Embrace the Mystery Page 5

  “Ah. Vojalie is so wise. She’d been troubled for days, insisting that I come to you, that something terrible was afoot. And now we have Quinlan wearing a clown’s costume, workmen replacing your plate glass window, and you having created a very fine and exquisitely powerful enthrallment shield. I’m most impressed, daughter.”

  Batya wasn’t fooled by her father’s light tone since the three ridges of his forehead had become compressed—a sure sign that he didn’t like the current situation at all.

  “But come,” he added. “I’d like to go elsewhere so that your workmen can finish their job, I can enjoy a cup of tea, and you can tell me in greater detail exactly what happened.” He glanced at Quinlan. “Both of you. My talented wife insisted that each rendition of events would be important.”

  “Of course,” Quinlan returned.

  Davido sounded so serious that a new shiver went through Batya. Some part of her must have been blocking all that had transpired until she could assimilate what the recent attack might mean for the future.

  She knew one thing for certain, she was not going to like what her father had to say.

  * * * * * * * * *

  Quinlan stunned Batya by telling her he would make the tea. One of his reasons was very selfish, however, since he couldn’t bear the thought of Lorelei preparing anything else. He felt certain she’d add too many bags or not enough, or something.

  Of course the real reason was much closer to his sense of self-preservation. He wanted time to think.

  If he’d been bothered before by what seemed an impossible situation, Davido’s sudden presence, urged by his wife, one of the most powerful fae in the Nine Realms, cemented the idea that the recent attack and continued surveillance had huge realm implications.

  Not that his thoughts had been much different, since the sheer size and power of the radical mastyr vampire wraith-pairs told him that a new threat had entered the war.

  But when visionary elements intruded, like Vojalie’s, brought here by one of the most enigmatic and powerful trolls in his world, Quinlan’s heart had turned to stone and started sinking.

  Sweet Goddess, what was going on here?

  He took his time making the tea, then finally carried the tray into the sitting room adjacent to the dining room. Batya, he’d come to discover, owned the entire building.

  Davido stood with her next to a large north-facing window that overlooked a small enclosed patio garden. They were discussing weather control options and planting some specialty roses that would bloom all winter for her.

  Davido was a renowned gardener.

  He set the tray on the coffee table, the sound serving as a call to tea since both turned and headed in his direction. Father and daughter kept talking while Batya took charge of the teapot and poured out three cups through a strainer.

  As Batya and Davido sipped their tea, Quinlan told his side of things in as much detail as he could recall.

  Since he remained standing, his audience looked up at him while he spoke.

  “Could you see her face?” Davido asked.

  “No. Just a powerful glow but I could smell her, like something that had been rotting for a long time. I remember the smell from Sweet Gorge.”

  “Sounds like an herbalist of some kind,” Davido remarked. “And the quality of her smell might be an effect she created on purpose, like a dramatist. After all, a pleasant fragrance wouldn’t incite fear, would it?”

  “No. But what’s her game? What does she want with your daughter?”

  Davido’s brows rose, which in turn deepened the lines between his three forehead ridges, typical troll features. “Nothing. She wasn’t here for Batya. Vojalie was very clear about that.”

  “You’re mistaken, Davido, or your wife is. I can remember the ancient fae stating, ‘He wasn’t supposed to be here’, meaning me.”

  “Then we have a mystery.” Davido sipped his tea.

  “Did Vojalie say anything else, some detail you might have forgotten?”

  “No, that was it. Wait, there was one more, small thing, but it didn’t exactly make sense. Maybe it will to the two of you. She said, ‘speak to the siren’. But what could that mean? Were the police here?”

  “’The siren’? Are you sure?” The stone in Quinlan’s heart sank farther still because he thought he understood, which meant that Batya wasn’t the object after all.

  “No,” Batya murmured, shaking her head. “No, no, no.”

  “What’s going on, my children?” He looked from one to the other.

