5

Ophelia

Cleo and I make a pit-stop in her office after talking to human resources.

I've already decided to leave bright and early tomorrow to head out to Boston. Knowing Cleo will probably work late tonight, I settle in for a few last moments with her before I'm on the road and won't be back in Seattle until who knows when.

"It can't be traced back to the Bureau," Cleo says, resting her elbows on her desk and rubbing at her temples. "But all this political bullshit has been a nightmare these past few months, and I'm ready to hit back at the bastards."

I huff a humorless laugh, more than aware what she means. Congressman Daniel Sorenson attempting to abduct his former girlfriend with information he funneled through the Bureau. The recent sensation of a dragon plucking a woman up off the street in downtown Seattle. The grumblings by those who would see the Acts reconsidered.

It all weighs on Cleo's shoulders, and I'm more than happy to do whatever small part I can to help her and the Bureau out. To do exactly what she says and fight back against the naysayers who would keep the world stuck in the past.

She looks at me with a familiar spark in her eye—determined, dauntless. "I want to know who's really behind these rogue vampires, and whether it's all just a crock of shit cooked up by the Haverstad campaign."

"The mayor?"

"Exactly." Cleo stands and walks to the wall of windows at the side of her office looking out over Seattle. "This power struggle between the covens and Boston's leadership has been going on for decades, and it's only gotten worse since the Acts."

She gives me a brief rundown of what she knows. Legal and not-so-legal businesses run by the covens, silent partnerships and back alley deals, formal power challenged by informal power, and all of it ramping up with the passage of the Acts and the acknowledgment of the paranormal world.

"Haverstad fucking hates the influence the covens still have in the city, and if he can knock them down a few pegs while winning some political points for himself, all the better."

I hum in acknowledgment. "And the Bureau?"

"Can't be involved." She lets out a long breath. "If we get any information we can use to nail him, we'll have to find another way to bring it to light. We're supposed to be neutral in all of this."

"But?" I prompt.

"But both Blair and I agree staying neutral when we could start firing back would be a mistake. It's a bad look for all paranormals, this circus they've created and all the negativity it's stirred up in the media, and it needs to end. So we'll have to be smart about how we handle this."

"Understood." My mind whirs with a mental list of contacts I have in Boston, a few from my days back in uni who didn't abandon their journalistic ambitions after graduation. "You can count on me."

I try to say it with more conviction than I'm truly feeling right now, considering how sideways this entire morning has gone.

Cleo's gaze narrows, and she comes back to sit down across the desk from me. "Lia…"

"You can," I assure her. "It's not too much. Even if… even if Casimir's involved. I can handle it."

She stays silent for a few moments, lips pressed into a thin line. I can almost hear the cogs turning in her mind, the warnings and advice she probably wants to give, how she's weighing whether to rescind her offer completely.

"I've got this," I say. "And if it turns out to be too much, you'll be the first to know."

She nods, though the wariness doesn't leave her eyes. When I get up to leave her office, I feel her worried stare on the back of my head the whole way out.

I wish she wouldn't worry so much. Or, maybe more accurately, I wish she wouldn't make it so obvious that she worries.

It's gotten worse these last few years. When we were younger, it was easier to ignore—all the differences between us and the fact that our lives have always been destined to take different paths.

It's not something we've ever really talked about, not in any way that matters. Every time I want to broach the topic with her, it sits in the center of my chest like a giant, black, gaping cavern.

I don't want her to see me as more vulnerable than the rest of my family, as different, as mortal, even though I just so happen to be all of those things. I want her to trust me to handle myself, to not have her worry about things neither of us can change.

Leaving the Bureau, I do my best to push away the shadows of those thoughts. Wind whips through my hair, hot and damp with a hint of salt from the waterfront just a handful of blocks away.

It's no use, though, and the memories flood in fast and sharp and unwelcome.

Not just all the reminders of the differences between me and my family, but of Boston. My deeply conflicted feelings about stepping foot back in the city, and the lingering certainty that agreeing to this was a mistake.

I never went back to the Raven after that night on the roof with Casimir.

Even years later, the memory of his words still has the power to put a tight knot of regret in the bottom of my gut. He was right to cut me down to size, even if I never saw him that way or intended to imply all I wanted from him was a bloodbond.

I don't know what I wanted from him, what I was thinking, what I was doing.

I was careless, thoughtless. In way over my head.

