The Queen Is Dead (The Immortal Empire) (22 page)

I don’t know if she believed me, but she didn’t push it and that was good. I didn’t want her to think I was spying on her, but I had to keep her as safe as I could if she insisted on bloody flaunting herself in the betties’ faces.

“They’re lucky, you know–Avery and Val. To have you, I mean.”

I stared at her. This was totally unexpected. “He’s lucky to have you too.”

She made a scoffing noise that startled me. Penny never
lacked in self-confidence; where had that come from? “Sorry. I reckon I don’t see it.”

It wouldn’t matter what I said to her. She was obviously in a funk and not in the mood to hear whatever I had to say.

“I would have fought them, you know,” she said. “If I’d been just a little faster getting to him, I would have tried to save him.”

“I know you would.” I resisted the urge to shoot Vex a what-the-fuck-is-this-about glance.

Her salad forgotten, Penny scooched closer to the edge of the sofa. “I mean, you can’t save everyone, right?”

“I think Dede’s proof
that I can’t save everyone, dearest.” And then, because I couldn’t help it, “Are you quite all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said on a sigh. “Just tired, and feeling useless. Forgive me. I think I’m going to toddle off to bed.”

I watched her stand and wished her a good night, as did Vex. She smiled wanly and wished us the same. Then she disappeared up the stairs, tugging off her wig as she climbed.

When I heard her bedroom door shut, I turned to Vex and whispered. “What the ruddy he { thg all was that?”

He scooped up a spoonful of ice cream. “Sounded like guilt and desperation to me.”

Yeah, it did, and that bothered me.

I woke up late the following afternoon with Vex still sleeping beside me in the darkness. The heavy curtains over my windows blocked out the day so that Vex could wake up without having to feed to face the sun. As it was, it was a slightly over-cast day, so it would be easier for both of us to be up and about.

I stretched and slipped from between the sheets. As I pulled on my black velvet kimono, I bent my neck to the side, getting a satisfying crack in return. Then I padded downstairs and dumped coffee grounds into the cafetière. While the water heated I nibbled on a piece of cheese to stave off the growling of my guts and spooned a glob of bacon fat into the frying pan on the hob. When that was hot, I slapped two steaks into the pan. They sizzled deliciously as I started up another pan of potato slices. I polished an apple on my robe and took a juicy bite.

When the steaks were done, I took them out of the pan and
cracked a couple of eggs into the hot cast iron. Vex still hadn’t come downstairs, so I put his meat and potatoes on a plate and stuck it under the warmer. I took my own plate to the table and sat down with my portable logic engine to see what was happening in the world and check my messages–not that I ever had many.

I’d just polished off the last of my potatoes when someone rang the bell. I was sucking a bit of egg yolk off my thumb as I opened the door. It hadn’t occurred to me until that point that it might be the Human League on the other side. Or even the press.

It was worse. Standing in the shade of my entrance hall were Ophelia and my mother.

“What the hell are
you
doing here?” Prior to a couple of months ago, I hadn’t seen my mother in years. As far as I knew, she never left Bedlam, maintaining the ruse that she was an inmate there, and not a traitor to the Crown and a rare “made” aristo. She’d been turned with a bite, and so had I.

Juliet Claire–my mother–was a gorgeous blonde with porcelain skin and bright blue eyes. She looked to be a few years older than me, but in actuality was in her late forties. She wore a blouse, waistcoat and snug trousers tucked into high boots. Coloured spectacles concealed part of her face and a wide-brimmed hat covered her upswept hair. She looked like she should be riding about in a carriage in Hyde Park rather than slumming in Leicester Square.

She breezed past me into the house. Rude of me not to invite her in sooner, with the sun shining as brightly as it was. “Do I need an excuse to call upon my daughter?” she enquired, turning to face me.

Ophelia crossed the threshold and I closed the door. “Yes,”
I replied. “I reckon you have one else you wouldn’t be here. Coffee?”

They followed me into the kitchen. “What an interesting space,” my mother remarked in a manner that told me that “interesting” was a polite snub.

“People who live in asylums shouldn’t comment on other people’s homes.” I took two mugs out of the cupboard, filled them with coffee and stuck them in the radiarange for a minute. I toppe ~ thg She lookd up my own cup as well and then joined them at my little table.

My mother had removed her hat and dark spectacles and studied me much like a hawk must study a young rabbit. “You look tense.”

“My brother is missing, someone hired a kid to nail rodents to my door, I am under investigation for murder, and Vex was almost blown up. Can’t possibly imagine what I’d have to feel tense about.”

She turned that sharp gaze on Ophelia. “Did you know about any of this?”

“Some of it,” my sister replied, looking as though she’d rather have her eyes gouged out than confess. “I was with Vex when the explosion took place.”

I stared at her as well. “You were almost killed and you didn’t tell her?”

Ophelia glared at me. “Would you?”

I thought about that. Probably not. I wouldn’t want her to worry. And I wouldn’t want to face the barrage of questions and demands for my safety that would likely follow.

“Exactly,” she continued, correctly interpreting my silence. Then to our mother, “We didn’t come here to discuss me.”

Judging from the look on her lovely face, my mother
anticipated a full briefing from Ophelia later. It must be awful to live with someone who expected to know everything her loved ones were up to.

I made a mental note to apologise to both Avery and Val when I got the chance. The apple didn’t fall far.

My mother wasn’t done. “If you didn’t spend so much time with that wolf, you wouldn’t get into such trouble. It’s always been his fault when you get hurt.”

“
That wolf
is asleep upstairs,” I informed her with a clenched jaw. “You’re a fine one to talk–you’re a were
and
completely hatters. If anyone found out what you’re doing in that madhouse of yours, they’d put a silver bullet in your brain. Fee can take care of herself.”

