Hellbent (39 page)

“Soon. Very soon. Tomorrow night, I hope—depending on what airplane ticket bounty the Internet is able to provide me. We’re all done out here. All done, and then some.”

I could hear him frown. “What does that mean?”

“Long story.”

“You say that a lot.”

“Well, lots of things are long stories. I always tell them eventually, don’t I? Don’t go to California, Ian. Don’t let Max talk you into it, if you reach him again. There won’t be a convocation, and I know who killed your father. Also, I know how we’re going to get Max off your case for good.”

“You still think you can fix this? Time is running out, Ray. It might have run out already.”

“No. You’re still alive, so I’m still ahead. And once I get back, I’ll explain everything. You’ll see. You’ll believe me. Hey,” I said, trying to divert the topic before I felt the need to wibble and beg. “How’s Elizabeth settling in?”

“Well enough. She’s an odd bird, but an intelligent woman. Schizophrenia, isn’t that right?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Sometimes she seems perfectly normal. Sometimes she lectures Pepper in quantum theory and how magic can change the past. Every now and again, she calls Domino ‘George.’ ”

“Who’s George?”

“I haven’t the foggiest. Either she doesn’t know either, or she doesn’t feel like telling us. Raylene?”

“Yes, darling?”

“She doesn’t have anywhere else to go, does she?”

“You looking to get rid of her already?” I asked.

“I’m only wondering,” he said, which didn’t answer the question. “You’re accumulating new household members at a steady clip, that’s all. We may need to renovate the next floor down in its entirety.”

“Does Pita need his own room?”

“Pita does not need his own room. He already has his own floor.”

“Next you’ll tell me I shouldn’t buy him a bed, because he already has the queen-sized Posturepedic in my room.”

“Now you’re getting the picture.”

“I think you’re right. We
will
need to remodel. Maybe the whole place—top-to-bottom, all four floors.”

“Are you thinking of opening a halfway house for strays?” he asked, approximately half joking and half worried.

“Not exactly. But I may as well tell you now, I’m bringing yet another new one home with me.”

“A new … person?”

“A new vampire. I don’t know if she’ll stay with us at first—in fact, I suspect she won’t. She’ll stay with Adrian.”

I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. “You found Isabelle?”

“Almost by accident, but not quite. I knew she was around, I just wasn’t expecting to find her so quickly.”

“Is she.…?”

“Deaf? Yes. I think she hears roughly as well as you can see.”

“The poor dear.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her. She’s tougher than she looks. It’s my favorite thing about her, so far. That’s one of my favorite things about you, too.”

“Why thank you. But now you’re buttering me up.”

“Not at all,” I insisted. “I miss you, and I’m relieved to be talking to you. You’re alive, and you’re home. It’s all I wanted.”

“I miss you, too,” he admitted, and then a moment of silence hung between us, occupying the line with nothing except the companionable knowledge that we were only a couple thousand miles apart, and we wouldn’t be for very much longer. “Tell me about
San Francisco. Maximilian wants me to meet him in Chicago tomorrow night.”

“I told you already, there won’t be a convocation—in Chicago or anywhere else. And Maximilian can go jump in a fucking lake.”

“I suspect he will not.”

“His loss. A nice swim can be good for the soul.”

“Raylene? Stop beating around the bush.”

“Who’s beating around anything? I have a plan.”

“Oh
no.
”

I sighed. “Why does everyone always say that, every time I say I have a plan?”

“Because your plans are—”

“It was a rhetorical question, okay? I have a plan. I think you’ll like it.”

“If you really thought I’d like it, you’d have told it to me by now.”

“Untrue, my dear. I’m only withholding because I have a few minor details to iron out.”

“Oh no.”

“Stop that, would you? They are
minor
details—details of convenience, not details of necessity. And they aren’t worth going into, not over the phone.”

“You’re not going to kill me, are you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh
yes
,” I pressed, and the evil smile that stretched across my face felt really fucking good. “But there’s both more and less to it than that. Things are going to change around here, Ian.”

“Around Atlanta?”

“Well, around Atlanta, too, yes. But you know what I mean. In Seattle. Things are going to change.”

