Hearts At Stake

chapter 5

Solange

Saturday afternoon

When I woke up, Lucy was muttering to herself. It wasn’t unusual, but there was a particularly strident edge to it, even more than was ordinarily the result of her impatience with our slow Internet connection. The several farms comprising the Drake compound were nearly a thousand acres, some without any power source. Our house was lucky to have satellite service even if it meant our connection suffered when it was a cloudy day somewhere else on the continent.

“Stupid satellite.”

I’d need a calculator to figure out how many times I’d woken up to her yelling at my computer. Patience was not one of Lucy’s finer qualities. I snuggled deeper into the nest of blankets. The sun seemed a little too bright, but I liked the warmth of it on my face. “What time is it?” I yawned.

Lucy flicked me a glance. “Just past two, I think.” She scribbled on a piece of paper. “Nose plugs, definitely need those. And a pocket knife, something really pointy. Ooh!” She interrupted herself excitedly. “A stun gun. Think they sell those on eBay?”

I yawned again, pushed myself up on my elbow. I was more tired than usual but I ignored that. “What on earth are you doing now?” I asked.

“Making a list of supplies,” she answered grimly. “I have no intention of letting that Helios-Ra jerk face use me to get to you again.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

She didn’t look remotely convinced. “Nicholas thinks it’s my fault.”

“Since when do you care what he thinks?”

She paused. “Oh. Good point.” She clicked the mouse. “Hey, look, they do have stun guns. That one has Hello Kitty on it, I think. Maybe not, it’s hard to tell.” Her eyes widened comically. “What are they made out of, solid gold and diamonds? I can’t afford that on my allowance.”

I groaned, letting my head fall back on my pillow. “Lucy, you can’t order one of those. Not exactly subtle.”

She made a face. “I guess.”

“Besides, you know my mom’s probably got one in the storeroom.”

She swiveled on her chair, eyes shining. “Think she’d give me one?”

“After last time? Not a chance.”

“What, come on! That was ages ago.”

“No one’s forgotten what happened when you convinced her to teach you archery.”

“How was I supposed to know I’d have such good aim?”

She’d very nearly skewered Marcus through the heart, which would have killed him, like anyone else. Arrows worked as well as stakes; it didn’t matter what the material was, as long as it was pointy and went right through the heart. It was actually fairly difficult to do: rib cages weren’t easy to pierce. She frowned at me.

“You’re really pale. Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

“God, not you, too.” I pulled the pillow over my face. “I’m fine.”

“You’re crabby.”

“Because you’re bugging me.”

She poked me. “I haven’t even begun to bug you.”

I uncovered one eye. “Go away, Luce. I’m tired.” I tried to make my one exposed eye do that cold flare thing my mom was so good at. Lucy tilted her head.

“You’re getting better at that.”

The one thing about being best friends with someone for so long was that even turning into a vampire didn’t really faze her. Her smile softened. Great. My vampire mojo engendered pity, not fear.

“Go back to sleep,” she said. The light caught the sequins on her velvet scarf, making me blink. “I’ll keep making lists of the painful and very slow ways I can make Kieran suffer.”

Kieran.

I closed my eyes, wondering why it was no effort at all to call up the exact shade of his dark eyes, hostile as they were. I should be thinking about the bounty on our heads, not whether or not I’d get to see him again. Because of course I’d get to see him again; he’d probably try and stake one of my brothers, if not me. Hardly a promising start to a relationship.

Relationship?

What the hell was I thinking?

No doubt my impending birthday was making my head fuzzy. There was no other explanation. I just needed more sleep. Because I did feel more tired than usual, as if keeping my eyes open was becoming a ridiculously difficult task, on par with algorithms and Hyacinth’s needlepoint. When I woke up again, I was alone in my room. My stomach grumbled loudly. I felt better, rested and clearly hungry. Maybe I’d make myself waffles with blueberry syrup. I couldn’t imagine ever not wanting to eat my way through a huge pile of them with whipped cream, even if every single one of my brothers assured me that by this time next week the very thought would make me nauseous. So I’d better eat as much as I could, while I still could.

The house was still quiet. The sun hadn’t set yet, my brothers would still be asleep. My dad could stay up all day and could even sit outside under a shady tree. But today, I knew, he’d be on the phone with every operative and vamp he knew, and Mom was probably taking inventory of the weapons. She wasn’t very strong during the day yet, but she wouldn’t be able to sit still—not after last night.

The kitchen was empty though Lucy had left a pot of coffee warming for me. I poured myself a cup and though it tasted good, I wasn’t in the mood for food anymore. We were out of blueberry syrup anyway. When my parents went shopping for groceries, they tended to bring home bloody steak and anything red: raspberries, cherries, hot peppers. It didn’t make cooking easy.

“Darling, try the raspberry mousse. It’s fresh.”

