Chapter Seventeen
Grant
Asher and Quinn arrive before Vlad re-emerges from the bathroom, and it’s hard for me to concentrate on anything they’re saying.
Quinn definitely knows. I mean, fuck, they both know, but Quinn’s got that wolf nose thing going on, and besides, I see the way his eyes widen slightly when he walks into the room.
I don’t know why. He knows why I told them to leave. I cross my arms grumpily over my chest. Not that we got as far as I wanted when I sent them away. I mean, it’s fine. It’s fine except it’s not because all I can think about is Vlad and the fact that he said he loves me.
He loves me. Me!
Asher reaches over and shoves my shoulder, almost toppling me to one side. I yelp. “Hey!”
“I totally get it, okay, but you do need to focus right now.”
Quinn gives me an equally sympathetic look. I sigh. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
“No need to apologise. I promise, you’ll have all the time in the world soon.”
I give Asher a sceptical look. Unless he knows something I don’t, we’re well in the thick of it and things may not change for a while. There are still multiple high fae to hunt down. It’s going to take a while.
Asher only shrugs in response. He means what he says, I guess. He can control all this about as much as I can.
Vlad comes out of the bathroom and picks up his phone before he sits beside me on the bed. Quinn is half off his stool, as though to offer it to him, but he gives me a rueful grin and sits back down.
“I will request that Margot and Rachel come here to speak with us,” he says.
“Is that a good idea?” Asher asks before I can.
“They are the only contacts we have in this city. Our fastest course of action is to uncover where Jakob is hiding.”
“What’s to say he won’t be back at the club?” Quinn asks.
“Well, if those bodies I kind of banished did go to Eirian, she’s gonna know something happened.”
Asher pulls a face. I don’t know if he’s disgusted or impressed. Possibly both. “Right.”
“The crux of the matter is that we cannot leave here until we have some idea where Eirian might be,” Vlad says. “She will undoubtedly be after Grant.”
“And why’s that, again?”
Vlad sighs. “She is under the impression that once the fae queen dies, she will be in the position to take her place. She needs a partner beside her and seems fixated on vampires who can withstand the sun.”
“We know that for sure?”
“Most of it. The rest might be an educated guess, but—”
“It makes sense,” I interrupt, nodding. “Do you think that’s why Rook and Saide came here? Did being bitten do something to them?”
Asher tips his head back to look up at the ceiling. “Who knows?” he mutters, sounding exhausted. Quinn does smile now, reaching over to thread their fingers together. “Fine. Call them. Whoever they are.”
“Rachel’s my cousin,” I say, and Asher’s head snaps back up again.
“What the fuck?”
“A coincidence, as it turns out,” Vlad says, already scrolling through his phone. “Margot and Rachel accosted us after a visit to the club. They have been attempting to warn young vampires off.”
“Your cousin?” Asher says.
“Yeah.”
“What’s she going to tell your family?” Quinn asks, and I shrug in response.
Vlad moves over to the door to make the call, and I explain the trips to the club and meeting Jakob.
I don’t say that I really want us to find him regardless of whether he’s with Eirian or not, but Quinn at least reads it from my tone.
The corner of his mouth tips up, and I get the feeling I might actually get to see him shift sometime soon, depending on how the rest of this job goes.
“They will be with us soon,” Vlad says, sitting beside me again. “Margot was rather sceptical, but that is not unexpected. Rachel convinced her to hear us out.”
“If Eirian can’t get hold of me, do you think she’ll try with someone else?”
“What do you mean?” Asher asks.
I shrug. “She recognised my power as coming from the Huntsman, and she met Vlad. It’s not a leap to work out that he’s my sire. If we’ve figured out the way the magic has worked through us, then so could she.”
“What was she doing before, do you think?” Asher says. “Giving them her own blessing?”
“She said something about a serum,” I reply.
“This may be a far more sophisticated operation than we anticipated,” Vlad says, and he and Asher exchange a dark look.
“He may not be able to lie, but he certainly understands how to withhold information.”
“Is that why we only had to get the name?” I ask.
Vlad squeezes my leg. “Likely so,” he says with a nod. “Eirian is someone the Huntsman is wary of. That means we need to be careful, too.”
We sit with that and discuss what our next steps might be after talking to Margot and Rachel, but they arrive about fifteen minutes later anyway. Vlad gets up to answer the door, warning me off with a brief look, and I shuffle back on the bed, shoving my shaking hands beneath my thighs.
It’s not like either of them knows there’s anything different about me. Why would they care? Being a vampire is the real change, the thing that took me away from here in the first place.
Margot comes in first, trailing after Vlad and keeping herself firmly between Rachel and the rest of us. She comes up short when she spots Asher and Quinn, and Quinn rises again—the extra stool having come from their room, I suspect, if only so we all don’t have to try to squeeze onto the bed.
