Chapter Thirty-Four
My shift, rest, and Nell’s food had healed me almost completely. If I stopped getting new injuries, I’d be back to normal in a few hours. Before I’d lost my magic, I would have healed a little easier. Actually, I wouldn’t have gotten so injured in the first place.
The magic would have taken out nearly any enemy before they’d had a chance to hurt me.
When I got to my car, Zach was already waiting.
He looked tired and pale. Despite the doctor patching him up, he was still injured.
“Zach,” I told him. “Joe is waiting for me at the office. Remy and Sam are both ready to come if I call them. I want you to take tonight off. Go home to Silverwood and relax. Lucy could use the company.”
He frowned. “What’s wrong with Lucy?”
“Her dreams,” I said. “They’re exhausting. She gets depressed. Imagine every time you fell asleep you became the victim of a killer.”
He crossed his arms and something terrible flashed in his eyes. “I know what it’s like.”
Of course he did. He’d been the victim of Frederick Axton. Only he hadn’t been able to wake up from his nightmare. Not for a long, long time.
I touched his arm. “Go home, Zach. Let yourself heal.”
He still might have argued if Joe hadn’t called me at that exact moment. “Hey, Joe,” I answered.
“Everything good?” he asked. “I’m just heading to the office with Max.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I convince Zach to go home,” I told him.
“Max was catching me up. You want me to come get you?”
“No, no, I’m fine. But…”
“Zach’s not in good shape?”
“Not really.”
“Let me talk to him.”
I handed my phone to Zach. “Joe wants to talk to you.”
Zach took the phone and put it to his ear, murmuring a hello to Joe. A few seconds later he ended the call and gave me back my phone.
“I’ll go home,” he said, “but just for tonight.”
I didn’t ask him what Joe had said to convince him, though I was curious. “Get some rest,” I said, relieved. “Give Ash a kiss for me.”
He nodded. “Call Remy in. And it doesn’t matter how much of an ass-kicking I got. If you need me, call me.”
I watched him walk away, holding himself carefully, his walk a little too ginger. I hoped one night would be enough to help him recover. I had my doubts. Zach was amazing, but he had no business fighting a whole pack of brutal wolves.
I drove out of Shadowfield, feeling strangely subdued. I realized five minutes later why. There were two things hanging over my head that I needed to handle. Gavin Voss, and the council.
Both those things were unsettling. I needed them over and done with. Voss would end up dead, but it was taking too long to get him there. And the council…
After tomorrow night, after I went back to see if I could retrieve my blade, I’d cut them out of my life as completely as I could.
Then the itchy, restless, unsettled feeling inside me would go away.
To take my mind off my worries, I called Bastien.
I should have waited. I should have visited him when I had one of the guys with me. But I wanted to get my mind off the council and Voss, so I called the vampire master.
“Bastien,” I said when he answered. “I need to talk to you.”
“Come see me,” he said immediately, his low vampire voice somehow dead and full of emotion at the same time. “I’m at home in Alexandria.”
“I’m on my way to the office,” I told him, “and Max will quit if I show up late again.”
He laughed. “Max isn’t going anywhere. Scarlett’s is closer than Alexandria. I can meet you there before you go to work.”
Honestly, I was eager to tell him about my encounter with the vampire ghost. Bastien had such little light in his world that I was happy to give him something joyful to think about. “All right,” I agreed. “Back parking lot, though. I don’t want to go in.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he said, and ended the call.
I called Joe. “Tell Max I’m going to be a few minutes late. Just a few minutes. I’m stopping by Scarlett’s to talk to Bastien.”
“Understood,” he said. “I’ll tell him.” Then he added, “Chicken.”
I laughed. “Yeah, a little.”
“Be careful, Kait.”
But he wasn’t worried. I’d be with the county master, after all.
I hung up and sped toward the city, loading up some music as I drove. I loved my people, I did. But sometimes it was truly nice to be alone and not feel like I needed backup because I was weaker than I used to be.
I was Kait Silver, magic or no magic. I was still a force. I proved that every time I fought the baddies and came out on top.
Tonight was a full moon, and she not only gave the wolves more energy, strength, and fierceness, but created a pull that made us all want to cast off the human world and run the night away. Once a year, in October, we gave in to that need. Once a year, we celebrated.
The rest of the time, we controlled ourselves during a full moon. We weren’t fucking werewolves.
Bastien walked toward my car when I pulled into the back lot of Scarlett’s, and I saw the shadows change slightly as the vampires with him faded back against the building. Bastien kept the city as clean and safe as he possibly could, unlike the previous master.
I’d once believed there were no good vampires. Now I had Joe, and Bastien, and even Farrow, though that poor girl was as warped as anyone I’d ever seen. She’d lived through more horror than even a vampire should have seen, and of course she’d been changed.
I had a soft spot for Farrow.
Bastien got into the car, his stare softening almost the second he shut the door and turned to look at me. “Kait,” he said. “Farrow asked me to give you her regards.”
I smiled. “Tell her I said hello.” Then, “Oh, I almost forgot. I got something for her a few weeks ago. I’ll be right back.”
