“Is it dangerous?”
“Not in and of itself, no.” She shook her head. “But if Maisie’s so desperate to stop the dreams that she’s given up sleep, we’re not going to be able to cajole her into it.” Rhea’s face scrunched up like the words she was about to say tasted bitter. “We would have to slip her a sleeping potion.”
My mouth fell open. “You mean drug her?”
“That’s one way to put it. I’d prefer to think of it as hiding something that’s good for her in her food.”
I shot her a disbelieving look. “Rhea, that’s so wrong.”
“What other option do we have? Sit by and watch her waste away? Wait around until Orpheus gets so fed up he has her deposed?”
“Can he do that?”
“Sabina, mages take the Oracle’s prophecies very seriously. He can and would depose her if he felt her lack of prophecy posed a threat to the race.”
“Shit.” I dropped heavily onto the stool. How had this gotten so complicated?
“She won’t ever have to know. In fact… hmm.” Her eyes went all squinty and her lips pressed together like she was hatching a plan. “Here’s an idea. We’ll suggest that she try moving out to the Crossroads until the Imbolc festival. Tell her that maybe a change of scenery and some quiet might help her. We’d need the ley line in the Sacred Grove for the dream incubation anyway.” Rhea started pacing, warming up to her idea as she moved. “We can slip the potion in her food. She’ll sleep through the ritual, so she won’t know we were involved. Hopefully, she’ll wake up with a prophecy and won’t suspect we had a hand in it.”
“What if she refuses to go?”
Rhea stopped pacing and looked up. “Then we’ll have Orpheus make it an order. But hopefully we can convince her without it coming to that.”
I shifted on my seat, not liking this plan at all. We both knew Maisie would refuse. Drugging her was the only option if we wanted to make it happen. But I hated to do it after everything she’d already been put through.
Rhea noticed my discomfort and approached, softening her tone. “Sabina, I know you don’t want to hurt Maisie. Please believe I don’t either. But this is serious. The Council has always relied on the Oracle for guidance. They’ve been sympathetic to Maisie’s issues, but the time’s coming when they’ll grow tired of waiting. Maisie’s pedigree offers her certain protections but that goes only so far. I don’t want to contemplate what will happen to her if she’s stripped of her position.”
I didn’t either. She was already so fragile that something like that would totally leave her shattered. I sighed and brushed flecks of dried herbs off my palms. “Fine. But this is between you and me. You can’t tell Orpheus what I’ve told you.”
“Sabina, I have to.” Rhea looked me in the eye. “Maisie is too important to the entire race to keep him out of this.”
“What if he says no?”
She smiled a small, cunning smile. “You leave Orpheus to me. By the time I’m done with him, he won’t just agree, he’ll give us his blessing.”
I prayed she was right. Because if her potion didn’t help my sister, nothing could.
After I left Rhea to go talk to Orpheus, I was alone and restless. I returned to the apartment, but no one was back yet. Probably for the best, since I wasn’t exactly in the healthiest state of mind.
The normally comfortable space did little to soothe me. I felt itchy and restless. If I stayed there, I’d just end up sitting around and stewing over the Maisie situation. As I paced by the kitchen for the tenth time, my eye caught a Necrospank 5000 T-shirt Erron had given Giguhl the night before. Seeing it brought back the revelations he’d shared.
It’s not that I didn’t trust Erron. But his report made me curious to know more about the mysterious Master Mahan. If nothing else, maybe facing the situation would make the damned dreams stop.
Deciding I needed to do something productive, I headed to the library on the second floor. I didn’t really expect to find a ton of earth-shattering exposés on the life of Cain in a mage book collection, but I was desperate for anything that would take my mind off Maisie.
After grabbing a few books from the shelves, I took a seat in a leather armchair next to an arched window. The moon was high—three-quarters full—and loomed over my shoulder like it wanted to read, too.
The first book I scanned was called The Book of Moses. I’d never heard of it, but it sounded vaguely biblical. I was surprised to find a book of mortal mythology in a mage library, but I guess it wasn’t all that strange. After all, mages live in a world dominated by mortal culture. Not being familiar with the mortal myths myself, I quickly ran through the pages and stopped when I got to a quote about Cain.
And Cain said: Truly I am Mahan, the master of this great secret, that I may murder and get gain. Wherefore Cain was called Master Mahan, and he gloried in his wickedness.