  At that moment, Lorelei appeared in the doorway, only she wasn’t walking, her soft brown eyes were now almost lavender in color but darker, her limbs had lengthened and thinned, and she now wore a long flowing black gown made up of gauzy strips of fabric. She floated several inches above the floor. “Your wife meant me. I’m what the ancient fae wants. I’m what she’s after. I’ve hidden all these decades, but she’s finally found me. I just don’t know how and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Lorelei.” Batya’s large hazel eyes widened. “You’re a wraith. But that’s impossible.”

  Chapter Three

  Batya knew she stared at a wraith, but she couldn’t believe her eyes, couldn’t believe that sweet Lorelei was a wraith. On the other hand, given that so many wraiths had chosen to become Invictus pairs, she wasn’t surprised that the woman hid the truth of her DNA.

  Yet not all wraiths were bad. She knew that a large portion of the wraith population had long ago either gone into hiding or now lived on an island colony off one of the eastern realms.

  Whatever the truth about the location of the wraith community, Batya had been living side-by-side with one all this time. Unbelievable.

  In her wraith form, Lorelei’s skin was the color of chalk, her lips a dark hue, the whites of her eyes pale yellow, and her irises violet. Her long hair floated around her as though moving underwater, almost weightless.

  She drifted slowly into the room.

  Batya’s cup had frozen halfway between her mouth and the saucer she held in her left hand. Two other cups hung midair as well.

  “You really are a wraith.” Batya still couldn’t believe her eyes.

  “Part of me is.” Lorelei frowned, a pained expression crossing her face. Then suddenly, the wraith became a blur, transforming into a lean white wolf that leaped high in the air, landing on the coffee table to snarl in Batya’s face.

  The tea tray and pot slid over the edge, clattering to the carpet below.

  Lorelei howled.

  Batya dropped her teacup and saucer and covered her ears, not because the sound hurt but because the emotion behind the plaintive cry pierced her heart. She felt Lorelei’s pain, an old wound fitting for a wolf’s howl. Batya wept because of the pain.

  She didn’t know what to do. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head back-and-forth. She needed the sound to stop.

  Suddenly, it did.

  She opened her eyes, and saw the cause. Her father had embraced the wolf, from the side, softly around the neck and spoke into Lorelei’s ear.

  Batya recognized the cadence of the old language. Davido had used it to calm her more than once when she was a child.

  When Davido drew back, releasing the wolf, Lorelei whirled through another transformation, resuming her fae form. She sank down into a chair across from the table, her feet turned in like a child as she shaded her face with her hands.

  She’d finally unveiled her secret, but Batya still didn’t understand. “You can shift, but you’re a wraith?”

  Lorelei nodded.

  “Yet you’re also fae.”

  “Yes. My mother was…is…fae and wraith. I carry all three strains.”

  “That’s not possible.” Quinlan, still standing, flared his nostrils. “No such thing exists in our world. You can’t exist. The wraith gene can’t exist with more than one other strain.”

  Lorelei chuckled bitterly. “And yet, I do. A product of extensive experimentation.”

  “H
ow old are you, child?” Davido remained nearby.

  “Ninety.”

  “And who is your mother, though I believe I already know.”

  Lorelei lifted her gaze to Davido. “Do you? I’ve always wondered if you or Vojalie or some of the mastyrs had ever known her.”

  “Yes, I knew her but she disappeared from the realm world for several centuries. Now it would seem she has decided to make a reappearance. And for your sake, I’ve very sorry my dear.”

  “Who are we talking about?” Batya glanced from one to the other, but got a sick feeling in her stomach as though her body already knew what her mind did not want to accept.

  “Fuck.” Still standing, Quinlan set his cup on the table and turned his back to Lorelei. He shoved his hands through his hair, dislodging the woven clasp.

  The sick feeling worsened. Batya turned back to Lorelei and held her gaze. “Who’s your mother?”

  “Quinlan knows. So does your father. Can’t you guess?” Tears now rolled down her cheeks.

  Batya once more shook her head over and over. “It can’t be.”

