“My friend, she loves…” I pause and clear my throat. “She loved your videos. She kept submitting made-up suggestions, close but not quite right, hoping to trip you up. But you never fell for it.”
“IMDb is a girl’s best friend,” Maggie says, her gaze flitting between Devon and me as if this conversation is not quite what she expected, and she’s not sure whether to relax.
And honestly, I have no idea how to proceed here either.
“Look, I don’t want to get involved in grudge matches or empire building, okay?” Maggie says suddenly. “I just want to live my life.”
“Okay,” I say slowly.
“I have a fiancé,” she says. “He’s nice. I have a very public career. A life.” She lifts her shoulders in frustration. “One I want to keep as far from this bullshit as possible.” She pauses, glancing at me. “I mean, you know.”
I frown.What does that—
“I take where I can without hurting anyone.” She grimaces. “Levi, my fiancé, had this running water feature put into our new house. He thinks I find the water sound soothing, even though it actually makes me feel like I need to pee, but it works. It’s gross, people taste better. But it does the trick.”
At least she’s honest, I guess?
“I did not choose my mother.” She hesitates. “Myothermother.”
She’s like me, then. First-generation spawn.
“And I’m tired of the threats, the constant need for vigilance. I don’t want to be recruited into someone’s army or forced into defending myself and my little bit of territory so some rando can climb the ranks.” She rolls her eyes with an exasperated noise.
“So, you’re here,” I say, just trying to follow her train of thought.
She bobs her head. “When I heard the announcement about a new Death and the rumors that she didn’t kill people left and right because she’s trying to live a normal life, I wanted to check it out.”
“Trying” is very much the operative word lately.
“I want an alliance. If I’m allied with you, the others will leave me alone. And you don’t want what they want, so everyone wins,” Maggie says.
It sounds so simple when she puts it that way.
“And I’m not alone,” Maggie adds quickly. “There are others who want the same thing.” She waves a hand in a vague gesture back toward campus. “I just volunteered to be the one to… open discussions.”
The kid clears his throat loudly. “Wevolunteered.”
Maggie rolls her eyes with a sigh. “This is Shane. He’s… persistent.” Her mouth purses in exasperation. “The others were more than happy to let me handle it.”
Shane juts his chin out in greeting. “What’s up?” Then he steps forward into the space between us, hand extended.
“Wait, don’t—” Maggie starts.
The moment I touch Shane’s hand, an electrical charge zips from his palm to mine with an audible crack and pop of light.
I suck in a breath, jerking my arm back to shake out the burning sensation in my fingers.
“Damnit, Shane, I told you, people don’t think that’s funny!” Maggie snaps. Then she turns to me with a slightly panicked expression. “I’m so sorry, he didn’t mean anything by it.”
“What?” Shane demands. “It’s just ajoke.” He grins. “Like one of those hand buzzer things.”
“You need to work on your timing, Shane, or you’ll be just acorpse,” Devon says, stepping up next to me. His tone is mild, but the cold threat tucked within is more than enough warning.
The grin falls off Shane’s face, and he ducks his head with a mumbled “Sorry.”
“His sire is Taranis,” Maggie says.
It takes me a second to place the name, longer than it should have, given what Shane just did. Taranis is associated with lightning in the myths. Feeds on electricity. Hundreds of years ago, it was just the human-generated kind (probably another source of vampire stories) but now with the advent of modern technology, Taranis—and his spawn—can probably feed on just about anything.
