Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124479 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 498(@250wpm)___ 415(@300wpm)
Until then, he would watch, protect, and carry what he could.
The mark flared once beneath his sleeve, acknowledging something.
Bastien moved deeper into the shadow and watched her window until the light went out.
TEN
The summons came at noon.
Bastien had slept three hours—if the shallow darkness that passed for rest among his kind could be called sleep. Genealogical charts covered his floor in overlapping layers, connections mapped in red ink dried to the color of old blood. Seven remaining targets. Seven bloodlines descended from houses that had voted to destroy the Marchande-Levesque family. Five deaths in two weeks meant the sixth would come soon.
Valentin Rousseau entered without knocking, his pale eyes scanning the documents with professional disinterest.
“The council requires your presence.”
“I was informed there would be no additional meetings until I had results to report.”
“Circumstances changed.” Valentin’s gaze settled on the Beaumont correspondence stacked near the window. “House Chardon demands audience. House Lavigne supports the demand. House Rousseau prefers neutrality but recognizes the political necessity of compliance.”
“The houses have lost five members. They want assurance that your investigation has not stalled.” His tone carried no judgment, only flat delivery. “They want to see you explain, in person, why their people continue dying while you chase papers.”
Bastien understood, with the certainty of someone who had survived two centuries of vampire politics, that this meeting was not coincidence. Five deaths in two weeks, and suddenly the houses demanded his personal appearance. Someone had waited for the investigation to reach a critical point, then applied pressure designed to pull him from his work.
“When?”
“Two hours. The Beaumont estate in the Garden District.”
The Garden District—where the Marchande-Levesque family had lived before their destruction, where their blood had soaked the soil now supporting magnolia trees and maintained lawns. Not neutral ground. A statement.
“I’ll be there.”
Valentin nodded once, turned, and left without closing the door.
Bastien gathered the Beaumont correspondence into a leather case. He would not leave evidence of this quality unprotected while attending a meeting designed to waste his time. He photographed the genealogical charts with his phone, preserving the connections in case someone decided to search his apartment during his absence.
The mark stirred beneath his sleeve. Steady. Patient.
Not the houses—the vampire council wanted him controlled, not used. But whoever had designed this situation understood that the council’s political anxieties could be triggered at convenient moments. The architect had not created the meeting; they had simply waited for circumstances that would inevitably produce one.
Two hours. Travel to the Garden District would take thirty minutes in afternoon traffic. The meeting itself could last two hours, three, four—however long the houses chose to perform their grievances. Add travel back to the Quarter, and he would be occupied until evening.
Six hours. Eight. Time enough for the killer to move.
He locked his apartment and descended to the street.
The Beaumont estate occupied three acres of manicured grounds on First Street, its Greek Revival facade rising white against the August sky. Live oaks lined the approach, their branches heavy with Spanish moss that filtered the afternoon light into gold and shadow. Gardenia and wet earth scented the air—the Garden District’s particular fragrance, thick in the heat.
Bastien passed through the iron gate at 2:17 PM. The mark flared once—recognition of something he could not identify—then subsided to baseline warmth.
Watchers ringed the property. He counted eleven figures positioned at strategic intervals: vampires in formal dress marking court attendance, humans in suits suggesting private security, one woman whose movements carried the boneless grace of fae blood. Every faction with interests in vampire politics had sent observers to watch the angel explain his failures.
A servant in Beaumont livery led him through the entrance hall and into a receiving room that had witnessed a century and a half of vampire negotiations. Burgundy wallpaper absorbed the afternoon light. Crystal chandeliers hung dormant, their electric filaments replaced by candles casting wavering illumination across the gathered representatives.
Marcelline Renault occupied the room’s central chair, her midnight blue dress a dark anchor in the sea of lighter fabrics surrounding her. Representatives of the five major houses formed a loose semicircle: House Béat to her left, Chardon and Lavigne to her right, Rousseau and Fontenot in positions suggesting deliberate neutrality. Behind them, minor house members filled the remaining seats.
Séverine Chardon stood rather than sat, the scar along her jaw catching the candlelight, her silver hair precise. She had stationed herself slightly apart from the semicircle—close enough to project authority, distant enough to suggest she operated independently of whatever the rest of them had agreed before Bastien arrived.
The supplicant’s position had been left empty at the room’s center.
Bastien took it without breaking stride.
“Mr. Durand.” Marcelline’s voice carried the weight of someone who had practiced authority since the Revolution—the French one, not the American. She did not thank him for coming. She had summoned him, and they both understood what that meant.