Queen of The Hill (Knight Games) (12 page)

“Someone’s a lucky girl,” Berta said.

I plucked the card off the plastic prong and opened it.

Mi cielo,

Michelle has informed me you have not yet chosen flowers for our wedding. May I suggest these, although they will pale in comparison to the beauty of the bride.

Love,

Rick

“How did your boyfriend even find a florist to deliver third shift?” she asked.

“He’s my fiancé, and he’s very resourceful,” I said. Probably got help from Soleil. Flowers bloomed in her presence all year round. Plus, a fae florist would have no qualms about delivering in the middle of the night.

Berta huffed and mumbled something about “the honeymoon phase.”

I pulled out my phone and sent Rick a text.
Thank you for the flowers.

Nothing. He’d had the phone more than a month now and still didn’t know how to text. I shrugged and dialed his number on my way to the cafeteria.

He answered on the first ring. “Why do you insist on typing the message?” he asked. “Isn’t it enough that we can call each other at any moment we wish?”

“Thank you for the flowers.”

“My pleasure.”

“I think your choices will be perfect with the dresses I picked for the bridesmaids.”

“Glad I could help.”

“I have some bad news. I just saw a vampire bite come through the ER. Brutal.”

“Brutal would be if you found a dead body. The vampire showed restraint if the person was alive.”

“More like the vamp made an effort not to get caught. The victim was compelled not to realize she was bleeding to death. Probably so she could get far enough away from the scene before she died. Makes it impossible for us to trace the killer.”

“It appears Julius’s absence is already rippling through the coven.”

“We’ve got a week and a half until the full moon. We have to find him. Can we do a locator spell like we did with Marcus?”

“We can try. The spell will have to be performed at the Thames.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll need sleep or I won’t be strong enough.”

“I’ll make preparations.”

“Oh, and Rick?”

“Yes,
mi cielo
.”

“I texted you because you need to learn how to text.” I stressed each of the words to make sure he knew I was serious.

He chuckled. “Why for?”

“Because someday you might be in a situation where you can’t speak but you need to tell me something.”

“When would that be? Give me an example.”

“Say you were in a library,” I suggested. “You must remain silent, but you might need to ask a question.”

“Why would I be in a library?”

“Researching a spell.”

“In what library could I research a spell?” he asked.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Okay, poor example. How about this? What if you were stuck in an alley and the only thing keeping you from being eaten by carnivorous elves was the ability to remain perfectly silent while texting me for help?”

“I’d simply use our connection to call you psychically.”

With a groan of frustration, I said, “It’s a life skill. I cannot be married to a man who can’t text. It’s impractical. I promise you’ll like it if you try it.”

He hummed skeptically.

I stopped at the entrance to the cafeteria and bit my lip. “How’s this, Rick? I get off work at seven. I can either go home and sleep or stop by your house for sex. Text me which you’d prefer.”

I hung up on his response and giggled with satisfaction as I slid the phone into my pocket.

T
he next afternoon, I stopped into Valentine’s for lunch. It was a Saturday, busiest day of the week, which meant Logan was guaranteed to be there. I needed to talk to him. I needed him to understand he was in danger.

“What can I get for you, Grateful?” Dustin asked as I bellied up to the bar. Dustin was Logan’s assistant manager. Good sign. He only bartended when Logan was managing.

“Valentine burger, medium-well, and fries,” I said, scooting onto a barstool.

He scratched my order onto his pad. “Coke?”

I nodded. While he filled a tall glass, I perused the restaurant.

“You looking for Logan?” he asked.

“I was going to say hello if I saw him.”

Dustin slid the glass across the bar to me and leaned closer, his smile melting as he neared. “He’s in his office.” Dustin looked right then left. The bar was packed and Dustin had the reputation of being a huge gossip. I’m not sure what he was looking for because despite the crowd of people around me, he kept talking. “Between you and me, he hardly comes out of there anymore. He’s changed.”

I furrowed my brow. “Does he give a reason?” I was curious if Dustin had heard of Tabetha. Did they date publicly?

Dustin shrugged one shoulder. “I think you broke his heart.”

