All Chapters of The 200 Year Blood Swap: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

(Morrison)By midday the matter had climbed the chain, the way everything in Nachtigall eventually did, and the chain sent me the one person I'd have chosen to see.Archmagister Seraphine Quill had taught me magic from the age of six, back when my hands were too small for the work and my mother too busy for the boy attached to them. She was the one who'd sat up with me through the nights the power came in wrong. She didn't fuss and she didn't flatter, and in a court that ran on both, she'd been the closest thing to solid ground I'd ever stood on. When she came through the door in her traveling coat with her sleeves already pushed up, something in my chest I hadn't known I was holding eased."Maxine, this is Archmagister Seraphine Quill," I said. "She taught me. If anyone alive can put a name to what's on our hands, it's her."My wife's face did the thing it did whenever a stranger walked in: a fast, complete inventory, filed before Seraphine had finished crossing the floor. She didn't

(Maxine)"Oh, good," Theo said, brightening the way he only did for a fresh target. "You must be the insane decision. Hi. Theo Varco here. I'd stand, but I'm saving my strength for being disappointed in my sister." Morrison's eyes went to the screen, to the sharp-faced young man who had my exact eyebrows and none of my restraint, and something in him gave a fraction. "Morrison Marwick." "I know who you are. There were three gossip streams." Theo squinted at him. "Whatever insane thing my sister has done to you, on behalf of House Varco, I apologize. She's been like this since she was four. We've tried everything." And Morrison, my locked-door

(Morrison) "I know she's one of eleven people with the access. That isn't the same sentence,” I say in defence of Seraphine. "Her heartbeat changed when she looked at the marks. I told you that. It jumped, and then she throttled it flat, which is what people do when they've just seen something they don't want you to know they recognize." She came to the table. "I don't catch that by accident. I've built a life on catching exactly that." "Vampire hearing isn't an infallible lie detector," I said. "Hearts speed up for a hundred reasons. Fear. Recognition. A cold room. A woman in her sixties who climbed four flights of stairs to look at something that shouldn't exist." I heard how badly I wanted it to be true even as I said it. "It isn't proof." 

(Maxine) Morrison had listened to the entire call from the edge of the room, out of the camera's line, arms crossed, saying nothing. He waited until I ended it. He waited until I set the screen down. He waited long enough that I knew he was loading a question I wasn't going to enjoy. "You want to say something," I said. "Say it." "The theory's clean," he said. "That's what bothers me. It's too clean." "It's clean because it's true." "It's clean because it explains everything and costs your family nothing. Stolen blood. No suspect. Nobody in your house has to have done a single thing except get robbed." He kept his voice level, which was worse than

(Maxine) I don't remember much of leaving. I remember Theo's hand on my wrist, telling me not to do anything he'd have to be impressed by from a hospital bed. I remember Morrison taking every logistic off me without being asked, the physicians and the doors and the car, because he'd read my face and understood I had nothing left to spend. I remember the private wing in the old city, the door closing, the silence, and standing close to the one person who'd told me the truth when everyone else had shrugged.For a while neither of us said anything. I stood in the middle of a borrowed room in my own kingdom and tried to stay upright like a person, and failed at it in stages."Someone did this to him." The words came out wrong. "For a year I made peace with it. I told myself it was nobody's fault,