Chapter One

Neeve

 

The last thing I expected to interrupt my spell transcription was my father trying to set me up with a vampire. As a witch, I had standards—and bloodsuckers weren’t on the list.

“I’ve arranged a meeting for you with Benedict Whitlock tonight. He’s open to dinner, so your appointment is at seven. You’ll meet him at the lobby of Everlight Emporium.”

It was all I could do to withhold a groan. Not this again.

Weren't dads supposed to protect their daughters from apex predators?

Lucky me, mine introduced us.

Dad adjusted his suit coat and straightened, shamelessly glowering at my assistant, who had attempted to prevent him from interrupting me. Sianne speared him with a glare of her own. Her office was small enough as it was, but having my imposing progenitor’s bulk within made the space shrink in size.

Dad was tall, even for a warlock.

Irritation simmered beneath my skin, but I couldn’t let it seep out. Thinking of the Separation Spell I’d been working on for the academy’s updated textbooks, I inhaled through my nose and pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth, working to keep my frustration in check.

“Dad,” I said, “I’m working. Can we talk about this later?”

I hated when he did this to me. Uneasiness pushed from my stomach and up into my throat.

He snatched the pen from Sianne’s hand—either not noticing her jaw drop or not caring—and clicked it a few times as though he needed something to fidget with.

“I was just about to use that,” she muttered.

Dad spoke as if he hadn’t heard her. “This can’t wait until later. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Sure. If my goal was to become an appetizer.

He clicked Sianne’s pen a few more times and then tossed it onto her desk. It landed with a small clack against the side of her pen cup that held several others. I grimaced, sidestepping, hoping to keep him from making for my office and seeing the parchment I’d been working on.

Not that it was a secret or anything like that, but I didn’t really want his usual lecture about how I was wasting my talents here.

Dad was a high-standing liaison between the human government and the supernatural one, and he was used to getting his way. Ever since I'd refused to lead our coven in my mother's place and been exiled for it, he’d made it his mission to “fix” my life.

What he didn’t understand, though, was that I was happy being tucked away in my corner of the RSA’s archives department. For the most part, people here minded their own business. No one thrust their outrageous expectations—and their disappointment that I couldn’t meet those expectations—at me at every turn.

Dad also didn’t take my job seriously. While he didn’t think my work was important—how many copies of spells do we need anyway? (his words, not mine)—it was, in fact, vital.

The spells I transcribed added to histories, textbooks, and were used for study and instruction throughout the Mythic Kingdoms and at the academy, too. My work made these spells more accessible to more paranormals across the eastern U.S.

“Whitlock is in favor of the RSA’s insistence on secrecy, but I think a relationship with him could help us have more influence in human politics. Don’t blow it this time like you did with that wolf shifter.”

He had to bring that up.

I hadn’t wanted to go to that blind-date disaster, either, so it wasn’t my fault that I’d hardly gotten in a word edgewise while I’d been in the alpha’s company. And then, after an evening of ignoring everything I had to say, he’d tried kissing me once we got back into his car.

I’d stunned him with a spell that glued his lips together and called Sianne to come get me.

Benedict Whitlock was one of the oldest and most formidable vampire lords, but that didn’t mean I was any more willing to give in.

You would think Dad’s interest in my love life was because he cared about me—and maybe he did, but I knew that wasn’t his reasoning. Ethan Tuttle did nothing if it didn’t benefit himself in some way.

The stupid thing was, I still wanted to try. A small part of me liked that Dad hadn’t written me off, and I didn’t want to disappoint his hopes in me. I wanted to erase the hurt I’d brought to my family by accepting this job. Working in the archives was lowly, in their purview, compared to the more central role I could have taken in the coven.

At the same time, I didn’t want to jeopardize my job here at the Restraint Supernatural Agency, and if Director Nash heard I’d had a date with a vampire lord, he would suspect that I was attempting some kind of coup or something.

The RSA was my family now. I didn’t have anywhere else to belong if they rejected me.

I fit in here. They wanted me around. They accepted my talents and let me be who I was. I had room to breathe. I could make my own choices. I rarely had to talk to anyone I didn’t want to and could spend as much time as I wanted with my books.

