“Julian mentioned her,” I said.
“He did?” Celia sounded surprised.
“Just in passing,” I added quickly. “I didn’t want to pry.”
“That’s wise. The others have had some time to deal with her death, but Julian…” She paused and shook her head. I got the message. It wasn’t her place to tell me how he felt about his twin’s death.
“That’s why he was asleep,” I said to myself, and her mouth fell open. “Oh! It’s really none of my business. I shouldn’t be so nosy.”
First his bank balance, and now I was prying into the details of his sister’s death.
“I’m merely surprised he told you. He can be quite…secretive,” she said, choosing the final word carefully. “Most vampires guard their private lives.”
“And Julian?” I asked, even though I felt I knew the answer.
“He’s built a fortress around it,” she whispered, passing me some socks. “No one gets inside.”
“How did I?” I realized too late that I’d asked the question out loud.
“I hate to tell you this, but I suspect you’re only at the gates.” She tsked soothingly when my face fell. “Don’t fret. It’s further than he lets most people get.”
I sat down and pulled on the socks. Why had he shared this with me? No wonder she looked surprised. Unlike the others, Celia had to know that this was all an arrangement. She knew that he and I were practically strangers.
“Thank you,” I said.
“For?”
“Being kind,” I said with a sigh. “I don’t think I’m going to get a very warm welcome from everyone else.”
“Sebastian likes you. Not everyone in this house is your enemy.” She regarded me with a look I couldn’t quite place. Then, she bent and gathered my dress in her arms. “I’ll have this cleaned for you.”
I nodded. She left again, and I made my way back to my crossword, but I found myself too preoccupied to continue it. I’d been staring at it for five minutes when her words finally sank in. Not everyone was my enemy. That meant that some were, and I was sitting alone and unprotected. I curled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Then I stared at the door, wondering what the next vampire to walk through it would be: friend or enemy?
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
JULIAN
I hadn’t seen her move. Perhaps because I hadn’t expected it. My mother hadn’t been so riled up since her days as a suffragette. I blinked, straining to see the silver glinting at my Adam’s apple. My eyes flickered back to her. In the dimness of morning, her dilated pupils were boundless black. Yeah, I’d pissed her off alright.
If someone walked into the room, they might mistake the scene. Sabine, though much taller than most women from antiquity thanks to her vampire genes, stood a good foot below my massive frame. If she were a human woman, I could simply overpower her and confiscate the sword. But she was a vampire, and an angry vampire mother could decimate an entire city within the blink of an eye. Physically, she was as strong as I was, and she’d seen even more battlefields than me. More than one vampire female had brought me to my knees in my lifetime, but it had been centuries since my own mother brought me to them.
A slit throat wouldn’t kill me, and no doubt, she would love to put me out of commission long enough to see to Thea herself. That I couldn’t allow. I opened my mouth carefully so as not to jostle the blade, which despite its years, was still quite sharp.
Sabine hissed in warning.
“You will listen to me now. If you are past the point where reason will suffice, I will physically persuade you,” she said. Despite the anger seething from her, the sword didn’t move a fraction of an inch.
“Never spare the rod, my darling,” an amused but familiar voice boomed from the doorway.
I didn’t dare crane my neck to see who had entered, but there was no need. I knew the voice. I hoped the unexpected entrance of my father would distract her.
But her gaze, and her weapon, remained resolutely on her wayward son. “Nothing a mother cannot handle. Welcome home, my love. I wasn’t expecting you.”
It could have been two weeks or two years since he’d been here. I never asked about such private matters. My parents’ marriage was best described as volcanic. One always seemed to know when the other was on the verge of eruption and left until the ashes settled. As vampire marriage lasted longer than mortal unions, it was a matter of survival. Lesser unions had ended in bloodshed and beheadings. But as the sires of one of the oldest and wealthiest vampire bloodlines, they were committed to making it work. So far, they’d only gone to war with each other once, a couple hundred years ago. Most of the family survived. A lot of humans didn’t.
“Do I smell breakfast?” Dominic Rousseaux moved into view, tossing a worn leather jacket on the settee. I had a vivid memory of him doing the same with a battle-worn cloak and getting blood on the upholstery. Mom’s eyes narrowed as if she were sharing the same recollection.
I wasn’t quite sure what year my father was born. He’d never been particularly open about his life before he became a vampire. It was an unspoken rule amongst the original vampires, not to speak of their lives before they changed. Some people believed they didn’t remember their human lives or how they came to be the first of our kind. I just assumed it was probably a lot to keep track of. I’d only been around for nine hundred years, and I didn’t remember half of that time.
But Dominic looked like the warriors depicted in Hollywood films about Barbarians and Spartans. No one would ever mistake his towering, brutal figure for human. He looked as if he’d been hewn from marble–a larger-than-life statue, cut to mythic proportions.
“Hey, Dad,” I said stiffly. “A little help?”
But he knew better than to take anyone’s side–even his own son’s–over his wife’s.
“Your son brought home a woman,” she told him.
“That was thoughtful,” he said, looking between us. “I’m starving.”
A growl rumbled through my chest and tore free of my throat before I could stop it. The vibration from it bumped the blade, nicking my skin, but I didn’t care. Something snapped inside me, and I knew. Mother or not–vampire or not–I would kill the woman holding me before anyone laid so much as their eyes on Thea.
“He’s also in thrall,” she added.
“So I see.” Dominic joined us, flanking my other side as he took measure of the situation.
“I am not in thrall,” I bit out, wondering if it would be easier to fight them both than continue this insane conversation.
“I could hear her blood-song from the front drive,” my father said softly. “Even I wouldn’t be able to free myself from that cantatio. There’s no shame in it. It happens to all of us from time to time. Some humans are just more tempting than others. Perhaps, your mother should see to this problem of yours.”
