Authors: Kailin Gow
Tavian did not appear particularly happy at that. “You mean…”
Scarlett smiled. “I mean that we are going to see Cruces, Tavian. Please do try to get along with him this morning. After all, he holds the key to getting Cecilia back.”
S
ince Cruces’ townhouse was not that far, Scarlett and Tavian walked to it rather than summoning a cab. At that time of the morning, with people out on the streets on the way to their various places of work, it was actually quite pleasant.
Scarlett found herself wondering if it would be quite so pleasant when they got there. The previous night, Cruces had whisked her back to his home in a rush to keep her clear of the clutches of the Order. Yet she had not stayed, the way he had clearly wanted. She had gone home. After all, she could not simply spend the night in the house of a man like Cruces. Would he have forgiven that?
There was really only one way to find out, and Scarlett was already on her way to find out. She increased her pace slightly, pushing through the crowds, and it was not long before the two of them arrived in Piccadilly. Scarlett moved up the steps to Cruces’ house and rang the doorbell, tapping her foot slightly impatiently as she waited.
The door opened within a few seconds, revealing an elderly man with thinning white hair and an almost beaklike nose, dressed impeccably in the uniform of a butler. He looked at Scarlett with the careful neutrality that was the hallmark of any good butler, then at Tavian with slightly less equanimity.
“Yes?”
Scarlett had not met the man before, but that was mostly because the few times she had been in Cruces’ home, the vampire had been with her. She certainly knew that Cruces had servants around. After all, Cecilia had been one of them.
“We need to see Lord Darthmoor urgently,” Scarlet said.
“I am afraid that he is not at home to visitors at this hour, Miss.”
“Well,” Scarlett said, “he is just going to have to be. Would you tell him that Miss Seely is here to see him, please?”
“Perhaps if you were to call back in an hour or two…”
“It really cannot wait,” Scarlett said. She put a palm out to block the door so that the butler would not have any chance to simply close the door. “And if he hears that you have delayed us in this matter, I cannot imagine that Cruces will be very impressed.”
She used the vampire’s first name deliberately, hoping that it would make the point that they were not casual callers. Even so, the butler seemed unmoved.
“George, who is it?” Cruces called out. “It is far too early for visitors.”
“So I was just explaining to the young lady, sir.”
“Young lady?”
Cruces appeared at the door a moment or two later. He wasn’t really dressed for visitors. If anything, they seemed to have caught him in the middle of dressing. He had on his pants and a half-way buttoned up shirt, but there was no sign of his cravat, suspenders, or outer garments. Scarlett realized that she should probably look away, but she had never had much time for what she should probably do. Instead, she let her eyes rove over Cruces, taking in the hints of muscle that showed under the shirt, his broad frame filling it out really very nicely.
Cruces smiled in a way that made it clear he knew exactly what Scarlett was looking at. “Scarlett. I trust you had a restful night back in your home.”
Of course he would refer to it. Scarlett was not about to be ashamed of it, either, so she nodded. “Very restful, thank you.”
“That would probably be thanks to the wards around your house,” Tavian said from beside Scarlett.
Scarlett raised an eyebrow. “Wards? There were wards around my house?”
Tavian nodded. “I spotted them when I came over.
Someone
placed basic protective symbols around your home.”
“Well,” Cruces said, unabashed, “you wouldn’t expect me to just leave her alone with the Order sniffing around, would you?”
“No,” Tavian admitted, “I suppose not.”
Scarlett had not noticed the wards, but presumably, that was because she hadn’t seen the outside of her house since she came back to it last night. She had certainly been in too much of a hurry when she left it this morning. Briefly, she found herself torn then between gratitude at the thoughtfulness of the gesture, and the inevitable annoyance that came when Cruces did something without bothering to mention it to her. She pushed both feelings to the back of her mind, however.
“Cruces, we are here on an important matter.”
Tavian stepped up to her then, and his arm slid around her. Scarlett saw Cruces’ expression flicker, just faintly, at the gesture.
“And what matter might that be?” He asked that just a little too loudly.
“My sister is missing,” Tavian said. There wasn’t anything in that tone. Perhaps he knew that he couldn’t afford to upset Cruces when the vampire offered their best chance of getting Cecilia back.
Cruces sighed. “
Again
? And what valuable item has she taken with her this time?”
“It isn’t like that,” Scarlett said. “May we come in?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Come through to the dining room. George, bring tea for my guests, and my usual drink for me. Have you both eaten?”
Scarlett nodded, but when Tavian shook his head, Cruces ordered the butler to find breakfast for the gypsy fey as well as the drinks. They went through to the dining room to wait for them. It was opulent, decorated in tastes that were elaborate, yet seemed to owe much to the lines of the classical world. That made sense though. Presumably, it reminded Cruces of his youth. He kept his appearance as a handsome young man, although he was so ancient that possibly not even that style was old enough to genuinely reflect his first days as a vampire. There were busts of long dead people around the walls, and paintings that reflected scenes from legends. In the center, there was a long dining table running most of the length of the room, and the three of them crowded at one end of it.
“Now,” Cruces demanded, “are you going to tell me what is going on?”
Scarlett decided that it would probably be better coming from her. “Rothschild took Cecilia, and she knows where Gordon is, so we need to get her back.”
“We?” Cruces asked.
Scarlett nodded. “He almost certainly took her to another world, possibly to keep her out of the way, or possibly just so that he could find a way to kill her and other fey like her using whatever Devices he could find there.”