That certainly sounded accurate since the Caste of Nod referred to Cain as Master Mahan. But the book didn’t give any details about when or why Cain created the Caste, nor did it shed any light on his reasons for wanting to bring on Lilith’s return to the mortal realm. I slammed that book closed and grabbed the next. According to the introduction, it contained a collection of oral histories passed down through vampire families.
I flipped to the chapter on Lilith and started reading. When I got to the part about Lilith and Cain’s first meeting, I stopped scanning and read every word.
As far as love stories went, it was fairly typical. Banished boy meets bad girl. They cavort by the Red Sea for a few decades. Create a new race of immortal, bloodthirsty offspring. Then, predictably, boy loses girl to demon king of the underworld.
That’s where things got a little fuzzy. The vampire texts chronicled how Lilith married Asmodeus and became Queen of Irkalla. There was some talk of how she shunned life on earth to make little demon babies. But Cain? I couldn’t find any documentation about him after he fled the Land of Nod to nurse his broken heart. Not all that surprising since vampire society was matriarchal. They worshipped Lilith and pretty much ignored Cain’s existence except as a sort of damned sperm donor.
Unfortunately, the other books didn’t offer much more in the way of details. I slammed the last one shut with a sigh. Glancing at the clock, I realized I’d just wasted two hours and had not much to show for it. Maybe Erron had been right. Maybe worrying about Cain was a waste of time.
I laid my head back against the back of the chair with a sigh. When I opened my eyes, my gaze was drawn to the painting that hung over the library’s fireplace.
“What are you looking at?” I said to my father, whose painted eyes seemed to watch me with judgment.
Cursing, I rose to approach the picture. I’d seen it several times since moving into Prytania Place. But now I noticed a framed photograph on the mantel under the painting. I’m not sure how it got there or who added it, but I’d never noticed it before.
Seeing an oil-and-canvas rendering of a face was one thing, but staring at a photograph was different, more intimate. The stark black-and-white image made him seem more real somehow. He was standing next to a river—probably the Hudson, which ran along the border of the estate in Sleepy Hollow. All around, bare trees and a light snow on the ground indicated it was winter. Despite the stark surroundings, he was laughing at whoever took the shot.
Flipping it over, I unlatched the rear of the frame and removed the cardboard backing. On the upper-right-hand corner, someone had written “Tristan, February 1954.”
My stomach performed a triple backflip. The picture had been taken just fourteen months before I was born. Had he already met my mother? Vampires have a twelve-month gestation cycle, so he’d either just met her or was just about to.
My heart thudded loudly in my chest. I turned the shot back over and studied it. His eyes sparkled with mischief—or was it the look of a man in love? I couldn’t tell. I guess it didn’t matter. Not really. Because while that one moment had been frozen for me to see almost fifty-five years in the future, back then time had marched on for my father. He’d met and fallen in love with my vampire mother. And that fateful introduction had cost both of them their lives.
As long as I’d been among the mages, I’d done little to learn more about my father, except what Rhea and others insisted on telling me about his “heroic life and noble death”—their words, not mine. Maybe I should have made more of an effort since, after all, I’d inherited his magical specialty. But what was the point, really?
He’d died before I was born. Rumored to have been murdered by Lavinia’s goons when she found out he’d knocked up her daughter. No one ever found the body, but there’d been blood in his rooms. Probably they’d dumped his body somewhere. Either way, he was never in my life, except as a… damned sperm donor.
If it hadn’t been my own history, I might have been amused by the Shakespearian irony of it all. But I’d spent most of my life paying the debts from my parents’ mistakes. So all I felt was resentful. And hollow.
I shoved the picture back into the frame and turned away. Looking back at the books, I made a decision. It was time to leave the past alone. Ancient history—Cain—and more modern history—my father—were just skeletons. There was no real meat to them. What really mattered was the present. And the future. It was about time I embraced the former and took steps to ensure I was ready for the latter.
As for the past? It was time to let it rest in peace.
21
Walking into Vein the next night was like arriving home after a long day at the office. I’d fully intended to be at the bar sooner, but the New York subway system had other plans.
I normally would have flashed over to the club with Adam, but he’d spent another evening out at the Crossroads dealing with security, so I told him I’d just meet him there for Giguhl’s first Roller Derby bout.
After three months of living in New York, I still hated public transportation with the fiery passion of a thousand suns. I hated the confusing schedules. Hated the crowds of people who didn’t give a shit that in my old life I would have ripped out their jugular for bumping into me. And I definitely hated the smell, a charming perfume of sour trash, hobo piss, and body odor. Considering it was January, I wasn’t looking forward to experiencing the tunnel funk during the hellfire summers.