“What are you going to do about your giantess?” the French vampire asked without missing a beat.
“Find out her name.”
“And then?”
“Begin swearing oaths, I suppose.”
“I can guarantee you will never be bored, my friend.”
Kendrick turned his head. “With what?”
“Setting the Ossuary to rights,” Etienne said with studied innocence. “What else?”
He would never be bored watching Miss Dryden’s face. He wanted to watch the emotions play over her features. He wanted to know what she looked like when she smiled.
“Ask your mystery woman her thoughts about that.” Etienne grinned. “If she wants to help, Kendrick, let her. You could use more allies. I can verify her latest note, track down this Horace person. Just think about it,” he coaxed.
Kendrick had a feeling he would be doing little else.
ChapterTen
“Iwant your opinion on this house I have inherited,” Kendrick told Dominic the next night. He had arrived on his friend’s doorstep a half hour after dusk. “I could find the tunnel entrance, but I’d like to see it from the street as well.”
“I know where it is,” Dominic said. “But we’ll need keys to avoid looking like housebreakers to humans.”
“Who would have the keys, if all Rupert’s cronies are dead or fled?”
“Not all,” Dominic said, giving him an odd look. “There is Joseph.”
“I wouldn’t describe him as a crony,” Kendrick said, thinking of the silent man who had alerted him to the onset of madness in a vampire.
“Perhaps not,” Dominic murmured.
“Where would we find him?”
The dingy chop house teemed with clerks and laborers eating bread and meat after a long day. Men sat elbow to elbow at long tables, putting away food as efficiently as possible. Kendrick spotted Joseph towards the back, staring into the middle distance with a tankard in front of him.
Kendrick weaved through the crowd and stopped in front of the table. “What are you doing here, Joseph?” Kendrick asked conversationally, doffing his baldric and swinging a leg over the bench to sit.
The human masticating his bread beside Joseph stared at the sword Kendrick rested on the table. He lifted his head and opened his mouth.
Kendrick caught his eye and shook his head.
The man blinked and looked down, sliding farther away. Dominic silently sat in the open space.
Joseph blinked, focusing on Kendrick. “I’m listening,” he murmured at a pitch only the vampires would be able to hear in the cacophony. “The petty squabbles, the earnest conversations, the bad jokes… They make me remember being alive.”
“Good,” Kendrick said. “Those who forget go mad. Have you heard of any more madness incidents?”
“No, thankfully,” Joseph said. “These last few years, there have been far more than usual.”
Kendrick leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Do you know who would have the keys to Rupert’s house?”
Joseph shot him a long look. Finally, he said, “I have them, Master.”
The word churned in Kendrick’s gut. “Not ‘Master.’ I don’t choose that title.”
“What, then, if not Draugodrottin?” Joseph asked quietly.