“For the better, I hope.”

“For
our
better, yes. Yours, and mine, and the kids. And Elizabeth, Isabelle, and Adrian. Shit, better for Pita, too—what the hell. No reason to leave him out of the fun.”

“You may reconsider your charitable attitude when you see your pillow.”

“Oh Christ.”

“Raylene?”

“Yes, Ian?”

“Come home soon.”

“I will. And when I do, I’m going to fix
everything.
”

We hung up, and I folded the cell phone back into my pocket. Then I rolled down the edges of the brown-paper bag that held my gifted peanuts, and I left it open on the park bench before I headed back to the hotel.

I
was right, and Isabelle wanted to stay with Adrian. But first she was willing to swing by the homestead with her brother, where she met Ian. They had lots to talk about … but didn’t seem to know what to do with one another.

One of the easier topics of conversation was her escape and subsequent life of freedom after escaping the island compound at Jordan Roe. She, Ian, and a handful of other preternaturals had been held there for experimentation by the military. But when a storm tore the compound open, those who had not died, fled.

Isabelle had tried to swim to the Florida mainland, but was washed out into the Gulf of Mexico. By sheer luck, she was picked up before dawn by a yacht called the
Saraphina. Saraphina
was owned by a
woman named Samantha Carey … a woman who was dying of breast cancer—though no one else knew it at the time. It was her secret, and the reason she’d bought the boat: for one last great cruise, taken on her own terms.

Fishing a young vampire out of the ocean changed things.

Isabelle and Samantha became friends, then lovers (despite the age difference), then parent and child when Isabelle bit Samantha—taking away the cancer for good.

Their union hadn’t lasted long, but it ended on good terms. Samantha’s new lease on life led to a desire for world travel, and she didn’t really have room for a partner, but she gave Isabelle enough money to live on, and they stayed in regular touch.

Otherwise, the girl vampire had been essentially on her own for the better part of a decade.

She knew that Adrian had disappeared, too, and she’d worried—but not known what to do. She knew that the Barringtons still ruled Atlanta, but she also knew that they were not as strong a House as everyone assumed.

“Theresa had kept Grandmother’s ring,” she explained with a glance at Adrian that said he knew which grandmother and which ring she spoke of.

“The diamond?”

“Yes, the one Mother brought from Cuba when they left. I wanted it back. They could keep everything else I’d left—just clothes, and some CDs, and nothing, really. Nothing worth looking for. But the ring … it was the only thing of value I ever owned, and Theresa was wearing it. I saw a picture of her with Robert Croft, from some party they attended. It was in a newspaper, and people were talking about Atlanta and Chicago forming an alliance—and that sounded awful, but I didn’t care about it any more than Theresa cared about the ring. She’s so stupid, she probably thought it was fake.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. “She didn’t strike me as the type to know coal from cubic zirconium.”

“It made me mad, so I went back to the house while they were still away in Illinois, before they came home. I broke inside and looked everywhere in their room, but I couldn’t find it. That’s when I realized she must’ve put it somewhere else.”

“She could’ve still been wearing it.”

Isabelle shrugged. “True, but I didn’t want to take it off her hand if I could help it. I didn’t want to see her, or talk to her. I didn’t want anything to do with her after the things she made me drink. All I wanted was the ring.”

“Did you ever find it?”

“No. Someone came in and almost caught me, so I had to come back later. When I came back the
next
time, they’d added some security. I set it off when I got inside one of the bedrooms—the window, when I opened it. It was very close to dawn, but I was willing to take the risk. The alarm went off. I disturbed a man who was staying there. He was settling in for the day, but he saw me, and he attacked me.”

“A man who was staying there? In that extra bedroom where I found you?”

“Yes. He was an old vampire, older than me. Older than you, I think. He was very strong, but I was lucky—we struggled, and the mirror over the dresser broke. I picked up a big piece of glass and threw it. It almost took his head off. Before he could kill me, I killed him the rest of the way,” she said, which was one way to put it.

“Father,” Ian murmured.

“Who?” she asked.

