Sophie nodded.
"I have the perfect person in mind."
Since it happened to be her mind, too, Sophie knew exactly who that perfect person was. "How do you expect to get Mrs.
Deveraux to agree?"
A hush settled deep in Sophie"s consciousness. It was neither peaceful nor serene but heavy with foreboding. She shivered
involuntarily.
"I cannot be a party to evil," she said, for what seemed the thousandth time.
A flare of indignation burned through her. "You have already been a party to evil," Mr. Deveraux answered with contempt. "You
made the d.a.m.ned cake that murdered me."
Sophie squirmed in the heat of his accusation. "Well, we won"t have to kill her, will we?"
In a flash the indignation was gone. "Of course not. What good would it do to kill her? We need to keep her alive to use her
blood, don"t we? And if it works, we"ll pick only the most wicked vampires to drain. The G.o.ds know there are plenty of them around. Think about it, Sophie. We"ll be performing a public service. Ridding the world of bad vampires and offering mortal women the gift of beauty. It"s perfect."
Sophie sighed. She couldn"t believe she was actually considering Mr. Deveraux"s plan. But some of what he said made sense. Mrs. Deveraux was not exactly an innocent. She had murdered her husband. On his birthday, no less. And there were lots of bad vampires around wreaking havoc and taking innocent lives. This would get them out of circulation.
Besides, she was a partner in this enterprise. She would use her good influence to counterbalance any evil Mr. Deveraux tried to sneak by her. Like exacting revenge on the guests at his party who carried on as if nothing had happened after his death.
Sophie knew Mr. Deveraux was sensing the shift in her thinking. She could feel it in the shifting of his own disposition. Warmth flooded her system.
"How are we going to approach her?" Sophie asked at last.
Mr. Deveraux greeted her question with a mental clap of approval. "That"s my girl. Sophie, this is going to be the start of a great adventure, I promise. Now go get dressed and throw some things in a suitcase."
"Suitcase?"
"I told you we would be moving to the mansion."
Sophie stood up slowly from the counter and looked around. "I"ve lived here a long time. Do we have to move?"
He released a snort of impatience. "You"ve seen the mansion. You can"t possibly expect me to live here."
But when he sensed the spark of anger his remark provoked in Sophie, he added, "But we"ll keep this place. You can come visit
anytime you want. How"s that?"
Sophie thought about it a minute. She had seen the mansion. And the grounds. And the cars. What would it hurt to experience them, too?
She moved toward her bedroom. "You didn"t answer my question," she said. "How are we going to approach Mrs. Deveraux?"
Mr. Deveraux remained silent for the time it took Sophie to throw some things into a battered valise. She felt timid, at first, getting
dressed with Mr. Deveraux here. But she did it by standing away from mirrors and only stepping in front of one to comb her hair.
Seeing her reflection sent a thrill once more along her spine. She was truly, wonderfully beautiful.
Her dress, however, looked like a rag on her youthful frame.
Mr. Deveraux clucked his tongue. "We need to go shopping. Your taste in clothes runs to the archaic."
Sophie didn"t argue. He was right.
She smiled at her reflection. She couldn"t help it. Just as she couldn"t help the thrill of antic.i.p.ation coursing through her. Mr.
Deveraux had said they were embarking on a great adventure. She"d never had a great adventure.
She turned away from the mirror and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the suitcase. "Okay. What"s the plan?"
Mr. Deveraux was smiling, Sophie could feel it. "You promised my wife a party, right?"
Sophie nodded.
"Well, it just so happens that Mrs. Deveraux has a birthday of her own coming up. Next week, in fact."
"Do you think she"ll recognize me?" Sophie asked, casting another approving glance at her reflection.
"Doesn"t matter. You can tell her you"re Sophie"s granddaughter. Her business manager."
Sophie smiled. It could work.
"Of course it will work, Sophie," Mr. Deveraux said. "It"s all going to work. Now let"s go see a woman about a party."
Blood Wrapped Tanya Huff Tanya Huff lives and writes in the wilds of Southern Ontario. Her twenty-two books run the gamut from heroic fantasy to s.p.a.ce opera although she is probably best known for the Vicki Nelson Blood books-recently adapted for television as Blood Ties and showing on Lifetime in the United States and a CHUM affiliate in Canada. Her twenty-third book, The Heart of Valor, was a July 2007 release, and the sequel, Valor"s Trial, will be out in the spring of 2008. The following story is in the world of the Smoke books-Smoke and Shadows, Smoke and Mirrors, and Smoke and Ashes.
