Bitten
Alexander Sterling understood he’d made a mistake. Ironically, what told him he’d made his mistake wasn’t the first punch that landed against his jaw with enough force to dislocate the joint, Nor the second punch that resulted in the blood pooling on the already sticky club floor, inches from his face.
It was the fact that his boss, Nicodemus Hargreaves, the vampire kingpin of New Orleans, went to kick him while he was down that told Alex he’d fucked up.
“Oh my god, Nic!”
With Alex’s head spinning, it was hard to match the voice to the person, but he recognized Valeria’s steel-capped stiletto boots clearly enough as she and two other sets of shoes scrambled to separate Nicodemus from Alex’s still addled form.
Shaking his head offered no clarity. Instead, the action spattered more blood on the floor and caused a sharp pain to radiate from his displaced jaw. But with three of his fellow vampires pulling Nicodemus off of him, Alex didn’t lose much for making the miscalculation.
“Get up!” Nicodemus’ usually crisp voice snarled the command. His clean British accent was almost toxic as he lunged against his captors and shouted: “Get the fuck up you fucking gobshite!”
The command rattled around in Alex’s head, but it wasn’t the reason he stood. He stood because if the vampire being held back broke loose while he was still on the ground, he’d be dead before the puddle of blood under him could grow bigger.
Once on his feet, Alex grabbed his jaw in both hands and winced as the mandible popped back into its socket. Another set of hands grabbed at Alex’s shoulders, steadying him as the discomfort caused his vision and his body to sway on the spot.
When his vision cleared, he turned to face his boss. Like all caucasian vampires, Nicodemus Hargreaves was blond, tall, and solidly built. So it was lucky that Alex, being a vampire himself, was equally tall and well built. It was also lucky that the pair of blond individuals who had each grappled one of Nicodemus’s arms around his back were also vampires.
On one side, Valeria had widened her stance to make up for what she lacked in width compared to the male she held back. On the other side, her partner, Rebel, had wrangled Nicodemus’s dominant arm into a sharp pin that Alex knew from experience would cut off the sensation to Nicodemus’ hand.
Even that didn’t make Alex feel better, given the savage rage that threw itself over Nicodemus like a blanket.
Next time, Alex, read the bastard’s mood before you make an offhand joke.
Alex held up his hands in surrender, mindful of the blood that trickled out of his nose and onto his black crewneck. To be phased by his own blood would be seen as a sign of weakness, and even if there was a part of Alex that was terrified his boss was going to break free from the vampires holding him back, he would not let himself be seen as weak prey.
Especially not by the man who was supposed to be his best friend.
Gesturing a soothing motion with his hands, Alex half tilted his head to further his gesture of surrender. “Nic—”
“Don’t you fucking ‘Nic’ me! You’re lucky I don’t gut you where you stand you filthy piece of—”
“Hey! What the hell is going on?”
Cold, bitterly cold, like the frost of a deep winter, that voice cut through the white noise of snarling vampires, the red haze of blood, and the churning fires of animosity that pulsed through the room. Its question seemed to throw open invisible doors and windows, to remind the group of vampires that the room they occupied was spacious and empty, when moments ago it might have been a cardboard box jammed into a dark corner of hell. A cardboard box inside of which one feral predator and four much smaller predators competed for space and breath and blood.
Alex didn’t dare look away from the predator who ruled the others, but the predator looked away from him. Those mad blue eyes of his snapped across the wide, empty dance floor of the White Witch nightclub, toward the front doors where the speaker stood.
Hard heeled boots echoed across a too-quiet space as the woman to whom that voice belonged crossed the distance from the door to the crowd of vampires.
“Well?” The sound of paper bags and a jingle of keys as they were thrown somewhere, and from Alex’s peripheral, a slight, dark haired and waifish woman stepped into view.
Tawny eyes set in a face almost like a porcelain doll’s glanced from Alex to Nicodemus and back. “Does someone want to explain to me why my husband is beating the shit out of his best friend? Or do I have to pull the truth from someone with magic?”