And in some small, shame-filled corner of my mind, I still wonder if maybe he was right. Is that what I was doing, back then? Looking for a vampire to claim me, looking for some way to stay with my family, to outrun the shadows that have been hanging over my head since I was old enough to realize how different I was from the people I love most?

Even though running from Boston after I graduated might have been the coward's way out, it also gave me the space and distance I needed to better come to terms with it all.

With who I am, with what I am, with the fact that no matter how much I try or how hard I work, I'll still just be me.

I'll still just be human.

The Acts changed a lot—they changed the fabric of the world and the shape of the future, they brought so many out into the light—but they didn't change that one simple truth.

Now it's up to me to navigate that truth, this changed world, and my place within it.

Starting in Boston.

I'm half-way across the courtyard outside the Bureau's main entrance when a voice calls out from behind me, piercing the haze of those thoughts and stopping me in my tracks.

"Ophelia."

Goddamn it.

I should have known I wasn't safe. Not until I put more distance between me and the Bureau. Not until I was tucked safely into my van, the horizon before me, heading east. I should have known not to let my guard down.

I turn to find Casimir standing tall and unmoving against the blustery day, watching me with hard, inscrutable eyes.

God, I forgot just how handsome he is.

I didn't let myself look at him too closely up in Blair's office, but I can't stop my eyes from roving over him now. Still so sleek and elegant, with platinum blond hair catching the breeze and mouth set into something that might be a smirk, though I don't know if it's curled in humor or distaste.

"Casimir," I say, another spectacular opening line. "About what happened in Blair's—"

"I hope the two of us will be able to—"

We speak over each other, both our words cutting off as an awkward silence falls between us.

He dips his head—a small, unexpected show of deference—and I latch on to the opportunity immediately.

"We can stay out of each other's way. In Boston."

Casimir nods. "If that's what you prefer."

"I do," I say, clearing my throat and shifting from one foot to the other. "Sorry if you wasted your time with this meeting. There's no reason I can't—"

"You mistake me, Ophelia. I fully intend to investigate this matter to the best of my ability. Whether or not we work that investigation together, I have given Blair my word."

"Fine. Then I'm sure Blair or Cleo can facilitate any needed communication between us. There's no reason the two of us need to—"

"No reason?" Casimir cuts in again. "Would we not work faster, better, if we worked as a team?"

"No. I don't think we would."

"Really? You still dislike me so much after all these years?"

"I don't—" I swallow the rest of that sentence.

It doesn't matter. Our past. What I might have felt or thought about him back then. My gnawing shame over how everything went down.

"It's not a matter of if I like you. We can work this on our own. That's how I prefer it, anyway, working by myself."

For a few long moments, hard crimson eyes lay me bare. Casimir looks at me like he can see through all my shit, straight through to the cowardly, scared part of me that was made to feel so small that night with him on the rooftop.

"As you wish, Ophelia." Casimir reaches into the pocket of his suit and pulls out a card, offering it to me. "If you change your mind, I'll welcome your call."

The thick cream paper sits heavy in my hand as I nod and slip it into my back pocket.

I don't want to think about it, don't want to consider what reaching out to that softly embossed number would mean for my own success or failure in all of this.

"Don't hold your breath."

The words come out sharp and petulant, but Casimir only smiles, the endlessly amused little smirk he wears so well.

"As I said, your call will be welcomed, should you choose to make it."

We fall silent for a few moments, eyes locked, the bustle of the day flowing around us like we're two rocks in a stream. Caught in the trap of that deep crimson, it takes him looking down at his watch for the spell to be broken and time to start moving again.

"I should be off," he says.

Lightly, casually, like that night in Boston might have just been a dream. Like it never happened, or it means so little to him he's forgotten it entirely.

I should be happy about that.

I should be happy one of the most powerful vampires in Boston has forgotten, or at least has no interest in talking about, the night I offended him so deeply, unintentionally made him think I could get away with taking advantage of him for his bloodbond.

I am no means and no end, sweet Ophelia. No thing to be used, even for a creature so beautiful as you.

"Well then," I say—slowly, awkwardly, dredging the words up through my thickened throat. "Goodbye, Casimir."

"Until we meet again, Ophelia."

And just like that, without waiting for me to protest or contradict him, Casimir turns and strides away. It leaves me staring after him with that same gnawing pit growing wider in the bottom of my gut, and a cloud of dread hanging over me as I leave the Bureau behind.