Midnight's Emissary Read online

  She didn’t have to voice what would happen if I decided to miss it. I had a feeling her retribution would be nasty and very painful.

  I didn’t answer, turning back to the door.

  “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a cocktail party tomorrow night. You should come.”

  Yeah, I’d clear my schedule. I had no intention of spending any more time with these people. If I never saw them again, I would count it a blessing.

  I walked out the door without answering. Aiden paced beside me, one hand on my back.

  I waited until we’d traveled far enough and had placed several hallways between us and them before I staggered away from Aiden’s stabilizing hand and let myself sag against the wall.

  My body trembled uncontrollably now that the danger had passed. I let myself have that freak out. I’d held steady in the moment, but now I needed to process.

  That woman could have crushed me like a bug. It would have taken less than a thought to destroy me. And they wondered why I wanted nothing to do with the lot of them. I didn’t like being scared and that seemed to be a common theme when I ran into a vampire.

  Aiden waited patiently until I stopped shaking, seeming to understand how important it was to let me have that.

  When I had pulled myself mostly back together, I said, “What the fuck was that?”

  “That was Elinor.”

  “I got that,” I snapped. “Do you people just go around torturing others for the hell of it?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Some of us. If we think we can get away with it.”

  “More and more, I am grateful for this sorcerer’s mark,” I muttered.

  “You would have avoided what just happened if you belonged to a clan,” he said nonchalantly. “You would be protected.”

  “Except from whoever held my leash.”

  He gave a head tilt, conceding my point.

  Thought so.

  “Is that so much worse than now? Any vampire more powerful than you can take what they want from you and you can’t stop them.”

  I had no answer for him. To me it was worse, but I doubted he would agree.

  “Last time someone tried to take me into a clan, it didn’t work out too well.” I gave him a meaningful look. He should know; he’d been the one to try to establish the connection. That connection had nearly killed me and done some damage to him.

  His lips twisted in thought. “I’ve been thinking about that. The connection should work if we did one of the older bonds.”

  I’d pass on that. I didn’t want to risk my life on something that might work. Especially when I didn’t really want to be claimed.

  “Did Liam really send you?” I asked.

  His face went carefully blank.

  “He didn’t, did he?”

  “I’m sure he would have if he knew you were going to happen on one of the applicant’s.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. I’d been thinking.

  Liam was the sort to orchestrate that whole scenario to help motivate me to get to work on locating the descendants. It was diabolical, but Liam struck me as someone who thought and strategized on several levels.

  “You know where he is?” I asked.

  “He’s probably in one of the back rooms working on plans for the selection.”

  Did I really want to find him? Sir Grumpy Pants was probably going to give me a bunch of orders that I had no intention of following.

  I looked Aiden over. He didn’t look like he was just going to let me walk away.

  “Don’t suppose you could pretend you didn’t see me?”

  He smirked. “Nope.”

  I thought so.

  “We’d better get started on tracking Sir Grumpsalot down then.”

  Aiden gave me an appreciative smile. “Accurate, but I dare you to call him that to his face.”

  Not in this lifetime. Maybe on the phone when we had a few land masses between the two of us, but not when he had a chance of making me pay for my snarkiness.

  Chapter Six

  Liam turned out to be easy to find. He was in the first place we looked, giving a briefing to three very dangerous looking men. Aiden and I waited just inside the door as he finished up.

  The men looked me over as they filed past us. They were all tall and had the look of soldiers. Fanged soldiers capable of tearing your head off with their bare hands.

  Their eyes filled with humor as they took me in, and they shared a look. It made me curious about what they’d heard.

  “Aileen. Come.”

  I couldn’t help looking like I’d just bitten into something sour.

  “Woof, woof,” I muttered under my breath.

  “I heard that,” he said, not looking at me.

  Louder, I said, “You were supposed to.”

  “She had a run in with Elinor,” Aiden interjected.

  “Did she?”

  “Elinor was in rare form. When I walked in, she was trying to interrogate your little bird.”

  I gave Aiden a dark look that said I’d appreciate it if would keep his mouth shut about things that didn’t concern him. His look responded that it did concern him. Also that he just liked messing with me.

  I don’t know what I’d done to draw his interest, but I wished I could undo it.

  “Elinor was surprised at how resilient the birdy was. She wasn’t expecting her to resist the fear once, let alone twice,” Aiden continued.

  “Did she use full force?”

  “Felt like it, but only Elinor knows.”

  They both looked at me with considering expressions.

  “You’re just full of surprises,” Liam said. He sounded like he was mentally reevaluating my place in the order of things.

  I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

  “What did you call me here for?” I asked, tired of them staring at me like they were trying to figure out what made me tick.

  “I wanted to go over your plans for the investigation.” He leaned back on the table and folded his arms across his chest.

  He was an ass, but a good looking one. The woman in me took a minute to admire the way his shirt stretched nicely over his muscles.