Perhaps the words were just a threat, all hot air and no substance, but the idea sent a strange shiver through the whole room, banking tempers and pouring cold water on the embers of conflict.
Daniella Lanoue-Hargreaves was not a vampire. But the question that now hung suspended in their midst was a vivid reminder that sometimes vampires were not the most frightening thing you could meet in the dark.
Looking almost feral herself, with her long hair in a dark tangle down her back and her bright eyes lined thick with black kohl, the necromancer pinned her attention on Nicodemus, arching a single, elegant eyebrow. And her voice was measured by polite inquiry as she asked almost too sweetly, “Well, Neon?”
If anyone else called Nicodemus Hargreaves by his middle name, they’d have found themselves on the floor almost as fast as Alex had. But at the sound of his human wife’s voice, Nicodemus’ gaze softened and his shoulders relaxed.
“It’s nothing, Nell. Just a bit of a spat between friends.”
Daniella’s eyes drifted to the blood on the floor, followed the splattering trail to Alex’s feet and then slipped up and over the mess that covered Alex’s shirt. She was looking at his face, but Alex didn’t have to be a vampire to know that the witch’s attention was on the blood still oozing out of Alex’s left nostril.
“Uh-huh.” She turned her full attention onto her husband. “Whatever has happened here needs to be resolved. You have about seven minutes to take a deep breath and work out your temper, pal, because Thalia and Bell are on their way here to drop off our niece.”
Nicodemus straightened up, his azure eyes clearing as something in his brain seemed to reset. “It’s Wednesday. Why are we on Cora-Watch?”
“Because Thalia and Bellamy are allowed to celebrate their thirteen-year anniversary without their eleven year old daughter being a third wheel is why.” A nail shaped more like a talon than a human fingernail prodded Nicodemus sharply in his chest. “And she asked to come see us because we’re the cool aunt and uncle.”
“Are we?”
“I’m cool,” Daniella gestured to herself. Then she waved her hand dismissively at Nicodemus. “You’re old.”
Fangs that had promised Alex violence flashed in a very different manner as Nicodemus smiled at his wife. “Right. Well you know what they say about age, pet.” He shrugged off Valeria and Rebel who both carefully removed themselves from Nicodemus’ path as Daniella made her way to the bar.
“It’s not important unless you’re cheese?”
Whatever response he had been expecting, the response his wife gave stopped him short. “And wine,” he said, his brain recalibrating a second time in as many minutes. “Age is important if you’re a wine.”
“More like whining.” The woman flashed the vampire a smile like it didn’t bother her that she’d walked in on him nearly killing Alex. And Nicodemus grinned at the woman like he had no memory of the fight that had just transpired. “So how long do we have the terror for?”
“Just tonight. They’ll collect her tomorrow at the big Thanksgiving meal we’re all having at the house. Which reminds me, I’ve got a few things that I need to discuss with you, husband-mine.”
And Alex thought that was it. The tension in Nicodemus’ body had gone. His world had become the shape of a slender, doll-like woman, and the events that had transpired before she walked in were now either entirely forgotten or water under the bridge.
Until, almost as an afterthought, Daniella stopped and turned back to him. “By the way, Alex, you know the rule: someone bleeds, I get dibs on it.” She gestured to her own nose and then the mess on the floor. “Use the unbleached paper towels. Fold them neatly and put them in a plastic bag. Make sure you label them. I want to know who’s blood I’m using the next time my craft calls for it.”
Alex hated the idea of Daniella having samples of his blood almost as much as he hated the idea of having to square off with Nicodemus. Almost.
But cleaning the blood off the floor was a solid excuse to keep him away from Nicodemus until the other vampire was well and truly calm. Not for his sake, Alex realized, as Daniella put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and drew his attention back to whatever mundane thing she had bought from the store. Because it wasn’t a witch walking the path of necromancy who studied his boss as he sorted through bags of cocktail ingredients for the bar. It was the other version of the woman.