Neither did Aunt Hyacinth.

I tried to conceal a shudder as I turned on one heel to smile at her. She stood in the doorway, wearing what I called her Victorian bordello dressing gown: all lace and velvet flowers and silk fringe. Her long brown hair was caught in a messy knot. Her pug, Mrs. Brown, sniffled at her feet. If Mrs. Brown was out of Aunt Hyacinth’s rooms, then it followed that the other dogs, giant babies that they were, were currently cowering under the dining room table. They feared Mrs. Brown the way I feared reality TV.

“Come up for a chat,” Aunt Hyacinth invited after pouring herself a glass of cherry cordial. She liked to experiment with flavoring her blood-laced food and drink.

Which is why I had absolutely no intention of touching the raspberry mousse.

We could technically eat food after the bloodchange, only it had virtually no taste and absolutely no nutritional value for us. Only blood kept us alive and healthy. Gross, gross, gross.

I was so going to have to get over this blood phobia of mine.

And soon.

“Are you coming?” Aunt Hyacinth called from the top of the staircase. I followed her up, Mrs. Brown nipping at my heels enthusiastically. There was a canine whine from the dining room.

Aunt Hyacinth had a suite of rooms on the second floor, as did my parents and I, next to one of the guest rooms. Aunt Hyacinth preferred to live with us instead of building her own house on the Drake compound. She could certainly afford it. Our family had been around long enough to learn how to be comfortably wealthy. At first there was considerable theft involved, which no one ever reported, thanks to the pheromones. But in the last few hundred years, everyone had begun stockpiling coins and decorative pieces, which turned into very valuable antiques with very little effort. In fact, every child born or made in the Drake family had a trust fund begun in their name in the form of a chest full of antique gold locked in the basement safe room. But, wealth notwithstanding, Aunt Hyacinth claimed being alone too much made her maudlin. Her word, not mine; though according to Lucy’s school friends I had a weird vocabulary and a weird accent—a hazard of being home schooled by a family with members born anywhere from the twelfth century on.

Aunt Hyacinth’s rooms were pretty much what you’d expect from a lady who still mourned Queen Victoria’s death—and the fact that said queen turned down an offer of bloodchange.

I turned my attention back to my surroundings. My own imminent bloodchange not only made me unbearably sleepy, but it also made it really hard to concentrate. Aunt Hyacinth’s parlour didn’t help. And it was a parlour, not a sitting room or a living room. A parlour. I’d learned the difference before I’d learned to spell the word. With the proper British spelling, of course, for Aunt Hyacinth. I’d also learned medieval spelling for words in honor of Veronique—with a French flair in honor of her Aquitaine heritage—and modern English from Mom and Dad. It was a wonder I’d ever learned to spell my own name.

I sat in a brocade-cushioned chaise next to a huge copper urn filled with ferns. Aunt Hyacinth loved ferns; they’d been the fashion when she had her coming-out ball on her eighteenth birthday. She’d worn a white silk gown and made her curtsy to the queen. She’d taught me to curtsy and I’d taught Lucy, who had practiced until she gave herself leg cramps. The parlour had lace tablecloths on every surface and silver candlesticks and painted oil lamps and silhouettes in gilded frames. There was a small dressing room filled with corsets and petticoats and pointy boots. Lucy and I had spent hours playing in there when we were little. Lucy would still play in there, if Aunt Hyacinth would let her.

Aunt Hyacinth reclined dramatically on a velvet fainting couch, drinking her cherry- flavored blood. Mrs. Brown hopped up to curl by her feet, accepting slivers of rare beef as a mid-afternoon snack.

I wondered, not for the first time, if it was possible to be a vegetarian vampire.

“If you keep worrying so much you’ll give yourself wrinkles,” Aunt Hyacinth scolded me gently.

“I can’t help it.”

“Darling, your brothers survived the change. As a Drake woman, you are far stronger than they are. Just think, you’ll wake up so refreshed. There’s no feeling like it.” She fanned herself with a silk fan decorated with white feathers. “And meanwhile, you ought to enjoy the courting.”

“Courting? Aunt Hyacinth, they’re drunk on my particular stink. And they don’t care about me, they just want me to give them little fanged babies or whatever. And they want the power of the Drake name. Not exactly romantic.”

She fanned harder. “But it can be, if you use it to your advantage.”

“No thanks.” I loved my aunt but there were certain topics we would never, ever agree on. Case in point: boys. Also: boyfriends, husbands, flirting techniques, and the supposed comfort of steel-boned corsets.

Aunt Hyacinth leaned over to run a hand over my hair. “It amazes me how beautiful you are sometimes, even with that loose, messy hair.” Her expression was dark, fierce. I’d have been terrified if I didn’t love her so much. “No harm will come to you, Solange, not while any of us live.”

And that scared me most of all.