Annette closed her eyes, running a hand through her golden-red hair. “I arranged for a private audience with the duke, though I confess I wondered if Lucille was mad. That changed the moment he walked into the room. You saw the portrait, Crispin, so you know how closely you resemble him. I relayed your circumstances and begged him to intercede with the judge, but he refused. He said he had only one son, his new, legitimate heir, and then he turned me out.”
I now understood why Annette hadn’t ever wanted to tell Bones this part of his history. My dad had also been a prick, and while I didn’t begrudge anyone a happy relationship with their father, sometimes I felt a wistful sense of loss hearing others speak of a bond I’d never have.
Annette glanced away. “You already know I sought the judge out myself and persuaded him to deport you to the colonies instead of sentencing you to the rope. When I went back to Lucille and informed her of everything, she made me swear that should you ever return, I would never reveal your father’s identity or actions to you. And so I swore on your life not to do so.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “Nothing else would have held me to that promise for so long, Crispin.”
Now I couldn’t feel anything from Bones. He’d locked his emotions behind an impregnable wall. “What of Wraith?”
She sighed. “I kept tabs on him during the nearly twenty years that you were away. He seemed a decent lad. Then, a few years after you turned me, I heard that he’d become involved in a secret noblemen’s sect that sought power through the occult. I returned to London without you and confirmed it was true. Your father was dead by then, as was the duke’s younger brother and Wraith’s mother, so he had no family left except you. I thought . . . I thought by informing Wraith about vampires, perhaps he’d turn from the occult in favor of undead powers. So I showed him what I was and told him of you. He seemed terribly excited and was determined to meet you as a new vampire. Only now do I realize I may have been speaking to the demon instead of him.”
“And you changed him over.” Bones’s voice was flat.
“Yes.” Spoken as she met his gaze again. “After he was past the blood craze, I was going to introduce him as your birthday present and pretend to have accidentally discovered your familial connection by hearing his true name. But when I arrived at his house that day, I found a note saying he couldn’t bear what he’d become and he was ending his own life. I searched the grounds and found a burned corpse with a silver knife in its chest. I believed it to be him, and felt it was my punishment for intending to break the vow I’d made to Lucille not to involve you with your father’s family.”
Annette let out a short laugh. “Two hundred years later, I received a call from a man claiming to be Wraith and saying he was ready to meet his brother as his birthday present. I didn’t believe it, but I hadn’t told anyone about him. So I waited at the hotel instead of leaving with Ian and the others, and, well, you know what happened then.”
Yeah. Hazael showed up wearing Wraith’s body like a Trojan horse and bled Annette enough to force the demon’s first possession split into her. If not for Ian’s horniness, we would never have known that she’d been attacked, and I would have had a lot less reason to be suspicious of Wraith at first.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, Crispin,” Annette said, swiping away the moisture from her earlier tear. Her voice became brisk. “I await your punishment.”
I personally thought Annette had been punished enough by holding those secrets for over two hundred years. Any sins she was guilty of were committed out of love and her own sense of honor, which might not be the same as mine, but it was just as sincere. Still, I wasn’t her sire, so the decision wasn’t mine.
Bones’s mouth twisted. “What shall I do? Beat you? Cut you off from my line? With your knowledge of my past and my family, you are the only link that I have left to them.”
“Actually,” Ian said, speaking for the first time since he’d come in the room, “that’s not quite true.”
Epilogue
Christmas Eve
E VEN WITH THE additional leafs added to my dining-room table, we still had to squeeze together to make room for everyone. Only one out of the eleven people here ate food for sustenance, but the table was piled high with all the traditional fixings, and everyone corporeal pretended to be hungry for it.
Bones carved the turkey while the rest of us heaped our plates with side dishes. I would have been happy to cook, but oddly enough—and I refused to acknowledge that it might have to do with my culinary skills—everyone insisted on bringing something. Bones roasted the turkey, Kira made the dressing, Denise baked the pies, Mencheres made a Middle Eastern dish that I didn’t recognize, Spade provided the mashed potatoes, Annette candied the yams, my mother baked the green bean casserole, and Ian brought the wine.