House of Pawns

  But I don’t look at any of them. My eyes are for Ian only.

  He descends the stairs, and with his movement, attention is drawn to him.

  I hear one quick intake of breath…two. Low voices begin whispering. But I stare at Ian.

  He looks nervous, which is so not him. But then again, he’s just become everything he despises. Many know of his hatred of the vampires. And here he is, alive, after being dead.

  When he reaches the bottom step, he offers his arm and the foyer is dead silent.

  “I think we did this backwards,” he leans over and breathes. “Isn’t it you that’s supposed to make the sweeping entry down the grand staircase?”

  A little laugh bubbles up out of my chest.

  The door opens once more, letting in my latest guest. But when I turn to look at who has arrived, everything goes cold and dark in my chest.

  Elle stands there in a pale pink, simple dress, staring with a white face and doe eyes at her very alive brother.

  “Elle,” Ian breathes.

  She doesn’t say anything. She just stares at him with those wide eyes, but eerily calm demeanor of hers. I see her swallow once.

  Before she turns around and walks back out the door.

  “Elle,” Ian calls. He lets go of me and takes off after her into the dark. He closes the front door after himself.

  I stare at the door, feeling a little hollow hole form in my chest.

  I close my eyes.

  Count to ten.

  Take a deep breath.

  And turn around to the deadly silent crowd behind me.

  “Thank you all for coming,” I say loudly. I hadn’t planned to make a speech. But here we are. “I really appreciate you all being here to celebrate my twenty-third birthday with me. Being new to Silent Bend isn’t an easy thing when so many have such deep roots.”

  So many eyes are glued to me. They blink back, scrutinize me. Look unsure. Others are so very curious.

  “I never knew my father,” I say, holding my chin high. “I didn’t even know he existed until I got a copy of his will. I’m just a simple girl from Colorado who discovered this other life that existed on the other side of the country.”

  I wipe my palms on my dress. This is a paradigm. This could change so much. I have to do it right. Lillian walks to my side and hands me a glass.

  “You know, my mother died when I was nineteen,” I continue. My voice grows softer, and half the crowd leans toward me, gripping my every word. “I thought I was alone. So when I learned about the Conrath Estate, about this town, I felt like slightly less of an orphan. Thank you for being my family, Silent Bend.” I raise my glass to them in a toast.

  Those with their own glasses raise them. Low murmurs echo throughout the crowd.

  But I can feel a shift.

  No longer am I the devil offspring of a man they feared. I’m the girl who never knew that man. A girl with no parents. A girl just looking for her new family in a new town.

  As if sensing my speech is over, the crowd shifts, heading to other places, resuming conversations.

  Lillian leans in. “Well done.”

  But I feel slightly sick inside. Like I’ve just manipulated everyone into thinking I’m a better person than perhaps I really am.

  “That was some speech.”

  The crowd parts, and up walks Anna Burke of the false House of Royals.

  She wears the same black tulle and leather dress she wore to what would have been my bloodletting. Her hair is in soft waves around her face. She looks absolutely stunning and intimidating.

  “Thank you for coming,” I say. Everything in me tightens just slightly. Every single move I make, every tiny breath I take is all in play now. I can never slip up, even for a second. “I’m glad you felt comfortable enough to come.”

  “You sure have stirred the shit pot with Jasmine,” she says with a small smile. “And I told you it wouldn’t be long that you’d keep yourself away from our kind.”

  I loop my arm through Anna’s, Lillian on my other side, and we begin making our way to the ballroom. “Circumstances change old resolutions.”

  “I have to wonder if Jasmine knew you were in love with Ian Ward when she collected him for you to drain,” Anna says. She looks around the room, but it isn’t with the wonder of most. “It sounds like a game she’d play just because she can.”

  “Anna,” Samuel coos from behind us. We turn to find him with his usual coy smile. “You’re looking stunning this evening.”