A woman who could summon whatever she desired from beyond the veil was a scary creature. But a woman who practiced hedgecraft; who straddled the line between life and death; who knew what it was to slip beyond the veil; who held souls in her hands and possessed the power to shred them like paper or take a shredded soul and mend it into wholeness again…
A woman who could bring the soul of a dead vampire back to his impossibly damaged body and convince it to stay even when the body hadn’t been strong enough to house it?
That was something that made the witch possibly scarier than her psychotic husband.
It was the hedgewitch, not the necromancer, who studied Nicodemus now, and because of that, Alex took the way out that she offered him with as much grace as he could muster. So he nodded his acceptance, and turned away from the witch and the murderous psycho that was his boss to carry out his sentence.
He breathed a long, low sigh of relief as the vampire who had helped him up handed him a wad of brown paper towels.
“Thanks, Andy.”
“Oh, don’t thank me.” Andromeda took a step back and shoved her hands into her pockets. Wiry and looking like she ran on electricity and jet fuel, the woman’s smile was borderline rabid. “I’ve seen Nic lose his temper a fair few times over the decades, mate, but I’ve never seen him go quite so savage on you before. What the hell did you say to him?”
Wiping his nose with the first paper towel, Alex glanced back to their boss. Looking at him now, you’d never guess that thirty seconds ago, he’d been on his way to ending Alex’s life. And yet, the male was placid and content as he draped an arm over the witch’s shoulder.
“He’s been pissy all day,” Alex muttered unhappily as he knelt and laid a paper towel over the sticky puddle on the floor. “I confronted him about it.”
“Guess that conversation didn’t exactly go to plan.” Valeria hovered somewhere over Alex’s shoulder, her voice low as she too watched Nicodemus and Daniella go through groceries.
Wrapped in their own world, if the owners of the White Witch were aware of the small group that had convened around Alex as he mopped his own blood off the floor, they gave no hints. Instead, Daniella gathered up a few bags, handed them to Nicodemus, and pushed him toward the front door.
“I misjudged the kind of pissy he was feeling. I swerved left expecting him to swerve the same and he clotheslined me instead. Anyone got a baggie to put these in?” He held up his bloodied paper towels, and he was not surprised when none of the vampires hovering over him bothered to move.
“Then you’re a dumb cunt,” Rebel said with a grim smile. “Mind you, you’re not wrong mate. Boss has been touchy all damn day.” Rebel ran a hand across the shorter hair at the back of his head. “Fuckin’ thought it would be me to get into it with him, though.”
“Usually is you,” Andromeda pipped sweetly. Her tone had Alex bracing. In a moment, she would tell Rebel to go put a dollar in the swear jar behind the bar. And that would start an argument. And frankly, his head hurt too much to want to be the adult in the situation if that happened.
But Valeria said, “Frankly, I don’t blame him for being touchy, given the afternoon he’s probably had.”
Andromeda might look like a Victorian street urchin who’d gone for a roll in cocaine, but Valeria, with her sleek, silver blond hair, her vibrant green eyes, and her dulcet southern drawl, was the sort of woman who made it easy to understand why vampire women were called queens. Now standing with her arms crossed in a way that emphasized the soft shape of her chest and the delicate curve of her hips, the vampire queen licked her fangs behind her teeth and eyed the door on the far side of the club where Daniella and Nicodemus had disappeared.
“Is something going on that we should know about?”
Green eyes swept over the small group of vampires, and Alex saw the moment that Valeria realized she had shared information that was potentially problematic.
But she shrugged as though it meant little to her. “I was chatting with Ellie on the phone earlier.” Her attention swung to Alex. “You want to take a wild guess about what she was very excitedly planning to do in about five to seven years time?”
