Chapter Fifteen
Davis arrived from the hospital in the medical examiner’s van to transport Frank’s body to the morgue. Joe Menendez handled the paperwork. It would read that Tobias was informing Frank Dubois that he was about to be arrested for the murder of Nicolette Strigoi and Mayor Dubois went wild in response.
As a result, he attempted to kill Jade Laroque during his psychotic break, and Tobias had no option other than to subdue the mayor. By any means possible.
Of course, that paperwork would never be found, kept in a confidential file. And the mayor’s certificate of death certainly would never see the light of day.
Deidre Dubois would fill out a missing person report in due time, and they would conduct a cursory search for the missing man. There would be no body to autopsy. If all worked out, even Philippe Laroque would never know what happened.
Unless his daughter told him.
“What the fuck?” Bo yelled as Tobias tried to explain what had happened in Frank’s office. Jade stood off to the side, observing the shifter. He fidgeted, barely able to stay still.
“I know it’s a lot to absorb, but I saw for myself.” Tobias turned toward Jade. “Although I still don’t understand how you kept your transformation into Lamai a secret. Who turned you and when?”
Jade’s hurt was reflected in her voice. “Your daughter turned me a week ago.”
“No. She wouldn’t,” Bo snapped. “She would’ve told me.” He ran his hands through his hair, finally resting on a muscled knot between his neck and shoulder. Tension balled up there. Bo had become a walking time bomb. “I can’t believe she and I have come this far, and now Raven’s in danger.”
Mortal danger.
“She would, and she did-though she didn’t mean to. Raven inadvertently took too much blood from me. She was very apologetic.” Jade smiled. “She didn’t tell you because you were unconscious at the time. Raven explained how she doesn’t really feed anymore. She just got caught up in the moment and the memories of our mom. The only way to keep me alive was to change me. It was really strange because she communicated with me telepathically.”
“These past few days, Raven never mentioned what happened,” Bo said in a despondent tone. What other secrets was she keeping from him?
Tobias was reeling. “I don’t understand.”
Jade fingered a strand of her curly hair. “I wanted her to change me. She was going to try a blood transfusion, but she feared it would be too little, too late. So…I bit her wrist, and she had to let me drink.”
She laughed.
Bo thought it quite odd for this woman to react this way.
Jade pinched the bridge of her nose between her brows. “You don’t understand. I can’t really blame you. When she drank from me, we connected…or rather she connected to our mom and me. Raven was devastated when she realized I could die. She only meant to scare the piss outta me, which she did. I lost total control of my blad-”
“Okay, too much info,” Bo interrupted.
“When I began to drink from her, the connection was complete. It was almost as if the three of us were in that room together. Raven,
“Why didn’t she tell me?” Tobias asked.
Again, Jade laughed. “Maybe because Raven knew you’d be furious and she didn’t want to shift everyone’s focus from saving Bo. In the meantime, she had Tracy give me blood. I promised to play along. I think Raven hoped the transfusion would dilute my blood enough that I wouldn’t change, but it just took a little longer.”
“Now what do we do? Your father still has Raven, and he’ll know you’re not quite the same daughter,” Bo worried aloud.
“Yes, that will only increase his hatred. He has no idea what really went on? For all his power as a
“Did
“I never took Nicki’s blood. I should have. I would have known she was in trouble in spite of Frank’s shields if I had.”
Bo went into the kitchen and poured a cup of coffee. “So how did he find out? That you were his, I mean. You wouldn’t have shown signs of being a Lamai until you were around twelve or thirteen.”
Jade rolled up the sleeves of her black cable knit sweater. “The old fashioned way. He had a paternity test done.”
“Of course. He has all those connections in the medical field, so it makes sense he would have a test performed,” Tobias said as he gazed out the window, no doubt wondering where his daughter was. No longer a Lamai, Raven didn’t have the same bond to her father as before.
Jade was lost in thought. “Frank’s magick was strong, but I think that, deep down, my father knew something wasn’t right, which is why he had the paternity test done. He always said to me, ‘You can’t trust anyone.’”
“Speaking of paternity, how is Emerald?” Bo asked Tobias.
“She’s fine, at home resting. I was with her all last night.” Tobias half-heartedly smiled. “She tried working some of her fae magick to see if she could locate Raven, but came up empty.”
