Society of Supernatural Sleuths Box Set 1, page 10
“So you’ll forgive me if I do not let you dodge the question of whether you and Cecilia are special quite as easily as that?”
That got another smile from the young gypsy man. “Yes, I think I can forgive that. And yes, both Cecilia and I are different, even among the Roma. A few people there might have minor talents, but the things we can do are different. Tell me, is it just my sister and I you are interested in, Miss Seely, or the whole of my people?”
Scarlet thought. Obviously, she wanted to know as much as possible about Tavian and Cecilia to help with the business of the ring, but truthfully, she wanted to know as much as possible about all his people. She would not have been her parents’ daughter had she felt otherwise. After all, how many times had they taken her to parts of the world that seemed impossibly exotic, and taught Scarlet about peoples there who were very different from anything she could have imagined?
“I think that I would like to know whatever you are willing to tell me,” Scarlet said at last.
Tavian drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “Well, that is potentially a lot, but I do not think we should go through it all now.”
“No?” Scarlet could not keep the disappointment out of her voice.
“Well, we have nothing to do but wait for now when it comes to the case, so why not join me over at the camp tonight for dinner?” Tavian suggested. “I will tell you anything you want to know then.”
“You want me to have dinner with you?” Scarlet asked. “You did just see me kiss Cruces, right?”
“I saw you kissed by him and swept up in the moment. I see you on the edge of feeling something for the arrogant little lord. I would like to see you for dinner tonight, so that you know that you have more than one choice here.”
“You sound very certain that I am attracted to you,” Scarlet said.
Tavian looked at her from under that wonderfully dark, flowing hair. “Tell me that I am wrong.”
“You are very direct today,” Scarlet pointed out, trying to find time in which to think. “When we first met, you didn’t even speak.”
“You seem to prefer directness. Please, agree to come to the camp. You will not regret it, and you will get your answers. You do know how attracted I am to you. The things my mouth, my tongue and the rest of my body want to do to you…”
Scarlet bit her lip. She knew that she probably should not, but she had been there before, after all, and she also remembered reading somewhere that, no matter what people in towns might sometimes think, the Romany took the virtue of young women very seriously indeed. Dinner would just be dinner unless Scarlet said otherwise.
“Won’t you give me at least some answers now?” Scarlet asked.
Tavian licked his lips. “I will trade you,” he said. “An answer for an answer. You ask your question, but I get to ask one of you in return.”
“And that question will be?”
Tavian shrugged. “Anything I choose. And the answer must be truthful. That is how the game works.”
“So you are playing games with me now?” Scarlet demanded.
Tavian shook his head at that. “I might be, but in this case, it is because I want to know more about you. Will you agree?”
Scarlet barely hesitated. “All right. Why can you walk through the mist?”
Tavian grinned. “That’s an easy one. Because I am not wholly Roma.”
“Then what-”
Tavian put a finger to Scarlet’s lips. “It is my turn. Why did Sherlock Holmes bring you in to try to find the ring?”
Scarlet bit back the urge to tell Tavian a half-truth like the one he had just told her. “Because I have the talent for seeing the supernatural. I have always had it, ever since I was a girl.”
“Really? Then…”
It was Scarlet’s turn to put her fingers to his lips. “My question. If you are not a gypsy, then what are you? Another vampire?”
Tavian shook his head. “No, not that. Never that. Does seeing the supernatural bother you?”
“No,” Scarlet said. “It is a privilege, even if it is one I do not understand. I have the opportunity to see things that other people will never see, and that sometimes lets me help them when other people cannot. Some of the supernatural is strange, but so much more of it is beautiful.”
Tavian nodded.
“Exactly what are you?” Scarlet asked.
Tavian smiled. “I could dodge that too, you know, if I wanted. But I won’t. Will you stand up a moment, Scarlet?”
Scarlet stood, unsure of what it had to do with getting an answer to her question, but willing to trust Tavian enough to go along with it. Tavian stood too, looking into her eyes for a long moment.
“It is easier to show you what I am than to tell you,” he said, “and anyway, I have wanted to do this since I saw you. Especially since the vampire has already come close to making up your mind.”
That should probably have warned Scarlet what was coming next. With a delicacy that surprised her, Tavian slid his hands to the back of Scarlet’s head and kissed her long and slow, before his tongue touched hers, and she felt the heat and want in them.
Chapter 16
The kiss was different to the way Cruces’ had been so soon before. It was gentler, softer, and more open. It did not demand that Scarlet kiss Tavian back. It asked, and she did. Oh, she did. If that had been all there was to it, it would have been enough, but it wasn’t. Instead, from almost the moment their lips met, Scarlet found her head filling with images. It should not have been possible, but she could see them clearly, could almost feel them.
She was standing on the edge of a village. It was not a large village, and it did not have a railway line running to it. It was tiny and sleepy, hidden in the shadow of the woodlands around. It was a place of tiny cottages and small dreams. And on the edge of the village, there sat caravans, where gypsies had come to ply their trades for a brief time. The scene before Scarlet shifted then, and she found herself in one of those caravans. There was a crib in that room, a rough, wooden thing containing two babies that looked to be no more than days old. They were sleeping close to one another.
