Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,74
for this one?” I asked.
It was just as we feared. Harris called me and said the faeries didn’t want the house at this time. Despite the strategic importance for the realm of Wyrd to secure pieces of the human world, the faeries had been isolated from humans for so many centuries that they were just plain refusing to act upon the strategy.
“Queen Morgana said that she does have some low fae who are interested, but she is working out the finances. The house would have to be purchased by the kingdom’s treasury and owned by the crown, but occupied by the low fae, and that is causing its own set of problems. She said that if you had a human bride, that would help immensely.”
“I don’t have a ‘human bride’, Harris, you know I have no friends! I certainly don’t just keep brides on a shelf! Billie, you said you had a friend, didn’t you?”
“I’m not going to approach any of my friends with this situation anymore,” Billie said sourly. “First thing Kate’s going to want to know is how I got turned into a vampire during a house flip.”
So that was that. We had one of those houses—a beautiful home that was just too personal to sell to anyone, both for its size and the fact that not just anyone could live in a magical parallel. Dead weight. We couldn’t move on.
Not very long after I got off the phone with Harris, while I was still sitting in the phone nook brooding over the situation, it rang again, and the person on the other end of the line was asking for Graham.
“Graham? Phone for you…”
“How odd,” he said warily, taking the old telephone out of my hand. “Hello? Speaking, yes. Yes… Really? No heirs? Yes…I am very surprised.”
Byron came up behind me, looking pleased, as Graham hung up the phone. “I told you to trust me,” Byron said.
“That was the executor of Sam’s will,” Graham said. “Sam didn’t have any kids, so…he left Bel Tramonto to me.”
“Byron, did you kill the old man and make him change his will!?”
Byron held up his hands. “No! This was done years before! When Sam was more with it, he definitely had wished for Pandora’s Box to be opened, and he was sorry he killed me. You’ll see. You’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Will I find…you?
That scared me a little. Byron’s body must be there. He was obviously leading us to this spot.
“That makes it easy!” Billie clapped her hands when we told them all the news.
“So we get to go to California but we don’t even have to fight it out with Caleb and Kiersten,” Jake said. “This is a dream job.”
“I wonder if the house will even need much work,” Jasper said. “Being in California, it must be newer. It will definitely have a kitchen, even if stuff needs updating. And it sounds like this guy had new money, not old depleted money…”
“That is true. But you might…want to tweak a few things,” Byron said. “Although you don’t have to sell it at all. It’s Graham’s house.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Graham said, and we busted open more wine and some takeout menus to celebrate.
“So…are you gunning for revenge on those witches too, Gaston, or would you rather stay here?” Billie asked, and I saw that she was nervous, but it had to be asked. Those two had a little thing going, but it was too short-term to be this serious. On the other hand, as a new vampire, she really ought to be sticking with him until she got past the difficult phase, so I wasn’t sure we should take her along if he didn’t go.
“I guess I’d better,” he said. “And I haven’t forgotten what I said at first. I’m still not sure about Byron, demigod or not. I’ll go to keep an eye on you.”
That’s an excuse to pretend he doesn’t care if I ever heard one, I thought, smiling. Once we worked out our theory of Byron from the Arcana, Gaston hadn’t said another word about him. He likes Billie, and I like…
All four of my men were gathered around, and we’d been living on top of each other, but as usual, the relationship had taken a back seat to other stuff. It was easy to juggle this new arrangement when we didn’t really have to confront what it meant. If we survived Pandora’s Box, it would be time for me to figure out what my future really