Being punched in the jaw hurt, but the vicious knowing in Valeria’s eyes was like a gut punch that pulled Alex’s insides out of his bellybutton.
He missed Mel. Andromeda’s sister was up north in Bossier, working as a liaison between their branch of the vampire syndicate and Jedidiah DuPoint’s. Valeria was Jedidiah’s daughter, and she had been their liaison with DuPoint for the last six years.
Mel was ferocious, but Valeria knew how to twist a knife once she stuck it in.
“It’s one white hair,” Alex said defensively. “She showed Nic one fucking white hair. It’s not the end of the world.”
“No, it’s just an irrefutable sign that Nic’s human wife is a decade older than she was when they met.” Valeria said the words like they were the most obvious thing in the world. “One hair that’s going to turn into three, then nine, then twenty-seven, until a spray becomes a streak and in the time it takes a vampire to blink his darling, dark-haired wife is an old woman dying her hair magenta because she thinks it’s hilarious. Meanwhile all he’s thinking about is the fact that she’ll be dead before he comes out of his second age plateau.”
Andromeda cursed under her breath. “Alex, you twat. What did you actually say to Nic?”
Somehow, the two queens had squared themselves off with the men. Standing shoulder to shoulder, they eyed him up like two disapproving parents, and Alex, who had just finished mopping his own blood off of the floor, felt like he was the one in the wrong.
He looked to Rebel and hoped for some kind of mercy.
The other male shook his head. “Don’t look at me, mate,” he said. “You know what toms can be like about their partners, even when it’s supposed to be casual. And you know the boss was bitten harder than most when he fell for Elle. If he raised concerns about his wife getting older, and your immediate response wasn’t to give him a glowing fucking report of how healthy and young his missus looked, you fuckin’ deserved being punched in the mouth and kicked while you were down besides.”
That was not what Alex had been hoping to hear.
“Can we just forget about what I said?” he pressed. “I already got my jewels handed to me by the boss, I don’t need to get into another fight about this right now. Especially not if the kid is supposed to be here later. The last thing I want is the third degree from you lot and then a field of questions a mile wide from Cora because I’ve got blood on my shirt.”
Three vampires sized him up, and Alex couldn’t pretend to be relieved when all three of them shrugged the matter away.
“Whatever it was, I hope you’re not so stupid next time,” Valeria said. She linked her arm with Andromeda and turned her attention to the other woman. “You wanna go hang out by the front and see if we can jump-scare the kid?”
Andromeda’s fangs flashed. “Oh yes. I live to hear that child scream.”
Valeria offered her free hand to Rebel. “Coming?”
Rebel glanced between Alex and Valeria, his loyalties visibly torn.
But he said, “Tempting, but I’m going to help Alex pick up the shreds of his dignity. Also, Cora’s unnerving.”
The silver blonde queen shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Their departure was abrupt, and it left Alex feeling out of sorts as he watched Rebel watch him. They were the only two in the building now, and the high ceilings, the clear space of the dance floor, and the general eeriness of being in a nightclub that had yet to open its doors seemed to create a vacuum around the pair.
“You’re a dumb fucking cunt,” Rebel repeated his earlier sentiment with a scowl. The words should have sounded absurd coming from a man wearing a full three-piece tweed suit. Instead, the clipped King’s English accent slipped into something rough and thick that made the words sound like they belonged there. “You’re lucky Nic didn’t fuckin’ kill you for what you said.”
Surprise stirred in the midst of his guilt. “You heard?”
“Yeah I fuckin’ heard.” Rebel shook his head. “Why do you think it was Val and Andy who dragged Nic off of you and not me? Thank god the girls didn’t hear, mind, or I doubt you’d be in one fuckin’ piece.”
“It was meant to be a joke. Nic normally takes black humour well.”
“‘Course he does. But not about Daniella.” Rebel scrubbed his head again and when he cursed, his voice echoed in the emptiness around them. “I mean, fuck, man. I adore Valeria. I’d bloody fight the fuckin’ sun for her pleasure. My obsession with Val is minimal compared to Nic’s with Elle, and even I would have fuckin’ clocked you if Val was human and you spat that shit at me.”