  She barely resists rolling her eyes. “Give it up, Samuel.”

  “Never,” he taunts her. “And, I’m not finding anyone, Alivia. Whoever this spy is, he’s good.”

  “Spy?” Anna asks.

  I explain to her what has been going on and watch her face closely as I do so. I need to feel her out.

  She’s curious—and intrigued.

  “He said five weeks?” Anna repeats. “That’s not very much time. You feel like you’re prepared?”

  I give the smallest of shrugs. “I think there are few circumstances anyone can ever be fully prepared for. I will do my best and deal with the reality when it arrives. But I wondered if you’d be up for a job I don’t think anyone is more qualified for than you.”

  “A job?” she repeats. She looks doubtful, but also interested.

  I nod. “I need to know more from this spy. I am tired of him sneaking around and I don’t like looking over my shoulder. I want to talk to him face to face. But, seeing as I’m still human, it’s a little difficult to do on my own.”

  “Your boyfriend used to track our kind down as a human and did a pretty damn fine job of it,” Anna says. She’s testing me out, feeling how committed I really am. “Why not ask him?”

  I look up at Samuel, who gives a little chuckle, and Lillian, who gives me a knowing look. “Ian is…torn about his new condition. I’m trying not to push too much.”

  “You’re afraid to ask him,” she calls me out.

  “Yes,” I admit, no shame. “I have a feeling he’s going to not be around as much for a little while. His sister just found out, in a not so gentle way, that her brother is still alive.”

  Anna looks at me for a long moment. She looks over at Lillian, searching her. She glances at Samuel. There’s something unspoken that goes on between them, like he has the ability to tell her what I’ve just done for him.

  “I was alone for over a century,” Anna says as she looks back at me. “I thought I was a strong person, but the loneliness nearly drove me suicidal. I found Jasmine and her House and I joined them out of desperation, but I was always her pawn and she made it obvious that I wasn’t needed for anything other than numbers.”

  “I promise that you will never be just a number in my House,” I say, holding her eyes and putting as much loyalty as I can into her gaze. “I’m asking you to be my General, Anna.”

  Once again, Anna looks from me, to Samuel, to Lillian.

  “Alivia is not like Jasmine,” Lillian says. And there’s so much trust and surety in her voice, it leaves me slightly breathless.

  “Things are different here. This is how a House is supposed to be,” Samuel says.

  “You have my loyalty if I can count on yours,” I promise Anna as she looks back at me.

  A small smile pulls on the corner of Anna’s lips when she says, “You’ve got yourself a General.”

  IAN CALLED THAT NIGHT AND said he wouldn’t be back. Not for a while. He had his family to deal with.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. His family was always Ian’s biggest concern before, and the reason he did everything he did—to protect them. But it still left me feeling empty.

  So instead of obsessing over him, I concentrated on what needed to be taken care of in my House.

  If I am going to run a successful House, I need every member of it to feel as if they are needed and vital. Anna has a job: to find the spy and work with Rath to maintain our security. I task Samuel with finding other Born in our area that are not
associated with a House. His ties run deep and old. Lillian is in charge of PR with the town. I need her to come up with ways to continue making the town less afraid of me.

  I spend a lot of time in my office, staring at my board of names.

  Micah.

  Markov.

  Christian.

  Trinity.

  Cameron.

  I know I will never win over Micah. He will remain loyal to Jasmine to the end. And, he may be my biggest threat because of that fact. He could be a complication I will have to deal with.

  Markov. I once thought that if I could sway him to my side that I could do this. I’m already halfway there and yet I don’t have his loyalty. But he constantly seems intrigued by my tactics. I need him on my side, but I’m not sure how to win his loyalty.

  I don’t think I understand Christian enough to know how to handle him. His father once ran the House, after my uncle was killed. The King publicly shamed his family. Will he stay with Jasmine out of habit and nostalgia? I feel I’m going to have to enlist Samuel to gain his brother’s loyalty.

