He bookmarked an article, a vampire brother and sister missing from Maine.
“What was your focus?”
There was another, a woman missing from Vermont. Another from Saskatchewan. “Impact of the Middle Passage, broadly.” He pointed at the screen. “We definitely have a problem.”
Estelle came to read over his shoulder and he let himself enjoy the light smell of her perfume. The lilac was a strangely innocent, old-fashioned scent. “I’m tired of having nothing but problems,” she said thoughtfully. “Some solutions would be welcome.”
It had taken Stephan only a few minutes to create a list of similar disappearances from across North America. “We need to look into this.”
Estelle’s eyes were trained on the screen. “I’ll get my teams going. We can contact the families and see if there are any commonalities. It’s possible they’re legitimately attracted to the Dawning, even Jimmy.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think so.” Stephan saved the list and emailed it to her. Estelle was right and logically he knew they needed to rule that out. His gut, though, said there was more. Estelle’s brow furrowed and she bit her lower lip as she stared at her phone, the tips of her retracted fangs barely visible.
“Nor do I,” she said.
There was a long silence. Now or never. “What I was going to say earlier—” he started.
“I need you on my team, Stephan.” Estelle spoke in a voice so low he had to lean forward to hear her. “This—” she waved between them “—negativity, feeling I’m always walking on eggshell. It has to end for us to work together successfully, or at least usefully.”
The sound of the multitude sang in Stephan’s ears along with Estelle’s slow breathing. She was right. It was draining to be on edge, to never be comfortable.
She had opened her mouth to add to her point when he said what he’d been thinking for months. It was time to man up and speak some truths. “For a while, I thought there was…I thought we had the potential for something.”
Estelle regarded him warily. “We respect each other.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know what you mean, but you don’t trust me.” She held up a hand before he could reply. “Don’t deny it because I know it’s true. You think I’m a kind of puppeteer who wants to control you, or manipulate you.”
“I think you have the ability to do it.”
She snorted. “Caro has the ability to turn into me and take over my life. I trust she won’t do it because we’re friends. I have faith in her. If you can’t offer the same confidence in me, if you don’t believe I can control myself, then this is not going to work. Not colleagues, not friends, and definitely not anything more. None of it.” A knock on the door interrupted them. Estelle’s body stiffened and Stephan automatically turned, ready to move in front of her before he even looked. Whatever had disturbed Estelle that much was a threat, and he wouldn’t allow anyone to threaten his woman.
No. Not his woman, not until he thought about what she said. She was right, he knew it, but…it was hard to turn back on those old prejudices. He needed a little time.
At the door stood a tall man with the same coloring as Estelle but an obnoxious grin that made Stephan want to feed the bastard his teeth.
“Who’s that?” he asked.
Estelle waved the guy in, her dark eyes dull. “Felix. My brother.”
* * * *
What was Felix doing here? And with such perfect timing. Estelle’s gut clenched. The last time they’d seen each other it had ended up with their mother in tears and begging them to remember they were a family—but not before blaming Estelle for not being more understanding of her brother and sensitive to his needs. That was the problem. After almost a century of sibling rivalry, Felix knew how to push all of her buttons.
Plus, he was simply a detestable, selfish piece of work, and had been since they were young.
The door slid open. “Sister. You didn’t tell me you were in town. Raoul called to tell me about your friend.”
The lack of inflection in his voice was more insulting than anything verbal. Before Estelle could reply, Stephan stood up. “Stephan Daker.”
“I heard. A masquerada.” He kept his eyes on Estelle.
“As you see,” she said, keeping her cool. “We’ll see you at dinner tonight?”
“Bringing a guest? So will I. Keep the number balanced.” He leaned against the door.
“Up to you. Until tonight?” She kept the dismissal polite and turned back to Stephan. “As I was saying, the library is organized first by—”
“I hope you gave our parents advance warning of who you’re bringing? You know how they can be.”