“Any other day and he’d have taken it in stride,” Alex muttered, heading to the bar so he could store and label his bloodied paper towels.
“Mate, there’s no day that Nicodemus Hargreaves wouldn’t murder someone who implied what you did.” Rebel dogged him behind the bar and leaned against the counter. Almost as an after thought, he bent down, fished through a cardboard box in one of the cupboards, and tossed him a black t-shirt with the White Witch logo on the front.
He added, “You just poked the bastard on the day where he’d have happily murdered you.”
Alex took the clean shirt, exchanging it for his own bloodied tee, which he threw in the bin behind the bar.
Rebel was right, of course. Because the unequivocal truth that Alex had failed to take into account was that vampires were built to find a partner and lock down on them for centuries. Because unlike the legends and myths, vampires weren’t humans that had been turned into monsters by dark magic or venom or parasites. They were an evolutionary cousin of homo sapiens.
Oh, there was some magic in there. Not enough to craft with, but enough to understand when they were touching it. Enough to know when blood hit their tongues that the blood was the medium of something richer and deeper and more primordial that fuelled them.
And when blood and sex and companionship could all come from the same individual? Why wouldn’t obsession bloom so deep it could drown the unsuspecting and stop their world in its tracks?
The evolutionary benefit was that vampires didn’t get a seven year itch. They stayed consistent with their partners through their lifetimes, and they rarely took second partners if one outlived the other. Even if necessity called from them to take another, they never bonded with the second to the same depth as they did the first.
So Rebel was right, and Alex was a tool for forgetting it.
“Thanks for not outing me to the girls.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted it. Rebel’s smile turned sharp and vicious even as he sidestepped to make room for Alex at the sink.
“Oh, my absolute pleasure, friend.” Rebel’s words were level, drawn out, and borderline sycophantic, complete with a hand over his heart and a mock bow. “Any favour I can do for you in your time of need, you can count on me.”
Alex scowled, his suspicion sudden and deep as he eyed the other male. Anyone else would have let him hold on to the delusion that their good deed was simply that. But vampires traded in favours, and Rebel, for all of his fine fashion sense and his carefully guarded, cut glass accent, was a man o’ war disguising himself as a shark. He did not believe in lying in wait for the unsuspecting when he could enjoy the spoils of his victory immediately after entanglement.
“What do you want?”
“I want the night with Val,” he said. “And if Cora Chaos is here, that’s not happening. Nic will make me babysit her the whole evening to make sure she doesn’t turn the barman’s lemons into voodoo dollies or something. And I have plans tonight, Alex. Big plans. So you’re gonna offer to babysit the little beast so that I don’t get saddled with it.”
On paper, it was a relatively even exchange.
In practice…
The doors of the club flew open, and the girl in question trudged into the club as though she had been summoned. Wild-haired, puppy-gangly, and sporting a backpack so stuffed that the weight of it made her walk at an angle, she headed unquestioningly for the bar.
And Alex immediately wished he was somewhere else.
“Rebel!” She beamed as she spotted the tweed wearing vampire who was her absolute favourite of all of her uncle’s employees. “Guess what Uncle Nic’s just said.”
Rebel arched an eyebrow at the girl as she slung her bag onto the top of the bar and clambered to kneel on a stool so she was high enough to brace her elbows on the bar.
“Let me guess: he said that you and I are going to be bosom pals this evening while he and Aunt Elle work.”