  I gave Aiden, who walked to the table and poured a glass of water, a quick glance. He didn’t look like he had any intention of leaving, and Liam hadn’t made any effort to usher him out.

  “He knows,” Liam said, confirming what I was beginning to suspect.

  That surprised me. Aiden didn’t strike me as the sort to take interest in these kinds of political maneuverings.

  “It’s in his best interest that the wrong person isn’t put in power.”

  Aiden toasted me with his water and took a sip.

  Vampires. This was one thing the books got right. It seemed like they couldn’t get enough of the Machiavellian politics. Not me. I was too strait forward, with no patience for this type of thing. I wanted my part done so I could go back to my simple job and simple life.

  “Has she found anything yet?” Aiden asked.

  “Of course not. I’m not a miracle worker. I got this job tonight. I haven’t even had a chance to get in touch with my contacts, let alone find anything.” Not strictly true since I knew Thomas sired me. I kept that thought very quiet as Aiden was a mind reader. A powerful one.

  Aiden glance at Liam. “I don’t have to tell you what’s at stake here if she fails.”

  How about telling me what’s at stake? And not talking about me like I’m not even in the room.

  “I am well aware,” Liam said.

  “You’re all in agreement that I need to make progress,” I said. “Instead of calling me here for a pointless conversation, how about next time you let me do my job and stop getting in the way?”

  Liam stared at me, his eyes intense, as if he was trying to see to the very core of my being.

  “Why is it that I sense you’re hiding something?” he asked.

  Aiden’s gaze fastened on me and suddenly it was like I was a bunny in front of two ap
ex predators. It was not a comforting feeling.

  How to play this? The crux of the matter was that I was hiding something. Something big. That something would solve all of their problems. It was also something I would prefer to keep under wraps until I knew the lay of the land a little better. Once that bell was rung it would be impossible to unring it.

  From the statements both Liam and Thomas had made about my sorcerer’s mark, it seemed that it wasn’t the full protection I had thought. I had to make myself seem important enough to keep alive and happy but not so important that they would feel I was better off under the clan’s watchful eyes.

  Worse, I suspected if Thomas found out he could turn little ole me into a vampire, he might get it into his head that he wanted other ankle biters running around. What better way to test his new found ability to sire vampires than by using those who share genetic material with me? Like my sister. Or her daughter.

  I needed to pacify them enough that Aiden didn’t try to take a little peek inside my mind. I could keep him out with my forest visualization defense for now, but I didn’t know if that’d hold up if he put in a concentrated effort.

  “How would I have had the time to find anything to hide?” I asked. “I’d just begun visiting some of my contacts when you called me in.”

  Lucky for me, I counted Dahlia as one of my contacts so I wasn’t lying. Entirely.

  His eyes narrowed. I kept myself loose and relaxed and didn’t go overboard with keeping eye contact, but I didn’t avoid his gaze entirely either.

  He seemed to buy it when he reached for a sheet of paper on the table.

  “I’ve added a few names to the list of witches and other spooks that might have had a hand in the hex. We’ll visit the people on this list to see if any might be involved in this.”

  I shook my head before he finished speaking. “Nope. Absolutely not. We are not working together.”

  He got that pissed off look that said he found me very trying. “We are.”

  “We aren’t.” I held up a hand to forestall the storm I could see brewing. “You came to me because you needed someone the witches and the rest of the community didn’t fear. Someone they could talk to without thinking they’re going to be drained of blood at the end of it. That someone is not you. How is it going to look if I show up with the big bad enforcer dogging my every step? You think they’re going to talk? Because I sure don’t.”

  Aiden snorted. “I like her.”

  “Gee. Guess I can die happy,” I said in a dry tone.

  I looked back at Liam who appeared none too happy with the interruption.

  “You came to me for a reason. Trying to back pedal now is only going to be more suspicious to these supposed enemies.”

  His face was reserved as he studied me. I tried to project as capable a look as I could dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.

  “Fine. You have two days. If you’ve shown no progress at the end of that time, I’m stepping in and you’ll just have to figure out a way to make this work with the big bad enforcer.” He gave me the smile of a tiger. The one that said he was on to me but was willing to play with his food for a little while before gulping it down.

  His smile did nothing for my peace of mind.

  Two days wasn’t a lot of time, but I’d take it. I just needed to figure something out. No way was I letting someone else fall into Thomas’s clutches if I could help it.

  The hell of it was, I wasn’t seeing a lot of options.

  Elinor struck me as one of those who didn’t need absolute power to be absolutely corrupted. If the rest of the applicants were anything like her, it would be like choosing your shade of evil.

  “I’ll just be on my way.” My smile was more of a baring of teeth than an indication of happiness.

  Liam’s voice was silky and smooth. “Aileen. I know you’re hiding something. I will get to the bottom of it before this is over.”

