Page 24 of The Mermaid’s Bubble Lounge (Sam Quinn #8)

TWENTY-FOUR

Could This Have Been an Email?

“I’ve heard some things,” Clive told Bracken, causing Joao to still. “I have no answers for you right now but would appreciate the time and space to do a little research of my own. I assume, if I do find something, that you’d be able to get a message to her family?”

“I could,” Bracken responded. “Yes, indeed. I met with the family myself, you see. They’re heartbroken. Still. I understand that you can’t tell me anything right now, but please share with me what you know when you can. They’ve been mourning her loss for twenty-two years.”

“I understand, and I’ll get back to you,” Clive said. “Thank you again for your time and knowledge. We are grateful.” He disconnected the call.

“Why didn’t our own historians find this?” Pablo shook his head, staring away from the group.

“Other than that jaguar story,” Ahmed said, “where we were painted as the villains, none of those killings involved us.” He leaned forward over the table.

“All this time we’ve been told that our own people wanted to out us to the world.

We’ve been scrambling, the older ones trying to teach the younger ones how difficult it was before we became fiction, before vampire hunting fell out of fashion. ”

“Yes, and why was that?” Pablo sneered. “Members of the Guild were involved in those investigations. How did you miss all of this?”

“We didn’t.” Vlad looked like he was one shitty comment away from handing Pablo his final death. “My report said that although it appeared to be a vampire killing, there was no evidence of one being involved.”

Joao stood and began to pace around the library. “Mine was similar. We could find no trace of the killer. That was in the report. Sebastian said he’d heard rumblings of vampires wanting to be out to the world and so saw this as connected.”

He was also the one flaunting the rules of secrecy to feed on innocents.

I know, darling, but we have no idea if any of these Counselors knew what was going on in Budapest.

“Sebastian remained Guild Master longer than was customary,” Cadmael explained.

“He stationed himself in the Guild House, which put him in close proximity to the twisted old fae living in the condemned upper floor. We must assume he was compromised. I suggest we go back over the decisions the Guild has made in the last decade to see if we still support them. Leadership throughout the vampire world is changing. We will need to change as well.”

Joao paused his pacing in front of the fireplace. “Why did you keep asking about the missing shifter?”

“Because Russell and Audrey rescued a black jaguar shifter who was being held by a vampire,” Clive told him.

Joao’s eyes turned vamp black. “No. They swore to me they had nothing to do with the little girl’s disappearance.

I spoke to the shifter family myself. I assured them it wasn’t a vampire.

” He was nothing like the carefree playboy now.

Like a bowstring, he was vibrating, barely holding himself back from mass murder. “Who?”

“Russell said he was a vampire who identified himself as John. We can ask Russell to join us and explain,” Clive said.

Joao nodded stiffly. Clive glanced around the table. No one protested, so Clive went to the door and said, “Russell,” knowing Russell would hear.

The Master’s office door opened and Russell walked down the hall. “Yes? May I assist in some way?”

Clive waved him in and closed the door. “I was explaining to the Guild about the jaguar you and Audrey rescued. The group would like to know more about the vampire who was holding her.”

Russell nodded solemnly. “I see. He told us his name was John and that he was a newborn from Texas when he applied for membership to the noctur—”

“When was this?” Joao interrupted.

“Just a little over a month ago.”

The Guild members glanced at each other, looks of consternation on their faces.

“It was a lie, though,” Russell continued. “I first met him in—I’m not sure which state. It might have been Texas. It was in the mid-1800s in the antebellum South. He was a paddyroller who had—”

Adaeze gestured to catch Russell’s attention. “I’m not familiar with this term.”

Russell thought a minute, clearly running back what he’d just said to find the unfamiliar term.

He nodded. “Paddyrollers or patrollers were armed white men who acted as a kind of militia, chasing down escaped slaves, punishing us for defiance, and making money by selling us back to plantations in need.”

“I see,” Adaeze responded, her eyes turning black.

“They were ignorant and violent men. When I first came into contact with this John, he was one of a group of patrollers who had been made vampires and I was one of the escaped. So, when he walked into my office almost two hundred years later, pretending to be a newborn, I knew he was lying. I’ve only recently become the Master.

I had no idea why he was here, but I assumed it was because a Black man in authority—especially this Black man, who’d made him look a fool all those years ago—bothered him.

I’m afraid my temper got the best of me, and I handed him his final death before I could question him more thoroughly. ”

Adaeze nodded. “Good.”

“Was he the one who stole her?” Joao demanded.

Russell looked at Clive for context.

“He’s asking whether you know if this John was the one who originally stole the jaguar cub in the or if she had been trafficked.”

Russell shook his head. “I don’t know. We weren’t aware there was an imprisoned shifter at the time. We found her later, her pelt covered in burns and vampire bites, reeking of his scent.”

“What did you do with her?” Joao demanded.

Vampires were masters of subtlety, so when Clive leaned ever so slightly toward Russell, it was tantamount to a declaration that he had Russell’s back and that Joao needed to calm the fuck down.

Russell kept his focus on the Guild members around the table. “One of our dragons is a veterinarian.”

“One of your dragons?” Pablo’s look of boredom didn’t match the tension in his voice.

Ahmed glanced over at Pablo, shaking his head. “How have you not heard about the Battle of Alcatraz?”

Russell nodded. “We didn’t feel we were the right ones to look after an abused shifter, one who had been abused by one of our own kind, so we took her to our veterinary friend.”

“What has she said?” Joao took a step forward. “Was it a vampire who originally stole her?”

She hasn’t shifted and spoken, I told Clive. She’s traumatized, but Alec says she’s getting stronger.