  “Her name is Margetta, the ancient fae, the one who smells of a land fill, the one who enlisted Mastyr Ry, turning him against Bergisson Realm, who caused all that misery at Sweet Gorge six months ago.”

  Davido drew close once more, standing behind her. He petted her head with his short, thick fingers. “My dear, you are among friends.”

  “Am I? But for how long? And where will I go now? I was so happy here.” She glanced up at Batya, tears glistening on her long lashes.

  Lorelei then stood, shook out her hands and straightened her shoulders. Drawing in a deep breath, she blew it out slowly. “Not your problem. I know that. If I leave, Margetta will not bother any of you again. I’m the one she wants. I’ll pack up now.”

  Batya rose to her feet as well. “Well, eff that, Lorelei. You’re not leaving, so don’t even think about it. We’re family here.”

  Davido nodded, an approving light in his eye as he met Batya’s gaze. “Listen to my most beloved daughter. She speaks the truth from her heart. You have a home here.”

  Lorelei glanced from him to Batya. She nodded several times but kept her lips pinched tightly together. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

  Quinlan, whose hair now hung about his shoulders, scowled at Lorelei. “Help us to understand what’s going on here. Is she behind the Invictus?”

  “She and my father, yes. You’ve probably heard him called the Great Mastyr, he is both vampire and shifter.”

  “Sweet Goddess. Then you are vampire as well. Why didn’t you tell us that?”

  She shrugged. “Because I’m a disappointment to my father. My vampire genetics are the weakest part of who I am. ‘Negligible’ is the word he used. I believe they’ve been searching for the right mate for me, that because I’m also part wraith, I’d be able to form an incredibly powerful Invictus pair.”

  “This is insane.”

  “Yes, it is. Papa considers himself to be a scientist but my mother carries the ambition in the family, though she’s happy to use my father’s abilities. Margetta wants to rule the Nine Realms. She has desired nothing else for the past thousand years.”

  Batya’s mind spun, question after question rolling through like leaves swept along by a brisk wind.

  Lorelei met her gaze. “Maybe, if I told this from the beginning.”

  Quinlan sat down on the couch and Davido moved behind Lorelei to sit in the chair next to her. Batya picked up the teapot and tray, as well as the cup and saucer she’d dropped, putting them back on the coffee table. She sat down at the opposite end of the couch from Quinlan as Lorelei slowly resumed her seat.

  Over the past two years, since Lorelei had served in the clinic, Batya had imagined several scenarios to explain who the woman was, even a past that involved Lorelei being a professional, high-end thief in one of the Nine Realms and that she’d moved to Lebanon to escape capture.

  Never in her wildest imagination could she have pictured that the delicate woman opposite her, teardrops brimming once more in her eyes, was the product of gross genetic manipulation and the union of a shifter-vampire and a fae-wraith.

  “Excuse me if I stare at you.”

  “I understand.” She settled back in her chair. “I suppose for you to understand how I ended up here, I need to tell you about Genevieve.” She spoke of her troll governess that Margetta had kidnapped to serve Lorelei over sixty years ago, forcing the woman to school Lorelei until she was eighteen.

  Margetta had erred, however, because the woman had been the salt of the realm-world and had imbued Lorelei with the values she held so close to her heart, of love and personal liberty, of realm-service, of kindness to strangers, all good things.

  At the very moment that Margetta had come to take her daughter out of the mountain prison and put her to work in the family business of scientific evolution and Invictus pair creation, Genevieve had concocted a plan to escape with Lorelei.

  All had gone well until Margetta arrived just a few minutes early, and Genevieve had died helping her charge make good her escape. “I didn’t know until I was well away, hidden by the disguise I could create, that she’d sacrificed her life for me.” She shook her head as though, even after all these years, she still couldn’t believe what happened.

  “Where did you go?” Quinlan asked.

  She smiled and glanced at Davido. “I lived in Merhaine for a long time, in Vojalie’s shadow. I was a troll servant in your home for twelve years from 1952 until 1964. I think you might have recognized me when you saw me in the doorway.”

  “Of course I did. You called yourself Jenny.”