  Trinity hates me. I don’t understand why. I’ve never done anything to her personally. I’m quite sure she will have no desire to come to my House. But I am not sure I can get Cameron to join my ranks without Trinity. They are both young, him in blind love with the girl who thinks of him as nothing more than a friend. I’m going to have to think back in the ways of high school hormones to handle this situation.

  Who do I go after first? Markov, Christian, or Cameron?

  The air around me is cold and the night dark outside. I’ve yet to die and resurrect, but the more vampires that come to inhabit my home, the more nocturnal my schedule has become.

  A small voice in the back of my head says it would make my life easier to simply get my death over with and embrace the inevitable. But there is something else, something basic and so very, very human that says not yet.

  And I know. I just know, that Ian will never look at me the same once I’ve resurrected. I hate feeling this way.

  There is also the fact that as soon as I am a vampire, I will have to find another way to keep my subjects fed.

  Every other day. That’s how often I let one of them feed on me. First Samuel. Second Lillian. And then Anna, just a few hours ago.

  It’s a problem I will have to deal with soon. The more House members I gain, the less blood left for me. I will die eventually just trying to take care of them.

  A commotion downstairs draws my attention. Hushed voices float my way and I strain my ears to hear them. I walk toward the door to hear what is being spoken.

  “This will shift everything,” Rath whispers. “This will destroy her.”

  “I will not keep this silent,” Anna says quietly, but with determination. “How would I even begin to hide it, anyway?”

  “I will take care of it,” Rath responds. Because he can take care of anything.

  “She needs to know,” Anna breathes.

  I step out of the office and walk to the balcony that looks over the foyer. I rest my hands on the railing and look down on them. They stand close, the tension a physical thing between them.

  “I need to know what?” I ask calmly.

  Both their eyes dart up to my face. There is a darkness in Rath’s that says if I hear what needs to be said, there is no going back. But Anna is determined. And, in her face I see the first seedlings of loyalty.

  “There’s something you need to see,” she says. “But be prepared, it’s bad.”

  For the first time in a while, my heart leaps a little higher in my chest. A slight sweat breaks out on my palms.

  I descend down the stairs and just before I’m about to follow Anna out the front door, Rath catches me by my wrist.

  “Just remember who you are, Alivia Ryan,” he warns.

  But his warning, his reaction, just hurries my departure outside.

  It’s still early, or rather, late, depending on how you look at it. It’s just after ten o’clock, so the sky is dark and damp. I cannot see much as I walk with Anna down my front steps and out onto the grounds.

  There, between the steps and the fountain, in the middle of the circular driveway, is a large cement box. I squint against the dark, trying to make out details.

  Details like the dirt that clings to most of its surfaces. Details like the marble headstone sitting directly in front of the box.

  Marlane Ryan. Beloved mother.

  The world grows very quiet as reality falls away. Tunnel vision takes over, and the only thing I can see is my mother’s name. My fingers and toes go numb and I’m not really sure I’m anchored to this earth any more.

  Something garbled and far away sounds in my ears, but I can’t process it.

  I fall to my knees before the headstone. My fingers brush over its polished surface.

  Mom.

  Here.

  That cement box is what she was lowered into. Inside it is her decomposing body.

  I laid her to rest three and a half years ago. In Colorado.

  But here she is, in Mississippi.

  Finally, my body leaps back to life. I vomit, barely turning my head before the sick arrives. Dry heaves then take me over. The violent tremors start.

  And the hatred burns in my veins.

  “Did Jasmine do this?” I hiss as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “Did Jasmine dig up my dead mother and deliver her to my front steps as revenge?” My voice quakes with rage.

  “I would assume so,” Anna answers. She isn’t wary or afraid of my emotional reaction. She’s prepared for orders. “No one else would have reason to do something so vile.”

