Lover Avenged (Black Dagger Brotherhood #7)(7)

The pills were located behind the dusty stack of cookbooks. She took out one trifluoperazine and two loxapine and put them in a white mug. The stainless-steel spoon she used to crush them up was bent at a slight angle, and so were all the others.

She’d been crushing pills like this for close to two years now.

The CranRas hit the fine white powder and swirled it away, and to make sure the taste was adequately hidden, she put two ice cubes in the mug. The colder the better.

“Father, your juice is ready.” She put the mug down on the small table, right on top of a circle of tape that delineated where it needed to be placed.

The six cupboards across the way were as orderly and relatively empty as the fridge, and out of one she grabbed a box of Wheaties, and from another she got a bowl. After pouring herself some flakes she grabbed the milk carton, and as soon as she was finished using it, she put the thing right back where it went: next to two more of its kind, the Hood labels facing out.

She glanced at her watch and switched into the Old Language. “Father? I must take my leave.”

The sun had set, and that meant her shift, which started fifteen minutes after dark, was about to kick off.

She glanced at the window over the kitchen sink, although it wasn’t as if she could measure how dark it was. The panes were covered with sheets of overlapping aluminum foil that were duct-taped to the molding.

Even if she and her father hadn’t been vampires and unable to handle daylight, those Reynolds Wrap blinds would have had to be in place over each window in the house: They were lids on the rest of the world, sealing it out, containing it so that this crappy little rented house was protected and insulated…from threats only her father could sense.

When she was finished with the Breakfast of Champions, she washed and dried her bowl with paper towels, because sponges and dishcloths weren’t allowed, and put it and the spoon she’d used back where they belonged.

“Father mine?”

She propped her hip against the chipped Formica counter and waited, trying not to look too closely at the faded wallpaper or the linoleum floor with its worn tracks.

The house was barely more than a dingy shed, but it was all she could afford. Between her father’s doctor visits and his meds and his visiting nurse there just wasn’t much left over from her salary, and she’d long ago used up what little was left of the family money, silver, antiques, and jewelry.

They were barely staying afloat.

And yet, as her father appeared in the cellar’s doorway, she had to smile. His fine gray hair radiated out of his head, a halo of fluff making him look like Beethoven, and his overly observant, slightly frantic eyes also gave him the look of a mad genius. Still, he seemed better than he had in a long while. For one thing, he had his fraying satin robe and silk pajamas on right—everything facing forward, with the top and bottom matching and the sash done up. He was clean, too, freshly bathed and smelling like bay rum aftershave.

It was such a contradiction: He needed his environment spotless and precisely ordered, but his personal hygiene and what he wore were not an issue at all. Although perhaps it made sense. Caught up in his tangled thoughts, he got too distracted by his delusions to be self-aware.

The meds were helping, though, and it showed as he met her eye and actually saw her.

“Daughter mine,” he said in the Old Language, “how fare thee this night?”

She responded as he preferred, in the mother tongue. “Well, my father. And you?”

He bowed with the grace of the aristocrat he was by blood and had been by station. “As always I am charmed by your greeting. Ah, yes, the doggen has put out my juice. How good of her.”

Her father sat with a swish of his robes, and he picked up the ceramic mug as if it were fine English china. “Whither thou goest?”

“To work. I am going to work.”

Her father frowned as he sipped. “You are well aware I do not approve of your industry outside of the home. A lady of your breeding should not be tendering her hours as such.”

“I know, father mine. But it makes me happy.”

His face softened. “Well, that is different. Alas, I do not understand the younger generation. Your mother managed the household and the servants and the gardens, and that was plenty to engage her nightly impulses.”

Ehlena looked down, thinking that her mother would weep to see where they had ended up. “I know.”

“You shall do as you will, though, and I shall love you e’ermore.”

She smiled at the words she’d heard all of her life. And on that note…“Father?”

He lowered the mug. “Yes?”

“I shall be a bit late in getting home this evening.”

“Indeed? Why for?”

“I am going to have coffee with a male—”

“What is that?”

The change in his tone brought her head up, and she looked around to see what—Oh, no…

“Nothing, Father, verily, it is nothing.” She quickly went over to the spoon she’d used to crush the pills and picked it up, rushing for the sink like she had a burn that needed cold water stat.

Her father’s voice quavered. “What…what was it doing? I—”

Ehlena quickly dried the spoon and slipped it in the drawer. “See? All gone. See?” She pointed to where it had been. “The counter is clean. There’s nothing there.”