I filled in, “The man you killed. His name was William Renner. Ian knew him, but they were no longer part of the same House.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t go there to kill him. I only did it in self-defense.”

Ian said, “And he attacked you for the same reason, I bet. You surprised him. He thought you were there to kill him, and it’s hard to blame him. He was under the Barringtons’ roof. I’m sure every one of them looked like a potential murderer.”

“It was a misunderstanding,” she said, nodding. “I wish he hadn’t been there. I only wanted the ring. Now I’ll never find it. If I go back now, the House will be locked down like Alcatraz. I’ll never get inside.”

“You may not have to,” I told her brightly.

Adrian, who was sitting in front of the television with Pita on his lap, asked, “Why’s that? Are you going to go back there and get it for her? I don’t know if she told you or not,” he said to his sister, “but Raylene is pretty good at getting in and out of places.”

“If I have to, I’ll totally sneak in and swipe it for you. Frankly, I’d do it for giggles—and for the chance to put my fist through Theresa’s face. But I suspect it won’t come down to that. Give it another few weeks, and I can probably collect it with a phone call.”

The room got quiet, primarily because the kids weren’t present to start asking questions. They were out, as was their custom at three
AM
on a weeknight. Hey, it’s like I said—I’m not their mom, and I don’t monitor their comings and goings. Very much. Actually, I knew where they were … or at least, I knew what they were doing. I’d sent them on an errand.

Ian prodded me first. “Raylene, you said you had a plan and I said ‘oh no.’ Is this the part where you tell us exactly how much ‘oh no’ we ought to be feeling? This situation.” He waved toward where he knew Isabelle was sitting, cross-legged on the floor beside her brother. “It could get very tricky, politically. She killed the head of a House …”

“By accident,” I interjected.

“Regardless, it’s been pinned on the Atlanta House—”

“As it rightly should’ve been, since Isabelle is technically still a member of the Barrington clan. And it happened on their watch, under their roof.”

Elizabeth piped up, startling the whole room. “I’ve hidden the bones.” She’d been downstairs when we’d begun the conversation. I hadn’t heard her come up. Damn, that woman was spooky when she wanted to be.

Isabelle saw us all turn to look at Ms. Creed, so she looked, too.

Elizabeth entered the room and took the free seat next to Ian on the short couch. She moved a little slowly, as if she’d only just awakened. It takes time to adjust to a vampire’s schedule. Or a drag queen’s.

“Good evening,” Ian told her.

She smiled at him. “Good evening to you all, too.”

“Elizabeth, I’m glad you’re here,” I told her.

“And why is that?”

“General principle?” I tried.

“Ha.”

“Okay, I’m glad you’re here because now this makes everyone. All the grown-ups, anyway. And the time has come to unveil my nefarious plan—the plan that’s going to keep Ian from turning into dust at the hands of his brother, and prevent his brother from going on the warpath after us. This is the plan that is going to keep us all safe and secure for the foreseeable future.”

“This sounds like a big plan,” Ian said.

Adrian said, “Tell me about it. I’ve been trying to drag it out of her since Georgia.”

“All right—let’s hear it,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll like it best if I don’t have to use any of the bones. They wear me out, and I still have plans for at least two of them.”

“Two of them?” Did I really want to know?

“Two more things to be undone.”

“Is there any rush?” I asked nervously.

She glanced down at her wrist, which did not have a watch on it—or a calendar, or anything else to tell her anything. But upon checking that patch of skin, she concluded, “Yes and no. One of them, I’ll need to start soon. One can wait.”

“Will you be blowing up anything in Seattle?”

Elizabeth considered this question. She stretched out and relaxed, a move that caught the attention of the resident cat. Pita abandoned Adrian’s lap and sauntered over to Elizabeth, who patted her thigh in an invitation. The kitten took it, purred, kneaded his claws around into her leg, and conked out again.

Finally, she said, “Not at this time.”

I’d take what I could get. “Fine. Here goes.” I cleared my throat for dramatic emphasis. I made sure Isabelle was watching me, and could see my lips move. Since this once, for these few precious seconds, I had everyone’s attention … I laid it all out.