  I climb to my feet and place my hands on the lid of the box, taking slow, deep breaths. I remember having to go down to the coroner’s office and identify her mangled, broken body. The deep gash on her forehead. The breaks in her legs and one of her arms.

  For three days straight, I sobbed until I had no strength in me.

  Inside this box is the woman who was too young, too unprepared for my arrival, but she kept me anyway. Did everything she could to make me happy and safe.

  A young, stupid girl with a cell phone and a car ended her life.

  And, here she is.

  Dead.

  Decomposed.

  Across the country because of my enemy.

  Rath was right. This will break me. This will change everything.

  I’ve tried being civil. I’ve tried doing this without devilish tactics. But when my enemy insists upon becoming the devil, I have to fight back with horns.

  “This will not go unanswered,” I promise my mother.

  I CAN ALWAYS TRUST RATH to take care of things.

  He has a new above ground tomb built in the tiny family cemetery the next morning. Right next to my father. After all these years, after only one night spent together, they are here again, side by side. It’s a beautiful and peculiar thing.

  I cannot be present when they remove her body from her burial vault and the coffin I scraped every penny I had together to pay for. I want to remember my mother as human, soft, and motherly, and whole, not the decomposing nightmare she surely must look like now.

  Rath takes care of it. I’ve never been so grateful for him.

  I tried calling Ian. I needed him here by my side as I stood at her new grave. I needed him to hold my hand and talk me down, to say that everything would turn out okay.

  But he never answered any of my calls.

  So instead, I have Lillian holding my hand. I have Samuel standing behind me, one of his hands gently on my shoulder. I have Anna beside me, glaring darkly at my mother’s headstone in front of her tomb. And Rath, standing so close beside me that I can feel the heat of his body radiating to warm my side.

  I may be alone, not a single family member to my name, but I have my new family, there to support me in what is my third darkest hour. They stand here with me, for as long as I stand there.

  Until the sky lightens. I know the pain they must be feel
ing as with every minute, the sky grows brighter. But they do not leave my side.

  So finally, I have to think of someone’s unease other than my own. I hug every one of them. Take Lillian’s hand once again. Take Anna’s. And together, as a family, we walk back into our home.

  “I’VE CAUGHT HIS SCENT HERE and there, but it’s days old,” Anna says as we make our final loop around the House. “I don’t think he’s been back to the House since you heard him the night of your party.”

  “You’ve found no traces of him around town?” I ask as we walk up the steps and into the house.

  Anna shakes her head. “Not yet. The new security cameras are high speed, but they still might not get a clear shot of him, but it will be something. And the UV motion lights will go off with any movement at all.”

  I nod, feeling frustrated we still have not made any headway in the last week in finding this spy. I have faith in Anna, but I expected she’d produce results within days. I remind myself to be patient. “Thank you,” I offer.

  We step inside the foyer and Anna pauses. “I wanted to ask you something but if you don’t want to talk about it, just tell me it’s none of my business.”

  “Okay.”

  “Jasmine was telling you the truth about the King wanting to know right away if you’re his Queen or not,” she says. She takes a seat on one of the stairs. She rests her forearms on her knees. Between her fingers she twirls a narrow silver shaft. I have no idea what it is, but in the hands of Anna, I’m sure it’s deadly. “Do you really want to leave it in his hands to kill you on his terms?”

  I ponder her question for just a moment. “Yet if I choose to end my life now, isn’t that kind of on his terms too, because his coming is forcing my hand? It’s all about choice. It’s all just a matter of when, however you look at it.”

  Anna thinks this over for a bit before she finally nods. “You’re a smart woman, Alivia. The way your mind works, it’s unexpected.”

  I’m not sure what to say to her compliment. “Thank you.”

  “And you have this air of humility about yourself, but there’s something about it that reminds me of sheep skin. There’s a vicious wolf underneath it.” Anna studies me with those dark eyes of hers, a small smile tugging on her face. “I will admit, I’m glad I’m not on Jasmine’s side in this war.”