Perilous Partnership (5 page)

Ariel Tachna

“Leighton.”

“You‟ll want to do something about him, Jean. I don‟t know what the solution is, but he‟s a loose cannon, and that isn‟t good for the Cour, with or without l‟ANS,” Angelique warned.

Jean nodded. “I just wish I had an idea. Maybe our research will help us find a solution. I know he made his own bed with the way he treated Adèle, but I can imagine how I would feel if Raymond suddenly pushed me out of his life.

It doesn‟t excuse Jude‟s behavior, then or now, but I feel sorry for him.”

“Well, stop,” Angelique ordered. “I worked with him and his partner, and
I
wanted to slap him more than once. Her restraint in not killing him was phenomenal.”

“No, they just fucked each other over by fucking each other silly,” Jean said with a sigh. “I‟ll talk to Raymond. He wants Adèle to help with security for l‟Institut. Maybe something can be done as we move forward, some spell or potion or something to either help Leighton control himself or to help her find a way to tolerate him.”

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THE trip to le Morvan, the heavily wooded region southeast of Paris between the capital and Dijon, would have taken three hours by car if either of them had owned one and nearly that long by train, given the remoteness of the town nearest the abandoned monastery. Raymond had a simpler solution, transporting himself there and having Mathieu send Jean after him. With the disbanding of the Milice de Sorcellerie, the magical arm of the French military, after the war, most wizards had stopped carrying their repères, since they no longer needed a link to the locator map that had allowed Marcel to keep track of his operatives while they were on patrol, a map Raymond had insisted they move to l‟ANS headquarters in case of any future need. Raymond still carried his repère religiously, making it a matter of a quick spell for Mathieu to send Jean to join him. He thought again, as he had done countless times since the partnerships formed, how much easier it would be if a wizard‟s magic worked on his partner, but while he had no explanation for the limitation, neither could he deny its reality. The repère and the locator map assured a solution as long as another wizard was around, for himself or for any other paired wizard who needed it.

“Monsieur Payet,” the real estate agent said, coming up and shaking Raymond‟s hand. “It‟s an honor to finally meet you face to face. I thought you said Monsieur Bellaiche would be—” She broke off when Jean appeared at Raymond‟s side. “Oh.”

Raymond chuckled. “Magic is a wonderful thing, Madame Prost. Jean, this is Madame Prost, our real estate agent.”

“Madame.” Jean offered his hand. The woman visibly steeled herself as she took it, giving Raymond another reason to chuckle, but Jean behaved himself, and the woman relaxed.

“So you‟re interested in the monastery outside of Dommartin. You do realize it‟s been sitting empty for ten years.”

“We‟re aware of the state it‟s probably in,” Raymond assured her. “We‟re more interested in the amount of space it would afford us than the condition it‟s currently in. We have the means to see to the necessary repairs.”

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Ariel Tachna

“If you‟re sure,” Madame Prost replied. “I have my car. It‟s about a thirty-minute drive unless you‟d rather….”

Raymond smiled. “Taking your car is fine, madame. Magic is a wonderful thing, but even it has its limits. You can tell us about the area as we go. I know le Morvan only by reputation. I‟ve never had the occasion to visit.”

“The regional park was founded in 1970,” Madame Prost explained, “to protect the unique biodiversity of the region. It‟s a nature preserve that also celebrates the rich cultural heritage of the area. From Roman times, it‟s been a center of thermal baths. Autun was built around that time and is a wonderful example of Roman city planning. Of course, Dommartin is much smaller and much more recent, but it goes to show the depth of history in the region.”

“Are you aware at all of the magical history of the region?” Jean asked. As they drove through the thick forest, he thought he could sense magical resonances, a sensitivity he had developed somewhat since the beginning of his partnership with Raymond. He did not expect to find another locus the way they had at Notre-Dame, if only because there should only be four, each aligned with one of the elemental powers, and with the identification of the cathedral as a locus, four had been pinpointed already.

