Page 63 of Call of the Blood

“You might have to explain the second because you have my card.”

“We met at Court of Coffee,” I reminded him. “I had been leaving. He’d been going in. I wasn’t paying attention, didn’t notice him, but he recognized me. After so long, he’d recognized me as an adult. I recognized him once I looked at him. Wren deals in information. He can give me information that will speed the process up for me.”

“He can be expensive,” Alexius confirmed. “I’ll review whatever charge he gives the card if necessary. Let him know I’ll be keeping an eye on it.”

“Okay…” I nodded. “And I need access to Maria’s records. Legitimately. I don’t want to waste time breaking into her stuff. I just don’t want her to be hovering over me while I have access.”

“You will have to give a compelling reason as to why Henry would be a potential threat to her. See if Wren can give you one of those.”

“Fine.” I inhaled sharply, thinking, but I had an actionable idea to start with. It would be good enough for now. “That’s all. I’ll tell you if I need anything I can’t get myself.”

“Okay. Would you like to go to Wren tonight?”

“No…” I was plotting. "Right now, I’m pretending to be helping you. Make a scene of that. Make it seem like I’m suddenly super wrapped up in the work you’re doing. Don’t tell even Declan or Callahan the truth. Or Maria. I want Henry to really think I’m just busy as hell right now.”

“He probably knows what I’m working on already. I’ve gotten stumped, and things have escalated. You are my employee, and you have a notably different set of skills compared to me.”

The logic was good. I stood quietly, the immediate hot temper fading into the cold need to act. Henry hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t kill anyone. He pissed me off, and he was going to pay for that. After I lost fucking everything, he could have been honest with me. Now I was going to tear apart his life until I found the truth.

It was a bit hypocritical of me.

“I lied to him, too, you know. About why we went to the werewolf party. Told him it was just about Declan and Lexi and me, all arguing and fighting. Not about the kill in Declan’s parking garage.”

“Do you think lying to him about a vampire kill near Declan’s house is even close to the same as to why he disappeared from your life some seventeen years ago? Add to that, he was being severely punished. Jacob’s belief was probably that he’d fail to reestablish and die somewhere. And he hid that he was exiled from you.”

“No. It’s not the same. I’m just thinking.” I thought back on every interaction I had with Henry. There had always been something in the back of my mind that didn’t trust the man. I had chalked it up as my own resentment from my human life that had carried into my immortal one. Now I was wondering if I had missed any red flags in those conversations that I should have caught.

“My mind is spinning over every minute now,” I admitted. “Every smile, every laugh, every question, every comment. You know, he said once that you arriving at Jacob’s nest was… like a storm. But instead of being the portent of things to come, you were the thing, like death on the pale horse. But you know what he really never talked about? What he did in the nest. He would talk about how he was second generation, made by a vampire who was in the nest and how the perspective of everything was different from mine, but I don’t know what he did. Without a control issue, he must have served the nest somehow.”

“Truthfully, I barely remember him, if at all. He was just another one of Jacob’s vampires. I’d have to look at his records again.”

“It truthfully doesn’t matter, does it?” I huffed. “He certainly works now. He has money… but he hasn’t told me what his work is now, either. Just made comments about how he was grateful that Maria’s nest allowed him a life outside of just, and I quote, the small world around her.”

“Jacob was very personal and had a smaller nest because of the purpose he was using it for.”

“Yeah…” I wished I had asked better questions of Henry. Dug more into his life and the details of it. Who were his friends? What were their names? Could I have asked to meet any of them?

Well, now I’m asking. I’ll just take this one step at a time until I’m ready to confront Henry. Throw his lies in his face and find out what the hell he could have done to upset Jacob right after my father died.

There was a lot of silence as I thought about what I was planning to do.

“Everly?”

Alexius was watching me from just beyond the threshold, refusing to enter the room without my permission still.

“I’m just thinking.”

“I’m going to start making the calls to get your things sent here.”

“Thank you,” I called out, but I was still distracted, still replaying every moment with Henry.

25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

When the next night began, my travel work kit was already sitting in the living room, dropped off by the human staff who also delivered the blood. Alexius made sure we both had blood, then watched me set up everything in the office.

“Are you going to be using it now?” he asked, sounding curious.