They even slept when hands lifted them from the crib, placing two more babies down where they had lain, swaddled in blankets against the cold of the night. For a moment, Scarlet was not certain about what had happened. She went over to the crib bending over it to stare down at the tiny forms within. Delicately, careful not to disturb them, she peeled back the swaddling blankets so that she could see the babies better.
Both had black hair and one had familiar, very familiar, green eyes. Both looked up at Scarlet, making her wonder exactly how that could happen. This was a dream, after all. A vision of the past. Yet there was no doubt that even as Scarlet looked at the children, they looked back at her. There was one more surprise beneath the swaddling cloth too. The children now in the crib had wings.
They were small wings, delicate wings, like those of a dragonfly fluttering above a summer pond. They flexed as the children below stared up at her, and Scarlet had to wonder just what these children were. What kind of children had wings? What kind of children replaced others in their crib?
The answer to both questions came to Scarlet in a rush. The children in the crib now certainly were not human, because human children did not have wings. That meant that they had to be some form of supernatural creature, and one form of supernatural creature was notable for stealing children. The fey. The children in the crib were changelings, fey children left to be brought up by humans. And, since Tavian was the one showing her this vision, and since the deep green of those eyes was so very familiar, that meant…
Tavian and Cecilia were fey children. They were changelings. It was the only answer that made any sense.
Even as Scarlet decided that, Tavian pulled away from her enough to look her carefully in the eyes. His finger traced the contours of her face in a way that seemed to come half from affection and half from worry. He seemed almost afraid. Afraid that Scarlet would recoil from what she had just seen, perhaps?
“Did you see it?” Tavian asked. “Did you see the vision?”
Scarlet had to nod. “I saw it. Why show it to me?”
“I owed you an answer.” Tavian shook his head. “But it was more than that. I have not shown that to anyone else before, Scarlet. You are special, I feel it, and you need to know. There is a bond between us. Especially an undeniable physical attraction, an electric animal desire for each other.”
Scarlet pulled back slightly more at those words. She liked Tavian. She had liked kissing him. Even so, she was not going to let him make some kind of claim on her.
“That is not what I mean,” Tavian said, obviously sensing her discomfort. “I just mean that there must be something we share, because no ordinary person would have been able to see what I showed you.”
The word ‘ordinary’ took Scarlet’s thoughts back to the sight of those two children in the crib.
“You are a changeling,” she said. “Cecilia too. The fey… they swapped you for gypsy children.”
Tavian nodded. “But I was raised among the gypsies. I was raised human, the way you were.”
“What do you mean by that?” Scarlet demanded. “I am human. My mother and father are perhaps a little odd, but they are definitely human.”
“And yet you saw the vision.”
“Well, I have always been able to see the supernatural. That doesn’t mean anything,” Scarlet insisted. “It isn’t like I go around flying or changing my shape. Really, Tavian, what you are suggesting…”
Tavian spread his hands. “I do not want to suggest anything to upset you. I will merely say that Cecilia and I always saw what was really there, too.”
Scarlet shook her head. She was not going to unseat everything she knew about her life on the strength of mere supposition. Nor was she going to even contemplate some of the possibilities that came into her head in those moments. There was undoubtedly a simple explanation anyway. Perhaps one of her distant ancestors had been part fey, or something similar. It was far more likely than anything Tavian seemed to be implying.
To change the subject, and because she was not going to give up on her case that easily, she decided to ask the obvious question. “Tavian, if Cecilia knows that she is not Romany, then her story about wanting it as an heirloom of Roma royalty is nonsense. Why did she really take it?”
Tavian sat back down at the table, staring at it for a second or two. Scarlet sat down too.
“Tavian?” she said when he did not speak immediately. “I need to know.”
“Yes,” he replied, “I suppose you do.”
“Then why would Cecilia really have taken it?” Scarlet looked at the young gypsy man. “What is it that I am missing?”
“You have to understand that Cecilia is not a bad person,” Tavian said, “but she is obsessed.”
Scarlet knew the kinds of things that obsession could do. “What is she obsessed with?”
“With our past,” Tavian explained, tracing a pattern on the tabletop. “With what we are. I have come to peace with the fact that we live in this world, but Cecilia thinks that is not enough. She wants to go home.”
“Home?” Scarlet found herself thinking of all the legends she had heard when it came to the fey, and particularly about those that claimed they lived in a special land beyond the reach of humankind. “She thought the ring would get her there.”
“Exactly,” Tavian said. “Everywhere we went, she would ask questions. She would learn the old legends of the faerie folk, and she would talk to those who claimed to have seen them. She said it was learning about our heritage.”
Scarlet cocked her head to the side. “You do not agree?”
Tavian looked momentarily angry. “I have learned some things about the fey, but I learned the most important things when they took away two human children and abandoned us in their place. I was brought up among the Roma. That is what matters. To me, I am human.”
“But Cecilia does not think so?” Scarlet asked.
