CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Istormed into the house, finding Alexius standing in the living room, waiting on me. I said nothing as I closed the distance, but kept the love seat between us, staring at him. I dropped my things on the loveseat, kicked off my shoes, and stared at him.
“You want me to start,” Alexius said, nodding slowly as he realized I wouldn’t speak. “Okay… You finding Henry Abbott here is bad news.”
“How? He’s part of Maria’s nest.”
“He’s not.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but Alexius lifted a hand and kept talking.
“He’s not a member of her nest. I knew that already, but while you were driving home, I called and asked her one more time.
I had asked over a year ago, but since you found him, perhaps it had been a situation like with Declan, taken in for protection.
Maria said Henry Abbott is not a member of her nest. Would never have been without notifying me since I was actively looking for him for you. It would have been common courtesy.”
That made my eyes go wide as he explained. I reached out to the arm of the loveseat and slowly sat down.
“Okay… but that doesn’t make him a problem. He’s not unknown. He’s not one of those vampires. He’s well established. He has friends. He goes to Court of Coffee.”
“I forgot to tell you something.” Alexius looked away, and for the first time, I saw him look truly unsure. Insecure in something. He sat down on the couch, leaving us at an angle to each other, able to see each other’s faces.
“Before you tell me what it is, tell me what made you forget to tell me,” I said, feeling that if I heard that first, perhaps I’d be more understanding of what he needed to say.
“I learned something at Isaiah’s. We both know what happened there.
I was severely injured. I needed a lot of recovery time from the fire damage.
You had a broken femur. It just…” Alexius shook his head.
“I forgot, because I had intended to follow up on it more, but then nothing else appeared, so I never thought to tell you the first part. And then it slipped my mind entirely.”
“What did you learn?”
“Everly, Isaiah and I looked through all of Jacob’s old records, the old paper records. Things saved from the destruction of the nest. We found his file on your uncle, and it told us why Henry disappeared from your life.”
I stiffened and could only immediately offer what Henry had told me.
“He told me he needed to get away. That losing my father was too much for him, and he was tired of the grief of watching his human family die after he got attached. He and Jacob had agreed, and so Henry left.”
“Jacob exiled him,” Alexius said softly. “Jacob felt he did something so wrong that he threw Henry out of his nest, with no resources except what Henry had to his name and no recommendation to transition to a different nest. It was the most severe punishment Jacob would ever allow himself to do.”
The world fell out from underneath me. Uncle Henry had been lying to me since the first conversation.
What else was he lying about?
“Why was he exiled?” I asked, searching Alexius’s face. “And how did that never get noted?”
“Jacob didn’t write down why… that’s what I had hoped to find out before telling you,” Alexius said. “And Jacob would have never told humans, so there was no way your mother knew, either.”
“So, I have been hanging out with a liar and not even knowing when you’ve known Jacob threw him out the entire time?” I couldn’t believe Alexius never told me.
“You could have told me you found him,” Alexius responded, his face going hard as the blame game kicked off. “You should have told me the moment you saw him or spoke to him.”
“You have always told me that my uncle was for me to deal with however I wanted!” I didn’t scream, but I definitely raised my voice. “And you have known that he was fucking exiled like a criminal for nearly a year!”
“It never came up! You’re right, I should have mentioned it immediately. I was hoping to spare you discovering whatever may have gotten him exiled on your own. I wanted to…”
“You were coddling me,” I hissed.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
I turned and started to storm off. Ten months. He’d hidden it and then forgotten it for ten months.
And he wasn’t the only one I was mad at, as all of Henry’s lies started to repeat in my head. How he’d softened it all. How he danced around how he and Jacob had agreed for him to leave and how he enjoyed being at Maria’s nest.
“Everly, let me make this up to you,” Alexius said, calling after me. “Tell me what I can do. I know I shouldn’t have initially decided to hide it. I should have told you from the moment I knew. Please tell me—”
“I was opening up to him!” I turned and screamed. “I was telling him about us. He heard about the blood club, and I told him about us! He heard about the werewolf party and Declan, and I told him about that!”
Alexius was suddenly in front of me, reaching.
“And I would have known if not for you,” I hissed, pulling out of his range before he could grab me.
“What do you want to do?” Alexius asked, his hand dropping to his side.
“I want to know everything,” I snarled. “I want to know who he’s pretending to be, how he makes money, how he hid for so long. I want to know why he was exiled.”
“Then we’ll do that.”
“No. I’ll do that,” I said, defiantly looking up at Alexius. “You will work for Maria as you promised. My uncle will be mine to deal with.”
“Everly—”
“No. Stop.” I held a finger up at him. “I am good at this. We both know that. I was distracted by all the drama with Declan and Lexi and whatever is going on with us that I didn’t dig hard enough on Henry.
I will now, and when I’m done, I’m going to know secrets he doesn’t even know he has.
” I turned on my heel and went toward my room, hearing Alexius follow me.
“You didn’t bring anything to do that sort of work,” he reminded me.
I went into my room, and honoring our rules, he stopped at the doorway, not crossing the threshold.
For a split second, I considered giving him points for that.
But as I told Declan, we were going to keep the bar off the floor and make people jump a bit higher than not being the absolute worst.
“Okay, then I’ll do it the hard way—”
“Rupert can send your traveling kit by next nightfall. We’ll get Maria to facilitate it.”
That’s jumping a bit higher.