“No, that‟s not an area I can advise you on,” the real estate agent apologized. “I wouldn‟t even know who to ask.”

“I would,” Raymond said. “Not by name, but if we decide we like the monastery, Jean, Adèle can probably get us in touch with some of the local wizards and perhaps even some of the other races as well. Does Autun have a Cour? Your counterpart there might be of some help as well.”

The look on Jean‟s face suggested he doubted that statement‟s accuracy, but he held his tongue in front of the realtor. She did not need to realize there was dissension among the Cours. Raymond caught the look, however, and filed the question away for later. If establishing l‟Institut in Dommartin would create problems for Jean, he needed to know that before they committed to buying the monastery. Not that he was planning on signing papers today. They had far too many issues to address before they made that kind of decision.

“We‟d do better to ask my colleague in Dijon or in Auxerre,” Jean said. “It has been a number of years since I‟ve had any contact with the chef de la Cour autunoise.” He rather wanted to keep it that way, though he knew it would not be possible if the monastery in Dommartin worked out as a site for l‟Institut.

“Dijon is a two-hour drive, and Auxerre is one and a half hours away,”

Madame Prost supplied helpfully. “Autun is only about forty-five minutes.”

“How far away is Château-Chinon?” Raymond asked, far more concerned about the proximity of friendly wizards than friendly vampires at this point.

Having Adèle within arm‟s reach would simplify their lives immensely.

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“Oh, not far at all,” Madame Prost replied. “Perhaps ten minutes. Probably not even that, honestly, if you want the town itself. Château-Chinon-Campagne is a little farther, another two or three kilometers perhaps.”

Raymond and Jean shared a glance and a smile. Perfect. “We have a former colleague from the Milice de Sorcellerie who works in Château-Chinon-Ville,”

Raymond explained. “Having her close will make settling in easier, should we decide to purchase the monastery.”

“You didn‟t say why you were interested in it,” Madame Prost probed lightly.

“No, we didn‟t,” Jean agreed, deliberately not elaborating.

Madame Prost seemed a little shocked by the abruptness of the answer, but she let the matter drop as she pulled off the main road onto the narrow track that led north out of Dommartin toward l‟étang de l‟Île. “The monastery is just over this hill.”

The monastery, when it came into sight, was not large as such installations went, but in addition to the chapel, it had several buildings, all in the familiar yellow limestone of the region. The buildings were laid out in a large rectangle, leaving a central open area originally for outdoor activity or perhaps as a pen for livestock. Either way, with a little attention to landscaping, it would provide a lovely terrace and garden for those who enjoyed such pleasures.

Madame Prost produced the key to the largest of the buildings, ushering them inside the shadowed interior. Jean breathed a soft sigh of relief. He had fed from Raymond the day before, so the sun posed no threat to him, but a thousand years of survival instincts telling him to shun sunlight were hard to cast off in only a year with his partner.

“The monastery is not actually in the parc naturel,” Madame Prost was saying when Jean relaxed enough to mentally rejoin the conversation, “so you shouldn‟t have any problem with permits for any changes you want to make. It wasn‟t interesting enough historically or architecturally to end up on any of the landmark registers either.”

“All to our good fortune,” Raymond said, looking around and mentally assigning functions to the different spaces. The refectory would serve as a dining hall, of course. The monks‟ cells could be turned into private rooms— small ones, but hopefully the people who were there as students would only stay for a week or two, and they could take out a few walls to make larger rooms for the researchers and faculty who would be staying for longer stretches of time. “Is it heated?”

“The previous owners had plans to open it as an auberge, but they ran out of money before they could finish the renovations,” Madame Prost said. “They installed radiators in some of the areas, but not all.”

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Ariel Tachna

Raymond nodded, internally debating the logistics of completing the heating system versus asking the wizards to maintain the temperature in whatever spaces they were using. That would work for their rooms and for the public areas but not for the rooms the vampires slept in. He would have to think more on that. “What about electricity?”