Tavian shook his head. “No. She would talk about finding our real parents. About getting back to our fey home. And if she thought that Darthmoor’s ring would help…”
“She would not hesitate to take it,” Scarlet finished for him. “Why now, then? I was under the impression that she had worked for Cruces for a while.”
“Cecilia started to have visions,” Tavian explained. “Ones similar to the one you had just now. They showed her glimpses of another place. She was desperate to get to it.”
Scarlet looked at him directly. “And you did not tell me this because…”
“Because at first, it seemed like you might just be working for Darthmoor. I showed you where to find Cecilia, though.”
“Yes,” Scarlet agreed, “you did.” An idea came to her. “And you might just do it again.”
She did not give Tavian a chance to ask how as she leaned over the table to kiss him once more. It had to be worth a try, didn’t it? After all, if that was what triggered a vision in her the first time, then maybe doing it again would give her some useful information. It wasn’t exactly as if it was an onerous way to hunt for clues.
Images did not leap immediately into Scarlet’s mind, but she could feel the presence of a second set of thoughts and feelings alongside her own. Tavian’s. Thoughts that wanted the kiss to go on forever. That wanted it to be so passionate that Scarlet forgot about the likes of Lord Darthmoor and gave herself wholly to him. That loved the taste of her lips against his, and their bodies entwined together fucking, licking, and climaxing…
Scarlet was lost in the passionate thoughts between them, letting out a moan that was swallowed up by Tavian’s mouth, locked on her while his hands roamed over her breasts.
Scarlet fought for control, pulling back from Tavian’s thoughts as best she could even as she wondered how she could possibly learn them like that. Yet she knew that to have any chance of making the connection between them work once more, she could not afford to hold back like that. She had to give herself up to the moment completely.
Scarlet did her best. She kissed Tavian like he was the only man in the world. She kissed him until the establishment around them faded into the background, lost among the intensity of their lips on one another’s. Scarlet kissed Tavian deeply, taking everything she could from the kiss, and Tavian kissed her back with every bit as much passion, his mouth devouring hers with such hunger.
At that point, like water from a dam that had finally burst, visions washed over Scarlet. She saw a place that could not be England, with a landscape that was impossible in its beauty. She saw figures roving over it, clashing against one another in waves of flesh and violence. Some were pale, and fast, and as they struck, Scarlet could see their fangs. Others were ethereal and lovely, armed with weapons that held no iron and fighting with every bit as much hate as their vampire foes.
The vision rolled on, and Scarlet saw battle after battle, in a war that seemed to have no end. She saw vampires falling on the homes of the fey with such violence that she would have looked away if she could have done. She saw fey striking back, killing vampires in numbers too great to count. And then she did see England. She saw London, and the battles waged in secret around it. She saw that the war was not done, but that it had merely taken a different form in this modern time and place.
More than that, Scarlet saw what she had to do next.
Chapter 17
Scarlet pulled back from Tavian then. Breathless. He was barely breathing, too, just staring at her with his intense green eyes. She understood more about the war between the vampires and the fey than she had known before. More than that, she had seen places she recognized in that vision, places that were part of the fabric of London.
“I think I can find Cecilia and the ring,” Scarlet said. “But we should go now.”
“Now?” Tavian repeated. “But why is there such a hurry? As much as I would like to say otherwise, Darthmoor and the boy with the sword might be useful to have around if there is going to be trouble.”
Scarlet shook her head. “What I know… it’s barely there. It feels like a cobweb. If I leave it too long, everything might fade, and we’ll be back to the beginning again.”
“So what exactly did you see?” Tavian asked.
Scarlet tried to put it lightly. “Just a few places that Rothschild might be hiding.”
“Rothschild? You want to go after Rothschild?”
Scarlet shook her head, standing. “I don’t want to go after him. I know how dangerous someone like him will be…”
“You don’t,” Tavian said. “You cannot, or you would not be suggesting this.”
Scarlet gripped Tavian by the arm then, a small flash of anger coming out. “Are you suggesting that I should ignore this? The evidence points to Rothschild’s involvement, from his augmentation of the Order’s mark on me to his standing in less pleasant segments of the vampire community. We have to speak with him.”
“So why not just go back to his jewelry shop and speak with him there?” Tavian asked.
“I could be wrong, but… go outside and look for it, would you?” Scarlet waited, and after a second or two just staring at her, he went and did as she asked. It was more than ten minutes before he returned.
“It’s gone,” the young gypsy man said. “I don’t understand…”
“He and those who work for him must have occupied an empty store front,” Scarlet explained. “We did not meet by accident. Rothschild went to a lot of trouble to mark me, and to give me his necklace.”
Tavian stared down at the sapphire of the pendant Scarlet wore. “You did not say that he had given you that.”
“You did not think to comment that I was wearing it after meeting him, but not before?” Scarlet asked.
“I… I did not see it,” Tavian said, staring at it again, then lifting the stone lightly in his hand. “There is magic to this. I can feel it now.”
“Something to make sure no one noticed it, perhaps?” Scarlet said, and then shook her head. “No, that cannot be all of it. There must be more to the piece, or why insist that I wear it?”
