The blond witch waved her hand up at me as though she were a schoolgirl and I were the teacher. “All of us?” she asked.
I glanced around the group. It was small, but the room was tiny. “Do we need everyone for the spell?” I asked.
Lady Alice shook her head. “It’s very simple.”
“Good. Then no, not everyone should be there. Just Mary Jane, Lady Alice, and Lavinia in the house, and the rest in the alley, waiting as backup if the plan doesn’t work. But it will,” I said, reassuring myself as much as the witches.
Ten stories above, I heard the lone, singular caw of a raven. The sound echoed in my ears, and I knew it was foreshadowing something. I only wished I knew what.
“I’ll be there, vampire,” Lavinia said finally.
I locked eyes with Lavinia. “Good,” I said. I meant it. Whether we liked it or not, we were bound to the witches. And they were bound to us.
9
The next night, I was hiding in the bushes that surrounded the fence of Samuel’s Lansdowne House estate. A few hundred paces away, Damon hunched in the shadows of one of the large portico columns of the Georgian mansion.
Damon turned toward me and I nodded to him. I was ready in case things went sour and he needed backup.
Damon knocked on the door and was unsurprised when, seconds later, Samuel himself answered. His eyes were bloodshot, and his pale skin was almost white.
The wind had picked up and was blowing toward me, making it sound like the conversation was taking place only inches away.
“Listen. I’m here to offer you a deal,” Damon said stiffly, before Samuel could say anything—or stake him. “A business transaction. From one vampyr to another,” he said, using the ancient, foreign-sounding term for one of our kind.
“A deal,” Samuel repeated. An inscrutable expression—was it amusement? Curiousity? Anger?—flickered across Samuel’s face. “You killed my brother. I ruined you. And yet, now you come to me to try to negotiate. Why?”
I held my breath, lest Samuel should hear me. Watching my brother talk calmly with a man hell-bent on destroying our lives, it was all I could do to sit back on my heels and stay quiet. Maybe it was the eleuthro from several days prior or Lady Alice’s blood, but something had changed within me. My nerves were on edge and I was ready to spring into battle at a second’s notice. After all, the next few hours wouldn’t merely determine Damon’s and my fates—they would determine the fate of the entire city. In the words of my brother when he had a particularly good hand of poker: We were all-in. But right now, there was nothing I could do but watch the scene unfold.
Damon shifted back and forth on his feet, and I knew he was exercising every ounce of his self-control not to lash out and attack Samuel.
Say it. Damon’s head jerked back to glance in my direction, even though I hadn’t even said the words out loud. Admit he’s won.
“When I was a human, I was a soldier in the Confederate Army,” Damon said through gritted teeth. “I know the difference between victory and defeat, and I know when to wave the white flag. I’m done fighting. I just want to make a deal, one man to another. Give me my life, my freedom, and I’ll give you something you want,” Damon said, bowing slightly.
Samuel threw back his head and laughed, looking like a wolf baying at the moon. “What could you possibly have that I want?”
“Your purebred witch,” Damon responded.
Samuel stepped toward Damon, slamming him against a column. I cringed as Damon’s skull hit the wood, leaving a lightning bolt–shaped crack in the plaster. “How do you know about that?” Samuel asked, emphasizing each word.
Damon shrugged, seemingly unperturbed by Samuel’s violent outburst. “I overheard you and your minions discuss your search for a purebred witch. Stefan has Mary Jane. And now, thanks to his foolish rescue, I know exactly where she lives. She’s defenseless and gullible. It’ll be easy for me to get her for you.”
Samuel tapped his slim, tapered fingers together as he scrutinized Damon.
“So my torture wasn’t in vain. I’m glad you came to your senses. But I’m still not sure if I’ll let you go free. After all, what of your brother?”
Damon smiled chillingly, a look I knew all too well as one he gave before he was going in for a kill. “I’m sure you can remember from when we were…friends,” Damon said, choking on the word, “how little fondness I had for Stefan. While he was of assistance recently, I can’t say his help has made me like him any better. He’s made his choice about how he wants to live, and I’ll be damned if he drags me down with him. He’s nothing to me,” he said dismissively. “He’s not one of us. Here he is, playing the hidden hero to fallen women of the East End when he could have the world at his feet. I can’t associate with a vampire who doesn’t embrace his true nature. Even if he was once a brother.”
Samuel nodded once. “Well, he’ll be easy enough to take care of. Tell me more about the girl.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Damon said. “I’ll bring you to her tomorrow night. She lives in a two-bit slum with a few other witches, but I’ll make sure none of them are around. Come alone. That is, if I have your word that you’ll clear my name of these silly charges and stop trying to kill me.”
Samuel’s eyes gleamed like two lanterns in the darkness. “You have my word. I’ll exonerate you of all this Jack the Ripper nonsense as soon as the witch is in my possession, alive and well.”
Damon stuck out his hand for Samuel to shake.
Samuel grabbed his hand, and I expected a crash of thunder or spark to ignite as they shook. But there was nothing except for the whistling of the wind through the bushes.