“How’s your abdomen feeling?” Estella asked when they returned to the office.
Marianne gave Estella a withering look that clearly said that isn’t what she wanted to talk about and didn’t respond.
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, wringing her hands. “I haven’t thanked you yet for coming after me. And for throwing yourself like a wrestler at whoever was behind me.” She took a steadying breath, “Thank you.”
The other woman put her hands on her hips, “What’s going on, Estella?”
“It’s…” She sat down hard into a chair and covered her face with her hands. Her family kept Estella’s circumstances quiet. Even the specifics of how she came into Jacques’s hands weren’t revealed. But Marianne could have gotten seriously hurt, or worse. It was the first time something had happened to Estella in public. If they were ramping up their efforts, more people could get involved.
It suddenly was harder for her to breathe.
“We don’t know.” That wasn’t entirely the truth but it also was not much of a lie either. Her family knew someone and something was after her. They suspect that it has to do with Estelle and Marguerite. The vampire from the graveyard and Estella’s strange dreams do not always seem to deal with each other when they parse out the details.
“You don’t know? None of you know anything?” Estella did not begrudge Marianne her incredulity. Her grandmother Theodora was one of the oldest vampires in Europe and Matthieu one of the most magically educated individuals here as well. Vampire or not, the man knew more than most.
“Non.”
“Is that why Matthieu and Theodora are in Greece?”
Estella took a deep breath, “Oui.”
Marianne hopped up then and reached for the phone. “We should call Monsieur Saint-Tourre, tell him what happened.”
Estella snatched the phone out of her hand. Marianne flinched at the speed and Estella swore at herself to slow down. People often forget about her vampirism.
“There is no point in worrying him while he’s in court. There is nothing for him to do. Whatever that was is now gone. This is how it is. They wait for an opening and don’t make one themselves. The danger has passed.” The danger is past. The danger is present. It’s a continuum of the choices of the long dead bringing their baggage down on her head.
“But maybe he could go and track it? Find them so that there isn’t a next time.”
“Marianne. There is no one to track. I don’t think that was some kind of vampire. It was like a ghost or apparition.”
“But it was so fast, Estella.”
“You know vampires, Marianne. You grew up with two of them in your house. They don’t just disappear.”
Estella sighed and turned back to the files piled high on the desk, “Let’s get back to work. You said you had a lot to do.”
____
Hours later Jacques walked into his office with a box of choux pastries. The scene was a common one the last few months: Estella bent over his desk organizing paperwork into files while Marianne was elbow deep into the filing cabinets. Reorganizing his files had been Jacques’s summer project for her. Apparently watching Estella put his 150 years of files into a semblance of an order had inspired him.
But Estella knew he would notice that something was wrong about it. The room was completely silent. While she tended towards solitude, his intern did not. The young British woman was much more comfortable with noise, even if she did have to make it.
The neighbors on the street were also subdued. When she poked her head out an hour earlier Monsieur Travere up the street closed his bookshop early and the gardeners had gone inside.
Jacques made a show of the choux pastries, presenting them boldly to Marianne who formally declined the treat and then he flashed the box at Estella in the adjoining office. She tried to muster a smile in response and accepted a pastry but it tasted like ash in her mouth.
Jacques kept his smile on his face, “I had a good day in court. Madame Prouxl should not have any more legal conflicts with her former husband.”
“That’s good,” Marianne offered from deep within the filing cabinets.
Estella kept her head bent over and did not respond.
He left the box on the front desk closer to his inter, she’s the one who would normally eat the treats anyway, before sauntering into his office. He traced the pointed line of his jaw with his thumb. Estella had seen that stance countless times. He was considering information. “People are anxious. All of the businesses in the Quarter seem to have shut for the day.”
Estella sighed and finally lifted her head. The strain must have shown plain on her face because he dropped his hand. “What happened?”
If it had been Matthieu or Theodora in front of her, Estella may have tried to tone down the horror of the day. But this was Jacques, the man who came to her as a child, no questions asked. He listened intently to her story, his lips pressed into a thin line.
“I’ve already prepped to leave, Jacques. I assume I will not be staying in Paris for the week after all.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“I’m afraid not.”
____
“I’m not going to Greece, Estella. Someone found you in Paris. In public. I’m not leaving you here.”
They were arguing. Estella thought Jacques should go get their grandparents. Jacques thought that was reckless.
“They’ve known where I am the whole time, Jacques. There was just finally an opening.”
The rest of her words came out in a rush and she prayed it had the effect she needed, “Something is coming, Jacques. Coming for me. I need them. I need all of you.” She grabbed his arm and shook, “You, Theodora, and Matthieu when it all comes to a head.”
His eyes narrowed, a slight glow to the gray in the evening light,“And you don’t think Matthieu and Theodora will be back in time?”
Estella swallowed her teeth. She thought it was already too late.
“I think they are lost in the mountains.”
“Lost?” He tilted his head, his thumb coming to his chin. “Estella, what do you know?”
He was asking about her dreams.
She bounced from foot to foot.
