The Jealousy

Chapter 20

We didn't make it to the kitchen.

We made it as far as the bottom of the east stair before the front doors banged open and a guard came through them at a dead run, boots skidding on the stone.

"My King—"

"Not now."

"My King, there's a car at the gate."

Lucifer stopped. The jar was still in his hand.

"Whose car."

"Calloway's."

The whole hallway changed temperature.

"Beau Calloway," Lucifer said.

"Him and four men and his son. He says he's here about the fourteenth. He says he's got a vote on the Council and he'd like to hear your side of the rogue business before he casts it."

"That's not how the Council works."

"That's what he said, my King."

Lucifer stood there with a jar of preserves in his hand and his jaw working.

Then he looked at me.

"Go to the kitchen," he said. "Find Doreen. Ask her about the dusting and don't ask her anything else. Not with him in the house."

"You're gonna let him in?"

"I'm gonna let him in, I'm gonna pour him a drink, and I'm gonna smile at him for an hour." He handed me the jar. "And then I'm gonna find out which one of my Councilmen called him before he got in his car."

He turned and walked toward the doors.

"Lucifer."

He stopped.

"Your coat," I said. "You're in your shirtsleeves."

He looked down at himself. Then he shrugged the coat off the hook by the door and got it on, and rolled the left sleeve down over the bandage, and buttoned the cuff.

Then he went out into the courtyard.

---

I never got to the kitchen.

I got about ten feet down the corridor when the doors opened again and Beau Calloway came through them with four men and a kid.

Not a kid. Nineteen, maybe twenty. Dark hair, good coat, that loose walk that boys have when they've been told their whole life they're going to be somebody.

He looked at me.

Not the way men look at a maid. He looked at me the way a man looks at a horse he might want to buy.

I kept walking.

"Hold up," he said.

I stopped. I didn't turn around.

"Turn around."

I turned around.

He was grinning. He had a good face for it — the kind of face that's never been told no and doesn't know what to do with it when it happens.

"You're the one," he said.

"The one what."

"The one who walked out of the pit." He came a step closer. "Heard about you all the way out in Hollow. Everybody's heard about you. They're saying the Beast bowed to a girl with no wolf."

"People say a lot of things."

"Are they lying?"

I looked at him.

"Yes," I said, and turned to go.

"Hey." He got in front of me. Not touching. Just fast. "Don't be like that. I'm being friendly."

"You're being in my way."

"I'm Trey Calloway. My father's the Alpha of Hollow. We're here about the fourteenth." He said it like it was a gift. "Which means in four days I'm gonna be sitting in a room with you and my father's gonna ask you a question and I'm gonna have to decide what I think of you."

"Decide fast. I'm busy."

He laughed. It was a real laugh, which was somehow worse.

"You're funny," he said. "That's not what I expected."

"What'd you expect?"

"A girl who cries."

"Give it a week."

He stepped back and let me pass. But he said it as I went by, low, just for me:

"You know what my father's gonna ask him? He's gonna ask him why he's keeping a dead bloodline's maid alive when the Council's already got a vote to take her off his hands."

I stopped.

"Take me where?"

"Nowhere bad." He shrugged. "Hollow's got a house. Got a garden. Got a cook. Better than scrubbing floors in a castle where the man upstairs turns into something that eats people."

"You offering me a job?"

"I'm offering you a way out," he said. "Think about it."

---

The great hall was lit up like a holiday. All the candles, both fireplaces, the long table with the good chairs pulled out.

Lucifer was standing at the head of it with a glass in his hand and a smile on his face that I had never seen before and hoped I'd never see again.

Beau Calloway was maybe fifty and built like a door. He had a laugh that filled the room and he used it constantly and nothing he said was funny.

"—and I said to Abel, I said, Abel, a rogue on the ridge road in this day and age? And he said, well, Beau, that's what the report says, and I said, Abel, then the report's wrong." Calloway turned. "Isn't that right, my King?"

"I've never known Abel to be wrong," Lucifer said pleasantly. "About anything. Ever. It's one of his best qualities."

Calloway laughed. It went on too long.

They made me serve.

That was Lucifer's call — he caught my eye when I came into the hall and tipped his chin at the sideboard. Serve. And so I served, and Trey Calloway watched me do it from his chair the way a cat watches a bird through glass.

His father noticed.

"Ah," Beau said, when I set the decanter down. "This must be her."

"Yes," Lucifer said.

"The one from the pit."

"The very same."

Beau Calloway looked at me. Then he looked at Lucifer.

