Chapter 11

Chapter

Eleven

My chauffeur to and from Merrum Manor was a young brunette mage named O'Neil. Until recently, she'd served as one of Moses's personal guards. He'd become dissatisfied with her performance and threatened to turn her over to his most sadistic lieutenant, Carter Kade. I'd suggested he assign her to me instead. She had no idea what hell I'd saved her from.

Since she was no longer a guard, she didn't wear a uniform, but she'd donned a navy blue jacket the same color. Under it she wore a black T-shirt and dark jeans. Dark clothes hid blood better. The Vamp Court enforcers also wore black.

"Good evening, Ms. Worth," O'Neil said as she opened the rear door for me.

"I'd rather sit up front." I went around to the passenger side. "I'm not a fan of sitting in the back."

She blocked the passenger door before I could grab the handle. "I can protect you better in the back. That's my job." A job that she had to do perfectly and according to Moses's demands to stay alive.

Still, I held my ground. "I know what your job is, but if we end up having to fight, we're going to fight together. I don't cower in the back seat while someone takes hits meant for me. Your boss knows that. If he doesn't like where I sit in the car, he can take it up with me."

Her eyes widened. She'd probably never heard anyone talk about Moses like that, or even imagined she would. And she had to know as well as I did that the vehicle was bugged. No doubt Moses was listening to us now.

"I don't want to be late," I reminded her when she didn't move. "Let's get going."

She apparently figured out I wasn't going to back down, so she opened the door.

Malcolm floated into the back seat as I settled in the passenger seat. He leaned close and touched my arm. You trying to get her in trouble? he asked. I thought you liked her.

Moses is listening , I reminded him. Everything I do and say is part of this game we're playing. If I rode in the back without arguing, he'd take it as a sign I'm letting him make the rules. I've worked very hard to establish this as a partnership. I can't give an inch—not on anything. He will take a mile every time.

This is a side of you I don't like to see . His voice in my head sounded unhappy. You're cold when you talk that way.

I'm sorry , I told him, and I meant it. But that's the price of playing this game. He's cold and calculating, so when I'm dealing with him, I have to be that way too. You know that's not the real me, and it won't ever be. It's a role I play.

He let go of my arm and floated back. His uneasiness had waned, but he clearly didn't like anything about the situation. None of us did.

Our drive to Merrum Manor remained quiet. I would have chatted about inconsequential things or at least turned on the radio to pass the time, but O'Neil was hyper-alert for any sign of a threat and I had to let her do her job.

When Valas had Daniel and me kidnapped from our pack land, she did it right under the noses of two of Moses's guards. I hadn't seen either of those guards since and assumed Moses had them killed for failing to prevent the kidnapping. Never mind we were taken by a team of a dozen Court enforcers against whom two cabal guards wouldn't have a prayer, no matter how well-armed or well-trained they were. Even Sean, Nan, and Ben hadn't been able to keep us from being taken.

Though most of his business interests centered in and around Baltimore, a year ago my grandfather purchased a sprawling Victorian-era mansion here to use as his West Coast headquarters. That wasn't a coincidence. Apparently, he'd tracked me to the area and formed a brief alliance with a local crime boss, Darius Bell, to draw me out of hiding. As soon as they succeeded, he had Bell killed and took over his cabal.

The moment the manor came into view, nausea surged in my stomach. I rested my elbow on the window and propped my chin on my hand, feigning boredom in case Moses also had a camera in the vehicle.

Fake it and you can take it , I reminded myself. He can only get to me if I let him, and only if I let him see it.

While the house itself remained largely unchanged, he'd made some modifications to make it more defensible, most noticeably a tall wall around the entire estate and a double gate, all protected by deadly black wards. We drove through the gates and wards. They sizzled on my skin and made me queasy. Some of the wards were illegal razor wards, which would slice us to ribbons if the spellwork that granted this vehicle passage failed midway through.

O'Neil parked in the mansion's garage. I opened my own door and got out as the heavy, reinforced door rolled closed. Malcolm stuck to me like glue as O'Neil led us into the house.

The manor had housed a bordello for almost seventy years until a combination of the number of ghosts that haunted its rooms and the efforts of law enforcement finally closed it down. Before he moved in and christened the place Merrum Manor after himself, Moses had the strongest ghosts captured into crystals for his mages to use for power and discorporated the rest of the spirits that had called the mansion home. One of the captured ghosts was Malcolm's boyfriend Liam.

