Fratricide, Werewolf Wars, and the Many Lies of Andrea Paddington

  * * *

  The Team had come back. Talked to James. Tried to pull him back into that world of prophecy and death. Lisa didn’t want that. She just wanted her husband. Not some god or demon. Just a man. A good man.

  She realised that while she’d been staring vacantly out the back window it had become night. Where was James? He hadn’t done something stupid, had he, like storm up to the manor and demand answers?

  Who was she kidding; that was exactly the sort of thing he’d do.

  Had something happened to him?

  The opening front door interrupted her catalogue of horrible things that the Andrastes might have done to him. James stepped into the living room, still dressed in his long tan coat and dark blue suit, but paler than when he’d left her at the Tree. “Everything all right?” she asked.

  Rather than answer, he shrugged off his overcoat and hung it up. There was still a blood stain on the left sleeve; he refused to let her remove it. Said he needed it to remind him what was important and who the real beast was.

  James poured a scotch and drained it in one belt.

  James was drinking now? He always had a glass of wine with the Andrastes to be polite, but he’d never developed a taste for alcohol because he hated crowds and noise and smoke: the three chief ingredients of every pub on Archi. What had happened since their conversation with McGregor?

  “You okay?” she asked, placing a hand on his shoulder partly for comfort and partly to stop him refilling the glass and making himself sick.

  “Care to sit?” he said, dropping onto the couch. Lisa took the place next to him, hands folded in her lap, and he filled her in: the possibility of another prophecy; talking with Charlie and Guenevere; the empty coffin. When he was finished, he stared off into space and drained his scotch.

  Oh. He must have refilled it at some point.

  “Isn’t this good news?” she asked. “Not the prophecy, that’s awful; the part where your father is still alive somewhere?”

  “Yeah, but my mother never mentioned my father to me. Whenever she talked about him, it was in the past tense.”

  “You don’t know what Adonis threatened her with. Lying to protect you shows she cared, deep down.”

  “She used her final breath to make a dig at Adonis rather than tell me that my father was alive, so as much as I’d love to think the best about her, I just… can’t.”

  Lisa stroked his hand for a while. “You’re really going tomorrow morning?”

  “I have to.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. Adonis’s warning rang in her head. The vampire was up to something and James was running right into it as fast as his legs would carry him. “And if I asked you not to? As a favour to me.”

  He looked at her, his not-quite closed mouth revealing crooked teeth. “Why?”

  She nearly told him about Adonis’s plea to let them help her, but it would mean telling him about their conversation at dinner and that she’d known there was another prophecy. Jim didn’t need to hear that another woman close to him had been keeping Adonis’s secrets.

  “You’re not still worried I’ll see all those shiny Mainland baubles and not return?” James asked.

  She’d never actually been worried about that. She’d been worried Adonis would kill him. She’d worried why Adonis had been so concerned with James’s character. What was the demon supposed to do? Why did Adonis think Lisa needed protecting from her own husband?

  Lisa lied quick. “I’m worried you’ll find some shiny Mainland girl and not return.” It played on old insecurities from her nearly-friendless childhood and the first three months when she’d come back to Archi.

  It wasn’t even that big a lie. After a couple of years of everyone treating her like she was ugly, it was only James’s constant compliments that reminded her that she didn’t have that bad a reflection.

  Jim bought it. “You really think there’s anyone out there better for me than you?”

  “Well, you… didn’t have much choice on Archi.”

  “Oh, thanks, dear,” James said. “I only ended up with you for lack of options, is that it? I’m not sure whether you underestimate how amazing you are or if you’re insulting my massive manly appeal.”

  “So prove me wrong,” she said. “Stay here, with me, with us.” She placed his hand on her belly. “No demon, no prophecy. Just us.”

  His brown eyes explored her face. “No,” he said, and she knew that arguing was pointless. He’d made up his mind that this was the Right Thing To Do and nothing would dissuade him. “I’d rather be a husband than a demon but I can’t sit around if Adonis is planning another genocide, and if I don’t go then this could turn into a war. I might be able to end this without death.”

  He wouldn’t, though, because Adonis was every bit as stubborn as him.

  “I could stop you, you know,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “I have feminine wiles.”

  He smiled. “I’ve noticed. But I have duties.”