She softens a little at his earnest look. “Uh, no. It’s fine. We can stand.”
Rachel’s gripping her hand. She looks at me briefly but doesn’t hold my gaze. Guilt gnaws at my insides. Vlad sits next to me again. This time, he doesn’t touch me, though he’s sitting closer than he ever would have before.
“What do you know about the vampire Jakob?” Vlad asks.
Margot scowls. “Less than you, I’d reckon. You’ve been spending all that time with him.” Her glare moves to me.
“Do you know why he was after those young vampires?” I ask. Vlad’s hand twitches like he wants to reach out for me, and Asher and Quinn watch on in silence, Quinn sitting again.
“He wanted to kill them.”
“Not that,” I say, then shake my head. He definitely wanted to kill me. “Not just that.”
“What, then?” Rachel snaps, and the venom in her voice takes me by surprise.
They need to know. We’ve already told the packs and the clans in London. There’s no hiding the Hunt anymore, not when high fae are doing as they like over here.
“What do you know about the fae?”
“Fae?” Margot scoffs. “Like fairies?”
“They’re where the stories come from,” Asher says when I hesitate. He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. “But they are as real as vampires and werewolves and all the rest.”
Rachel blinks. “Werewolves?”
Quinn smiles and gives her a little wave. She goes pale but, to her credit, doesn’t move back.
“Anyway,” I say loudly. “Fae. They’re here. One of them is working with Jakob. She wants a specific kind of vampire.”
“Then why is he killing them?” Margot asks.
Vlad looks at me and I nod. He reaches over and takes my hand like he can’t help himself. “It was an experiment. They sought a vampire who could withstand the sun.”
“But they can’t,” Margot says. “Can they?”
“’Course not,” I reply. Rachel certainly doesn’t believe me. It might have been fifteen years since I last saw her, but I recognise that sceptical look in her eye. Honestly, I don’t think Margot does, either.
She sighs, though, and reaches into the pocket of her denim jacket. She pulls out a small, battered notebook and looks at Rachel before she stretches her arm out to offer it to us.
“What is this?” Vlad asks as he takes it.
“It’s… pretty much every vampire in Margate. All the ones we could find. All the places we last saw them. There’s a list of those working with Jakob. A list of the ones we’ve not seen in a while. It’s all there.”
“Holy shit,” I mutter, and Margot shrugs, ducking her head.
“Not much else we could do,” Rachel says. “We knew we couldn’t get Jakob to leave. He’s always got other vampires with him.”
“Tell me about it,” I say and glance over Vlad’s shoulder as he flicks through the pages. Sure enough, there’s name after name, and I recognise about half the places Margot has written down, too.
“What do we do now?” Margot asks.
Vlad sighs. He closes the book and passes it over to Asher, who flicks through it himself. “You should—”
“Vlad,” I mutter.
Vlad glances at me. I raise my eyebrows. We can’t just throw them out of this. For one thing, if they’re the only people who know about the vampires, they might be in danger. Plus, they’ve been here. Eirian knows where we’re staying, but if she works out that Rachel is related to me…
“We’re already involved,” Quinn says, gesturing between me and him. “Can’t hurt, can it?”
Asher gives his mate a look that very clearly says it can and it will, actually, but Quinn looks right back, expression all placid, and Asher caves first.
I glance at Vlad. Will he cave, too? I widen my eyes a little and he frowns.
“None of that,” he mutters, but he squeezes my hand before he looks at Margot and Rachel again. “We may well have need of your assistance. We need to capture this high fae and arrange for her transport.”
“Capture?” Margot asks. “After she killed all those vampires?”
“It is a delicate political situation. We cannot keep killing high fae.”
Quinn grimaces. Asher knocks their shoulders together, still looking through the book.
“Fine. How do we capture a… fae?” Margot asks.
“Same way you capture anything,” Asher says absently. “We need bait.”
The entire room goes still. I guess Margot and Rachel think they might be the bait, but Vlad’s shoulders are tense and at this point, his hand has mine in a death grip.
“That’s gonna be me, right?” I ask.
Asher’s head jerks up. “Fuck.”
“It is,” I say. “She’s not going to come out for anything else.”
“We could try—” Quinn begins, but I shake my head. Truly, he’s the safest one here. He’s a wolf, and the fae don’t like that at all, turns out.
“I’ll do it.”
“Grant,” Vlad murmurs. His eyes are pleading with me.
“It’s going to work. We can capture her. There are six of us.”
“And she may have countless other fae with her.”
“She’s down three already.”
Vlad blinks, lips pressing into a thin line, and Asher sighs, finally setting the book aside.
“Grant’s right. So are you. We need to capture her, and to do that, we need to draw her out.”
“Very well,” Vlad says, but the clench to his jaw tells me he doesn’t like the idea at all. “But I have conditions. Rules.”
I can’t help my grin. “Oh, of course you do.”