“Yes.”
“Are you beginning to understand why your boss was so upset with you?” There was a hint of steel in Sunshine’s voice that made me flinch.
The night I’d lured the snake downtown, Sunshine had warned me that she thought something dangerous was coming and that she wanted me to be safe.
She had not been…happywhen she met up with me after learning what I’d done.
“I don’t understand yet,” I confessed. “But I’m trying. The paper has been harder to write than I expected.”
Sunshine made a noise in the back of her throat. “The task force’s expectations are practically the opposite of your slayer training, so I imagine it will take time for you to pick it apart and understand. I guess I should just be thankful you’re so diligent that you’re genuinely trying to research and learn for the sake of your paper instead of writing a fluff piece. But I’mstillupset with you, Jade, for breaking your word.”
Ooh, it is not good that she’s using my actual name instead of my nickname.
“Understood.” I bumped the door open, my senses sharpening with the cool breeze that was sweeping through the city filling the air with the musty smell of dead leaves and fresh air.
Sunshine eyed me, but her stance relaxed when she wrapped her knit scarf around her neck. “Brrr. I regret not buying a hot drink. Think the werewolves will finally swap to the task force’s winter uniform with sleeves?”
“Not unless Captain Reese makes them,” I said.
Sunshine laughed and I put on a smile as we strolled down the sidewalk. But there was a part of me that still worried—about my family, about the case of Orrin and the monsters, and especially about Considine Maledictus and his decision to sniff around Magiford.
CHAPTER
TWO
Considine
Iroamed down a luxuriously furnished hallway mulling over the unfortunate circumstances that had brought me here, to Drake Hall.
I didn’t encounter a single vampire on my prowl—which was unusual. Usually, the place was crawling with vampires—Killian Drake was the Midwest Eminence, marking him as the leader of all the vampires in the region, so he was hilariously popular.
But since I’d arrived in Magiford for my “vacation” in early September, I’d seen far less of his Drake Family vampires than I’d expected.
He must be missing at least a third of his forces—what?
I paused, turned, and stared at a framed photograph that hung from the wall.
The priceless vases, antique busts, and gold filigree wallpaper hadn’t caught my attention, but this cheap, mass-produced, black frame stuck outbecauseof its cheapness and the color photo encased within it.
It was a poorly taken photograph of a crowd of people—a number of them Drake vampires given that they were all wearing well fitted suits. It looked like the other half were wizards based on their coats and the smudgy crests emblazoned over their coat pockets.
Standing at the center of the photo was—I suspected but couldn’t know for sure due to the poor quality of the photo—Killian and a short blonde haired human woman wearing a wedding dress.
Is this his wizard, then? His One that he’s been desperately hiding from me since I arrived?
Given our long lives, love was a fleeting thing for vampires. Relationships—particularly ones in which you were supposed to be affectionate—took work and effort to maintain and opened you up to a plethora of weaknesses. When the bleak possibility of centuries upon centuries stretched out in front of you, it was often easier to just fall into something easy like bitterness or hatred.
A vampire’s One, however, was the person they declared as the being they’d love for the rest of their days. Even after the One died and months, years, and eventually centuries passed.
It wasn’t something stated easily, and often vampires died when their “One” did.
Killian, the most competent and sly of the Dracos children, would have been the last vampire I’d expect to make such an insane decision. But here we were.
I leaned closer to the photograph trying to make out the blonde’s pixilated face. She was short but her smile was big and full of all the hope only humans—wizards included—were oblivious enough to have.
“Considine.” Killian called from farther down the hallway.
I wasn’t surprised by the sudden appearance—he seemed to have a sixth sense whenever I stumbled upon anything to do with his One.
