Bitten by Cupid(6)

Port Henry was obviously the solution they’d come up with. A small town in southern Ontario, it was relatively vampire friendly, with some of the townfolk knowing of their existence and a small group of immortals living there who could help look out for Stephanie. Mirabeau supposed it was the kid’s best chance of a normal life. She just didn’t understand why she and Tiny had been chosen to deliver her. Where were Decker and Dani? Were they not going to live there with her as well?

“Dani and Decker are going on a honeymoon,” Stephanie informed her with a sigh, obviously still reading her thoughts.

“When did they get married?” Mirabeau asked with surprise. Decker was an enforcer, and—having to depend on each other for survival as they did—all the enforcers were a pretty tight group. If Decker had gotten married, she not only should have known about it, but she definitely should have been invited to the wedding and was insulted at the possibility that she hadn’t been.

“No, they aren’t married. This is a prewedding honeymoon. Once they get the worst of the ‘new-mate hormones’—as Dani calls them—out of their systems, they’ll plan the wedding and join me in Port Henry. Until then, that Elvi woman and Lucian’s brother, Victor, are going to put me up and keep me safe.”

Mirabeau peered at the girl, judging her expression. She didn’t seem upset by this turn of events. Rather, there was an almost excited gleam in her eyes, and Mirabeau dipped briefly into the girl’s mind to see that, to her way of thinking, she would be like a border in Elvi’s bed-and-breakfast, and for all intents and purposes she would be free to do as she wished. The thought was heady stuff for a teenager, her first taste of freedom. Mirabeau decided it wasn’t her place to disabuse the kid. She knew Elvi Black, now Argeneau, had lost a daughter of her own sometime ago and suspected the woman would mother the girl and get all in her business. She also knew without a doubt that Victor Argeneau was not going to leave the kid unsupervised. However, she didn’t want a sulky Stephanie for the rest of this assignment so kept her mouth shut.

She also didn’t believe for a moment that Dani McGill had abandoned her sister to travel around working off “new-mate hormones” with Decker. Mirabeau knew that Leonius Livius, the rogue no-fanger who had turned them, was interested in recapturing both sisters. That being the case, she suspected the “new-mate hormones” story had just been a cover to keep Stephanie from worrying about her sister. Mirabeau suspected Lucian had convinced Dani to be bait in a trap to try to catch the no-fanger, and Dani, desperate to see her sister safe, had agreed so long as the girl was somewhere safe and out of the way.

Recalling that Stephanie could read her mind, Mirabeau killed that thought as soon as it occurred, just as she had the thought that Elvi would be more a guardian than a landlady in Port Henry. While she pushed both thoughts aside quickly, Mirabeau did decide she would have to check into the possibility of a trap once this assignment was done and see if they needed help with it. Leo was a tricky bastard who had gotten away from them twice already. If she could help keep it from being three times, she was in.

The rustle of paper drew her attention to Tiny, to see he had pulled a notepad from his pocket and was now leafing through the pages. When he paused with a satisfied murmur, she moved closer and peered at the page he was shining the flashlight beam on. It was a hand-drawn map of the sewers, she saw, noting the church marked clearly on the page as the starting point and the veinlike blue lines running away from it. A path had been marked in red, and it looked pretty convoluted. It seemed Lucian was determined to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to follow them without being noticed. Some of the turns appeared to be close together, and others seemed to bend back the way they’d come. Anyone attempting to follow them would have to stick pretty close to keep from losing them.

She didn’t know why Lucian had gone to all that trouble when he and the others were in the church registry office, where the secret passage leading to the basement and the entrance to the sewers was. But then it occurred to her that the wedding party couldn’t linger in the registry office too long without drawing attention. If Leonius or one of his people had dared to sneak into the church for the ceremony, they might become suspicious at the long delay. They might start reading minds, or notice that Stephanie hadn’t come out of the registry room.

While Lucian was unreadable to most, the entire wedding party had been in the room when Mirabeau entered to sign as a witness to the ceremony for Marguerite and Julius. The others had watched silently as Lucian had taken her arm once she’d finished signing and ushered her to the secret panel, explaining that her partner was in the second group of witnesses and would soon join her with the package. While some of the others in the wedding party were older and harder to read, an equal number were new turns, easily read whether they wished it or not. It wouldn’t take long for someone to figure out where Stephanie McGill had disappeared to, she realized, and decided they had wasted enough time. They needed to get moving.