Heir to the Coven (12 page)

“Anyone that walks in the door is fair game, huh?”

“Bad choice of words.”

“What? Oh, ‘game’. I thought Dawn was joking about that blood comment. There aren’t actually people in that house that would be out to drink my blood are there?”

“No, but sometimes cats like to play with small creatures. Corner them, bat at them, and torment them. Think of the people inside that house like a group of cats; charming when they want to be, sneaky, cunning, only occasionally declawed and all to willing to sink metaphorical fangs in whenever they feel like it.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“But I’m just like them when I want to be so it works.” He eyed me as he drove and I wondered if I had just worried him a little. “Anyway, where are we going? And what is that smell?”

Chris sniffed the air. “I don’t smell anything.”

“I have a hypersensitive sense of smell. You know, I can actually smell blood. You probably don’t want to know that. No one ever really wants to know that, but it’s true.”

“Then I’ll have to always make sure I shower before our dates.”

Even though the air conditioning was running, I put the window down. I could still smell it and it was making me nauseous. “Did you forget a bag of groceries in the trunk? It really smells like meat.”

“You can really smell that? You aren’t a vegetarian are you?”

“Um…no.”

“Oh.”

“Why?”

Chris grinned sheepishly. “I planned a picnic on the beach and packed a trunk full of sandwiches and salads. I didn’t know what you liked so there’s some of everything back there. I hope you brought sunscreen, you must really have to be careful about the sun with that skin of yours.”

I groaned at the dreaded sunscreen comment, but explained I currently had no worries about the sun. After that I faced an interrogation about half-caste life: Why did we live in coven houses? Didn’t that leave us open to a siege? What started the war? Did any other group drink blood beside the Order? Were the half-castes in the Order as scary as the rumors said?

Finally I asked, “Are you writing a story on this?”

“Sorry,” Chris said as we pulled into a parking spot at the beach. “I’ve never been in a position to ask anyone these things. I sound like a two year old don’t I?”

“A two year old wouldn’t have come up with wonder slut.”

“That was a good one.”

“Do you practice them?”

“Spur of the moment only. I never rehearse my material.” He smiled and got out to lug the picnic basket out of the trunk. It was on the tip of my tongue to offer to help since it looked like the basket might pull him over, but decided to let him do the manly thing. So much for my personal motto of living in the current era, the Victorian era still seemed to have a hold on me if I was going to let a man feel like a man for his demure little woman. The vampires that drilled those age-old misogynistic concepts into my head would be so proud. Oh, well it seemed like a nice thing to do for his ego and I was usually very hard on the ego or so I had been told.

We found a spot where a cluster of boulders blocked the wind. Chris was worried about sand in our food and I was worried about sand down my dress. It took me about four minutes to decide the beach was not my scene. The ocean was pretty, but the sand that stuck to everything, the beating sun that bothered my eyes and the endless stream of screaming brats on parade reminded me why I had gone to the beach once when swimsuits were still made out of wool and had not returned. Prowling dark allies was much more my style.

“Quite the spread. Did you make it or buy it?” I asked.

“I bought the sandwiches, but I made the potato salad. Mom’s own recipe.”

“That’s nice.”

“Did your mom cook?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“No.”

“Were you close?”

“No. Can we talk about something else?”

“Not a problem our mouths are about to be too busy to talk.”

I had a sinking feeling he wasn’t talking about kissing which was quickly confirmed when Chris glopped a spoonful of the potato salad on a plate and handed it to me. Then he gave me a verbal map of what sandwich was where. I was pretty sure I was supposed to pick one and dig in. I grabbed an egg salad sandwich and stared at it as it sat on my plate. What was I going to do with all this? “So what did you bring for dessert?”

“No dessert until you finish what’s on your plate missy.”

He’s joking. He’s joking, don’t overreact I told myself. But then he prompted me to try the potato salad and I snarled. I didn’t mean to.