Cruces smiled then. “I was under the impression last night that the idea of other worlds was one that stretched even your willingness to believe.”
“Well, I’ve seen more since then,” Scarlett said. “We need you and your ring, Cruces. We need to get to this other place if we’re to find Cecilia.”
Cruces paused for a moment, in which George came in with breakfast for Tavian, tea for him and Scarlett, and a cup full to the brim with blood for Cruces. Clearly, the butler knew what his employer was.
“George,” Cruces said, “my friends here tell me that I must help them to retrieve Tavian’s sister Cecilia, you remember Cecilia, from another world, where she is being held captive. What do you think? And none of that ‘I couldn’t possibly say’ stuff.”
The butler nodded. “I think, sir, that you probably
do
have to go after her. Even if it is Cecilia.”
“Hmph. I suppose so. Plus there is Rothschild to consider. He is probably collecting Devices with which to kill the fey as we speak.”
“Possibly, sir. And might I point out that this is the sort of thing you do, sir?”
“That will be all, George.” The butler hurried off and Cruces shook his head with a smile that was gently mocking. “Well, there we have it. Even my
butler
seems to think I have to help. Well, hold on a minute.”
He hurried off and came back a minute or two later with what looked like a series of maps, which he proceeded to spread out at the far end of the table from Tavian, saying something about not wanting to get grease from the breakfast on them. Scarlett noticed that he had not taken the time to finish dressing, leaving her still with that suggestion of his muscles shifting under his shirt every time he moved. With anyone else, Scarlett might have put that down to the hurry to fetch the map. With Cruces… well, Scarlett would never put something like that down to chance with him.
Scarlett took her tea and went up to that end of the table to study the map. Even at first glance, it looked a little different. The land masses were where they should be, but the political units shown were not the ones she had learned in school. The Empire in particular was considerably smaller than its current extent. She suspected that there was more to it than simply being old, however, because with her talent for seeing the unseen, Scarlett could make out faint lines over the map.
Needing a closer look, Scarlett reached into her purse, drawing out the pair of brass goggles she kept there and putting them on. At once, the magic in them worked to enhance her own natural sight. Making the lines she had seen before stand out and others appear. There were hundreds of them. Thousands.
“Leylines?” she asked.
Cruces nodded. “And it is those that let us open portals. Now, can you pick out the right ones for our needs?”
“I thought you might be able to,” Scarlett said.
Cruces shook his head with another of those smiles of his. “Hardly. Though if I could, it would make things simpler, wouldn’t it?” He laughed. “Why, I might not even need you.”
He reached out over the table then, his hand covering Scarlett’s as his voice dropped to a level that Tavian, at the other end of the table and still intent upon his breakfast, would not hear. "I might need you for other things, though. Believe me, your talents aren’t the only reason I like having you around.”
“You like having me around?” Scarlett teased.
Cruces’ expression grew momentarily serious. “You were the one who left last night. I didn’t make you go.”
“You should have,” Scarlett said. “A gentleman would have.”
Cruces leaned over to kiss her, sweeping his hands up to her hair as his lips met hers. It was so sudden that Scarlett could hardly breathe, yet it was gentle too. Cruces’ lips were like velvet against hers as Scarlett kissed him back eagerly.
They pulled apart after a second or two. Tavian apparently had not seen them, either. Scarlett found herself almost tingling with the danger of that.
“It is good to see you safe this morning,” Cruces said. “And now, it seems, you are to be back in my arms for another adventure.”
W
hen Scarlett pulled back from Cruces, she took a moment to look over to where Tavian still sat, finishing his breakfast. He obviously hadn’t seen them. Something else, however, had obviously caught his eye. He stood, moving to the side of the room where a window opened out onto the front of the house and the street outside. There, he stared for several seconds without speaking.
Intrigued, Scarlett moved over to him, wanting to see what was out there. What she saw there, out on the street before the house, quickly had her staring too. A man and a woman stood together there, and they were about as far from anything that should have been in London as Scarlett could imagine.
Both of them wore garments of golden cloth that looked entirely unsuited to the English weather. For the man, it was a tunic falling to his knees, while for the woman, it was a sleeveless dress that fell in waves around her. Both wore sandals instead of shoes.
The man was powerfully built, with a short, dark beard and curly hair. He was handsome, almost flawless, but he stood in a way that favored one side, and as he took a slight step towards the house, Scarlett saw that he walked with a limp. It did little to distract from the sense of power he radiated, though; one that almost had Scarlett taking a step back to match his step forward.
If the man was handsome, the woman was beautiful in a way Scarlett would not have believed possible. Her hair matched the gold of her dress, and fell loosely down to her waist. She was almost as tall as the man, with a figure that made even Scarlett feel a brief stab of envy, and features that instantly made her think of the kind of beauty found in classical sculptures. In fact, Scarlett briefly looked around, sure that one of the busts that decorated the dining room looked like her.
People should have been staring, if not at the sheer beauty of the woman, then certainly at the way the two were dressed. They were dressed like something from myth, and certainly not in a way that would have been considered normal in London, yet nobody so much as glanced at them. That told Scarlett as clearly as anything that they were supernatural in some way, visible to her only thanks to her talent for seeing the unseen. Yet what were they? Scarlett had seen so many things over the years. She had seen the spirits of the dead and creatures out of stories, vampires and fey, the
ka
of Egypt and stranger things. Yet she had never seen anything quite like the two figures standing in the street.