My sister shot me a startled and surprisingly thankful glance. I squirmed a little. “You came here for a reason. What is it?”

Juliet–sometimes it was difficult to see her as maternal–sighed. “I see that both of you are too much alike and I cannot win. Fine. Xandra, I came to speak to you about something important. Something only you can do that will change the world for ever.”

I wasn’t the brightest wick on the candelabra, but I didn’t have to be to understand where she was headed, especially not after Vex’s issues with the pack. “You want my goblins to align with you.” It was a ludicrous thought. She might as well stick a sign that read
ALL YOU CAN EAT
above Bedlam’s front gate.

“Did you tell her?” she demanded, accusing Ophelia.

My sister scowled. “No, but neither is she stupid. She knows that people are going to want to use her.”

Our mother flinched. “I do not want to use Xandra.”

She could start by telling me that and not my sister. “But you want to use my goblins.”

She looked at me as though I’d spoken in tongues. “Well, yes.”

Of course, because goblins didn’t have feelings or intelligence. She’d take that back if she saw that room of monitors they had.

“For what? What could you possibly have planned that you would need the gobs to carry out?”

“I don’t have anything
planned
.” She was positively peevish. “But everyone knows that the side the goblins is on is the side with real power.”

“Because everyone’s afraid of them.”

“Of course. If the goblins decided to come cobbleside and declare war, no one could stop them.”

Maine and his big guns might give it a go.

“They have no intention of coming above ground, and if they did, it wouldn’t be to fight someone else’s battle.”

“It’s their battle too. I can’t imagine they’re treated fairly by the current regime.”

I arched a brow. “Will the new boss like them any better?”

She flushed. “Of course.”

I believed that about as much as I believed that Val was going to stroll through my door at any moment dressed in one of Penny’s frocks. “Right. Look, I know change is coming. I reckon Queen V feels it too. Things can’t continue the way they are, but the goblins will not side with people who think of them as monsters.”

“
You
think they’re monsters,” Ophelia tossed in, reminding me of whose side she was on.

“Yes, but they’re
my
monsters.” The words fell easily off my
tongue, surprising me as much as my mother and sister. “And I refuse to allow them to be used as weapons in your war.”

“What are they if not weapons?” my mother demanded. “They are born killers. Animals with no sense of loyalty or right and wrong—”

“Mother!” Ophelia cried.

“What?”

I almost laughed, but Ophelia cut me off. “Xandra is a goblin.”

Juliet frowned. “That’s not the same. She was raised properly.”

“I was raised as a lab rat,” I informed her. “Born to a woman paid to breed with aristocrats, brought up to serve my betters and betrayed by almost everyone I loved. Does that sound fucking proper to you?”

High colour stood out on the apples of her smooth cheeks. “I did what I thought best for you.”

“You let me think you were lost to me for ever. You couldn’t even come and see me when I was shot. I almost died and you hid away in your fortress because your cause was more important. Yet when you think I might be useful to you, you turn up on my front step. All because you want to use and exploit the only beings who have shown me unconditional respect and caring. I’ve learned more about loyalty and honour from the goblins in two months than I ever learned from you.”

For a second, I thought she might slap me. Gold flashed in her eyes–a sure sign of werewolf aggression. I let my own monster show just a little. If she wanted to get into a pissing contest with me, I was more than willing to discover which of us was more dominant. This woman was a memory to me, not a mother. Not any more.

Instead, the gold disappeared, replaced by wetness. She blinked it away. “You’re right. I wasn’t a good mother, but Xandra, you can help change our world. Don’t you want to change it?”

Ah, maternal guilt. That was a potent weapon. “Of course I do. But I’m not going to speak for the goblins. I’m not going to sign them up for someone else’s cause. Your flaw is that your crusade is more important than the people involved in it or eved io sn those you love. If I ever align with you, it will be because my plague wants to align, because we believe in what you’re doing, not because you’re my mother, and certainly not before I know I have your respect.”

“Well said,” came Vex’s voice from the doorway.

I’d felt his arrival a second before he spoke. I think I could be dead and still know when he was near, even though he moved with astonishing stealth for such a big man.

Juliet–time to dispense with referring to her as my mother when she hadn’t earned that right–leaped to her feet, squaring off against Vex as though he was the trespasser on her territory.

Two alphas, nose to nose. I was about to get pissed on.

“This doesn’t concern you,” she informed him, ice practically dripping from her words.

He folded his arms over his chest, shirt straining at the shoulders. “Anything that concerns Xandra concerns me.”

She stiffened, but didn’t stop staring at him. Brilliant–a battle for dominance in my bloody kitchen.

“Shit,” Ophelia muttered. When I looked at her, she added, “Mum’s not pack.” As if that meant anything to me. “It means that she doesn’t acknowledge Vex as alpha, but as her equal.”

I rolled my eyes. “Figured that out already.”

She scowled at me. “Fang me, don’t you know anything? If Vex thinks she’s challenging him, they’ll fight. She’s no match, but she’ll fight him regardless rather than submit to his dominance.”

Now I was scowling. “That’s fucking mental.”

“Isn’t it?”

I turned my attention to the two wolves staring each other down. Vex didn’t look like he was in any hurry to get violent, but he wasn’t the type to take blatant disrespect for his position either. If Juliet didn’t back off, he’d be forced to slap her down. And he could seriously hurt her. The only reason he hadn’t made a move already was because she’d given birth to me.

Sighing, I rose to my feet and put myself between them. “I declare my house a no-pissing-match zone. Neutral. Now both of you step down or get the hell out.”

Vex nodded. “As you wish.”

Juliet smirked. “Some other time, MacLaughlin.”