Charley reached for the phone, but Sasha wouldn’t relent.
“I can’t believe I’m watching this movie while you’re sexting some guy like it’s no big deal.” Sasha glanced down at the phone, her expression souring. “You’re not wearing underwear?”
An older couple on a blanket in front of them turned around to give Charley the evil eye.
“Sasha!” Charley whispered. Her cheeks burned, but Sasha only giggled.
“He thinks you’re romantic,” she whispered. “Obviously he doesn’t know you very well. Oh, he sent a new one!” Sasha glanced again at the phone, eyes narrowing as she read the latest message. “Wait. Now he sounds like a psycho.”
“Give me that.” Charley swiped the phone back and checked the screen.
I need you here ASAP, Charlotte. Nonnegotiable. Find a cab—my driver is unavailable.
It wasn’t her man. It was Rudy.
“It’s the boss,” Charley said, unable to keep the disappointment from her voice.
“Good ol’ Uncle Rudy.” Sasha rolled her eyes. “We already know he’s a psycho.”
Everything okay? Charley texted back.
Be here in 30 minutes. Time to talk about your future.
Charley’s stomach bubbled, threatening to revolt against the milkshake. She was already on Rudy’s shit list, and she’d completely forgotten to report in on her museum findings. There was no telling what he wanted now.
“You need to ditch that gig,” Sasha said. “I know he’s your uncle, but still. You’re super smart, talented, driven. Why stay in a crappy job when you can find something awesome?”
“It pays really well, Sasha. I can’t just walk away.”
The movie credits were rolling, but the sisters were still drawing nasty looks from everyone around them.
“So that’s the most important thing?” Sasha asked. “Money?”
“It is when you don’t have any. And that’s not something I want either of us to worry about—not ever. Okay?”
It wasn’t the first time they’d had this argument, and Charley knew it wouldn’t be the last. But for now Sasha dropped it, gathering up their trash and helping Charley fold the blanket.
“Guess I need to grab a cab,” Charley said. Rudy lived in a massive steel-and-glass tower in the no-man’s land between Chinatown and the Financial District, arguably the most inconvenient location in Manhattan. Getting there in thirty minutes was about as likely as finding that awesome new job Sasha thought she deserved, but she had to try. “You heading home?”
“Nah, I’ll see if Darcy wants to meet up.” Sasha linked her arm with Charley’s. “Come on, I’ll wait with you. Forty-Second Street?”
“Let’s try Fifth,” Charley said. On Fifth, she could at least wait in front of the library, one of her favorite buildings in the city.
They packed up the rest of their things and threaded their way through the post-movie crowd. Traffic on Fifth Avenue was a nightmare; every cab that passed was already occupied.
“Figures.” Charley sat on the library steps, gazing up at the stately marble lions that’d guarded the entrance for more than a hundred years. In their familiar company, she relaxed.
So many people thought living in New York was exactly like a movie, where everyone was fabulous and rich, spending their evenings at A-list restaurants with dollhouse-sized meal portions and rude waiters, or hopping from club to exclusive club, or—at the other end of the spectrum—getting drunk on cheap beer and stumbling through Times Square.
But for Charley—more than the restaurants, the clubs, the music scene, the tourist traps—the best places in New York were the ones that had survived the centuries. Libraries, museums, universities—the places that showcased and archived humanity’s great achievements, the things that would continue to inspire awe, even when people themselves no longer could.
Charley blew out a breath. Even as her own life descended into chaos, at least she could count on her beloved lions, always here to remind her that no matter what mistakes she made, some things endured.
Maybe she would, too.
“What are you thinking about?” Sasha asked.
“Patience and Fortitude,” Charley said.
“What?”
“The lions. Those are their names—Patience and Fortitude.”
Sasha finally smiled. “You’re a nut. Hey, an empty cab! Come on.”
In a flash Sasha bolted to the street, hailing the cab as Charley ran to catch up.
“Have fun with Uncle Boss,” Sasha said, opening the door for her. “Later, we’re working on your résumé.”
Charley climbed into the cab and blew a kiss goodbye, telling herself for the millionth time that she’d find a way out of this life eventually.
It just wasn’t going to be tonight.
“Fulton and Water Street,” she told the driver. “Fast as you can.”
Chapter Nineteen
A vampire, upon the rare occurrence of his death, swiftly turned to ash. As such, he required neither a coffin nor a crypt; the four winds would simply scatter him where he fell.
Yet Ravenswood was an exact replica of the West Sussex estate, with no detail left to chance. Not the stately manor itself. Not the lush, verdant gardens. And not the crypts that stretched out beneath the property in an endless network of stone arteries. In England, when the original home was occupied by humans, such crypts held the bones of generations of Redthornes, an honorable resting place for members of the bloodline whose prominence was rivaled only by its longevity.
Until it wasn’t.
Here at Ravenswood, the crypts held no bones, no honorable men, for none were left in the Redthorne line. Instead, they housed only the ashes of Augustus Redthorne, still lying where he’d fallen, no winds to scatter him.
Across from the vampire king’s eternal resting place was a hollow tomb, a cavernous chamber for which he had—in the final months of a life that should’ve been immortal—found another use.
“It was his research laboratory,” Dorian said now, watching his youngest brother flip through one of their father’s journals.
Dorian had come down to the crypts to do the same, though he wasn’t expecting company. He suspected he and his brother had very different motives.
“He never stopped.” Gabriel set the book on the stone slab at the center of the tomb, then picked up another, running his fingers along the cracked spine. “So many bloody experiments, so many theories.”
And no time for his children, Dorian thought. It was an old refrain; one they’d stopped speaking aloud in adolescence, but one that still rang in Dorian’s ears whenever he thought of his father. Though the man had been born a noble who wouldn’t have had to work a day in his life, curiosity drove him to medicine, and he’d spent the majority of his human years bent over such work.
When he wasn’t treating patients in London, he was writing about them in West Sussex, candle burning low on the desk, quill scratching across the page, each illness a puzzle to be solved.
But here at Ravenswood, hundreds of years and thousands of miles away from his old life as a human doctor, he became those patients. An ailment with no cure. A mystery. A complex puzzle only he could solve.