I climbed out of the car and hurried to the back hatch, where I’d stashed the gift I’d bought for the vampire. I handed the pretty pink and white striped bag to Bastien when I got back into the car. “I saw it and…” I shrugged. “I thought she’d like it.”
“May I see it?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
He reached into the bag and pulled out the fat, weighted stuffed dog, an adorable gray and white sheepdog. Farrow had seen Ash once and had watched him with the fascinated longing of a child. I believed that when she’d been human, she’d had a beloved dog.
But vampires rarely kept pets. For one thing, dogs and cats didn’t like the undead. Cats hissed and ran away, and dogs barked, growled, and hid under the furniture.
He stared down at the stuffed dog for so long I squirmed in my seat, uncomfortable and a little embarrassed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but I was pretty sure both Bastien and Farrow would think I was demented.
“Kait,” he said, almost mournfully. “Kait.” He lifted a tentative hand to touch my face.
I didn’t move as he caressed my cheek so lightly I almost didn’t feel it. “It was a…” I cleared my throat and tried again. “It was a silly idea.”
“No,” he murmured. “She’s waiting in the shadows. Can I bring her into the car, or do you need to speak to me alone?”
“Of course you can bring her in. The news I have will affect her, too. And both of you will like it more than the stuffie.”
He smiled, just a little. “Not possible.”
Farrow appeared at the car as though he’d put down the window and called to her. She got into the back seat, her eyes empty, her face blank.
I turned sideways in my seat so I could see her. “Hi, Farrow.”
“Hello, Kait.”
Bastien put the stuffed animal back into the bag before reaching in between the seats. “Kait bought you a present,” he told her.
Finally, a hint of emotion. She frowned, then took the bag gingerly, as though afraid something might jump out of it and bite her. “What is this?” she asked.
“Open the bag,” Bastien told her.
Even though the parking lot was decently lit, it was still dim in the car. I turned on the overhead light, which really didn’t help much.
She pulled the toy out of the bag and stared down at it, as Bastien had done, not saying a word. I watched her, and Bastien watched me.
Finally, she lifted the dog to her face, squeezing it tightly in her hands, and broke into dry, harsh sobs.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, no, Farrow. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
But she shoved her upper body between Bastien’s seat and mine, and still holding onto her little dog, she wrapped her free arm around me and hugged me as hard as she could.
And that was hard.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “You cannot know what this means to me. I love it, Kait. I love it so much.”
Then she sat back against her seat and played with her stuffed animal like a six-year-old might. “This is the best present I’ve ever gotten,” she murmured. “And she’s so heavy! Her name is Precious.”
I smiled at Bastien. “I guess she likes it.”
He took my hand in both of his. “To her, it is joy. She adores it, Kait, the way she adores you.” He hesitated. “If anything should ever happen to me and I find my true death, will you take her?”
Farrow gasped. “Nothing will happen to you. Not ever!”
But Bastien didn’t take his stare off me. “Kait?”
“Of course I will,” I told him. “She can come live at Silverwood. If that’s what she wants.”
“Nothing,” Farrow cried, “will happen to you. And if it does, if you die, Precious and I will die with you.”
I honestly didn’t think the girl could survive if Bastien’s life ended. But that brought me to the reason for my visit.
“Last night,” I began, “I went to a client’s house to take care of what I thought was a demon attached to their child. It wasn’t a demon, Bastien. It was a ghost. A vampire ghost.”
For a second, there were no sounds. As Bastien tried to process what I was telling him, Farrow became so still in the back seat that it was like she’d managed to slip out of the car without me noticing.
“You are serious,” Bastien said, finally. Then, “You are sure?”
“I am,” I told him. “He’s in a spirit trap in my house. He will fade, in time, and cease to exist. But he was there, Bastien. He was feeding from the little girl. He bit me, and I felt it.”
He stiffened. “He bit you? Show me.”
I didn’t bother telling him there was nothing to see. The residual vampire magic in Zach had felt it, and Bastien was a powerful master. He would feel it, as well.
“We might stay here, when we die?” Farrow asked.
“We do not end,” Bastien murmured, his fingers probing the invisible bitemark on my shoulder. “I feel him.” Then his fingers became caressing. “You are not hurt?”
“No.” I pulled my shirt back over my shoulder. “I have to go to work.”
There was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
A spark of something that decades of horror had smothered but somehow not killed.
And when he smiled at me before leaving the car, that smile lit up his face—for just an instant, but I saw it.
For the first time since I’d known him, he was genuinely… happy.
“As is almost always the case,” he said, leaning forward to look through the open doorway at me, “you have given us something that cannot be repaid. You save us, Kait Silver, even when you don’t mean to. Thank you.”
I sat there for a few minutes after they were gone, wondering exactly when things had begun to change between me and the vampires. Between me and Bastien. I’d saved his life. That had been the beginning of an unexpected bond.
Finally, I started the car. “You’re welcome, Bastien,” I whispered, then sped down the highway, rushing headlong into whatever the rest of the night had waiting for me.