"She's pretty," he said. "Doesn't look like much. But pretty."

"Thank you," I said. "I'll put that on my resume."

The room went quiet.

Trey laughed and choked on it.

Beau turned in his chair. He wasn't smiling anymore.

"Funny," he said. "Funny's a bad thing for a servant to be."

"Beau," Lucifer said easily. "You were saying something about the vote."

"I was saying that a maid with a smart mouth in a castle full of men is gonna cause trouble."

"I'll take the risk."

"And I was saying," Beau went on, "that the Council's got a vote on the fourteenth and it's got nothing to do with rogues. It's got to do with heirs."

The fire popped.

"I don't have heirs," Lucifer said. "You know that."

"Which is the problem." Beau sat back. "Eight years, my King. Eight years of a cursed Alpha with no mate and no son and no line. And now a girl walks out of the pit and doesn't get eaten and the whole valley starts asking questions." He tapped the table. "Abel wants her brought before the Council. I want her off your books. Hollow's got a house, she can live out the rest of her life in it, and in exchange Hollow votes with you on the fourteenth and you keep that throne."

"You want her in a house."

"A nice house."

"Under your roof."

"Under my protection."

"She's not for sale," Lucifer said.

He said it pleasantly. He said it like he was passing the salt.

"She's a servant," Beau said. "She's on your payroll. Servants go with the household."

"She's not for sale."

"Everything in this valley is for sale, my King. You know that better than anyone." Beau picked up his glass. "I'm offering you a vote."

"I don't need your vote."

"You might after the fourteenth."

"I might not."

"Then we'll find out." Beau raised the glass. "To the fourteenth."

Lucifer picked up his own glass.

The boy reached across the table and put his hand on my wrist.

"Hey," Trey said, low, under the toast. "Think about it. I meant it."

And the glass in Lucifer's hand came apart.

Not dropped. Not knocked. It came apart, crushed, and the whiskey went across the table and the shards fell into his plate and everybody at the table stopped talking at the same time.

Trey let go of my wrist.

Lucifer looked down at his own hand. Blood in the whiskey. Blood on the white linen.

He lifted his head and looked at Trey Calloway, and his eyes were gold.

Not flash. Not a second. Gold, and they stayed gold, and the fire in the grate bent the way heat bends when the wind changes.

"Hands," Lucifer said. Very quietly. "At the table."

Trey put both hands under the table.

The gold went out of Lucifer's eyes and he smiled that awful smile and reached for a napkin.

"Kitchen accident," he said. "My hands have never been right. Beau, you were saying something about the fourteenth?"

Beau Calloway was looking at him the way a man looks at a dog that's just shown him its teeth.

---

I found Lucifer in the study at midnight, alone, standing in the dark with his back to the door.

"They're gone," I said.

"I know."

"Trey's in the west wing. The father's in the blue room. He said it was an insult to be given the tower."

"Let him have the blue room."

"Lucifer."

"I'm fine."

"You're not fine. Your hand's bleeding."

He looked down at it. There was a napkin wrapped around his knuckles with blood coming through it and he hadn't changed it.

"So who called Calloway?" I said.

He was quiet for a second.

"Abel," he said.

"You're sure."

"Abel called him from the village exchange. The driver of the milk cart told me." He turned around. "The milk cart. Again. Every time something happens in this valley, the milk cart knows first."

I stood there.

"One hundred four," I said.

"What?"

"One-fourteen." I walked up to him. "The letter said the fourteenth. Calloway's here about the fourteenth. Abel wants me in front of the Council on the fourteenth."

"We know that."

"No, we don't. We know the date. We don't know why the date." I held up my hand. "Lucifer. What happens on the fourteenth?"

"Nothing. It's a Council sitting."

"That's not what I asked." I stepped closer. "The full moon's on the fifteenth."

He went very still.

"What day does the Council sit every month?"

"The fourteenth."

"Every month?"

"Every month. It's in the charter."

"On purpose?"

He stared at me.

"Who picked that date?" I said. "Whoever picked it knew the full moon comes the next night and a cursed man can't sleep the night before a moon. So the Council sits when you're at your weakest, every single month, on the exact day a man would need you to be at your strongest."

He sat down in his chair. Slow.

"The fourteenth," he said.

"One-oh-four," I said. "It was in the letter. It was in the pigeonhole. It was on the door."

He looked up at me.

"Say it."

"Somebody's been planning this for years," I said. "And Owen Pierce was just the first guy they let get caught."

Chapter 20 Ends