“They did that first,” the real estate agent replied. “The main complex has electricity and running water. I believe they also installed electricity in the grange, but with no plumbing fixtures, it doesn‟t have water.”

Raymond nodded and moved deeper into the abbey, opening doors and letting his imagination run wild. The scriptorium could be one classroom, the salle capitulaire another. As he kept walking, he found the infirmary, the chauffoir, the apothecary, even the old laundry room, all of which could be converted into meeting space, office space, laboratories. Eyes alight, he turned to face Jean, hoping to see the same enthusiasm on his partner‟s face. Jean‟s expression was composed as always, but Raymond saw a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. “Could we see the other buildings?”

“Of course,” Madame Prost said, leading them back out into the weak winter sunshine.

A quick tour of the grange, obviously used for keeping animals and tools, revealed holes in the roof and in one wall, but the rest of the structure seemed sound. Raymond wished Thierry was there, but he could always arrange another visit before they signed the contract. The purchase would be “as is,”

since the previous owners had defaulted on their loan and the property was currently owned by a bank, but at least they would know what they were getting into before they made their own purchase. The other two buildings, the Hostellerie that had been used to welcome guests when the abbey was active, and the abbot‟s lodging, were in somewhat better shape, but even they would need work after ten years of standing empty.

The air was fresh, though, as Raymond moved to the center of the cloister and breathed deeply. “Will you excuse us for a moment, Madame Prost?” he asked, not wanting to share the privacy of this ritual with an outsider.

The real estate agent looked startled, but she stepped out of their line of sight without protest.

“What do you think?” Raymond asked Jean softly.

“It‟s perfect, and you know it,” Jean said in an equally hushed tone. “It needs work, but the setting, the buildings, are ideal. We won‟t find anything better.”

“That‟s what I thought,” Raymond agreed. “Let me check the magical resonances. We‟ll need to have Thierry, Alain, and Adèle come visit as well.

I‟m adept enough to check at a surface level to make sure nothing is amiss, but

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I would prefer to have them check more thoroughly before we commit. Most places have a natural affinity with one element more than the others, but occasionally we‟ll find a location with no affinity for one element at all, and for this kind of endeavor, we need all four elements in some degree.”

“A phone call would be enough to get Thierry and Alain here now,” Jean commented. “If Adèle is on duty, that might be a little more complicated for her.”

“Let me see what I can feel first,” Raymond said, closing his eyes and stretching his magical senses to the natural world around him. Air stirred his hair lightly in response to his call, the eddies warming at his command. He breathed deeply, letting the energy of the atmosphere fill him. With a nod, he sank to his knees, threading his fingers through the tall, winter-brown grass until he reached the earth beneath their feet. Sluggish with fallowness from the cold, it responded slowly to his less-than-practiced touch, but eventually Raymond could feel a tremor of magical current. He would definitely have Thierry verify his assessment, though, because if the stagnation he felt was from more than just the season, it could complicate their undertaking. Fire leapt to his fingertips instantly. The small lake that he could barely see through the stand of leafless trees drew his attention finally.

“Walk with me?” he asked Jean, turning his head to meet his partner‟s eyes.

Anywhere you want to go
, Jean replied silently, a nod of his head all the answer Raymond needed. They made their way down to the shore of the pond.

As Raymond knelt and dipped his fingers in the icy water, Jean looked up and down the water‟s edge. The pond had a stream at each end, although he could not tell if it was natural or manmade. More concerning from a security standpoint was the collection of houses he could see across the expanse of water. They would have to discuss that with Adèle if she agreed to undertake the security precautions for l‟Institut. With no barrier to keep people out, only common courtesy would stop their neighbors from coming to investigate what they were doing. In his experience, the novelty of new neighbors would overrule common courtesy for the first few months at least.