Rather than follow O'Neil, I walked at her side with Malcolm behind us as we made our way from the garage down several mirror-lined hallways. We passed a dozen cabal guards and soldiers, but I didn't see any sign of Moses's head lieutenant, Nora Keegan. She and I had forged a secret alliance against Moses because she knew her days were numbered. Except for Kade, Moses went through lieutenants like toilet paper, and he knew he couldn't trust her long term because she'd betrayed her former cabal for him. Once a turncoat, always a turncoat. The moment she looked at him in a way he didn't like or he thought she'd outlived her usefulness, she'd be dead. For a long list of reasons, I'd never like or even feel sympathy for her, but I certainly didn't envy her.

O'Neil took us to a pair of doors. She knocked, paused, and slid the doors open about a foot. "Sir, your guest is here."

An all-too-familiar voice with a distinctly Baltimore accent responded from inside the room. "Show her in."

O'Neil opened the doors wider and stepped aside. Chin raised and expression carefully neutral, I strode into the room with Malcolm right behind me.

The mansion's formal dining room was as enormous as I'd imagined. As with the rest of the house, Moses had preserved most of the original luxurious décor, including the enormous risqué bordello painting over the large fireplace. Maybe he wanted to feel like modern aristocracy living in this plush Victorian mansion, which was very different in almost every respect from his very modern cabal headquarters near Baltimore. He certainly acted like some kind of king.

As I entered, Moses rose from his tall chair at the head of the dining table. It could probably easily seat sixteen people, but at the moment there were only two chairs. The tall chair at the head of the table was unmistakably his, and he'd set a place at his right so we'd be sitting only a few feet apart. As ridiculous as it might have looked, I would much rather have sat at the foot of the table than close enough to smell his cologne.

I'd dressed casually for the meal, since I didn't want to give Moses the impression that I'd invested time fretting over my clothing choices. Moses usually wore tailored designer suits whether he was at home or in public. Tonight, however, for only the second time in my entire life—the first being about a month ago, when I'd first come to see him here at the manor—he wore slacks and a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms.

His attire put me more on guard. He seemed to be going overboard trying to relate to me. That was more suspicious than if he'd been his usual suit-wearing, overtly malicious self. I suddenly wondered if he'd somehow seen what I'd been wearing and dressed down to match my attire. Strange as that might seem, I wouldn't put it past him. To my grandfather, everything was a game.

Moses came around the table to meet me in front of the fireplace. His gray hair looked freshly barbered. So did his close-trimmed beard and mustache. He'd always been overly fastidious and conscious of his appearance, like he thought he was a cover model for Crime Lord Monthly .

He gave me an appraising look, as if wondering what I was thinking, and extended his hand. "Good evening, Ms. Worth."

"Hey." I shook his hand briefly and resisted the urge to wipe my palm on my pants when he let go.

Moses glanced over my shoulder at O'Neil. "Wait in the hallway."

"Yes, sir." She closed the doors. I heard the soft thunk of a lock.

"You're not a prisoner," he said at my glare. "It's a security measure, nothing more. This room has no wards. I know locked doors won't keep you in."

"No, they won't. Nor will the house walls or the perimeter wards." I made a show of looking around. "Was there not a more ostentatious room available for this dinner? "

"Yes, but my lieutenants are using it for a meeting," he said blandly.

For a beat, I stared at him. Was that…a joke? Surely not. I had never heard my grandfather attempt to be funny a single time in my entire life.

At my reaction, the corners of his mouth turned up in a ghost of a smile. "Please pour yourself a drink at the bar."

"No thanks. Water's fine."

To my surprise, he didn't argue as he'd done on previous occasions when I refused a drink. "Then let's have a seat, Alice." He gestured grandly at the table. "The soup's already served."

Malcolm's unease prickled through our binding. He'd asked me several days ago if I worried Moses might poison me at one of these meals. But honestly, I didn't think so.

My grandfather had asked for three things in return for his ongoing protection and letting me continue to live my life more or less as I wanted: a truce between us, the occasional favor, and what he called "family dinners."

With my aunt Catherine, my mom's older sister, now dead, my grandfather and I were the last of the Murphys. He hadn't given up hope that he could get me back under his thumb, but he'd relied on gifts and promises as much as threats to persuade me to make a deal with him. That made me extremely suspicious, because I'd never known him to use anything but threats to get what he wanted. Maybe he thought he'd have a better chance if he didn't act like a total monster, though he had to know I wouldn't think of him any other way. So why play nice? I had no idea—at least, not yet.