“Whoa. I guess no one ever hovered over you at meals before. What was that mother of yours doing while you were growing up?”

“She was rotting in the ground because she died giving birth to me. The only people around to hover over me were my vampire nanny and assorted members of Lucius’ court. For the most part they called me ‘the child’ and I was treated like a lapdog the way my mother, the dessert, was treated. Which means we were over dressed, passed around and considered property. She was screwed by Lucius before he screwed me over.”

Chris went pale. “I am so sorry Natasha. I had no idea. I never would have said that if I had known. I thought you were just being shy.”

I pushed my hair out of my face and took a deep breath. “I’m the one who should be sorry. There was no way for you to know and I wasn’t explaining. General rule of thumb with me; if I’m giving one word answer it’s probably time to change the subject.”

“Desserts have to be willing don’t they? Who would want to do that?” Then his eyes went wide and he began to babble. “Sorry, again. I was thinking to myself and it came out of my mouth. Forget I said it. Forget the entire conversation. I will not bring up the mother topic again starting now I promise.”

Maybe it was because I felt bad for snapping at him or maybe it was because I was looking for something to do to ease the tension, but I stuck a forkful of that damn potato salad in my mouth and froze.

He saw the look on my face and asked, “Is the mayo bad?”

I shook my head and started to chew. I needed a plan. When Chris bent his head to take a bite of his sandwich, I used my preternatural speed to spit the mouthful out and cover it in sand. I looked up and found a blonde haired little girl staring at me.

She smiled at me and waved at Chris, “Hi.”

“Hi,” we both said.

Then that little bitch looked at Chris and said, “She spit her lunch in the sand.”

It was mean and immature, but I deliberately reddened my eyes and glared at the little girl. She squealed and ran away. I turned back to Chris who was staring at me in bewilderment. There was no way to explain so I decided to change the subject. “Do you like being a reporter?”

“Uh…yeah, I like it.” He looked over at where the little girl was crying to her mother and pointing back at me. “You’re really not going to explain it are you?”

“If I told you I would have to kill you.”

“Very funny.” Chris ate some more and then asked, “I wanted to be a writer, but I’m not very creative so now I write about other peoples’ stories since the ideas are already out there waiting to be found and I don’t have to manufacture them.”

“Did you want to write novels? What kind?”

“Fiction. Maybe historical fiction. I bet you could help me there.”

“I don’t know about that one.”

“It is so weird to think of everything you’ve seen in your life Tash. Stuff I’ve only read about you experienced first hand. I should do an article on you.”

I laughed. “There would be some people who would be very unhappy about that.”

“Like your father? He probably wouldn’t come off very well, how could any man let his child be caste? Even if he couldn’t stop it, why wouldn’t he do whatever it took to get it away from the vampires or the coven that did it?”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you wonder how your father could let this happen to you?”

That’s where things got ugly. I shot to my feet and stared down at him. “If you had any comprehension about vampires or true half-castes you would know that no one really has a choice in the matter, but since you’re an outsider I would stop passing judgment on people and situations you know nothing about. Of course you wouldn’t understand the need to create more of your kind, you’re barely even one of us. If you registered in the slightest with anyone you would be in a coven and not asking me stupid questions. I’m out of here.”

Before he could say another word I was out of sight. I had gone two blocks before I realized it was a two hour drive here and while it wouldn’t drain me too much to walk all the way back home, I really didn’t feel like walking so I called Max to come get me.

Chapter 13

When I got back to the house that night I had the sneaking suspicion that after Max had hung up the phone with me, he had warned everyone to vanish the second we returned because no one, and I mean no one, was around. Usually there were people sprawled out on the couches watching TV, or reading in the library, or going in and out of the house for duty or an evening out. Couldn’t a girl call her driver to demand he pick her up at a discount chain store because she walked out on her date with a few rants about potato salad and men and their questions tossed in without public notice being given? Was there some sort of color-coded alert system in place that I was unaware of?

