specific house. We’d since learned from Declan Edgar that the four is always a lie when it came to revenants, and, apparently, this was true all the way up to the top.
Cuthbert was a house of clairvoyants, George Cuthbert being Danika Sherlock’s revenant companion before he’d been staked by off-duty NYPD officers who thought they were doing society a favor, and she’d been turned into a ghoul by a combo platter of Gregori Nazaire and his twisted old wench of a DaySitter, both of whom bought their respective farms on the rickety wooden dock behind my cabin. Strickland was a house of telepaths, which we’d discovered when Wesley rapidly developed his peculiar and annoying revenant skills. The Cross family were also a house of telepaths, the DaySitters of which had formed Gold-Drake & Cross in the late nineties to assist law enforcement with their psychic Talents. I wondered if the invitation had intentionally excluded all of the telepathic and clairvoyant lines, but that much seemed obvious. What wasn't nearly so clear to me was why?
I continued reading aloud. “Each house may bring one (1) mortal human to serve as the DaySitter’s Second, should he or she Fall.”
“Fall,” Batten repeated.
“Y’know, die,” I translated, trying to sound casual. “Harry gets to bring a backup, uh, nutritional supplement in case I go tits-up while I’m there.”
“Gee, that’s…” He finished with a long, unhappy noise, apparently finding no words in his vocabulary.
“The opposite of encouraging?” I offered. “Other than the tits part, I mean.”
“You thought I’d be your Second?” His boots dropped off my desk and he sat forward. “Why the fuck would I set myself up as Harry’s backup snack?”
“Before you entertain any thoughts that I see you as some sort of romantic knight in shining armor, I did have a perfectly practical reason to believe you’d want to join us,” I said with a sour half-smile, “and it wasn't because you've already done time on dead-guy watch. If I wanted someone who was just there to be munchies, I could ask Gary.” Our former boss, Supervisory Special Agent Chapel, had allowed both Harry and Wes to feed from him in a pinch.
I shook the card in his face again, and read the name I’d saved to secure Batten’s interest. “From House Sarokhanian, Aston Sarokhanian, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Sayomi Mochizuki.”
Batten let his eyelids close, and his lips started an interesting sequence of twist, bite, push, and tuck; it made me have second thoughts about revealing this name. Batten was a psychic null for me, a neutral, and I’d never been able to feel him with either of my Talents; I never felt this lack more acutely than I did when we were discussing his past. Batten had lost his grandfather, hunter Colonel Jack Batten, during a mission to stake Aston Sarokhanian. I had no idea whether Jack Batten was alive or dead. I’m not sure Mark knew, either, but he had a knotted scar from where Sarokhanian force-fed from Batten’s femoral artery, a visible reminder of his loss. There were invisible scars that might never heal, too, scars that meant failure, regret, and violation. His whole life had been driven by revenge for this loss: first as a cop in Michigan, then gaining fame as the nation’s most notorious vampire hunter, then expanding his reach through international hunts and working for Chapel in the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to ask about Sarokhanian. He opened his eyes and they darted back and forth across my face, like he was puzzling something out. “Who is Speaker Aristoxenus?”
He said it as though he believed that Harry would have ever shared the darkest secrets of the Falskaar Vouras with me. It was both flattering and a little depressing, since I had to shrug like the know-nothing goober I was on that score. I could have made something up; Batten might have fallen for it and been impressed for a
Cuthbert was a house of clairvoyants, George Cuthbert being Danika Sherlock’s revenant companion before he’d been staked by off-duty NYPD officers who thought they were doing society a favor, and she’d been turned into a ghoul by a combo platter of Gregori Nazaire and his twisted old wench of a DaySitter, both of whom bought their respective farms on the rickety wooden dock behind my cabin. Strickland was a house of telepaths, which we’d discovered when Wesley rapidly developed his peculiar and annoying revenant skills. The Cross family were also a house of telepaths, the DaySitters of which had formed Gold-Drake & Cross in the late nineties to assist law enforcement with their psychic Talents. I wondered if the invitation had intentionally excluded all of the telepathic and clairvoyant lines, but that much seemed obvious. What wasn't nearly so clear to me was why?
I continued reading aloud. “Each house may bring one (1) mortal human to serve as the DaySitter’s Second, should he or she Fall.”
“Fall,” Batten repeated.
“Y’know, die,” I translated, trying to sound casual. “Harry gets to bring a backup, uh, nutritional supplement in case I go tits-up while I’m there.”
“Gee, that’s…” He finished with a long, unhappy noise, apparently finding no words in his vocabulary.
“The opposite of encouraging?” I offered. “Other than the tits part, I mean.”
“You thought I’d be your Second?” His boots dropped off my desk and he sat forward. “Why the fuck would I set myself up as Harry’s backup snack?”
“Before you entertain any thoughts that I see you as some sort of romantic knight in shining armor, I did have a perfectly practical reason to believe you’d want to join us,” I said with a sour half-smile, “and it wasn't because you've already done time on dead-guy watch. If I wanted someone who was just there to be munchies, I could ask Gary.” Our former boss, Supervisory Special Agent Chapel, had allowed both Harry and Wes to feed from him in a pinch.
I shook the card in his face again, and read the name I’d saved to secure Batten’s interest. “From House Sarokhanian, Aston Sarokhanian, Crowned Prince of the Blood, and his DaySitter, Sayomi Mochizuki.”
Batten let his eyelids close, and his lips started an interesting sequence of twist, bite, push, and tuck; it made me have second thoughts about revealing this name. Batten was a psychic null for me, a neutral, and I’d never been able to feel him with either of my Talents; I never felt this lack more acutely than I did when we were discussing his past. Batten had lost his grandfather, hunter Colonel Jack Batten, during a mission to stake Aston Sarokhanian. I had no idea whether Jack Batten was alive or dead. I’m not sure Mark knew, either, but he had a knotted scar from where Sarokhanian force-fed from Batten’s femoral artery, a visible reminder of his loss. There were invisible scars that might never heal, too, scars that meant failure, regret, and violation. His whole life had been driven by revenge for this loss: first as a cop in Michigan, then gaining fame as the nation’s most notorious vampire hunter, then expanding his reach through international hunts and working for Chapel in the FBI’s Preternatural Crimes Unit.
When he finally spoke, it wasn’t to ask about Sarokhanian. He opened his eyes and they darted back and forth across my face, like he was puzzling something out. “Who is Speaker Aristoxenus?”
He said it as though he believed that Harry would have ever shared the darkest secrets of the Falskaar Vouras with me. It was both flattering and a little depressing, since I had to shrug like the know-nothing goober I was on that score. I could have made something up; Batten might have fallen for it and been impressed for a
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