A cold sweat washed over me. No pressure, right? I turned to Rossi. “Tell us everything you know about Lavius.”
Rossi unclasped his hands and sat back, crossing one leg over the other, ankle resting on knee. “If I were to tell you everything I know about Lavius, we would be in this room for years.”
Really? Work with me here, Travail.
Myra spoke up. “Narrow it down to the most pertinent details. Anything that would tell me who he has around him, where he might own property, what you think his next move might be. Why he’s chosen to bring this fight to Ordinary now.”
“He wants the book.”
“You’ve said that. Why now?”
“This is an old promise between us.”
“What promise?” Ryder asked.
“That of all the things on this earth, I will be the one to kill him.”
Silence spread out slowly as Death exhaled a long breath. It was as if Death had been waiting to hear those words for decades and more, as if he craved Lavius’s end.
“Why you?” Ryder asked.
“Because I vowed when he took what was mine, I would end him. Ben is mine. Delaney is mine…”
“…hey,” I said.
“…Ordinary is mine.” His words were dark and heavy as a gallows’ drum beat.
Granny, who had been on her feet this entire time, finally sat back down on the couch beside Jame. Her anger was softened by something else. A hunger to see Rossi follow through with that promise. Two killers who spoke the language of vengeance.
“Can you?” I asked.
Rossi’s shoulder lifted in a casual shrug. “Yes.”
Okay, so it was good to know our vampire was just as much of a badass, maybe more, than the bastard who had crossed our boundaries, killed Sven, broken Jame and Ben’s link, kidnapped Ben and bit me.
Suddenly, things were looking up.
“How?” Ryder asked.
“Brutally.”
Jame growled and so did the other weres.
Look at that. Everybody on the same page like one big happy bloodthirsty family.
“He said he wants the book. Why challenge you for it now?”
Rossi’s eyes tightened just slightly. He had an answer to that. An answer he didn’t want to share with the class.
“Your father, perhaps?” Than offered.
“Rossi’s father?” I stared at Rossi. “You have a father? Alive? Alive-ish? Why didn’t I know that?”
“I was born once,” Rossi said with an offended lift at the end of his words—almost, for a moment, the Rossi I had always known. “My father is long, long gone to dust.”
“Ah,” Than said. “I see I have misspoken. I did not mean your father, Travail. I meant your father, Delaney.”
“My father is dead,” I said.
