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“Let me ring you up, and we’ll find out.” I scanned the books in and processed Josh’s credit card payment before wrapping both books in tissue paper—Ms. Booker encouraged me to go the extra mile for our regular customers—and packing them in a brown paper bag that had a book design printed over it.
I passed the bag over to Josh. “I hope you enjoy the books. Can I help you with anything else?”
“I don’t suppose you happen to stock hymnals of Gregorian Monk Chants?” Josh asked.
“Um, no.” I blinked. “I could see if there are any books we could order for you, though?”
Josh checked his watch and shook his head. “No, I’m afraid we are due at House Medeis in a few minutes. It is nearly time for a surprise night training session with Hazel, and I have so been looking forward to it. She makes amusing noises when properly surprised, and that makes His Eminence laugh.”
I struggled to make my laugh even a little realistic and not robotic with fear. “His Eminence” could only refer to the leader of the Drake Family and the vampires of the Midwest, Killian Drake. The “Hazel” Josh referred to had to be Hazel Medeis, the protégé of the top wizard in the Midwest.
The exact kind of people I’ve been avoiding since I told the Curia Cloisters what I was.
After my adopted siblings—Pat and Joy—had been kidnapped by the now ex-Unseelie Queen and ex-Seelie King—I had told the Curia Cloisters that I’d recently discovered I was a shadow.
Initially I’d faced a lot of doubt—shadows had been considered extinct for centuries since the elves had killed them long before the elven war that had taken out the elves.
The Curia Cloisters dragged their feet all summer in researching it, but in mid-August they’d finally concluded that I was what Noctus said I was.
What I hadn’t expected was their sudden renewed interest in me. When I’d been an outcast/freak of nature, the Curia Cloisters had been very little help. Now I was constantly getting invitations to meetings as they were desperate to find out how my parents had survived—as if I knew; they’d dropped me off at a hospital when I was a baby, and a human family had adopted me!
I hadn’t agreed to any meetings for several reasons. First off, I was a little bitter that the Cloisters was magically interested in me now that I was a shadow when I’d spent my entire life desperately trying to get help from them before discovering what I was.
Secondly, the invitations I kept getting were from supernaturals with high standing in the Cloisters. I preferred a trouble free, quiet life and wanted to avoid political ploys at all costs. Meeting with highflyers would not help me succeed at that goal.
And finally, when I’d left Noctus, the king of the Mors elves who was hiding his existence from supernatural society, I had promised him I wouldn’t let anyone find out about him, or the city of elves that lived in his proverbial shadow.
I was going to keep that promise, no matter the sacrifice.
But I need to focus on work, now, notNoctus, I reminded myself.
I pushed my shoulders back and refocused on Josh the unlikely vampire. “Do you train Hazel often?”
Josh tilted his head as he thought. “Frequently enough, I suppose, as I am her firearm instructor. Celestina trains with her more, but that is understandable given that she is the First Knight of the Drake Family, and I am only the Second Knight.”
“Second Knight?” I repeated, my eyes bulging so much I was going to need eyedrops to hydrate them after Josh left.
The First Knight and Second Knight were terms used to refer to the vampire family’s first and second strongest members after the Family Elder.
Which means Josh is the third strongest vampire in the Drake Family?!
I stared at the even-tempered vampire, who smiled at me, looking very benign even though he had to be deadly beyond my reckoning to have that kind of rank.
Josh checked his watch. “Regardless, we had best leave—being late is a stain I do not wish to add to my soul. Good evening, Chloe Anderson. May the light of life puncture the darkness of this bleak existence for you.”
A wave, and he was gone, his two underlings trotting along behind him—though they shoved each other when they tried to get through the door at the same time.
“Huh.” I dubiously glanced at the accounting software that was open on my work computer’s screen. “I guess that will teach me for judging a book by its cover.”
I finished processing the last few purchase orders for the day, before exiting out of the software.
Since I finished that, I’d better check and see if there are any customers who need to be informed that their orders are in.
Usually the task was left to the day shift, unless a supernatural indicated they preferred to be notified during the night hours.
I fished around in the drawer and grabbed the printed-out list, frowning when I saw it was just one specific customer: Mr. Ferryman.
I’d been trying to contact this particular customer all summer long for the many books He’d ordered—and purchased over the phone with a credit card—but had failed to come in and pick up.