For a thing that did not have large canines, the girl could turn her smile into a gnashing of teeth with frightful ease. “Yep! It’s like you’re psychic or something! Anyway, I thought you could help me study my math, because Aunt Elle said that if I could memorize all of the prime numbers between one and one thousand, she would start teaching me how to cast a circle. Or possibly, if you aren’t up for numbers, you could take me to the shooting range in the back of the building and we could practice, because last time we hung out, you said if I could take a gun apart and put it back together, then you’d teach me how to shoot one. And I think I managed it now. I read instructions online, anyway, so if you lend me your gun, I can give it a try and—”
Alex bit the sides of his tongue as he watched Rebel’s face contort into something that could not even be considered polite indifference. “That’s… fascinating, pet,” he interrupted the girl mid-flow because sometimes it was the only way to get a word in when speaking with Cora.
Her jaw clamped shut as she studied Rebel. “You’re about to say ‘but,’” she said, shoulders falling. “Adults always say things in that tone of voice before they add, ‘but.’”
Rebel’s smile should have been rueful. It wasn’t.
“I am, unfortunately, kiddo. See, it sounds like we have a slight hiccup in our plans. ‘Cause, ordinarily, I’d love to look at maths and numbers and teach you to take apart a nine-mil and all of that…” he trailed off, his nose twitching as he fought visibly with the urge to use some sort of expletive before he continued, “other fun stuff. But see, before I knew you were coming, I made dinner reservations for me and Miss Val, which means that I’m actually not going to be here tonight.”
The girl’s expression fell. “Oh.”
That was it. No arguments. No buts. Just a single, disappointed syllable as the girl’s gaze dropped from the vampire to her own scrubby fingernails which she picked at dejectedly.
“Yeah, believe me, kid, if I’d known you were comin’ I’d have set up the whole thing for a different day. As it is, the reservations are made and we’ve got to go to avoid a cancellation fee and all that…” Rebel lied like a snake on his belly, and the bastard did it while barely looking guilty for it. Then he said, “But hey, Alex here is free the whole evening, and he loves maths, don’t you, Alex?”
Eyes like labradorite stones landed on Alex. He reminded himself that he was a grown ass vampire male. He reminded himself that he was over six feet tall, and that he had not only trained from a young age to shoot and to fight, but also to parley with the very rich and the very powerful.
He told himself he was not frightened to death of the eleven year old hellbeast now staring at him like he was her newest and most prized possession.
Especially while Rebel smiled with smug charm between Alex and the girl he was attempting to pawn off on him.
“Do you really like math?” Cora narrowed her eyes at Alex, and his stomach shrank another half size under her scrutiny.
“I mean, it’s all right,” Alex offered, doing his best not to lie outright to the girl. “I preferred English, but I got decent enough marks, if you need help.”
Jaw set, the scrawny girl gave him an astringent once-over. “All right. List all the prime numbers you know between one and a thousand.”
Irritation flickered at the command. “Shouldn’t you be listing them off to me, titch? You’re the one who wants to know them.”
“I already know some of them,” the girl defended. “I want to know if you know them, otherwise you won’t be able to help me.”
“Girl’s got a point, Alex. Can’t help her if you don’t know them yourself.”
Alex reminded himself that he had already been in one fight this evening, and he didn’t need to be in any others before the club opened.
Besides, if you fight with Rebel, you’ll end up fighting with Valeria, too. And she’s a hell of a lot scarier than Rebel.
He licked his fangs and braced his hands on the counter as he squared off with the girl. “Tell you what, titch, you list off the ones you know, and if I can’t list off the next number in the sequence, you can drill me instead of the other way around.”
The girl brightened and straightened up, thrusting her hand over the bar toward him. “If you can’t list the next number, then you have to let me try to take apart your gun. And if I can, you have to teach me to shoot it.”
He stared at the girl as she wiggled her fingers at him.
“Shake on it?” she asked.
Knowing that he was probably making a mistake, he took the girl’s hand in his.
His conviction at his error compounded when her smile got wider and she said, “It’s a deal then. Are you ready?”
