She didn’t invite me in. She also didn’t mince words.
“Did you bring it with you?” She glared at me, one hand on her hip, the other fanning her face as if the cold night air that was cutting right through my winter coat was too warm for her.
Now that I was there, I couldn’t help but wonder whether Edwina Fitzwilliam might have been a different kind of person before she’d turned. Had she been a good, kind parent to Frederick when he was small? I hoped so. I hated the idea of little Frederick growing up in a home with someone like this as his mother.
I patted the front pocket of my jeans, where I’d stashed my cell phone before getting in the Uber. “Yes.”
“Let’s see it.”
I fished out my phone and pulled up the photos app. “It’s right here,” I said, before hitting the play button.
My voice rose tinnily from my phone, and it took everything I had not to cringe right out of my skeleton at the sight of me gesticulating wildly in Frederick’s living room with a bag of donated blood in each hand. Somehow the clip looked even more ridiculous here, on my phone, in front of the very person I’d hoped to threaten with it.
But it seemed to have a profound effect on Frederick’s mother all the same. She recoiled, horror-struck. Her shaking palms went to her cheeks as she watched the video of me warning everyone of the looming North American vampire threat.
I pocketed my phone when the short clip ended. Frederick’s mother shrank away from me, inching her way back inside the house.
“If we agree to break the engagement and let him go,” she began in a whispery voice, her hand fluttering at her throat, “will you destroy that?”
She looked terrified. Fortunately for me, though, this was the easiest bargain I’d ever made. “Yes.”
“Tonight?”
“Right here,” I offered. “Right in front of your eyes.”
She nodded, but only appeared partly mollified. “Nanmo tells me it is possible to make copies of things like this. Do you promise to destroy all other copies if we release my son? And to not put it on the TikToks?”
“This is the only copy,” I assured her. “When I delete it from my phone no one else will ever be able to see it.” I paused and tried to keep a straight face when I added, “I promise you I will never put it on the TikToks.”
She hesitated, as if unsure whether to believe me. And then, after what felt like entire minutes, she drew a deep breath.
“If you are lying to me,” she began, “we will hunt you down like the dog you are.”
The door slammed in my face.
I looked up at Reginald, who wore a wary expression.
“I’m coming down,” he said, floating to the ground as though being lowered by an invisible rope. “I think she bought it, but—”
Before he could finish his thought, the door opened again.
There was Frederick, dressed in the same clothes he’d left the apartment in a few nights ago when he went to the rendezvous at the Ritz-Carlton. My eyes roved over him, taking in every inch of him—from the disheveled way his hair fell across his forehead, to the white long-sleeved T-shirt that clung to his broad shoulders like he was born to wear nothing else.
His gaze bored into mine, as though he were as unable to stop looking at me as I was to stop looking at him. He looked even paler than usual, with dark circles ringing his eyes I’d never seen there before. But he was here, and he was whole, and he was beaming at me with a look of such tenderness and wonder I felt foolish for ever having doubted his feelings.
“You came,” he said, hoarsely. His eyes were wide, incredulous. “You brilliant woman.”
Relief flooded me at the sound of his voice. I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Aren’t you gonna call me brilliant?” Reginald pouted from somewhere behind me. “I helped too.”
“And you even had to put up with Reginald while you did it,” Frederick said, ignoring him. He moved towards me from where he stood in the entryway, reaching for me. After going days without his touch, Frederick’s embrace was like coming home. I felt both rooted to the spot and seconds away from falling to the ground as he held me, his broad chest steady beneath my cheek, his hands a chilly counterpoint to the warmth of my winter jacket.
His touch warmed me from within all the same.
“We should go,” Reginald cut in, brusquely.
Frederick lifted his cheek from where it had come to rest on top of my head. “You’re right,” he agreed. He pulled back a little more so that he could look into my eyes. “They’ve let me go, Cassie. But it’s not safe for us to stay here a moment longer.”