Bo got up and dumped his remaining coffee into the sink. He turned and leaned against the counter, eyeing the two Lamai in the living room. “How do we even find Laroque?” Bo asked.
“I’m sure he’s not anywhere we would think to look. He won’t be on Hannah’s Vineyard or Mirabelle. I can’t sense his whereabouts or Raven’s,” Jade confessed.
“I don’t understand why your father put up with Frank after he found out he lied about you,” Bo said, puttering around the kitchen.
Jade wanted to help Bo with the breakfast dishes, taking the sponge from him. “My father never let on to Frank that he knew the truth that he was my real father. Only he and I knew…and of course you, Tobias. He knew he couldn’t trust Frank, so he used him, but he made Frank feel that they were in an alliance.” She rinsed the sponge and placed it back in the soap dish.
Bo asked another question. “How did Frank explain the situation when you never lost your incisors and grew Lamai teeth?”
“I was an anomaly, at first, and then he blamed my mother. Frank said she swore to him I was Tobias’s child. The only use my father had for Frank was that he orchestrated my abduction so my father could raise me. Then Frank played dumb for everyone else’s benefit and sobbed crocodile tears at my disappearance,” Jade said.
“Shit, that still leaves us with the problem of finding Raven,” Bo swore.
Philippe Laroque stood in the corner of his study, opening the windows to let the trade winds inside the room. He held a letter, yellowed from age. Raven Strigoi was in an upstairs bedroom guarded by two Lamai and three shifters. His mind raced as he thought about what had transpired over the past week. He worried incessantly about Jade. Was she all right? Was she safe? Had Tobias hurt her?
He used his magick in search of answers, but wasn’t happy with the outcome. She was safe, but somehow changed. The events that had taken place left an indelible mark on her. To what extent, he wasn’t certain.
And that useless mayor wasn’t answering his calls anymore. Had they turned Jade against him? Filled her head with lies so she would never want to see him again? Perhaps she finally felt a sense of belonging with the sister she’d lost so many years ago and now she hated him for taking her away from the only other family she had.
But Jade was smarter than that.
She had to realize everything he did was for her-wasn’t it? Or, more to the point, it was out of his hatred for Tobias. And his jealousy. That, he was certain, Jade knew.
Jade saw through her father’s motives and called him on it repeatedly. She’d asked him to give up this sick game of revenge, and he constantly told her no. Other than Jade, it was his only connection to Nicolette-this vendetta against Tobias. If he let it go, that meant he had to let Nicki go. He couldn’t, not this time.
In every other lifetime Philippe had visited through spiritual journeying, he witnessed Nicki choosing Tobias again and again. He’d been in love with other women, but if Nicki’s spirit was incarnated at the same time as Philippe’s, he was drawn to her, like the typical moth to the flame.
When the price became too high for him to pay and he realized his own daughter was in jeopardy, for the first time in his adult life he entertained the idea of letting go of this war. Nicolette was gone, and nothing he could do, even with all his power, could bring her back.
Perhaps Jade was right after all.
He’d fully intended to make a trade, one daughter for the other. He knew Tobias would agree to that, but what he hadn’t planned on, what no one was able to foretell, was the evil that lurked inside Frank Dubois. Like a festering boil, it became rancid inside the once-genteel man. The sins of envy and lust overtook him-the lust for another man’s wife, and the lust for power.
Frank fooled Laroque.
And Tobias. Philippe reflected on that time.
Frank was merely puffing up Laroque’s ego, asking endless questions about magick and contacting spirits, only to turn around and use everything he’d taught in good faith against him. He’d used the same technique with Laroque as he had to cover his feelings for Nicolette.
Poor Deidre.
She loved Frank, and he took her for granted. She wanted to raise a family with him, but Frank told Philippe he wasn’t cut out to be a father. He told Deidre his career came first. The timing wasn’t right. The years passed, and no children were born.
Deidre became distant. Though she still loved her husband, she knew that in his heart, Nicki would always come first. Deidre wrote to Philippe, pouring her heart out about her suspicions that her husband was keeping something from her. She asked whether he knew what it was.
He was so entrenched in his work in the lab-so focused on getting back at Tobias-that he hardly gave Deidre’s letters a second thought.
