Jonathan remained silent, not wanting to interrupt what was obviously a power struggle. He’d known she wasn’t close to her family but hadn’t realized it was because of the failed attack in Scotland.
“Please.” Felicity’s voice rose in volume. “At least let me try. If anything is stolen, I…” Her shoulders trembled. “I’ll stop trying to follow in my parents’ footsteps.”
She hadn’t said the word ‘hunter,’ but it hung unspoken in the air.
Mr. Sorrow’s expression softened. “I see. If this is truly that important to you, then I suppose I can give you an opportunity.” He sniffed. “It is not as if any of your guests will believe what they see.”
Felicity tensed beneath Jonathan’s hand, but she wisely remained silent.
Mr. Sorrow waved his hand. “You may continue this spectacle for a week. If anything goes wrong, I will hold youto your promise.” Then he turned and left, his coat snapping behind him like a whip. The door clicked shut, and the moment it did, Felicity sagged.
“That was too close.”
He laughed softly. “Quite the family you have.”
She stomped on his toes.
Chapter Seven
“What doyouthink, Mr. Drake?” Felicity said in her best impression of Mr. Blackwood’s whiny voice as she used a mortar and pestle to crush the herbs she’d gathered from the supply room. “What kind of security wouldyousuggest?”
She had proposed the idea of showcasing vampiric artifacts and had arranged the exhibit herself, but the moment a man had become interested, her employer tripped over himself to give Mr. Drake anything he wanted. After Great-Uncle Ezra’s departure, the two men had spent hours reviewing the various changes Mr. Drake had proposed to better protect the exhibit.
Neither of them knew that the thief targeting the illuminated manuscript was a vampire. Their security improvements might stop a human but would be completely ineffective against Winifred.
Felicity’s chest tightened as she remembered the sadness in her former best friend’s eyes when Felicity had pointed the crossbow at her heart. Felicity had almost believed Winifred had been telling the truth about wanting to reconcile.
But that was impossible. As a vampire, Winifred had no conscience. Her appearance at the Sloan House had simply been an attempt to use Felicity’s guilt to sway her into canceling the exhibit.
It wouldn’t work.
Felicity poured the crushed herbs into a clay bowl. Winifred had caught her by surprise once, but she wouldn’t get a second chance. The challenge would be keeping the cleaning staff from removing the herbs, but that concern vanished after she swept the materials into the space where the walls met the floor. The museum was so old that the mixture simply vanished into the cracks.
She had no way of confirming whether the spell had worked, but it wasn’t as if she could camp out at the Sloan House all night. Her great-uncle would be watching her more carefully now that she’d promised to give up being a hunter if anything went wrong with the exhibit.
She wouldn’t, of course. He could expel her from the base and force her to find her own lodgings, but she’d never stop searching for the vampire who had shattered her family.
With her exhibit protected, she exited the museum and strode along the sidewalk. A cab would have been safer and faster, but after her disastrous day, all she wanted was to find and kill a vampire. Preferably several.
She tucked her hand beneath the edge of her heavy cloak and ran her fingertips over the soft leather of the bandolier draped across her chest. If Great-Uncle Ezra discovered she had taken it, he would be furious, and even more so if he realized she had also stocked it with weapons from the armory. There were a dozen wooden stakes, four throwing knives, and a silver-edged sword in its scabbard, all beneath her cloak. She’d taken great pains to ensure none of these items would be visible to a passing observer, and her hair was tucked carefully beneath a brown wool cap and a hood. From a distance, no one would recognize her as a woman. Exactly what she intended.
She stopped in front of a silent stone fountain filled with brackish water and took in her surroundings. Narrow brick buildings towered around her, their windows dark. The onlysounds were wings flapping overhead and the howl of the wind, and the air was tinged with the musty, rotten-egg smell of human remains.
Her mouth went dry. A vampire was nearby.
The sword on her hip was falling, at risk of slipping down her hips. Before it could become a liability, she sat on the edge of the fountain and adjusted the buckle. It was chilly enough that her fingers were numb, and the cold seeped through the thin twill trousers she’d stolen from her brother’s closet. It was one of only three garments she’d rescued before Great-Uncle Ezra had ordered Vincent’s possessions carted away and his bedroom transformed into a second nursery.
They’d forgotten him so quickly.
A crow fluttered down from a nearby tree and pecked at a tuft of grass poking between two worn cobblestones. She reached into the pocket of her cloak and found the hardened remains of a crust of bread. After crushing it in her palm, she tossed the crumbs toward the bird. It squawked as bits scattered across its back but was soon rapping its beak against the ground. More crows descended on the feast, resulting in a scuffle.
Before Vincent had been murdered, they’d had a particularly nasty fight. He’d been distant for months, insisting he was working on a project for their uncle that required him to remain in the basement for days at a time. She’d demanded to know what had been so important that he couldn’t share it with her. He’d only clenched his jaw and insisted she wouldn’t understand.
She realized she was crying and dashed the tears away. If she’d known then what her uncle had done to Vincent—locked him in a cage with a werewolf—she would never have screamed that he could keep his secrets.
The crows finished with the bread and began preening.
She stood and brushed the crumbs from her palm. Patrolling while she was in such a state was unwise. It was time to return home. She doubted she could sleep with all the thoughts crowding her mind, but she needed to be well rested to deal with Mr. Drake in the morning.