Felix sounded honestly concerned, as if he was worried about the risk of embarrassment to her guest. She smiled happily, thrilled to have a chance to clap him back. “Wavena gave them a call.”
Her brother paled. “Queen Wavena called our parents? In person?”
She made sure to look confused. “Naturally. She wanted to make sure they knew how important my guest is. I’m surprised Maman didn’t tell you, since you see her all the time. Living at home.”
The electronic tapping of Stephan’s typing filled the room and the tablet gave a happy beep as he completed some search or another.
“Did she ask about me?” Felix demanded.
“If by ‘she’ you mean Queen Wavena, you should check with our parents.” She picked up a pen with barely concealed boredom. “I didn’t bother to ask.”
He glared at her. “Any other sister with an ounce of family feeling would have found her brother a court position already.”
That was what this about. “Yet here we are. Can I get back to work?”
He muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath and made sure to leave the glass door open behind him so Estelle had to get up and close it herself. Stephan lifted his head from the tablet.
“Older or younger?” he asked.
“Felix is ten years younger and very much the entitled baby brat.” No wonder—her parents had always fussed over Felix and treated his every whim like an inarguable command.
“He wants a place at court?”
She sat down and leaned over to see what he’d been searching online. “Desperately.” Although he was the heir to the family business, Felix was not a member of Queen Wavena’s circle. Unknown to her family, she’d asked Wavena four times already. The last time, the queen had taken her hand.
“Estelle, you must stop asking.” Wavena’s voice had been gentle but firm. “Felix is not you and he is not suited for work at court. You know why.”
Estelle hadn’t answered, but she knew exactly what Wavena was telling her. The queen admired hard work and honesty and despised shallow flattery. Felix had none of the former traits and displayed the latter in abundance, thinking himself charming and handsome enough that people should be honored to help him. Oddly, there were enough who were attracted to him, and his money, that Felix was constantly surrounded by an entourage of sycophants to whom he’d spun the story that he’d refused offers to serve at court because it was too staid and stodgy.
Still, it was a failure she didn’t like to dwell on.
“Ah.” Stephan didn’t press her further. “I assume I am the guest to your family’s meal tonight?”
She hadn’t even asked him. “I’m sorry. Do you mind?”
“Depends if I’m dinner.” He said it with a total straight face that tricked her until he broke out that devastating grin. She smiled back with relief that he wasn’t brooding over their previous, unresolved discussion. Though they’d have to address it at some time, that time was not now.
“Touché. I believe it will be my father’s famous coq au vin. His chef’s famous coq au vin, I should say.”
“Then I can’t say no.” He stared out through the glass wall. “I believe I also know who your brother’s guest will be.”
She followed his gaze to find Felix in close conversation with Raoul. Excellent. She groaned. “My mother loves Raoul.”
“Well, he’s such a charmer.”
“You don’t have to come,” said Estelle apologetically. It would be the height of bad manners to force him into this situation.
“I’ve dealt with worse than those two. I’ll be fine.” His phone buzzed and Stephan took a look, then slid the screen over to her. “Mai got back to us.”
Estelle frowned as she scrolled through the numbers and notes. “She’s suspected for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s kept track,” Estelle said. “She had this information ready. Also, she wrote a note at the bottom of the chart.”
“Give me that.” Stephan grabbed his phone back and squinted at the screen. “How can you even see font that small?” he demanded. “It looks like wriggles.”
“Vamps have good eyes. She says it’s been gradually growing and there are a significant majority who have had no prior experience with the Dawning or harbor those views.”
“All ages and genders,” Stephan said. “Fairly broad geographic range.”
“Something has to connect them.”
He nodded. “I’m going to get her to give me the occupations, family connections, clubs, and close friends.”
“I’ll do the same for vampires.”
For a moment, there was nothing but frantic typing as they both sent out orders on their phones. When she was done, Estelle looked up to see Stephan had finished at the same time.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose it’s time to get ready for dinner.”