“Pshaw,” I protested. “Have you seen him in here with anyone new? Maybe a woman?”

He gave me a strange and curious look. “No. What have you heard?”

So, he didn’t know about Tabetha. Interesting. “Nothing,” I said. “I just didn’t want to take all the credit for his weirdness.”

Dustin nodded and held up my order. “I’ll put this in. It will be a few minutes, if you want to say hello.” He gestured with his head toward the office. “Leave your coat, and I’ll save your seat.”

I stripped out of my black wool trench and draped it over the barstool, noticing the slightly singed back and shoulders. I needed a new coat. Dustin disappeared into the kitchen while I navigated the bustling tables to the door to Logan’s office and gave two sharp knocks.

“Come in,” he said gruffly.

I hurried through the door, closing it behind me.

“What are
you
doing here?” he asked. He looked up from his lunch, an expression of disgust on his face that had nothing to do with the potpie he was eating.

“I need to talk to you about Tabetha.”

“After how you treated us at our dinner party, I should throw you out of here on your ass. Lucky for you, Tabetha has asked me to keep our relationship discreet, for obvious reasons.” He waved his hand in the air like he was directing an invisible wand. “Kicking you out would invite a lot of questions. I don’t suppose you would consider leaving on your own?”

“Not until I say what I came to say.”

He widened his eyes at me. “I’m all ears.”

“You are in grave danger,” I said. “Tabetha threatened to kill you.”

He shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“When you left the room to get dessert, Tabetha demanded my cemetery. If I don’t turn it over to her by the spring equinox, she threatened to kill you. She’s using you, Logan.”

For a moment, Logan simply stared at the wall, mouth slightly open, jaw sliding back and forth as if he were adjusting the joint. When he spoke, there was menace in his words. “Tabetha told me you would do this.”

“What?”

He swiveled his chair to face me again. “You’re jealous. You are finally realizing what a good thing you had, and now you want me back. You made your choice. Now you have to live with it.”

My mouth dropped open. “I am perfectly happy with my choice, Logan.” I stormed his desk and leaned across so that our noses almost touched. “What I’m not happy with is having your blood on my hands.”

Hard eyes locked onto mine. “Then give Tabetha what she wants,” he said through his teeth.

I straightened. Who was I looking at? Was Logan so smitten with Tabetha that he was willing to gamble his life for her cause? If he was asking me to give Tabetha what she wanted, he must understand on some level that the threat was real. But there was not one shred of doubt in his eyes.

“You love her,” I said under my breath.

“Absolutely.”

“She’s using you, Logan,” I repeated.

“I think you should leave now.” He stood and pointed toward the door. “Go.”

With a heavy weight in my heart, I did … as soon as I got my Valentine burger to go. You absolutely do not abandon a hot and ready Valentine burger.

The next day, I met Rick at the Thames Theater to perform the spell to find Julius. We’d done this magic before, when we’d gone searching for Marcus after he escaped the hellmouth. The salve was a little different this time. The goop at the bottom of the cauldron at the center of the ring of skulls still smelled of eucalyptus, but Rick had used more golden seal to counteract the additional time between Julius’s last sighting and our search. I didn’t understand how the spell worked exactly, but I hoped it was as effective as it had been when we’d used it before.

“Thank goodness they cleaned the room,” I said. The area at the foot of the bed where we were performing the spell had been a puddle of blood the last time we were here.

“I am sure it was done as soon as Silas cataloged the evidence. All the spilled blood would have driven the vamps here mad.” He removed the giant wrought iron swizzle stick he was using to stir and placed it on the floor next to the cauldron. “The salve is ready.”

“Here goes nothing,” I said. I scooped a glob onto my finger and smeared it on my eyelids. “Let me know when the minute is up.” If the spell worked as planned, when I opened my eyes I would see a red dot in the direction Julius was taken. Rick and I would follow the dot to his destination.

“Open,” Rick said.

Gradually, I worked against the heavy, sticky mess to lift my lids. I blinked and blinked again. “This is wrong,” I said. I turned my head, right and left.

