circle, should be aware of her plans.
“I shall keep that in mind, but regardless, the time is not now. If we decide to entertain your offer, we will contact you. Good evening, Gillian.” The line disconnected, and Solange hurried silently up the stairs to her own room before she was caught eavesdropping. Eavesdropping was a major faux pas in the myriad of manners her grandmama had insisted she be raised with along with her routine training. The irony of a young girl being raised to physically be a threat to most all she would encounter, along with the manners of a lady of the aristocratic old south, was not lost on her. It was just another of the idiosyncrasies that made up her life and who she was.
~~~
Gillian Laurant ended the call she’d been on and sat back in her chair. She shook her head disbelievingly and raised both hands to her face to press the heels of her hands against her eyes. She had a tension headache. She was under pressure from headquarters to contribute to the hunt for the vampire who’d become the most prolific, senseless murderer in all the history of E.V.I.E.
E.V.I.E. was the acronym for the organization she worked for. She was in fact the cell director for the New Orleans branch of E.V.I.E. — Eliminate Vampiric Influences Everywhere. And they’d been watching the young great-granddaughter of Marceline De’Mers, head of the LaCelle Coven, as she came into her own. They wanted her for their own missions, their own agendas, and hopefully, if they could manage to get past Marceline to speak to the girl alone, she’d agree they could be beneficial to each other and join them. So far, they’d not been successful. Marceline was a force to be reckoned with, and she was highly protective of her great-granddaughter.
Gillian ground her teeth and pointedly ignored the ringing of the land line sitting on the desk in her office, allowing it to go to voice mail instead. Then her personal cell phone began to buzz, vibrating its way across the slick wooden surface of her desk. Gillian huffed out a sigh and sat forward long enough to snatch her phone off the desk and look at the screen to see who was calling her. Great — it was her boss, Jude. Jude had no sense of humor, at all. Add to that the fact that he’d been riding her ass to get to the bottom of the psychotic vampire they’d been tracking for the last seventeen years, and he didn’t understand Marceline blocking them from access to her great-granddaughter, this was not going to be a happy phone call to answer.
She begrudgingly swiped the screen on her phone to answer Jude’s call. “Jude, how are you?” she asked.
“Did she agree?” he asked bluntly, choosing to ignore all pleasantries.
“She’s only seventeen, Jude. She’s not completed her training, and Marceline refuses to give us access to her to even present ourselves as an option until she feels the girl is ready.”
“Until she feels the girl is ready…” Jude echoed.
“Yes.”
“The girl’s got more training than most of our agents already working on this case! She’s been trained since she was barely able to stand. How much more ready could she get?!” Jude shouted in frustration.
“I know that. But she is still just seventeen years old. And she has a right to make her choices as she grows into adulthood. She can’t be forced into E.V.I.E. if she’s not interested.”
“Gillian, it is your job, no — your duty, to see to it that this girl chooses E.V.I.E. versus working alone. Are we clear?”
“If I coerce her into working with us, for us, doesn’t it make her choice moot, not really her own choice?”
“Would you rather this vampire continue to murder multiple souls at will? He’s escalating, Gillian. I don’t need to explain this to you, you are already aware. He’s escalating, and our people haven’t been able to even track him, much less contain him.”
“I know that,” Gillian answered, her tone flat as she managed to keep her tone under control.
“Solange De’Mers has more talents than just being a master of martial arts — she’s got witchery on her side. One is not descended from the most powerful coven in the Americas without having a mastery of witchcraft as well. Her bloodline, along with her mastery of the martial arts she so readily excels at, is what put her on our radar. We need this girl,” Jude exclaimed passionately.
“I’m trying.