Cora didn’t give Alex time to be ready for anything. She barely let go of his hand before she rattled off, “One, two, three, five, seven,” a slight falter, her expression flickering, “Not nine, but nine is magically important. Eleven is prime, then thirteen… Seventeeeeen…”
Now the girl counted them off on her fingers. “Twenty-three? Twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven—”
“You forgot nineteen.”
The girl tripped over the next number in the sequence as he interrupted. “Nineteen?”
She looked so confused that it felt uncharitable when relief flooded Alex at the girl’s slip up.
Looking down at her fingers, Cora muttered under her breath.
And Rebel, the shit-eating bastard that he was, grinned wider. “Looks like you have a new study partner, Cora.”
But as pleased as Cora seemed, it was Nicodemus’ voice that said, “Why’s that now?”
Worryingly, Daniella was nowhere to be seen. But the kingpin looked relatively relaxed as he came up beside Cora and ruffled her hair. “Did you outsmart Rebel again?”
“I always outsmart Rebel,” The girl ducked out from under Nicodemus’ hand and smoothed out her hair. “But Rebel said that he and Miss Val have a fancy dinner reservation, so Alex said that he would help me study prime numbers so that I can convince Auntie Elle to teach me to set up an altar space for craftwork.”
“That’s good of him,” Nicodemus’ attention was cold and sharp as he eyed Alex. All was not forgiven for what Alex had said, but apparently Cora’s acceptance of him as a watch-dog for the night worked to smooth over whatever bitterness lingered between them.
You can definitely do worse than that, Alex.
So he seized the opportunity. “Seemed like a decent enough way to pass the evening. At least until Elle can take over and teach her the quadratic equation for making your niece magically taller.”
Cora sputtered indignantly. “I’m not short, I’m just young! I’ll get taller, you know. Maybe even as tall as you.”
“Maybe,” Alex and Nicodemus looked at each other, and it didn’t matter if only one of them spoke or both of them. The girl was flushed and grumbling and hauling her backpack off of the bar with the bruised dignity of a cat.
“I’m going to go wait in the office,” she emphasized the word for reasons best known to herself. “Where people actually do work around here.”
Nicodemus leaned against the bar, watched his niece walk off, and then canted his head at Rebel. “Since you have plans tonight, get gone, tom. Don’t leave your lady waiting.”
Rebel perked. “Thanks, boss.”
If only Alex could get a dismissal that simple, too.
“Alexander.”
Steeling himself up for the worst, Alex clasped his hands behind his back and looked at his boss. “Sir?”
Nicodemus waved away the unspoken question. “Just keep an eye on Cora, all right? When the club opens, don’t let her leave the office. Last time she was here, she tried to study for her English test in one of the bite nooks and nearly ended up as someone’s tea.”
Alex nodded. “Don’t feed the titch to the patrons. Very good, sir.”
“The club closes early tonight, but I need you to stay with Cora for a few extra hours. Get her back to mine and Nell’s, make sure she brushes her teeth and all that.”
“Sir?”
Again, Nicodemus waved a hand. “The sisters are expecting one of their cousins to come in for Thanksgiving. Since Nellie and I tend to be up late in the evenings and the flight’s a red-eye, we’re picking her up from the airport.”
The admission piqued Alex’s curiosity. Daniella was one of seven female children, all of whom were crafters and many of whom were outright witches. Their mother had been one of seven sisters as well, but in the decade that the Hargreaves vampires had been in New Orleans, none of the aunts nor their children had ever attended a family gathering.
Any questions he had died on his lips though as Cora’s voice filtered toward them from down the hall.
“Hey Uncle Nic? Is the salt lamp in your office supposed to be on fire?”
Eyes widening a fraction, Nicodemus stood straighter. “I think your charge for the evening is calling you, Alex.”
And the worst part wasn’t Nic walking away. It wasn’t the fact that Alexander Sterling could hear his boss snickering coldly as Alex flung himself over the bar and tripped over a bar stool as he threw himself toward the office and the slight smell of salt and smoke. It was the fact that his doing so was its own kind of poetic justice.