  “I did, after the one who had saved my soul, altering my life forever. Did you know what I was?”

  Davido shook his head. “No. Only that you were special, but even I couldn’t figure out what you were. I was intensely curious, of course, but Vojalie-the-wise told me to mind my own business and to let you be, that you needed to find your own way through life.”

  “Your wife is one of the best women I’ve ever known.”

  “Except perhaps for my beloved Batya’s mama, I would have to agree with you.”

  Davido smiled sweetly at Batya. Her mother had died in childbirth, a rare occurrence in the Nine Realms.

  Shifting his attention back to Lorelei, he said, “Then Margetta must have found you there. In our home.”

  “Yes. Do you remember the night that you lost all those cucumbers to an inexplicable frost?”

  “I do.” He leaned back in his chair, stunned. “And here is a mystery solved. Amazing. Eighty years later, I finally have the answer to the strange phenomenon that destroyed only the cucumbers.”

  “I battled Margetta then fled. After that, I never lived longer than a year or so in any one town except Lebanon. I don’t know what it is, how she can find me, but I must emit some kind of signature that Margetta eventually locates, despite all my disguises and shields.

  “After the first year passed in Lebanon, I thought maybe the earth-world would be my salvation. You can’t imagine how happy I was when I marked my second anniversary.”

  “Oh, my poor child. If only you’d approached me or Vojalie. We could have done something for you.”

  She smiled and extended her hand to him. “Knowing you both was enough.”

  “Jenny,” he murmured. He took her hand, covering it with both of his own.

  “It’s good to see you again, Davido. Truly.”

  “Where did you go after Merhaine?”

  She detailed much of her wandering life, from realm-to-realm, which meant that she knew a lot about all nine realms, more than most realm-folk would ever know.

  “So now I’m here.” Her gaze shifted to Quinlan. “I’m so sorry, Mastyr, that I brought Margetta here and that you suffered.”

  His brows drew together as he stared at her. “You are not responsible for the evil either of your parents inflicts on the world. You are as much a victim h
ere as I was of the recent attack. Now all we need to decide is what needs to happen next.”

  Lorelei slowly rose to her feet. “Please don’t worry about that. I know what to do, then you can get back to business as usual.”

  She turned as if to leave the room, but Davido met Batya’s gaze and gestured with his widening hands. You can’t let her go. This must stop now.

  “Wait,” Batya said. “We won’t let you leave.”

  When Lorelei got to the doorway, she turned and blew them all a kiss, shifting afterward to her wraith form and sped away, floating swiftly through the air.

  Batya’s entire being stiffened with sudden, powerful resolve. She tightened the enthrallment shield as she never had before.

  At the same time, she followed after Lorelei and found her in her bedroom punching at the shield with energy blasts from her palms. “Let me out,” she shrieked, sounding more wraith-like than Batya would have ever thought possible.

  “I can’t let you go,” Batya said, moving into the room. She knew both Quinlan and her father had followed her. She held the enthrallment shield with an iron grip, the value of a strong will in times of preternatural exchange.

  Lorelei floated in the air, her hair weaving madly back and forth, her long black gown floating around thin spindly wraith-legs. “Let me go, Batya. You’ve done enough, given enough.”

  “No, I haven’t. You’re my friend. I don’t desert my friends. Let me help you. We all want to help and we can. There’s a helluva a lot of power in this room right now.”

  For the next few minutes Lorelei pounded hard on Batya’s shield and a couple of times Batya flagged, but either Davido or Quinlan put his hand on her shoulder and revived her.

  In the end, exhausted, Lorelei resumed her fae shape and slumped to sit down on the floor. She fell apart at that moment and wept.

  Batya would have gone to her, but Davido was before her. He gathered Lorelei up in his arms and jerked his chin at Batya. She took the hint and left the room with Quinlan.

  She made her way slowly upstairs to her studio and crossed to look out the window. On the other side of the street, Margetta’s spy leaned against the opposing brick wall, puffing away on a cigarette with a pile of butts scattered around her feet.