Carefully, I stated one of my concerns, though my voice came out quieter than I intended.

“If my boss knew I was having dinner with a vampire lord, he’d think I was trying to overstep his authority.”

Which was exactly what Dad was trying to do. If I wouldn’t come back to the coven, fine. But he wanted to have connections with those in high places, and for some reason, he thought having me date them was the way to do that.

But anyone who knew me knew I’d never date a vampire.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dad said. “It’s a connection, that’s all. A chance to pull yourself out of the basement of this dusty establishment.”

He lifted his chin and looked around the archives office, at the others in their cubicles behind the glass door separating us, like he was on the wrong side of the tracks.

What exactly did he hope to achieve? Did he think that Benedict Whitlock was going to hire me instead? As far as I was aware, the vampire’s lair had plenty of help, and those women who worked closely with him ended up being feeders or a vampire’s personal blood doll.

I’d pass.

And why dinner? Vamps didn’t even eat the same things I did—so chances were, he would order a drink of blood and watch me pick at whatever meal I would order while we tried to pretend we both wanted to be there.

Not an ideal way to spend an evening.

I wasn’t all that comfortable around vampires. I doubted I’d be able to manage a single bite—and I knew for a fact he wouldn’t have the same problem.

Sianne cleared her throat. As my assistant, her desk was in the small room just before a visitor reached mine, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was.

I doubted I had any more in common with a stuffy old vampire lord than I did with the last guy Dad had set me up with. Benedict Whitlock would probably pester me for conversation, which was only a reminder of how badly I wanted this current one to end.

“I knew you’d see sense,” Dad said, inclining his head toward me with a proud smile. He pulled at his suit jacket and backed toward the door. “I’ll let Whitlock know you’ve agreed.”

My lips parted as a disgruntled noise escaped. What gave him that impression?

My denial was right there, waiting to slip free, but for some reason, I couldn’t let it. No was such a simple word, but I couldn’t bring myself to utter it.

Behind him, Sianne raised her eyebrows pointedly. Her raven black hair was tied back from her face, and she tapped her pen on her desk. Outside the glass door that boxed her and my offices away from the other archivists in their cubicles, several of them peered in our direction.

I ignored them all, keeping my attention on my father while my pulse throbbed in my ears.

“Fine. I’d better get back to work,” I said, hating myself for being so weak.

Even now, after everything that had happened, I still wanted my dad’s acceptance. It was stupid. I couldn’t explain why, but a deep part of me longed to not see his disappointment deepen any more than it already had.

He was the only member of my family who bothered interacting with me anymore, and like my job, I didn’t want to lose that, either. If that meant socializing with a pointy-toothed, bloodsucking vampire, then so be it.

Besides, if I was going to get this transcription done in time to do as Dad requested, I needed to get back to work.

Smiling, Dad gave me a single nod. “Seven o’clock tonight, Neeve. Make sure you’re there.”

While a thousand protests sounded in my brain, I suppressed them all, clutched my hands in front of me, and nodded.

“Bye, Dad.”

Without another word, he glared first at Sianne and her gesture toward the door and then strode out.

The minute he was gone, I exhaled a gust of breath and leaned my head against the wall.

“You did it again,” Sianne said. “You let him walk all over you.”

“I know,” I said, closing my eyes and wishing I had the guts to tell my dad where to take his rigorous expectations and unending disappointment in me and shove them.

But talking back to my father just wasn’t done. He demanded respect, and I’d learned a long time ago to give it. Even Sianne got that, or she would never have stood for him taking her pen right out of her hand like he had.

Sianne folded her arms and stared me down. She was shorter than me, but somehow managed to seem taller.

“I hate that he has no respect for me and what I do,” I told her. “These are my working hours.”

“You need to stand up to him,” she said.

“What good will that do? Everyone knows he gets his way.”

“Only because that’s what he’s so used to. You don’t have to go tonight. I know you don’t want to. I can see it in your face. Would it really be that bad if you told him how you felt?”

I stared her down. “It would be, yes. Anyway, I’d better finish this.”

I peered at the clock above her desk. The second hand ticked. I was already halfway to my office when she spoke to my back.