I went around to my chair with Malcolm right on my heels. Moses pulled out my chair, got me settled, and then returned to his seat on my left. Malcolm floated behind my chair.

"Kind of you to join an old man for dinner," my grandfather said as I draped my napkin across my lap.

It's not like I had a choice , I thought. "I rarely turn down free food," I said instead .

With a dry chuckle, he took the cover off my bowl of soup before uncovering his own. "I remembered you like minestrone. It happens to be one of my chef's specialities. Bon appétit , Alice."

I poured myself a glass of ice water from the pitcher on the table. I despised that he somehow knew what kind of soup I liked, because he meant that I'd liked it when I was his prisoner. Back then, we'd seldom eaten together, especially after I reached my teens. Most of my meals were delivered on trays to my rooms in his compound.

Those memories killed what little appetite I had. I stared at the soup like it was a bowl of spiders.

Fierce and fearless , Sean had called me. And normally I was, even when it came to facing Moses. But for some reason, the fact he remembered something so frivolous when those years had been so horrible for me sucked the ferocity right out of me.

I had to regroup or I'd set myself back in my game with Moses to the point I'd never regain what I'd lost, but I felt paralyzed.

Some bad-ass mage I was. Sucker-punched by a bowl of soup.

Strangely, I couldn't tell whether Moses had done this on purpose or he actually thought I'd appreciate his version of thoughtfulness. Usually when he did or said something cruel, he looked right at me and I never had to wonder about his motives. At the moment, his attention was on his own meal.

Malcolm poked me in the shoulder. The cold sensation made me twitch. "Snap out of it, Alice," he hissed. "Eat the damn soup, or so help me I'll sing every last Olivia Newton-John song I know, starting with the ones you said make you queasy."

That jolted me out of my paralysis. Bless him. I picked up my spoon.

"How's business at Maclin Security?" Moses asked after a few minutes of quiet soup consumption.

"It's good." Which he knew damn well. Once we'd reached an agreement, he'd lifted his embargo on Sean's company and they were swamped with clients again. He probably knew more about goings-on at Maclin Security than I did .

"Sean and his business partner have worked very hard to build their reputation," I added. "I'm happy to see them busy again."

"As am I." Moses dabbed his mustache with his napkin and left his spoon in his empty bowl. "You like the soup?"

The question seemed innocuous, and his expression held only mild interest, but now that I'd had a few minutes to think about it, both the choice of soup and his casual reference to my past had to be deliberate. The fact I'd even entertained the possibility, however briefly, that he was actually trying to be thoughtful was laughable—only I wasn't laughing. Understanding that this was all just part of his game did put me back on solid ground, though.

"Very much." I deliberately scraped my spoon on the bottom of the bowl to get the last of the broth to show he hadn't rattled me—not much, anyway. "Compliments to the chef."

"I'll pass your kind words along to André." Moses pressed a button on the underside of the table.

As if they'd been waiting just outside, uniformed staff entered through a single door on the wall opposite my chair. They cleared our bowls and served our meals from a rolling cart. Dinner turned out to be roasted chicken with vegetables. I hated to admit it, but the food smelled heavenly.

Once the kitchen staff left, Moses rose and took his glass to the bar. "Are you sure I can't get you a drink?" he asked as he poured himself two more fingers of bourbon. "I have a single malt scotch here I'd like your opinion on."

Really, there didn't seem to be much point refusing a drink when we were already eating together. In for a penny, in for a single malt, and all that. "All right," I said.

He returned to the table and set a glass in front of me. I paused between bites of chicken to savor the smell of the whisky and take a sip. "Really good," I told him when he seemed to be waiting for my verdict. "Very smooth. A little smoky and a nice bite on the finish."

"Glad you approve."

We ate quietly for a while as Malcolm floated around the room. I sensed Moses watching me when my attention was elsewhere. I focused mainly on my food and whisky and ignored him.

Once he finished most of that second glass of bourbon, though, I figured it was time to get him talking. A seemingly casual chat was one of a PI's best methods for obtaining information. Even the cagiest people revealed things when they talked, especially after several glasses of top-shelf bourbon.

"We had some visitors at the house last night," I said.

Moses glanced up from his meal. "Oh?"

"A convoy of Vampire Court enforcers showed up. They served Sean and me with a stack of indictments an inch thick."

He set down his knife and fork. "I was aware you had visitors, but I was led to believe their visit had to do with your newest pack member."