  My gaze shot between the two of them as my lips quirked up. “You’re welcome to try.”

  Yeah, it wasn’t smart bearding the dragon in his den, but sometimes you had to take a stand, if only to say you weren’t as tasty as you looked.

  His laugh was husky when it came and his eyes half-lidded as he watched me turn and leave.

  So soft that I might have imagined it, he said, “I look forward to the hunt.”

  * * *

  After the visit to the club, I needed a shower and some comfortable clothes to wash away the stench of fear and stress. I didn’t see much point in visiting any of the names on Liam’s list, not without doing some research first.

  It would also give me a chance to see what I could dig up on Thomas’s descendants.

  Showered, fed and in a loose pair of capri pajama pants and another oversized top, I settled onto the couch with my computer and the file Liam and Thomas had given me. I set a notepad next to it and logged on to my computer.

  The problem for me was where to start.

  Typing in ‘researching family history’ led me to a ton of sites that touted being able to do the search for you. The problem was that I was starting at the top of the tree and trying to work my way down. Most of these sites worked the opposite way.

  Thomas had lost track of his descendants back in the early days of the city when it was first being settled in the 1800’s. It looked like he’d tracked them for over a hundred years prior to that. All the way back to before they’d left Europe for this country. From what I could make out in the chicken scratch handwriting on the notes, a Thomas Bennet and his wife, Martha Bennet, bought five lots in what was now the west side of Columbus. From a small painting included in the file, this Thomas Bennet was not my sire, though he looked enough like him that I could tell they were related. I wondered how old my sire was. Older than two hundred, that was for sure.

  It looked like the Bennet family had a run of bad luck in that century with many of them dying under suspicious circumstances. Two of their children died before hitting their double digits. The cause of death in the obituaries was listed as unknown.

  The oldest son married but was murdered shortly after the wedding. Lucky for him he left a widow behind who bore him a son six months later. None of the other children married or left behind children.

  After hours spent researching, I sat back. It almost felt like this family was targeted from the get go. Like someone was systematically wiping them out of existence. Nearly every member was murdered or died under suspicious circumstances, the exceptions being those who married into the family.

  I traced their history all the way to 1913 when the family and its descendants disappeared. A quick search found that was the year of the great flood. Pretty much all of Columbus and Ohio, and parts of Indiana, were underwater. I remembered reading about that in a history class in high school. It looked like the flood claimed over four hundred lives with ninety six of them in Columbus alone.

  I saw a couple of Thomas and Martha’s grandchildren’s names listed as deceased, but that didn’t mean anything. Records were notoriously bad back then. If his descendants suspected they were being hunted, they might have taken the confusion as an opportunity to disappear while letting the folks back home think they perished.

  I leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. If I was a vampire and had placed a hex on my competition and knew that only a descendant could break that hex, I would have made damn sure there were no little rug rats left to ruin my plans.

  But why take so long to systematically murder all of the direct line? Why not just do it in one go? Pay someone to burn their house down.

  Maybe they needed to make their movements undetectable. Hide what they were doing until the hex was firmly in place so their victim couldn’t figure out a way to reverse it. My limited knowledge of hexes said they took time to set. That for a brief window its victim could reverse the hex if they found a skilled enough practitioner.

  That might explain things a little more. It would definitely explain why this hunt took place over decades rath
er than months. A vampire, or something similarly long lived, would have had that kind of time and patience to pull this off.

  This made my task more difficult. If that family figured out something was hunting them, they wouldn’t have made it easy to be found again. They probably covered their tracks and covered them well to avoid their hunter.

  It would probably be easier figuring out the witch or spook who had performed the hex. It would also make me feel less guilty should this go sideways and a descendant was found because of something I did. Thomas seemed desperate to me. If trying to turn one of them would break the hex, he’d probably turn them and not care one bit if it upended their entire world. Or worse, he tried to turn them and ended up killing them by accident as it seemed he’d done to others he turned. I didn’t want to be responsible for that.

  Either way, this was as far as I could go at the moment with this line of research. Time to switch over to the spooks.

  Finding information on the spooks was surprisingly easy. Especially any of the ones who tried to integrate into the normal world. Seemed even witches had a use for social media.

  It took no time at all to cross off three names since the owners were dead. I found mention of them using a simple search that uncovered their obituaries. Now, they could have laid the hex but that wouldn’t help us at all. We needed a live witch or spook to fix what got broke, which meant I was going under the assumption that person was still alive.

  One of the names had since moved out west and another had moved to Russia according to their activity on social media. I moved both of those to a lower priority. I didn’t think I had enough time to go all the way to Russia to question a witch.

  Four of the names had no ties to the witch community, which I assumed meant they were some type of spook incapable of masquerading as human. I’d have to reach out to Dahlia or one of my other contacts to see if they knew where I could find those four.

  I was betting the rest of the names belonged to one of the covens in town. Unfortunately I had no way of knowing which.