Promises to Keep - By Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Page 0,29
with.” He looked up at the bed. “Did she say where she was going?”
“She didn’t say anything,” Jay answered.
If she came from such a peaceful culture, Jay didn’t know what she expected to do against Midnight. On the other hand, two centuries in slavery was bound to change a person.
“Jeremy, you didn’t happen to find anyone else who might know about the Shantel, did you?” Jay asked, trying to keep the words casual.
“I’ve been trying to see if any of the older vampires in SingleEarth might know something,” he said, “but I know the humans and witches here better. Vampires don’t often come in for medical attention, you know?”
Who did Jay know who was old enough to have survived Midnight but wasn’t allied or otherwise tied to Midnight? The list was pretty short. Even vampires who disapproved of the slave trade tended to try not to cross the empire. Nikolas and Kristopher, Sarah’s friends, were fifty years too young—and Jay wasn’t certain he wanted to get them involved, anyway. He definitely didn’t want to get Sarah involved, not with Midnight, not when she was still trying to find her place in the vampiric world.
Wait.
There was a group Jay knew, and SingleEarth knew, that rumor claimed had been founded to fight Midnight. Few of their members were vampires, unsurprisingly, but some were shapeshifters or Tristes old enough to remember those days.
The Bruja guilds were technically three groups, known as Crimson, Onyx, and Frost. They had been founded during Midnight’s reign in opposition to the slave-holding vampires, and many of their members still considered themselves vampire hunters, though in recent years they had branched out into other illegal and semi-legal actions.
Frost and SingleEarth had recently managed to find a mutually beneficial and profitable arrangement. Frost provided bodyguarding and other protective services, as well as a strong arm to help SingleEarth with the increasingly complicated process of securing mostly legal documents for individuals whose lifestyles or life spans made anything requiring a birth certificate or social security card difficult.
Jay went to the main SingleEarth office to find the contact information for their Frost liaison. He had to sweet-talk the secretary to convince her to give him the information without reporting the request, but he was soon back in his room and on his cell phone, hoping he would be able to reach someone quickly.
He realized he had walked out on Jeremy without a word of explanation or apology. Jeremy probably wouldn’t take it personally.
A voice answered the phone, “Lydia’s Candy Shop, please hold.”
Was there was some kind of code he was supposed to give? For all he knew he had dialed a wrong number and this actually was a candy shop.
Maybe he should go back to the secretary and check on how to handle this, or even go through official channels. Better safe than sorry? But which was safer—going through official channels and possibly dragging SingleEarth into the mess he might have made, or trying to do this on his own so at the worst he was the only one likely to end up sold into slavery?
By the time someone came back on the line, Jay had decided it didn’t hurt to try.
“Thank you for holding. How can I help you?”
“This is Jay Marinitch. I’m calling from SingleEarth, and I—”
“Is this the best number to reach you?” the voice asked, interrupting.
“Um … yes,” he replied. “It’s my cell phone.”
“I’ll have someone call you back.”
The line went dead.
It could still be a rude candy shop, but the likelihood he had reached Frost was high. Jay left his room and scavenged the kitchen while he waited. The breakfast pickings were pretty slim. He picked up a stale donut, and then his phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Jay Marinitch?”
“Yes?”
Candy or mercenaries?
“I was told you called. What can I do for you?”
This was why he hated phones. “May I ask who’s calling?” he asked.
The voice on the other side of the line laughed and said, “No. You called us. What do you need?”
Not a candy shop. He might still make an ass of himself, but at this point, who could blame him?
“I need some information,” he said, “or a contact who can get me that information. Someone familiar with a culture that went extinct around the fall of Midnight but who isn’t allied with Midnight.”
A slight pause from the other side of the line—man or woman? Jay couldn’t tell.
“What culture?”
“The Shantel. I want to know about their magic, and their spirit-witch, the … sakkri.”
“Aah.” A short pause, and then, “I’ll call