11. Chapter 11 #2
My library trips were becoming useless. The further back in time I went, the more the pattern got confusing.
Vampires of status and their witch wives had been dying at a similar rate, almost in parallel to each other.
The only trouble was, all of the witches had been dying before their husbands.
So, it didn’t make sense that the infected nobles would attack their own wives in their rage-infected state.
The infection was as sporadic as the deaths of the red maidens.
Popping from one city to the other too fast to determine an infection rate or an incubation period or anything at all for that matter.
I needed Logan to put me on this case. Maybe I should have begged.
I wasn’t beyond begging. I had Ethel to save.
Christof took my coat at the entrance. “The library must have been wordy today, too, I presume.”
“An absolute claptrap,” I sighed.
“We have a new word for the vocabulary,” he said, taking the book I’d slid him under the cloak.
I leaned in, and said, “Becca lost the child, blamed it on Camila, and now Cecil is on a revenge trip on Camila. But Camila found out the child was the earl’s. Now she’s working with the earl to expose Becca and Cecil while pretending to be courted by him.”
Christof clicked his tongue. “Good for her.”
I giggled. “She’s so bodacious. I’m in love with her.”
He pointed his head to the dining hall. “Your husband is home early today. Given he’s voluntarily chosen to be a mark for Lady Piper’s food throwing practice, I might say he’s waiting for someone.”
Piper sat on his lap, holding her jam-covered paws up in the air while he brought a glass of orange juice to her jam-smeared mouth. They were an incredibly gentle sight. He looked different when he was with her. Vulnerable. Human, almost.
Piper’s eyes grew into big saucers when she noticed me. “Boo!”
She launched off his lap, darting in my direction, and I took off with all my might. She chased me around the breakfast table, giggling like mad. And I might have been slightly terrified about it.
I screamed, running around. “Seize the jammy creature before she makes us all stick to one another!”
She screeched when Logan hauled her off the floor, lifting her over his head a few times before lowering her onto his lap. She squealed and squirmed when her uncle grasped her arms and brought them in my direction.
“I want a proper name, m’lady,” I said, wiping the jam off her fingers with a handkerchief while Logan held her still.
She wrinkled her nose back and forth, unable to itch it. “I call you Boo.”
“Boo is not a name,” I told her.
She looked up at her uncle, frowning. “Bear?”
“Yes, Bear?” I asked, also looking up at him.
“Boo is a fine name,” he told her, holding my gaze steadily.
Asshole.
She chewed with her mouth wide open, tipping her head back against Logan’s chest to look at him. “She come to my dance recital, Bear?”
Recital?
He winced just a little. “She dances.”
To prove to me as such, she hopped off his lap with a piece of toast still all crumbled in her fist. Twirling and twisting nonsensically until she almost got me nauseous. She finished it all off with wide-spread arms, wobbling on her feet and with toast all over the floor.
I clapped.
Stinking adorable. Also just stinky. But adorable. In a stinky way. Like skunks. Sort of.
She fled off to show Christof her dance moves, nearly taking him down with the vase and the marble plinth it had been perched upon.
“Tell me you’re investing in her education,” I murmured to him. “Who keeps encouraging her in these artistic pursuits?”
He pressed his fisted hand to his mouth, watching me cut through the eggs Theodora lowered before me.
“Is it safe for her?” I asked, trying to ignore his piercing attention.
“This recital she’s obliterating with her dancing skills, I mean.
” I chewed a little slower. “Thinking about it, I think she might injure anyone coming in close contact with her. The question should be ‘are they all safe with her being there?’ But most importantly,” I said, leaning in. “Are we?”
He leaned back in his chair, spreading comfortably in it as he twirled his cigarette tin between his fingers.
“My sister was in the theatre. Music, dance, acting, she did it all. I want Piper to know her mother outside of the stories I tell her. To connect with Cassandra the way I knew she would’ve loved to connect with her daughter. ”
I could see why Cassandra wanted to keep him safe. I could see why she’d trusted him with the most precious thing she had. The only thing I couldn’t see was why she thought of me as a threat to him.
“Permission to let me burn in Hell.”
I nearly choked on toast when he tapped a finger on my chin and got up.
“You’re leaving again?” I asked, standing after him.
“I’ll be back to pick you and Piper up for the recital.”
“What is happening with the exarch’s proposal?”
“Still unapproved. They will be voting on it next month. We’re in the middle of an outbreak. They don’t have much of a choice.”
