Chapters (50)
- Cover
- Roc Books by Jacqueline Carey
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
I thanked him again and left. Believe it or not, I was actually looking forward to doing database entry. I’d probably change my tune after the first few hours, but at least Lee had managed to make the prospect of it fun, and the idea of having my very own digital ledger was empowering.
Unfortunately, that part where I’d said I didn’t expect to be going back to the House of Shadows for a good long time?
Turns out I was dead wrong.
Twenty-nine
I got in a solid day’s worth of data entry before Jen called me in hysterics the following morning. And Jennifer Cassopolis was never hysterical. Jen was tough. Not razor-blades-in-her-hair, she’ll-cut-a-bitch tough, but she grew up in an abusive household, and it made her tough enough.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I said when I could get a word in edgewise. “Slow down! Take a deep breath and tell me again. Who did what now?”
On the other end of the phone, Jen took several ragged gulps of air before swallowing convulsively. “Fucking Geoffrey!” she said, her voice thick with tears and rage. “He’s fucking turning my sister!”
Oh, crap. I closed my eyes. “Shit! Okay, let me think. Maybe we can put together an extraction team. Stefan—”
“It’s too late, Daise,” Jen interrupted me. “It’s already done. We got an invitation to the rising this morning. A fucking engraved invitation, like it’s a fucking wedding, for Christ’s sake! One of their minions hand-delivered it!”
I felt sick.
Turning a mortal into a vampire isn’t a spontaneous decision. It’s a process. Over the course of a month’s time, the mortal ingests small amounts of his or her blood-bonded vampire mate’s blood until it reaches the critical threshold necessary to keep the mortal’s flesh from corrupting during the three-day period between dying and rising. And yes, in case you’re wondering about the biblical echo, there are undead sects that claim Jesus was a vampire.
Anyway. It meant that Bethany Cassopolis was already lying dead in the House of Shadows, drained of mortal blood. And it meant that the process of turning her was already under way when I was there the week before.
That’s why she didn’t look as strung out as usual. And that’s probably why Geoffrey gave her permission to recruit an acolyte, so they’d have their very own playmate and blood source on hand for her rising.
And like a good little half-breed clinging to my mundane human morals, I’d passed up the chance to plant dauda-dagr between Geoffrey the prat’s shoulder blades and make an end to him.
“Daise?” Jen asked.