Page 14 of House of Crimson Hearts
“Mother of Blood, I was hungry, and she wouldn’t have survived turning.” Dahlia throws her hands up.
The thing is, Dahlia isn’t wrong. My ex probably wouldn’t have survived the turning, she was a bit of a wet blanket, and Dahlia likely did do her a favour because I was going to attempt to turn her. But I have no intention of letting Dahlia know that. I just like winding her up.
The doors fly open and crash against the walls, cutting the argument short. Sadie walks in, her expression muted, but she swings her hands in a series of gestures that promptly shut all of us up.
“The only one getting laid around here is Xavier,” Sadie signs.
It’s a fair point. Even Dahlia can’t argue with that. Xavier leans back in his chair, smug that he won a round he wasn’t even part of. Sadie moves around the table in a haunting fashion. Her dress is like a plume of smoke, billowing and drifting around her feet, which seem to glide across the stone floor. Moonbeams stretch from the window to the floor, and as she sweeps through them, I swear she flickers in and out of existence. I shiver. She kisses everyone hello, lingering a moment longer on my head.
Sadie and I are drawn towards each other. I always wanted to connect with her the way I do with Xavier, but she’s unpredictable, a little feral, and she holds pieces of herself away from us. She tries, though. With me especially, I think I’m her safe place. Everyone thinks Dahlia is the most savage of the five of us. Something tells me it’s really Sadie.
Xavier pulls a chair out next to him for Sadie. Of all of us, he’s the peacekeeper. He bends to whisper something in her ear. I strain to listen, if only to ensure he’s not whispering the same favoured words to her he does to me. Not that I’m jealous. I hate all my siblings with equal fervour.
“Your brothers and sisters were telling me their business updates. What have you from the church?” Cordelia says.
Sadie sags, a wispy noise emanates from her throat. Her hands dart in front of her lightning quick. I keep up, just about.
“The church is fine. Congregation is swelling. Though I am understaffed, and the Trial of Spirit is too difficult. The failure rate and death rates of potential monks is killing my ability to run enough services.”
Cordelia doesn’t look even remotely upset about this. She hates the church and only tolerates it because it makes her daughter happy.
But I make a note that I may need to employ a sign tutor again to brush up on my speed. I’m fluent, but Sadie speaks fast, and I do hate not being able to catch everything said.
Gabriel and Dahlia are the worst. They share entire conversations in looks and glances, a shift of a shoulder and a wave of a finger—I think it’s a twin thing. Either way, it’s infuriating always being on the outside.
They’re five hundred years old now. I remember their arrival like yesterday because I was furious Mother could bring yet more children into this family. Wasn’t I enough? Wasn’t Xavier?
The night they joined us, some human came tearing into Castle St Clair, begging Cordelia to come to his village to deal with a problem house. Of course, that wasn’t enough to pique her interest. But then he told her the house contained demon children. Well, she’d had a daughter for five centuries, and a son for two and a half. Why not add to the family?
So, she went with the human to the village and found a locked house. Not just locked but sealed shut magically. Some pissed off witch, I suspect. When she broke through the seal, what she found haunted the village for decades. There were dozens of bodies. All of them dead. Only the twins remained alive, stood in amongst the carcasses, their hands clasped. They were gaunt, caked in dried blood. The worst of it, though, the thing that really convinced Cordelia to take them in, was their answer to her question.
“What happened?” she’d asked.
“They upset us,” the twins responded.
And that was the end of it. Xavier and I had new siblings. She kept them human, mind you, then turned them against their will on their twenty-fifth birthday.
“And the club?” Mother asks, bringing me back to the present.
“Fine,” I shrug.
“Detailed response as ever,” she sighs.
“It’s good, Mother, trade is excellent. Why are we here anyway? You clearly have something to tell us,” I say.
She presses her lips together before turning to Dahlia. “We’ll discuss the army later, darling.”
Dahlia, her perfect progeny and head of her most valued resource, the vampire security force, smiles sweetly at her, displaying her razor-sharp fangs as she raises her goblet of blood-wine to her lips.
“I’ve an announcement,” Mother says. “I’m tired.”
“You had your Morose Mourning seven hundred years ago. Aren’t you a little old to be tired?” Xavier says.
“Actually, there are records of some of the elder vampires having a sort of second mourning period,” Gabriel says, his hand sliding to pull his books nearer.
“Is that what this is?” Sadie signs.
“No,” Mother answers.