His demeanor had flipped from nonchalant to deadly serious in a blink. I suspected it wasn't the indictments that caused his reaction as much as the fact his intel had been wrong.

"Your spies in the Court fed you bad info, huh?" I sipped my water with deliberate nonchalance. "That sucks—pun intended. It's tough to find good help willing to risk a very unpleasant death, I guess."

His scowl deepened. "What are the charges in the indictment?"

I gave him a brief rundown of what the Court had alleged and their demands.

Moses cut his remaining chicken into pieces as he listened and thought. When I finished, he said, "Well, obviously you'll hand this Albrecht over once you put up enough resistance to save face."

"We will not hand him over." It was my turn to put down my fork. "What on earth would make you think we'd do that?"

"Because it would be the smart thing to do?" He raised his perfectly groomed eyebrows. "He belongs to the Court. You're responsible for your own life first. Why risk it for a stranger?"

Deep breaths , I told myself. He's just trying to get under your skin. Don't let him .

"Matthias is not a stranger," I said coolly. "He's a pack mate. He's a person , not property. We don't ‘return' people like they're Frisbees that ended up in our yard."

"Oh, Alice." He chuckled. "How can you say this man is a pack mate? You aren't a shifter. You're a human mage who associates with werewolves."

Despite my determination to stay calm, I wanted to knock that smug look off his face. "Our pack includes several humans. All of them are pack mates. A pack isn't just about whether you're a shifter."

"I think the Were Ruling Council would disagree."

"Some of them would," I allowed. "But not all. A lot of packs include humans. But even if ours was the only one that did, it would still be true."

He waved his hand, dismissing my argument in its entirety. "If you want to call yourself part of Sean's pack, that's all well and good. Hopefully you'll never have to defend that belief with your own blood."

"I already have, more than once," I said. Damn it, I hated him. "As you well know. Most recently last month in front of members of the Council and a hundred other shifters. I don't think anyone from the Council or any other pack will challenge me again about whether I'm part of the Tomb Mountain Pack."

"Be that as it may, you'll have to hand Albrecht over to the Court. If he belongs to them, he's their property. Legally ," he added when I started to argue. "You know as well as I do the Court doesn't have employees like a corporation. You can't hire on and quit whenever you feel like it."

"That doesn't make it right, though. A whole lot of people the Court considers its property aren't there by choice."

"But some are . Have you asked Albrecht in what circumstances he joined the Court in the first place and what kind of documentation they have on him?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. I only know what's in the Court's paperwork."

"Then I suggest you have a very pointed conversation with him and get the facts." He finished the last of his bourbon. "I think you'll find you have no choice but to give him back and let the Court do with him as they please."

"Not gonna happen."

"Back to more important matters," he continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Regarding these indictments, I'll of course put my lawyers to work and see the charges are dismissed."

"Moses." I set my fork down again, this time for good, and dropped my napkin on top of it. "We have good attorneys. Aaron Riddell won't let us down." But since I had to play the game, I added, "I'll let him know he has additional resources he can call upon, if he needs to."

"I'll let it go at that for now. You see, we work well together when you allow yourself to be reasonable."

I counted backward from ten to one before I spoke so I could find my calm center again. "I don't know to what lengths Charles is willing to go to get his way on this. I can't take anything off the table right now, not even you."

Moses smiled. "Smart girl."

Stupid girl , he'd called me a hundred times, usually after having me tortured. Why won't you just do as you're told, stupid girl?

"I'm not a girl," I reminded him. "I haven't been one for a long time."

"That's true. You're very much a grown woman now." He dabbed his mouth with his napkin. "Interested in rumors about Charles and his Court?"

"Sure." As long as he was feeling chatty, I was all ears. I didn't take what he said at face value because cars in Hell would need snow tires before I trusted Moses on anything, but it might give me some insight on our situation. Or he might let something else slip about himself. Either way, I'd come out ahead .

"Then let's move to the conservatory." He rose. "I think we've both had enough of this room. A refill on your drink before we leave?"

I finished my whisky and left the glass on the table. "Nah, I'm good. Don't want to spoil such a good whisky by drinking more than one glass."

"Then let's go." He pressed another button under the table to unlock the dining room's doors.

O'Neil slid the doors open but didn't step over the threshold. No doubt she'd developed that habit early on, since many rooms in a cabal headquarters had the kinds of wards no one wanted to cross accidentally. "Yes, sir?"

"We're going to the conservatory. You can accompany us." He gestured for me to go ahead of him. "After you, Ms. Worth."