Page 34 of Magnum, Volume 2

Brooke looks like a seven-year-old, but she’s thousands of years old, and she is terrifying.

“I’ll go with you,” Squatch said, and I met his gaze. He and Kitty are friends with the powerful, ancient Master of Alabama.

“Is that allowed?”

“Doesn’t say to come alone. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I talked to Dev a while back, about what it would take to tell Storm about my true nature, but I haven’t told them she’s put her house on the market. I figured I should wait until she actually moves in.”

He shrugged. “No sense guessing. We’ll find out when we get there.”

And now it was two days later, and the two of us were riding our bikes on a crisp November day. We stopped at the gate, and ten seconds later, it opened.

I felt the vampire’s power as we crossed onto her land, and goosebumps traveled up my spine and down my arms.

A skinny wraith of a man answered the door, and Squatch said, “Julien. It’s good to see you.”

“The Mistress is awaiting you,” Julien said, and we followed him through the house and down many, many flights of stairs, then through a maze of hallways. Eventually, he led us into a sitting room, and we were suddenly standing before Brooke, who was dressed in a pastel pink-and-purple frilly dress with matching purple shoes and a huge pink bow in her hair — and ancient eyes that sent shivers down my flesh.

She was seated in an adult-sized chair. The kind someone would curl up in to read, but she was sitting upright, so her legs were out in front of her, straight. She looked tiny in the chair, and I focused on her forehead, rather than looking into her eyes.

I showed her the gift I’d brought. Kitty had told me to wrap it in colorful, sparkly paper. Squatch had told me to put a big, fancy bow on it made from expensive ribbon. I’d done both.

“Oh, how pretty,” Brooke said, and she floated to the floor and then skipped to me. She handed the ribbon to a female wolf, and then tore into the paper to find the Dapper Barons Peppermint Schnapps inside.

“Thank you, Magnum. It’s a thoughtful gift.” She handed it off to the wolf shifter, and floated up, so she was the same height as me.

“Storm McIntyre has twenty-three million followers on YouTube.” She tilted her head to the side. “The Senatus does not wish for humans with a large audience to know of us.”

My stomach fell to my feet, and my heart felt as if it was made of concrete. Was she saying I’d never be able to tell Storm?

“I love her, ma’am. She needs to know what I am. Please, is there anything I can do to make that happen?”

“I’ve been going through your mind, but I couldn’t get inside until you passed my gate. Turtles, with all your shells and walls, it’s annoying, is what it is. I need more time in your head. I see that you know the game of backgammon. Come, let’s play.”

She easily beat me the first two games, but I was trying very hard to only think about the game, and nothing else. I was off-balance, and I didn’t like it.

I tried to forget she was reading my memories, my life, while we played, and managed to win the third game.

“Fun!” she said while Mirabelle, the wolf shifter, set the board up for a fourth game.

Partway through this game, she said, “Years ago, I knew a turtle shifter who fell in love with a cheetah. They were both men, and the relationship fascinated me. One person needed routines and schedules, and he plotted out every last detail. The other was spontaneous. Hated routines. Completely impulsive. They loved each other and made it work, and I believe both were enriched by being forced out of their preferences.”

I had no idea what to say to that, so I remained silent.

She knocked four of my pieces off the board and said, “You and your Storm both thrive on routines and details.”

“We do, ma’am.”

“Are you so sure she’ll accept the supernatural without it breaking something in her mind?”

“I don’t know,” I told her, because lying would be stupid after the tiny vampire had been all through my memories and thoughts. “She’s open-minded with new data, and accepts things that have proof, even if she doesn’t like it.” I sighed. “But I was asking for Dev’s help in case she can’t handle it. In case we need to make her forget what I tell her.”

Technically, it’s legal to do the binding ceremony without a vampire overseeing it, but if the person doesn’t follow through correctly so the binding properly locks in, you have to either kill them, enslave them so they don’t have an opportunity to tell anyone, or sequester them somehow until you can pay a vampire to wipe their memories after the fact — and the human will often lose more than the one memory if a vampire has to come in later to clean up.

“You understand Dev would be pulling on my powers to make her forget, yes?”

“I do, ma’am.”