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“Well, then. I suppose we should all be here.” I raised one eyebrow.
“I know—odd, isn’t it?” Camille moved to the counter, where she poured herself a cup of risha-berry tea. “I guess we’ll just have to wait to see what he wants, but I have the feeling that he’s got something up his sleeve. I know the man is hiding something, though I don’t get any negative feelings off of him.”
“That’s good, at least.”
“I have something to tell you—” Camille started to say, but the phone rang again, interrupting her.
I was closest to it so I picked up. “Hello?”
“Menolly? Chase here.” He sounded harried.
I glanced at the clock. Five P.M. “I take it you’re still at work?”
“Yeah, love working Saturdays, you know. Anyway, we have problems.”
The words we so did not enjoy hearing. “What’s up and what do you need us to do?” I said it half-jokingly, but he didn’t banter back.
Instead, his voice was low and solemn. “I’m serious. We have a situation here and we need you girls. Seriously, come now and bring all the reinforcements you can. We… this is bad.”
Fuck. More words that I didn’t want to hear. “Our backup is depleted. I think Smoky, Roz, and Trillian went back to Otherworld—” Here, I glanced at Camille, who nodded. “We’ll be there as soon as we can. What’s shaking, and where do we meet you?”
“The Utopia Club. It’s burning, and we have people trapped inside.”
“Motherfucking son of a bitch! Shikra—did Shikra make it out?” The realization that she might be so much dust right now hit home and I flashed back to Chrysandra, lying blackened on the hospital bed. With vampires, though, there would be no slow death. Fire was one of the few things that could actually destroy us, and we burned bright and crisp and clear, wisping into a handful of ashes in seconds.
“She’s safe, yes. But the club was torched. That much we are fairly sure of, and the firemen seem to be making headway with the flames. But there’s something else going on in that fire. Shikra told Yugi that there was some spiritual activity going on there this evening—it started in the afternoon while she was still asleep. But her Supe bouncers and a couple of cleaning ladies had several nasty experiences. I’m wondering… is there such a thing as an arsonist ghost?”>Falling silent, I realized I was almost done. Short and sweet, that was my style. “So I’m letting it all go. I’m letting you off the hook. And I hope you’re with Mother now, in the Land of the Silver Falls. I hope you’re happy… because I don’t want you to be lonely anymore. You loved Mother with a passion I don’t know if I can ever feel… but I’m trying. I’m trying to open up, to let my wife in, to love her as much as you loved Mother. So… thanks… thank you for the lesson. If nothing else, you taught me that such a love can exist. You taught me to hope.”
With that, I’d said all I had to say. I gently leaned down, kissed the silent forehead, and whispered. “Good-bye, Father. We’ll never forget you.”
As I entered the kitchen and washed my hands, Hanna looked at me. The room was empty and her eyes were suspiciously red.
“Your sisters, they have gone into the living room. Would you like a goblet of warm blood?” She folded the hand towel and placed it on the counter, which was spotless. Both Hanna and Iris were meticulous about cleanliness.
I shook my head. “Thanks, Hanna, but no. I’m not thirsty.”
“You went to say good-bye, did you not?” Her English was improving. The Northlander was learning the ways and customs here, and she seemed content, though she’d taken one hell of a journey to get here.
I glanced at the kitchen door, lowering my voice. “Yes, but please don’t tell Camille or Delilah. They couldn’t handle it. They need to remember him alive, loving them. Not cold and ready to go in the ground. I’ve been there before, Hanna. I’ve been dead. And I went home to kill my family. Camille and Delilah saw me the night I died. They don’t need to see Father dead. You know?”
She paused for a moment, then gave me a gentle smile. “I understand. I truly do. You would not have wanted to see Camille when she returned from Hyto’s lair. I had to tend her, keep her alive so he could abuse her again. I washed the blood off her thighs, I washed the vomit out of her mouth.”
I stared at her, feeling like she was punishing me for some reason. “What are you getting at, Hanna?”
She tilted her head to the side. “Nothing, except you… you underestimate Camille and Delilah. You act as though you are the only one who has seen trauma enough to handle the harshness of life. You do them a disservice. You insult them.”
Normally, when someone talked to me like that, I got mad and wanted to beat the crap out of them. But Hanna’s clear gaze challenged me. I worried my lip. Reality was? She was right. But I seldom found anybody willing to read me the riot act. Most everyone was too afraid. Nerissa could stare me down—and Camille, at times. But very few had doused me with ice water and walked away unscathed.
If I breathed, I would have taken in a long breath and let it out slowly. Instead, I counted to four… to five… to ten. Then, when she still didn’t move, I blinked and looked down at my feet.
“You may be on to something with that. But what am I supposed to do? Let them go look at his body? Trust me, I didn’t even pull the shroud away that much, just enough to see his face and it was bruised and battered and scarred.”
She shrugged. “You do what you feel is right. But make sure you do it out of compassion, and not an assumption. I am a mother, remember this. And you girls, you are still young. Still growing. Still in need of guidance at times, whether or not you choose to believe it. Iris, she is busy with her own kinderkins now, she cannot keep track of you the way she did. But I… my own daughters are scattered from me. I hope they live. My son, he is dead and you know that I killed him to save him. Let me take a moment, now and then, to remind you of what you might be overlooking. Would you do this for me?”
She was so sincere, so brutally honest, that I could do nothing more than nod. Speechless, I forced a smile to my lips, and then headed toward my lair.
“I’m going to talk to Amber and Luke before the night is over.” At the door, I turned around. “Hanna… thanks. Thanks for being a voice of conscience.”
“Conscience?” Hanna shook her head. “No. I have no conscience. If I did, would my son be dead now?”
