“A hunter’s mentality would burn us all in our beds before allowing another night of existence,” Roger said.
“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Lucille said smugly. “However did you convince your little Ezra clone to be your pet?”
“He’s far from a duplicate,” Takashi said. His tone was diplomatic, but he had a stillness in his manner that demanded an end to the discussion of Zack.
Which Roger embraced. If he had been alone with Takashi and Candide, he wouldn’t have minded talking about him. Dempsey and Lucille weren’t in his heart and shouldn’t be given free access to his feelings. “The practice of the gray bands will die with Seamus and Anton. In addition to being cruel, they could be interpreted as a breach of the Chicago Pact. Their existence puts our standing with other supernatural powerhouses at risk.”
“I completely concur,” Candide replied. “I do have a few ideas of what you could do to win the coven’s heart.”
Roger motioned to the nearest empty seats. “I reached out because I wanted to hear them.”
And though they settled in and began to discuss new paths for the coven, Roger couldn’t help wondering how many might hold the same anger in their hearts that Dmitri did. Each one of them carried wounds too deep for him to trace their entirety.
He pushed that aside. He had to lead, and a leader moved forward. The past would need to become nothing more than a memory, and Seamus needed to become less than that.
CHAPTER 22
The night at the Chateau had been boring as hell, but it’d been exactly the kind of shit Reed had been preparing Zack for, so Zack hadn’t been surprised that he wound up talking about banal crap like color schemes and attire. The other two head pets, who belonged with Dempsey and Lucille, had eventually joined Zack and Mara’s conversation. Throughout the evening, Zack watched her and how others reacted to her. He built a hypothesis.
And the evidence began to pile up, especially as all of them, vampires and pets, eventually went down into the general areas of the Chateau and spent time with the other coven members. While the vampires carried on pretend niceties and played their mind games, Mara was on the move. She was subtle, never hurried but never in the same place for longer than she had to be. Following her around the Chateau would’ve been too obvious, but Zack kept an eye out for her. She escorted donors who had been bled out of rooms and into the company of a brown-collared employee who saw them off to the caretaker. She spent time with a nervous pet who was struggling not to cry. All with grace and command.
Vincent Talmadge wasn’t the head pet of the GLC. Mara was.
That wasn’t how it should be, and Dryden’s dismissive attitude about Vincent launched a series of questions. Why shouldn’t Zack worry about his cruel prank? Why did Mara treat Zack like he mattered but didn’t care about Vincent? Were they only pretending to get along with Zack?
Zack managed to get some sleep, but he was up by noon. With hours to kill, he tucked into the suite’s office with his notebooks and laptop and settled in to research. First, he updated his notes and journal with what he’d overheard and experienced over the last week. He’d put down bits here and there, but he hadn’t taken the time for a full inventory of what he’d learned. Doing that ate up valuable time, but the gained knowledge might be useful. He should’ve been writing down more instead of getting caught up in life.
With his notes in order, Zack flipped through to what he’d already learned about his current nemesis.
Vincent Talmadge was a little over eighteen years old, though his social media profiles had him as Seamus’s pet almost three years ago. He never talked about family, and he rarely mentioned his friends. His posts were almost entirely about this party or that, showing off how good he looked in his outfits, and basically creating a fiction of how wonderful his life as Seamus’s head pet was.
The best information would be on Night Deets, so Zack hopped onto his computer and rooted around the website. He ignored the dozens of notifications. People might’ve been wishing him a happy birthday, but he didn’t need the sea of crap that was inevitably piling up in his inbox. He went back as far as he could in Vincent’s profile.
In an early pic, nearly three years old, Vincent was wearing a red collar and was sitting on another teen’s lap. The teen had on a black collar. Zack zoomed in and spotted hints of a crowned serpent on the crest tag. Seamus’s head pet when Vincent hadjoined the collection. Luckily, the guy was tagged, so Zack scooted over to that profile.
The guy hadn’t aged in between. In his bio info, he had Marcus listed as his sire. His undead life didn’t seem to be as glamorous as his life while he was Seamus’s pet, and he had far fewer posts and updates. But his Night Deets profile went back six years, so Zack chased down the early posts and discovered another name. Another link in the chain.
The most recent post was a memorial message from a guy named Arturo, but other than that, there hadn’t been anything for the last six years because that teen was dead.
Zack had been so focused on the vampires that he’d only looked at the mortals in relation to them. But as he continued hunting the truth sickening his stomach, he knew he’d learned something horrible.
He wouldn’t have to worry about Vincent because Vincent would be dead within six months. Chances were slim that he’d get turned into a vampire. While Night Deets only went back about sixteen years, Zack couldn’t find another of Seamus’s head pets that had been turned instead of dearly departed.
The office door swung open slowly. Zack shut his laptop and brought his attention out of his notes and his own head as Takashi came into the room.
“Researching on your birthday? Don’t you ever take a break?” Takashi asked.
“I, uh, this is actually what I normally end up doing for my birthday.” Zack hurried to close his notebooks. If he kept moving, he might avoid the slight shake that was threatening to overtake his hand.
“What’s happened?” Takashi said.
So much for trying to play it cool.Zack sighed and sat back in his chair. “Reality.”
“How do you mean?”
“Look, IknowSeamus is a bastard.” Zack leaned forward again and gestured across the desk at his half dozen notebooks. “This is a trail of his destruction. I know what Roger meant when he said Seamus demonstrated his ‘authority.’ And it probably wasn’t the only time he was raped. And he’s not the only one Seamus hurt like that. And that’s just one way he’s inflicting trauma on others. He strangles every room he walks into.”
“All of which you had warning for.” Takashi neared Zack and leaned his butt against the desk in order to face him. “Where is reality kicking in?”
