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“Yes, even here in the Under, they follow their own internal clocks. Rather like my daughter,” Rose said with a nod. “I’m going to check on her. Please let me know if there’s anything else I can help you with. You should know that Christopher believes you saved him and Fenrir. He believes you’re the only reason he still has a connection to Fenrir, and while his heart aches sometimes, he’s so happy Fen had you.”
Wow. There was the guilt I’d tried to shove away. “He didn’t have me.”
“But he did.” Rose smiled, and when she did she glowed a bit like one of Alvis’s paintings. “I know this, Kelsey. I was a child when the vampires took me. I spent years without my mum, but she was there. You imprinted on him at an important time. When the rest of the world was hunting him, you reached out a hand and gave him a family. Do not doubt Fenrir’s love for you or his deep belief that you will accept him as he is.”
“How did you manage to get over it? I ask because I met another companion, one who let what happened destroy her.” She’d been the reason we’d almost died in Wyoming. When I think about it, she was the reason Liv and I were on opposite sides of this war. Meredith had been through the same thing Rose and the queen had gone through, but she’d reacted so differently. Rose had gotten out. She’d built her life, and it had been wrecked again by supernatural forces. “How did you manage to fall in love with another vampire?”
“Oh, I never loved the first at all,” Rose replied. “Well, that might be a lie. At first, Louis was somewhat kind to me. I suppose I saw a beautiful face and tried to adapt. It’s what we do as humans. We adapt to our surroundings. I was so young then. My view of life, my personality, my sexuality were all molded by that abuse, but I had the grounding of my mum’s love, and I know that’s what saved me. Being able to be with her again…well, it gave me the fuel to survive this time. I don’t think I would have given Christopher a chance if he’d been beautiful like Louis. I know they look frightening, but I understand more than many that beauty can hide evil, and what seems like a ruined body can house the sweetest of souls. You never truly get over the kind of crime that was done to me, but at some point you must decide if you’re going to live or not. I thought about the not option. I thought about joining my mum and Robert, wherever they went. But something whispered to me. Something pushed me to come here, to see if I could help. I thought a lot about the fact that Zoey could have ignored me. She was in a bad place, and she chose to be kind. I had ignored the supernatural world for over a decade, and it was getting bad again. Women and girls like me would be hurt. I had knowledge and experience. I had a degree in nursing. I could make it easy on myself or I could perhaps make it easier on someone like me, someone who desperately needed me. So I chose to live, and I was rewarded with the family I never thought I would have. I opened my heart because I wanted more than to merely survive. I might get that chance now that you’re back. I don’t have incredible powers, but I will fight this time. I will stand and hold the line. I will die if I have to because oddly enough, I’ve figured out that this life is worth it.”
“I’m going to do my best to make sure your Luna has a safe place to grow up,” I vowed.
“I believe you.” Rose stepped away. “And tell Zoey that I’m back and want to be involved when the time comes. I can work with the academics to ensure we have adequate medical care in all our bases.”
She walked toward the hallway, and I was left alone listening to the hum of conversation around me.
“He would have liked this. Alvis always loved a party,” someone was saying.
I let the conversation flow around me, but I didn’t hear anything interesting. I found myself wandering toward the back of the apartment. I’d been in Alvis’s studio the night of his murder, but I’d only done a cursory search. I slipped inside, feeling like an intruder.
His private studio was bigger than any room in this place, with the exception of his great room. There was a magical window that no one had shut down. In the next few days I was sure one of the witches would come through and snuff out the magics, or perhaps they would simply repurpose the space. For now it felt like a peek into the male’s soul. Soft light infused the room like some spell had managed to capture the perfect morning illumination. Out the window I could see a pastoral scene that gave me the impression of a warm spring day, and for some reason it felt like another time. Perhaps the 1800s. This might be a memory from an old lover’s mind, something that connected them and made him feel like a piece of her was still here with him.
I was getting thoughtful in my old age, or maybe it was pregnancy, but I felt for Alvis as I stood there in his studio. I hoped that there was some heavenly plane where souls were reunited. The idea of eternal peace didn’t make sense to me, but if it did to Alvis and his Marie, then I wished it for them.
There were no notebooks or journals here. Only paints and brushes and canvases. He had one on an easel, the painting half covered with a cloth. A familiar darkness peeked out from beneath, the cloth slung in a haphazard fashion, which was odd to me. Everything else in the room was perfect, as though Alvis was almost pathologically neat. But the canvas cloth was only halfway on.
I pushed the cloth aside, and I was right about the familiarity. The whole canvas was dark as night, painted with the same almost glowing-from-the-inside paint Relda had been using. He’d used the dark paint as the background and had started working in stars at the top of the canvas.
“I don’t like that one.”
I turned, surprised someone could sneak up on me, but then Luna was pretty small.
And sometimes small creatures knew big things.
“What don’t you like about it, sweetie?”
She had a banana in her hand and cocked her head slightly. “It hums most of the time. Sometimes I think it screams so loud I can hear it in my mama’s clinic.”
Oh, I was interested in that bit of information. I didn’t question what she was saying, didn’t shove it to the side or write it off as childish imagination. Nope. Luna was a werecreature—a bat. I wouldn’t question her ears any more than a wolf’s nose. “Is it humming right now?”
She shook her head. “No. It’s like someone turned it off.” She walked further in the room and stared at it for a moment. “But sometimes when I walk by, I can hear it humming.”
“And sometimes it screams?”
She nodded solemnly.
“Do you remember the last time you heard it scream?”
Another nod.
“Was it the day Alvis died?”
One more nod.
I gently placed the cloth back on the canvas, making sure it was completely covered this time.
I had one more piece of the puzzle, and I knew who I needed to talk to next.
