Page 16 of Transfiguration
“Holy fuck! I was overseas. Lots of plane hopping. Only in the States less than a week,” Con said. He never used his witch IDs overseas. Too many places hostile to witches and worse, the Dominion.
“Congress is in an uproar. Hundreds of high-level Dominion witches are dead. Santini went to ground to heal, but he’s back and okay?” Luca glanced at Sam.
“Yeah, he’s mostly in his right mind. It will take a while to orient the witch and his vampire to Fellowship rules,” Sam said.
“Do they know we are the bad guys?” Con asked quietly.
“We aren’t,” Sam said. “There are no bad guys. Nothing is black and white. The Dominion powers that be did some terrible things, but we are unraveling that. Our work isn’t always pretty, but is any massive organization’s?” He shook his head, unbothered by the work that sometimes came from the dark side of magic life. “Sometimes you have to be the bad guy to stop all the bullshit. It’s been a bit of a cold war, the Fellowship and the Dominion. We will still have some outright battles. Government bullshit too, probably some crap from the church, but neither of those is powerful enough to matter much on its own. If they unite, that is where the issues lie. Change is already happening. The powers the Dominion considersdarkmagic are rising. Much like my own did. If they hadn’t suppressed, murdered, and denied witches for centuries, would we be aligned? Maybe. No one in their right mind asks for powers like that. Slaughtering people born with them is genocide.” He looked at Bella. “Seeing dead people. Who would want that?”
“I enjoy seeing you,” Luca mumbled, wrapping an arm around Sam’s waist from behind and kissing the side of his face.
“Don’t be a brat,” Sam said, but didn’t sound put out at all.
“Will she be safe?” Con wondered, as he bit his lower lip, playing with his snake-bit piercing, the smoothness of it helping him focus even when anxiety still rolled in his gut. He had spelled all of his piercings, allowing him to change with them. He’d learned the hard way how much it sucked to have piercings redone all the time and made it work. His next plan was to figure out how to keep his clothing through shifts, but he had yet to master that spell. Being a witch wasn’t easy, even one as old and well versed in rarer magic as he was. He didn’t want Bella to struggle as he had.
“She’s not like other kids…” He thought of the tarantula hiding somewhere on her person and tried not to freak out about it maybe touching him. He wasn’t normally afraid of spiders, but something that big sent his mind astir.
“We’ll keep her safe,” Sam promised. He gave a wide grin that showed fang. “You know I’m good for it.”
Luca laughed, a husky sound, and Sam gasped as Luca rubbed himself into him from behind. “You are such a brat. I don’t need to meet Hart with a hard-on.”
Con let out a long breath. It didn’t matter that Sam was half a head shorter than him, small and pretty. It was like having Superman promise protection. “Thanks.”
The elevator finally stopped, and the door slid open to a posh office entry. Sam shrugged himself out of Luca’s touch and led them through, not stopping to talk to the receptionist, but leading them all down a hall toward that dreaded office space. Con wrinkled his nose at the fluttering against his senses. Everything was quiet. Despite the late hours, the building was usually filled with vampires, but this far up, it would be only Hart. He didn’t like people in his space.
Sam reached for the door at the end of the hall, but someone opened it before him. A young man Con knew only in passing, Rou’s assistant? What was his name, Parker? Was Rou here?
“Hey, Page,” Sam greeted as the young man stepped back to hold the door for them.
Page’s eyes widened as his gaze landed on Bella. Con tightened his grip and she stirred, glancing up. “It’s okay,” Con promised as they walked into Hart’s office. Did she feel all the wards like he did? Page closed the door behind them, stepping to the side of it as if he were acting as Hart’s assistant. There was no one else in the room other than them, Page, and Hart, who sat behind his desk.
Hart glanced up. He was a handsome man who looked very Italian, dark hair and eyes, the face of a model with a ‘billionaire daddy’ label slapped on it. Con knew he could be ruthless. The man was also one of the most powerful vampires in the world. Not only because of his connections and control over magical species or money, but his actual vampire power. It was another one of those fluttering things battering at Con’s tired mind. Undefined as any elemental power, but formidable. Could everyone else feel it? Or just him?
“Mr. Opal,” Hart said. His tone was flat, emotionless. Was he pissed?
“I didn’t find the book, but I’ll keep looking,” Con promised. Most of his leads had led to nothing, but he’d dig up more. It was the way of things in retrieval sometimes. Usually, he kept going until finding the target. This time, he had an unplanned detour. “As soon as I know Bella is safe.”
Hart opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a manila folder and tossed it across the desk. Luca picked it up since he was the closest and opened it. Inside was a chunk of paperwork, and Bella’s face on a picture on the top. Only Bella looked younger, with shorter hair. Her information?
“No missing person reports,” Hart said. “Never filed. In fact, it appears the family faked her death, an unknown illness, and a silent funeral. Does she wish to remain Bella?” Hart asked.
Bella wriggled in Con’s arms, turning to look at him. Con set her down. She looked tiny compared to the giant desk and the vampire on the other side of it.
“I am Bella,” she said, sounding sleepy.
Hart’s gaze fell to her. He sat for a moment longer, then got up and walked around the desk. Luca handed the packet of information off to Sam, who shuffled through it.
Hart knelt beside Bella, looking stern, though not scary. That he knelt to avoid towering over her said he knew how to handle children. But he’d raised Luca, so maybe he had a heart in there somewhere? Bella didn’t back away. “I’d like to ask you questions about things that have happened to you since your family sold you.”
Ouch. Con couldn’t help but flinch. No subtlety at all in the vampire.
“Okay,” Bella agreed. “My family didn’t want me. Everyone else wants to talk to dead people.”
“Your family didn’t want you because of your magic?” Hart asked.
“Yes.” She shrugged. “Mostly.”
“Her file says she was diagnosed with autism,” Sam said. “Could that be the ghosts talking to her, or actual autism?”