Russell didn’t respond, so Clive said, “She’s been traumatized by her captivity and abuse. She hasn’t yet shifted to her other form, so no one has spoken to her yet.”

Joao shook his head. “We have to make this go away before that happens. It can’t get out that she was taken and tortured by vampires.” He threw his hands in the air and began to pace again. “We’d end up at war with shifters.”

Pablo raised his eyebrows. “Did you miss the part about her being protected by dragons?”

“What?” Joao stopped and looked between Pablo and Clive. “She’s a jaguar. Will they care?”

It’s a good thing I’m not in that room. My fingertips are tingling. I want to separate his head from his body.

I know, but stay where you are and let me handle it.

“They will care very much. If anyone tried to get close to her, they’d die a fiery death.

We have five dragons living in this town who are very protective of this shifter.

What you have to understand about dragons is that they are an ancient force and though there are different clans in different parts of the world, they are all dragons and would drop everything, sacrifice anything, to come to the aid of another dragon.

The clans are very tight-knit families, and this jaguar is now under the protection of the Drake clan. ”

Clive gestured to Ahmed. “A very large part of the reason we won the Battle of Alcatraz against a far greater number of Master vampires is because we had dragons working with us, flying over the island and the ocean, burning any of Garyn’s people that they found.

” Clive glanced at the others. “So, no, we can’t just silence the shifter to hide our own culpability. ”

“We need to tell her family,” Adaeze said.

“Now, wait—” Joao began.

“Enough,” Cadmael grumbled. “Have your people investigate,” he said to Joao.

“I would think an American, and a Texan no less, would stand out in the rainforest. If he wasn’t the one who stole her—and given what Russell has told us about him, I’d assume he acquired her later—then we need to trace the trafficking.

We need to know where and when our people were involved in the supernatural trade. ”

“Yes,” Vlad agreed. “We also need to look into other missing shifters. I doubt this was an isolated incident.”

Thi cleared her throat. “Why would any of our people be involved in this? It seems more likely to be warfare between shifters.” She gestured to Joao.

“I understand this happened in your territory, but so has a great many other things that have nothing to do with us. I don’t think it falls to us to spend our time and effort on shifter concerns. ”

“It was a vampire imprisoning the jaguar,” Adaeze reminded her. “We are involved in it. And if we had been paying more attention to what was happening around us, we would have figured out what this pooka was doing long before now.”

Thi inclined her head. “Assuming there is a pooka and it’s killing to mimic us. There seem to be a great many unknowns and assumptions being made.”

“Yes, exactly,” Pablo said, tapping the table near Thi’s elbow. “They’re presenting conjecture as though it’s fact.”

Vlad slumped back in his chair. “Now I remember why I hate this job.” He checked his watch. “I think we’ve reached the end of our productive time. If we’ve moved into the bickering phase of the meeting, I have a book to read.”

Cadmael closed his eyes a moment. “Unhelpful. Agreed, but unhelpful.” He looked up at the clock on the wall.

“It’s after three. We have phone calls to make for the Counselor candidates we’ve discussed.

Let’s break now, contact who we need to contact, and regroup tomorrow to continue the discussion.

We have a monumental amount of work to do to rebuild the Guild.

I don’t want us getting bogged down in unnecessary arguments. ”

Adaeze and Ahmed nodded and stood. Pablo looked ready to continue fighting, but when Thi nodded and stood, he knew he’d lost his ally and so stood as well. Joao was still looking harassed, standing by the fireplace.

“You all know where your rooms are,” Russell said.

“Your people are downstairs, though I assume you can call them to you, if you’d like them up here.

The nocturne’s facilities are at your disposal.

If there’s anything that you need, please feel free to ask one of my people.

” He inclined his head and left the library.

“I’m going to go find my wife and wake her up.” Turning to Cadmael and Vlad, Clive added, “We’ll be out at the car in a few minutes, if you two would like a ride.”

I’m in Russell’s office.

I know, darling. On my way.

I blinked my eyes open and realized that Audrey had stayed with me. Pushing myself up to a seated position, I said, “Thank you. That was kind of you to stay with me.”

She waved away my thanks and came over to fix my hair. After she’d gone to the trouble to put it up for me, I’d proceeded to lie down on the bench for a few hours. “I wasn’t going to leave you vulnerable, missus. Has the meeting broken up, then?”

I nodded as Clive walked in. “There’s my little sleepyhead.” Play it up. You’ve been asleep for a few hours, remember? “Come, Fergus.”

Right. Sorry. I yawned loudly and Clive grinned before picking me up and carrying me to the door, my head tucked into his neck.

Russell and Godfrey were standing in the entry as Clive walked by with me in his arms. My head was down, but I felt the interest of a few vampires as Clive walked us past the stairs.

“Tell her we said good night,” Godfrey murmured. “And tell her to come back tomorrow so we can finish the docuseries. We were at a good part when she fell asleep.”

“I will. Thank you,” Clive said, walking out the front door and to our car.

“Allow me,” Vlad said, opening the back door.

Clive deposited me in the plush back seat. Fergus jumped in and then Cadmael and Vlad took their seats.

Once we were out on the road, I opened my eyes. “Gee, that was fun.”

Vlad huffed a laugh.

I scratched under Fergus’ chin. “Will they think it’s hinkey that you two are staying with us instead of at the nocturne with everyone else?”

“You couldn’t pay me enough to stay with that lot,” Vlad grumbled. “I’ve got better things to do than worry about who’s listening at keyholes.”

“At least there are fewer of them right now,” Cadmael said.

“Not for long,” Vlad reminded him.

When Clive pulled up to the house, I scanned the streets for a cat but didn’t find him. What was he up to?