“Do you see the red dot?”

“Oh, I see it. Only, there isn’t just one. There are thousands, all over the room, in every direction.”

“What does it mean?”

“I have no idea.” I stood and tried to focus my magic, willing the most ancient part of myself to interpret what I was seeing. “Maybe he’s de—”

Rick’s hand slapped over my mouth. In typical caretaker fashion, he’d crossed the room in a split second. “Don’t say it,” he whispered in my ear. His eyes flicked up toward the ceiling. “Once the coven knows, we will have no opportunity to influence who is chosen as his successor.”

I nodded. He dropped his hand. “But do you think I’m right?”

“It’s possible. I have no explanation.”

I grabbed a towel from our equipment bag and wiped the salve from my eyes. “Let’s try again, this time for vampire suspect number one.”

“Bathory,” he said, agreeing with my course of action.

Scooping another glob of salve, I spread it over my eyelids and concentrated on the vamp who’d tried to kill me. When I opened them again, I shook my head in frustration as I looked around the room. “Nothing. No red at all.”

“She wasn’t here.”

“She was behind this, Rick. We both know she was.”

He nodded. “I agree,
mi cielo
, but perhaps she compelled another to do her dirty work for her. The injuries to the victim were more consistent with ogre activity.”

Again, I wiped the salve from my eyes. “This spell only finds vampires. If we don’t know what or who took Julius, and I can’t track Julius, how do we find him?”

Rick grimaced. “We will have to think of something else.”

“In the meantime, we need to learn who plans to challenge Julius’s position, and try to win that person’s allegiance.”

“Or groom our own candidate.” Rick looked at me and lowered his chin.

“I know what you’re thinking, and he’ll never agree to it,” I whispered. Oh, how I hoped he wouldn’t agree to it. My stomach sank. He was thinking of Gary. Gary, who I’d dated in a past life—his past life. Gary, who I tried my hardest to forget on a day-to-day basis, not because I still had feelings for him—I didn’t—but because of how our relationship ended. For me, it was an ego-shattering, financial train wreck.

Rick pressed the issue. “No one else hates Bathory and loves you more. He’d be the perfect coven leader.”

“He doesn’t love me.”

Rick raised an eyebrow. “As vampires go, his feelings for you are close enough to serve our purposes.”

I couldn’t argue with him there. “If the challenge is physical, Gary doesn’t have a chance of winning. Vampire or not, he’s forever stuck in a poet’s body.”

He dropped his chin and looked at me through his lashes, a sexy smirk turning the corners of his lips. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Always underestimating your abilities. When will you see yourself for the powerful witch I know you to be?”

“Excuse me?” I was slightly offended at his perception that I lacked confidence.

“You are magic,
mi cielo
. A sorceress of the dead. I believe with the right spell, you could greatly improve his odds.”

“No. Definitely not,” Gary said.

I’d cornered him in his room and carefully revealed our suspicion that Julius might be permanently detained.

“You don’t know what you are asking me to do,” he whined.

“If you are worried about the challenge itself. I can make you a potion that will render you practically invincible for a time. I can make it so you can’t lose.”

He ran his long tapered fingers over the spine of a book on a shelf in his room. “Do you want to know what the challenge entails?”

“Yes.”

From the bookshelf, he selected a purple book with a gargoyle image on the spine and symbols where the title belonged. Vampire language, I supposed. “Is that the secret vampire manual?”

“Something like that.” He opened the volume to a page near the back. “At midnight, during the full moon, the Druherand, the coven leader’s second, will announce the abdication of the leader and ask for a challenger for the throne. If no challenger steps forward, the second-in-command inherits the throne.” He looked up at me from the book. “That’s the normal procedure, only this time, Julius’s second is the demon Padnon. A demon cannot rule a vampire coven. So in this case, his request will not be to challenge him directly.”

“Okay. So anyone can toss their hat into the ring?”

“Yes. There is no limit on the number of challengers, but if there is only one challenger, that vampire will inherit Julius’s role because Padnon can’t.”

“Seems like more than one vampire would want the honor of leading this coven.”