“Don’t look now, but you’ve got another visitor.”

Closing my eyes, I groaned again. “Who is it this time?”

I could only hope that this interruption would be better than the last one.

Before she could answer, the door separating our offices from the larger room of open cubicles opened, and Victor Nash stepped in. The RSA director wore a black suit with blue pinstripes, a blue shirt, and a black tie. His salt-and-pepper hair was cut close to the scalp, and a large mustache dominated his upper lip like a fuzzy gray pickle.

“Hey, there, sir,” Sianne said in the snarky tone she always used with the director. “Glad you could take the time to join us in our shadowed corner.”

Nash raised a brow at her as if wondering what she meant. Then he turned to me. “My most sincere apologies. You know I would never disturb you if it weren’t important.”

“It’s okay,” I said and then I folded my arms. Was it weird that he was easier to talk to than my own father? “What’s up?”

Nash clasped his hands in front of him.

“We have good news. Your help in returning that long-lost artifact to the Dragori king was a success.”

“Really?” I swapped an excited look with Sianne.

Just two weeks before, I’d helped my friend protect a runaway bride who’d escaped her fae king fiancé via the use of an ancient dragon scale. Jaxon and Valora had come to me for help identifying what they’d thought was a fallen star and had been shocked to discover that it was a relic from the dragon mount in Wyvern.

When I’d told them I’d hoped that returning the scale could open communications between the RSA and the dragons, Jaxon and Valora had happily handed the scale over to the RSA so they could get out of the limelight and run away together instead.

I hadn’t heard what had become of the scale since I’d passed it along to Nash and the others in the Dragon Alliance department, so this news was definitely welcome.

“Yes,” Nash said. “As a show of gratitude for that service, we have finally been given permission to travel to the shadowed dragon lands.”

Every muscle in my face retracted like sprung rubber bands. “Really?”

Nash beamed. “Really.”

The dragons lived in the rocks and harsh places of the earth. Their realm had been veiled during the Uprising, when the founders of Moonshade Academy had used a similar blend of power to preserve the school from outlying threats.

While we had few records from dragons themselves, as far as I knew, the Dragori had welcomed the hiding.

Additional magic had been embedded into the rocks and clouds, into the elements surrounding these dark creatures to cloak their cove even from paranormal eyes. They’d thrived on the seclusion. And they had never once given us any indication that they wanted it otherwise.

Until now.

Excitement built beneath my skin, prodding my curiosity and making it flare to life. I’d read all I could about the elusive creatures, but with how secretive they were, none of the stories had been enough to sate my fascination with them. If the dragons were open to letting people in? To finding out more about them?

Chances were, if they had a library, it was filled with stories of their lore, their legends, their histories just waiting to be unearthed. It made my mouth water.

“This is incredible,” I said. “You could get interpersonal documentation. Find out what’s really going on beneath the shadows they hide in!”

“Exactly. But that’s not all.” Nash leaned in as though sharing a great secret. “They have a library.”

Those three words had exactly the effect on me as he’d probably hoped—shivers, goosebumps, and dawning, intriguing anticipation. It was all I could do to tamp down the excited squeak that threatened to escape my throat.

“I’ve requested permission to access its books and records for years now and have been denied. But now, they’re letting us in, and I want you to be the one to go.”

I inhaled so hard, it made me cough. Sianne patted me on the back a few times, never taking her eyes from me. Once I got my brief hysterics under control, I tried to convey as much of my thoughts to her as I could with a single glance—

Me. He’d said me. I’d heard that right, didn’t I? Sianne grinned, giving me double thumbs-up, but I still couldn’t quite grasp this. I waited for him to deny the statement, but he did no such thing.

My hopes went sky high, and I worked to keep them in check. Unlike Dad’s offer, this was the chance of a lifetime. They could have sent anyone to catalog the dragons’ library—but they chose me.

Every archivist dreamed of discovering a forgotten truth, and this request showed that he truly valued my skills. Not because of a skill he tried to force me to have, but because of something I was already good at.

No one had set foot in Wyvern since the dragons had sequestered themselves three hundred years ago. According to every report, no one went in. No one came out.

Which only made this offer more irresistible.