Trouble was I really wanted to talk to someone about this, but I didn’t want to seem like I wanted to talk. I knew I could always talk to Rainor about life, but not my dating life especially after the dressing down he gave me the other night. Even if he didn’t decide to lecture me about appropriate behavior for a coven leader or cringe away from the idea of what he would think of as girl talk, he would find it way too funny. While the man could keep a secret about a great many things, I knew this would not be one of them. By the next morning I would have potatoes and potato salad showing up everywhere. Maybe I would even wind up with a sandbox in my bedroom. Respect was important in a coven, but this particular coven knew no bounds on its sense of humor and if Rainor made my date public knowledge then it was open season. Which brought me to Mercy who was at least bound by the girl code and the knowledge that I knew things about her that Kain didn’t and turn about was definitely fair play when it came to romantic secrets.

That didn’t mean I was without reservations about talking to her about my personal life anymore than I already had. The whole way to Mercy’s room I argued with myself that I shouldn’t open the door to girl talk. Not because it was unleader-like, but because once that door was opened it usually meant it couldn’t be closed again. Mercy and I had once talked about everything, but even if I were the same person I was back then I couldn’t escape the hard truth that there was most likely a traitor in this house and I was uncomfortable at putting my trust in anyone about anything at this point. I reminded myself that she had never betrayed my secrets in decades gone by and that I was supposed to be trying to ingratiate myself back into coven life. I knocked on her door.

“Come in.”

I opened the door and peered in. “Is Kain here?”

Mercy was sitting on the bed reading a book. She closed it and stood up. “He’s out right now. Is there something I can help you with or is this about this morning?”

“Actually I wanted to talk to you. It’s sort of personal.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. What’s up?”

I pushed the door shut and followed her inside. “Well, it’s about Chris.”

Mercy’s face brightened up. I definitely had her attention if I was going to talk about men. She wasn’t guy crazy like Dawn, but she liked all the gory details and unlike Dawn she had tact and discretion. “Ok.”

“We went to the beach.”

“Has he looked at your skin?”

“I don’t burn. And I don’t eat potato salad.”

“I’m going to leave that second one alone because of the randomness and focus on the not burning one. Does he know that? I know he’s a half-caste, but he isn’t part of a coven he doesn’t really know how everything works.”

“Not the real issue.”

“Sorry, but you and the sun look like you shouldn’t be on the best of terms. You’d think he would check before taking you somewhere you could be burned to a crisp and the sun does bother your eyes sometimes.”

“Anyway…we went to the beach which was as un-fun as I remembered it being, but I was willing to try to have a good time because he must like it to want to take me there until he started asking me about my mother.”

Mercy winced. “Again not the best of choices on his part.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What did you say to him about her?”

I laid out the entire conversation for her including how I eventually stormed off and left him standing there staring after me like I had grown a second head. You would think after 109 years of life I could respond in a more mature manner. So much for my speech to Kain about no longer being capable of spitting in Anton’s face, after the way I acted today I’d probably resort to kicking him in the shins. “I told him that she was a dessert and having me killed her.”

“What did Chris say?”

“He wanted to know why anyone would be a dessert.”

“I bet that hit a nerve.”

“Several. He apologized for the second time in five minutes and promised not to bring up the subject of mothers again. Then I ate his stupid potato salad and spit it out so that snot nosed brat could tell him, which made him get all weird. We were ok for a little while, but then he asked how my father could let his child be caste or at least not get me away from the vampires if he couldn’t stop it and I lost it and took off.”

“Define ‘lost it’.”

“I didn’t kill him, hit him or spit in his face if that’s what you’re asking. But I did say some really nasty stuff to him about not comprehending vampires or true half-castes because he was an outsider to coven life and barely registered as one of us anyway.”

“Ouch.”

I flopped back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. “This is why I spent years only having casual hook-ups. The emotional crap didn’t factor in.”