Page 12 of Hunt the Dusk
I’ll be there.
I tucked my phone into my pocket. “Seven at the Royal House.”
Padma’s eyes went round, and Merry clasped her hands together and squealed.
I looked between the two of them. “What?”
“You’re going to need a dress,” Padma said. “A really nice one.”
I groaned. “Great. Fucking great. I need a refill.”
Padma followed me to the coffee machine. The amazing contraption gifted to us by Kaster Black, bless his vampiric soul. I bloody loved this machine.
I punched the buttons for milky and sweet. “Did the transfusion go all right?”
“Yes. I have another week, and the books from the Night Library should be here in a couple of days.”
I’d meant to ask her about this library when she’d mentioned it yesterday but got sidetracked. I was about to ask now, but she spoke before I could.
“I did call the Order. I called in twice. I told them what happened. Everything that I told you last night, leaving out the part about Merry’s memories and the mullo attack, but they refused to replenish us.”
After everything I’d learned and seen, I had no more doubts when it came to Padma’s honor. “I believe you.”
She looked surprised then relieved. “Even though that means there’s something wrong at the Order?”
Never that. “I don’t think your call made it to the Order. They have no record. I’m beginning to think that it may have been intercepted.”
Her eyes flared. “Oh…”
“Yeah. The Order has nothing to gain by keeping the chapter small, but the vampires do.”
“You think it’s all connected?”
“Don’t you?”
“I think you’re on to something,” she said.
“There’s definitely something bigger happening here, and whoever is in charge of it doesn’t want the chapter interfering.”But there was something else niggling at me. “About Merry. Did you get her checked out? Medically?”
“She’s half-blood fae. There isn’t much a medical professional would be able to glean because their anatomy is so different to us.”
“Hmmmm, I just think…What if it’s not a physical ailment?” I could tell from her expression that the thought had crossed her mind.
“There is no way for us to know that. Not without a pure-blood fae healer looking her over, and there are none. Not outside of the Evergreen.”
“The Order may have contacts.”
The roar of a motorbike engine tried to drown out my words before dying.
“Yes, or they might not,” Padma countered. “Either way, once we tell them about Merry, she’ll be taken from us.”
Wait a second… “Merry asked you not to report it, didn’t she?”
“Every time we tell her the truth. Yes. The least we can do is respect her wishes and?—”
The bell above the main doors tinkled, and we both looked across at the door leading to the hallway.
The clip of boots grew closer, and then the door opened and a young woman wearing jeans and a leather jacket, bike helmet dangling from her gloved fingers, stepped into the room. She tugged off one of her gloves and ruffled her hair so that it went from helmet head to cute auburn pixie, then fixed her steely gray gaze on me. “You must be Orina Lighthart,” she said in a husky voice made for radio.
