That common ground united the pair of them. And although Mary would have wished for something else to bring them together, she was always glad—especially on a night like tonight—that Bitty had Zsadist in her life.
As the pair of them hit the grand staircase, it was as if a bell had been rung and the gates to the race opened, the assembled masses following them down to where Fritz was waiting outside with his black Mercedes.
The great thing about family, Mary mused, was that they showed up.
When it really mattered, your family, be they blood or by choice, were always where you needed them to be, even though they had busy lives and jobs and children of their own.
“Hey,” Lassiter said as he opened the way through the vestibule, “will anyone slap a puck around with me to pass the time?”
“No,” everybody, including Bitty, shot back.
“But I will slap the f-in’ crap out of something else,” V said under his breath.
“I love it when you talk dirty to me. Gimme a hug. C’mon, you know you wanna.…”
Nothing.
Elise knew nothing about where she stood: not whether she was able to keep going to school, or if she were stuck in proverbial jail, or even if she still had a roof over her head.
After she had gone to see Peyton out at the cigar bar, and had the collision-as-meeting encounter with that trainee as she’d been leaving, she’d come home and waited for her father’s return. On the bottom step of the carved staircase right across from the front door. Like a lost child.
Three hours later, he had walked in, his head down, his shoulders slumped, his spirit as deflated as a fragile balloon.
He hadn’t even looked at her—or even seemed aware that she was in the foyer. He’d just gone directly to his study and closed himself in.
Well … good talk, Dad, she’d thought. Breaking all kinds of new ground, aren’t we.
But really, how could she have expected anything else?
After an internal debate about the merits of interjecting herself into whatever process he was working through, she’d gone up and gotten into bed. No sleep for her during the day, but that hadn’t just been about her father and the sehclusion petition.
She couldn’t stop thinking about that male … his tattoos, and his piercings, the way he’d looked at her, what he’d said. She’d spent a lot of time replaying that scene on the sidewalk. In her head? They were still back there in the falling snow arguing, the sexual tension so thick it was like a rope she could pull on.
It was a shock, given the very real issues she was dealing with in her life, that she had any interest at all in making things even more chaotic. But she wished she’d given him her number. She was, however, glad she hadn’t—because if he did call her? She would see him again, and what a recipe for disaster that would be.
You didn’t need to know the specifics about a male like that to be fully aware he was a Taylor Swift song waiting to happen.
Or worse—
“Enough,” she said as she stood up from her bed. “Enough with the stewing.”
Her father would be downstairs in his study by now. So it was time to go face the music, as her mother used to say, and talk with him.
As Elise stepped out of her room, she pulled up short. Her father was just emerging from his suite down the hall, and he paused, too.
Clearing her throat, she said, “Father, I—”
He turned away without a word, his hand rising over his shoulder in classic stop fashion. “Not now.”
“Then when,” she demanded.
Her father did not respond. He simply kept going, striding down the hall to the formal staircase and disappearing on the descent.
Short of throwing herself in front of him, she didn’t know how to force him to engage. And even then, he was likely to just Conrail over her.
“Son of a bitch,” she hissed.
Maybe it was time to move out. But undoubtedly, he would cut her off, so how would she pay for anything?
The only reason she was able to go to university now was because of scholarships she’d earned. And they didn’t cover things like room and board.
A sudden urge to throw something had her turning her head toward an antique side table. That vase of flowers would be perfect, the thin neck at the top fitting easily in her palm, the weight of the water and the imported roses heavy enough to make her feel like she could do some damage, but not enough to hinder distance.
Shifting her eyes across the way, she stared at the closed door of the suite where her aunt and uncle stayed.
Her uncle would be out and about soon, but her aunt was no doubt still sleeping. Usually the female stayed in bed until after Elise got back from uni, rising only long enough to do her hair and makeup before returning to her satin pillows. It was no way to live, but after what had happened to her daughter? And the loss of her son?
Elise cursed … and then found herself on the move.
The next thing she knew, she was standing in front of her dead cousin’s door. From a distance, she watched as her hand reached out, clasped the knob, and turned it. When she pushed inside, she caught a whiff of the perfume Allishon had always worn. Poison by Dior—old school, to be sure, but it had fit so well on the female.
Elise had always thought that if the color purple had had a scent, that fragrance would have been it.
Without a sound, she shut herself in and flicked the light switch.
Illumination bloomed in the room, emanating from the crystal chandelier in the center of the high ceiling. The bed was across the way, strewn with pale blue linens that had white and gold accents, and sporting enough pillows to put a Macy’s display in the shade. The walls were papered with handmade Stark, the French scene of peach-and-yellow birds frolicking between blooming fruit trees something you could see down in the gardens during the good months. On the floor, the carpet was thick and of a cream that was so pale, it was nearly white, and the drapes framing the windows were the pale blue of a summer dress and just as diaphanous.
The decor was perfect for a young female of worth.
And yet Allishon’s possessions were the off-notes in the room: a black robe that was part priest, part demon worshipper; a crystal skull on the mantel over the fireplace; books with black and blood-red leather covers scattered in the far corner by a tapestry-covered pallet. There were also chunky black boots that were tall enough to go up over the knee … a high-heeled shoe without a mate that had a gun for a heel … black duffel bags filled with God only knew what else.
It was hard not to see the evidence of her cousin’s other life like potholes in a perfectly paved road. But how judgmental was that.
“No way to think,” she groaned as she rubbed her stiff neck.
The reality, though, was that something evil had come across Allishon’s path as she had searched for herself on the wild side. And that was Felixe’s point, wasn’t it.
Elise frowned as she thought about that trainee with the tattoos. He was everything that her sire was worried about her finding. Except she hadn’t met him at university—and that was her point.
“Just as well,” she muttered to the vacant room. “I’m not going to see him again.”
SEVEN