“I’m not sure. In my dreams, I am climbing a mountain. But everytime I look behind me to see where I came from, when I turn around I am back at the start of my trek. I just…Jacques, they need help. I know they need help. Wherever they are trying to go, Matthieu and Theodora keep ending up back at the beginning like me. If we want them back sooner rather than later then you have to go and help them.”
“And leave you here? Alone? Because after Paris, I cannot take you with me.”
“I know.” She grabbed her brother’s hand. “You have to leave.” She felt the necessity of that statement. Not only for their grandparents but for his safety.
She stretched her life too far and the rubber band was snapping back. Estelle’s bargain was going to be paid soon.
“Please, Jacques. They need you. I’ll be safe at Saint-Tourre.” It was a lie and the first one she ever told him.
For a moment, she feared Jacques saw through her. Out of all her family, she was closest to him.
“Fine but you do not leave home. Stay behind the protection wards, Estella.”
“Thank you, Jacques.”
____
A week after Jacques left, their front gate bell rang. Estella looked at the brass bell responsible for the offending noise, frozen for a moment in alarm.
Anyone who came to the house came to the front door. The gate— a smaller house at the start of the drive that hid their driveway—was for uninvited or unknown guests. They never had either. If people needed her family’s counsel, they would call the line or send a message. More often, someone they knew would bring the needy to them.
No one ever just came to the house.
The bell rang again.
And again.
And a third time on her way to the front door of Saint-Tourre. It was connected to the gate house. Simply turn the right way and you’ll be staring at the entrance to the front gate from inside.
Inside the gatehouse the ringing was a knocking, an incessant, frantic knocking on the door.
Estella found a young man, a vampire seemingly not much older than herself on the other side of the door. He had dark hair and green eyes that had the characteristic clear glow of a vampire. A scar cupped his chin on the left side.
“My name is Oliver Morris and my family needs your help.” Her help? “My sister fell in love with a human and the Commission found out and—”
“The Commission?” Realization hit her. “Oh. I am not Theodora.”
That stopped him dead.
“You’re not?”
“I’m not.”
He glanced behind her, into the house. “Is she..”
“And she isn’t here.”
He deflated, “she’s not?”
“And she won’t be for a while.”
“What about Matthieu?”
“He’s with Theodora.”
“What about—”
“Jacques is also with them.” She hoped, at least. Jacques had also gone MIA when he reached Greece.
Dismay clouded his features, “Can you help us?” Estella wondered if she should be offended that she was his last resort but really, could she help them? While she knew the ins and outs of Saint-Tourre, her family never intended for her to carry its burden. Matthiey and Theodora even tried to shield Jacques from it. But still, growing up here meant that she had inherited quite a bit of knowledge.
And that she knew where to look to answer his question.
“Let me see. Can you…” She isn’t going to let a strange man into her home if she doesn’t need to. “Wait here while I go look at some stuff?”
He opened his mouth as if to protest before nodding in acquiescence.
She shut the door on him and ran back through the house, up the stairs, and down the hall to the Archive. The big one. The one for scholars and academics and amateur historians seeking to uncover their past.
They didn’t get many of those kinds of visitors anymore. Not since before she stepped through the doors of Saint-Tourre though.
Most of her education has been a balance between magic and the liberal arts. Between lessons, she learned a lot about the role her family, especially her grandparents, have in supernatural society as counselors for those toeing the line the Commission set to ‘protect’ (her grandmother Theodora always says this with a sneer) supernatural society from human exposure. Theodora began her work several centuries ago to combat the narrative that the supernatural and human worlds had always, by necessity, been separate.
Estella sat through several lessons in the Archive of Theodora deconstructing that idea.
But what can someone do when her family is unavailable? The grounds of Saint-Tourre have some weight but are they sacred enough without the presence of her grandparents?
She searched through a thick reference volume created for Saint-Tourre’s Archive, looking for keywords that might give her a clue of what she could do. Several minutes ticked by, Oliver was probably itching to bang on the door again, when she finally spotted something that might be of use: “asile.” Asylum.
According to the entry, as an heir of Saint-Tourre, she could offer Oliver and his family asylum at the estate for one month so that they may build a defense against the Commission.
Hugging the heavy volume to her chest, she raced back to Oliver at the gate. Throwing the door open, she didn’t give him the opportunity to speak before asking him the most pivotal question, “Do they love each other? Your sister and the human, are they devoted?”
“Completely.”
She bobbed her head excitedly and shoved the book in his face, “then look at this!” Estella awkwardly held the large, cumbersome volume up so she could display the page. Fortunately, the scribe had drawn a red manicule pointing to the text.
“Asylum?”
“Yes. For one month. So you can create your own defense using our legal resources.” And she slammed the book shut and folded it back into the cradle of her arms. “I cannot really offer you counsel like my family members but I can help you build your defense and point you all to the best volumes in the Library and Archives.”
“What else?”
“Your family—including the human—need to get here before the Commission arrives at your door.”
Oliver pulled out a cell phone, “Let me make some calls.”