“When are you sleeping and resting in all of this?” I asked, not realising I’d grabbed his arm until his attention dropped there. “You’re gone for days.”
“Doing you a favour, aren’t I? So you don’t have to hide around the house every time I step in your vicinity.”
My hand slipped off his arm, laying limply on my side. He’d noticed? Had I been that obvious?
Little Piper and I stood side by side, watching Christof help Logan put his weapons and jacket on. The latter, for some reason, kept glancing between his niece and I. Multiple times.
He lowered to a crouch, bringing his face forward and letting her kiss both his cheeks. And then it was her turn. I’d noticed that the uncle and niece always stuck to their specific routines.
The little sticky gremlin pointed a non-jammy finger at me. “You kiss Boo now.”
My teeth sank into the tip of my tongue to hold myself from smiling.
Lifting my brows up, I waited, excited to see him completely pissed off.
Except, he wasn’t exactly pissed off. I didn’t know what it was, but his pupils nearly vanished into the sea of gold when he looked up at me, and his jaw was set so tight I thought it might snap.
Piper seemed to grow impatient. “Bear!”
“She doesn’t want a kiss, Bunny,” he said, standing and fixing his tie.
“Oh, I very much do.” And oh, I was going to be so sick, but the stunned look on his face was so satisfying.
“On the mouth,” Piper said, nearly biting all her fingers off from shyness.
I fixed his collar, running my fingers up and down the lapels of his jacket. “Come on, big guy. We’ve done it before. You didn’t burst into flames the first time.”
My amusement about his distress was short-lived as his hand slid to the back of my head, holding me there for a moment before he pressed a kiss on my lips. It wasn’t quick. It wasn’t rushed. It was soft and wet and lingering just like our first.
“Stop holding your breath,” he murmured as he captured my bottom lip with one last pull.
I finally inhaled, feeling blood tickle the top of my lip.
Piper squealed, wrapping her arms around our legs.
He still hadn’t moved away. “I’m not your friend,” he said, brushing the blood off my lips. “You’ll call me Logan.”
“No, I’ll call you Bear. But I am sure I will have it figured out as soon as Pipe here has it,” I said, hiking his niece up on my hip. “Say hi to Art for me. I kind of miss having him around the house. He’s good to talk to.”
He stared at me under his lashes, the tip of his tongue pressed to his fang. “Is he?”
I waved my fingers in his face. “Goodbye, Bear.”
“Do you hate Arthur, or what?” Liam asked, tugging on Piper’s tiny blond tails as we all watched Logan trot away in the direction of the stables. “Did he say something to piss you off?”
“What? No. I’m pretty sure we’re best friends.”
He shook his head. “Arthur, that poor mucker. He’s probably going to lose his tongue.”
Piper turned to me, pressing the tip of her nose to mine. “Are we friends?”
Was I friendth with a four-year-old? “Only if you teach me that spin you did.”
She nodded, grabbing my cheeks with her clammy paws. “I don’t have lotta friends.”
“How come? You’re stinky and adorable. More so on the stinky. But children like some funk.”
She giggled like crazy, tears nearly springing out of her golden eyes. Then she went quiet, resting her still-sticky cheek against mine. “I don’t have a mommy. People say she was crazy. They’re scared of me.”
Cassandra’s words from her letters came back to me. How she’d been scared of losing her mind. How she’d felt different in her last few weeks before her death. And that what Theodora had told me made the entire situation even more severe.
I pushed her forehead with mine. “What are their names and do you have a lock of their hair?”
Her tiny little tooths were all visible as she smiled.
“I wish I had a mommy.” I could see the sorrow in her tiny face.
I could recognise it so well—that moment of self soothing, of choking back the tears, sucking the comfort out of an empty place just to feel yourself swallow something down so nothing could come up.
Her voice was small as she said, “I have Bear.”
“Bear’s nice.”
She nodded, still holding back tears. “He’s good.”
Piper had given herself permission to pick my dress for her recital.
And since this was her day, I had reluctantly decided, after many hours of negotiating, to just let her.
If I’d heard another sweet, pouty pleath, I was for sure going to Hell.
It looked like Logan had come to the same conclusion.
Since he, too, was wearing a coloured suit only a few shades darker than the agony-in-red, eyesore of a dress I was wearing.
Logan had spread in his seat across from us, holding an unlit cigarette between his lips, and had taken upon himself to stare me blind. I felt odd in these ridiculously adorned garments; he didn’t need to make it so obvious that I looked odd, too.