"What do you think of that?"
"The window display?"
"The shawl!"
Henry stepped closer to the Treasures of Thailand window and examined the lime green silk shawl draped more-or-less
artistically over a papier-mache mountain. "Nice," he said after a moment, "but not your color. If I were you, I"d wear the turquoise." A wave of his hand indicated a similar shawl hanging in the window"s "sky."
"It"s not for me!" Tony Foster shot a scathing look at his companion.
"Ah, for Lee then. In that case, you need a deeper green."
"It"s for Vicki!"
"Vicki?" Henry turned, frowning slightly, to see Tony staring at him with an expression of horrified disbelief.
"You didn"t forget. Don"t tell me you forgot. You must have gotten Celluci"s e-mail."
"E-mails." Over the last few weeks there had been a series of messages from Detective Sergeant Michael Celluci. Each of them had been as direct and to the point as the detective himself tended to be, falling somewhere between terse and rude, and each of them had been read and promptly deleted. "About Vicki"s birthday."
"Right. So"-looking relieved, Tony nodded toward the shawl-"what do you think?"
"I think you"re unnecessarily concerned," Henry told him. "It"s just a birthday."
Tony stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk and stared at the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son of Henry VIII, once Duke of Richmond and Somerset, Marshal of the North, now vampire and romance writer, like he"d just grown another head. "Are you insane?"
Tony took a long drink of his latte, set the mug carefully back on the artfully distressed surface of the coffee shop"s round wooden table, leaned forward, and looked Henry right in the eye. It was something not many people could or would do and not something he dared on a regular basis, but he needed to make sure Henry understood the seriousness of the situation. "She"s turning forty."
"She"s essentially immortal," Henry pointed out, keeping the Hunter carefully masked despite the other man"s provocation.
"What difference does that make?"
He spread his hands. "An infinite number of birthdays."
"So?" Taking the opportunity to look away without backing down, Tony rolled his eyes. "She"s still only going to turn forty once."
"And someday, G.o.d willing, she"ll turn a hundred and forty, two hundred and forty..."
"You just don"t get it, do you?"
"Apparently not." Taking a swallow from his bottle of water, a modern conceit he appreciated since it granted him an accepted
public behavior-and there were many in Vancouver who drank neither caffeine nor alcohol-Henry studied Tony"s reaction and shook his head. "Apparently not," he repeated. That Vicki Nelson, who had been the first child of his kind he"d created in almost four hundred and seventy years, would care about something so meaningless as a birthday was hard for him to believe. Granted, she"d been definitely human before the change: strong willed, opinionated, with a terrier-like determination.... No, not terrier. That implied something small and yappy and Vicki was neither. Pit bull then. Aggressive, yes, but more often badly handled and misunderstood. He grinned at the thought of anyone attempting to put a muzzle on Vicki Nelson.
"What? You"re wearing one of your I"m so clever smiles," Tony told him as his thoughts returned to the coffee shop. "Have you thought of something to get her?"
Best not to mention the muzzle. Toronto, and Vicki, were three thousand odd miles away but the idea of that getting back to her gave him chills the way nothing had in the last four centuries.
"I"ve know her for years and I"ve never given her a birthday present."
"Forty, Henry."
"And why is that so different from thirty-nine?"
Tony sighed. "You write bodice rippers, Henry. I can"t believe you know so little about women!"
"No woman in my books has ever approached forty." Grocery bills might be negligible but he still had condo fees and car
insurance to pay and middle-aged heroines didn"t sell books.
"Yeah, and your fans?"
From the mail he got, his fans were definitely closer to middle age. Given that they thought he was a thirty-five-year-old redhead
named Elizabeth Fitzroy, he declined all invitations to romance conventions. "We don"t exactly converse, Tony."
"Maybe you should. Look"-elbows planted on the table, he leaned forward-"forty is a big deal for women. It"s either the age where they have to stop pretending or have to start pretending a lot harder."
"Pretending what?"
"Youth, Henry."