“We can do that?” I was staring at the small laptop I had brought, one for entertainment, not work. It ran games and wasn’t loaded with the right tools.
“We can do that,” he confirmed. “I won’t stop you from engaging with your uncle.
I just needed you home to tell you the truth of why he disappeared all those years ago and…
how I had discovered it and kept to myself.
He is still yours to deal with. And don’t think I’m saying this recklessly or to get your forgiveness. ”
I turned and met his eyes.
“I’m saying this because I believe in your skills and your temper.
That when you set your mind to something because you’re angry, there is no barrier too high you can’t climb it.
There is no wall you can’t break through.
You have killed bigger monsters, Everly Abbott.
The world has witnessed this. Henry Abbott is nothing but an insignificant flea who has harmed you in a way he doesn’t have the right to.
All I need is for you to tell me how I can help, and then I will go back to what I am working on, and you can do what you need to do. ”
Alexius didn’t speak without purpose. I knew that well. He preferred silence to small talk. And from what I knew of him after so long in his close personal space, he meant every word he’d just said.
It was a very high jump over a very high bar. It reminded me why I picked him time and time again when people wondered why I would live so dangerously.
“I’m too angry to sleep with you,” I said, staring at him.
“Of course. I will wait for you to tell me you’re ready before attempting to… seduce you again,” he said, looking away for a moment.
“I need my travel kit,” I said. “I need a lot of money.”
“You might have to explain the second because you have my card.”
“We met at Court of Coffee,” I reminded him.
“I had been leaving. He’d been going in.
I wasn’t paying attention, didn’t notice him, but he recognized me.
After so long, he’d recognized me as an adult.
I recognized him once I looked at him. Wren deals in information.
He can give me information that will speed the process up for me. ”
“He can be expensive,” Alexius confirmed. “I’ll review whatever charge he gives the card if necessary. Let him know I’ll be keeping an eye on it.”
“Okay…” I nodded. “And I need access to Maria’s records. Legitimately. I don’t want to waste time breaking into her stuff. I just don’t want her to be hovering over me while I have access.”
“You will have to give a compelling reason as to why Henry would be a potential threat to her. See if Wren can give you one of those.”
“Fine.” I inhaled sharply, thinking, but I had an actionable idea to start with. It would be good enough for now. “That’s all. I’ll tell you if I need anything I can’t get myself.”
“Okay. Would you like to go to Wren tonight?”
“No…” I was plotting. "Right now, I’m pretending to be helping you. Make a scene of that. Make it seem like I’m suddenly super wrapped up in the work you’re doing. Don’t tell even Declan or Callahan the truth. Or Maria. I want Henry to really think I’m just busy as hell right now.”
“He probably knows what I’m working on already. I’ve gotten stumped, and things have escalated. You are my employee, and you have a notably different set of skills compared to me.”
The logic was good. I stood quietly, the immediate hot temper fading into the cold need to act.
Henry hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t kill anyone.
He pissed me off, and he was going to pay for that.
After I lost fucking everything, he could have been honest with me.
Now I was going to tear apart his life until I found the truth.
It was a bit hypocritical of me.
“I lied to him, too, you know. About why we went to the werewolf party. Told him it was just about Declan and Lexi and me, all arguing and fighting. Not about the kill in Declan’s parking garage.”
“Do you think lying to him about a vampire kill near Declan’s house is even close to the same as to why he disappeared from your life some seventeen years ago?
Add to that, he was being severely punished.
Jacob’s belief was probably that he’d fail to reestablish and die somewhere.
And he hid that he was exiled from you.”
“No. It’s not the same. I’m just thinking.
” I thought back on every interaction I had with Henry.
There had always been something in the back of my mind that didn’t trust the man.
I had chalked it up as my own resentment from my human life that had carried into my immortal one.
Now I was wondering if I had missed any red flags in those conversations that I should have caught.
“My mind is spinning over every minute now,” I admitted.
“Every smile, every laugh, every question, every comment. You know, he said once that you arriving at Jacob’s nest was…
like a storm. But instead of being the portent of things to come, you were the thing, like death on the pale horse.
But you know what he really never talked about?
What he did in the nest. He would talk about how he was second generation, made by a vampire who was in the nest and how the perspective of everything was different from mine, but I don’t know what he did.
Without a control issue, he must have served the nest somehow. ”
“Truthfully, I barely remember him, if at all. He was just another one of Jacob’s vampires. I’d have to look at his records again.”
“It truthfully doesn’t matter, does it?” I huffed. “He certainly works now. He has money… but he hasn’t told me what his work is now, either. Just made comments about how he was grateful that Maria’s nest allowed him a life outside of just, and I quote, the small world around her.”
“Jacob was very personal and had a smaller nest because of the purpose he was using it for.”
“Yeah…” I wished I had asked better questions of Henry. Dug more into his life and the details of it. Who were his friends? What were their names? Could I have asked to meet any of them?
Well, now I’m asking. I’ll just take this one step at a time until I’m ready to confront Henry. Throw his lies in his face and find out what the hell he could have done to upset Jacob right after my father died.
There was a lot of silence as I thought about what I was planning to do.
“Everly?”
Alexius was watching me from just beyond the threshold, refusing to enter the room without my permission still.
“I’m just thinking.”
“I’m going to start making the calls to get your things sent here.”
“Thank you,” I called out, but I was still distracted, still replaying every moment with Henry.