soon?”
“Very impressive, mon cheri. There are not many still alive that know his true connection to me.”
“Or your true connection to the Toussaint Family.”
“Quai, c’est vrai. I was married to Albert Monsignac when I was sixteen years old. The marriage did not last long, but I kept the name. I am, by birth, a Toussaint along with my fraternal twin, Claude. Do enlighten me as to what else of interest you have uncovered about me. Or perhaps you’d like to hear about what I’ve discovered about you?” Cat adjusted her position on him a little, as if she were making herself more comfortable. Then she looked down at him expectantly – waiting for his response.
Moused looked up at her in disbelief. Still trying to steady his breathing after being slammed to the ground, he gave her a look that may or may not have conveyed either ‘die in a fire, evil bitch’ or ‘wiggle your lower half just one more time…yep, just there…’
He suspected he was going for the former, but had ended up with the latter.
Looking very amused, and quite a bit pleased with herself, Cat spoke again.
“So, you would prefer me to go first? Pas de problème.
“Maurice ‘Moused’ Thurman, born in Las Vegas, Nevada and raised near the small, abandoned and derelict town of Nowhere, Nevada. Your parents are wealthy cattle rancher Henry Thurman and his wife, Jewel, and you also have an older sister called Diamond. Neither you nor your sister took any interest in the ranch, which has disappointed your father to no end. When you were around eight years old, Louise and Lucas Balak – a brother and sister who inherited the small town from a distant and eccentric relative – moved to Nowhere, bringing with them their young ward, Napoleon Charming. You and Napoleon became inseparable friends. Such good friends, that neither discovering he was gay nor that he was a werewolf, along with his ‘Uncle’ Lucas, affected your friendship. I believe Napoleon remains your closest friend even to this day, n’est pas? How am I doing so far?”
“Not too bad. You don’t have any popcorn in that large bag of yours, do you?”
“Très drôle, monsieur. But let me continue. Lucas Balak meets his true-mate, an extremely rare female wolf, and he and this Pierce woman – along with some help from her family and friends – begin what is now known as the Nowhere Pack. Here is where my details are a little…fuzzy? This is a word, no?”
“Yes, fuzzy is a word. An example of it used in a sentence could be: My thought processes went a little fuzzy due to the constricted flow of blood to my brain from having a vampire sitting on me.”
“Ah, an excellent example! Let us continue. Somehow this female wolf has a very close relationship with the Segher House – to Hendrick and his right hand man, Oscar. This relationship is what brings the Pack together with the House, and for the first time in vampire history, a Family aligns with wolves. C’est incroyable! I would never have thought this to be possible!”
“And if someone had told me I would have a Louise Brooks look-alike sitting on me in my own elevator, I would have been a disbeliever too.”
“Pour l’amour de Dieu, again with the ‘Louise Brooks’ thing? I’ll have you know that I had already cut my hair like this long before that dance-hall tramp made the bob so popular.
“Now where was I?” Cat continued. “Oh yes. The Segher House becomes best buddies with the Nowhere Pack and this is how you, a computer hacker and genius, come into contact with vampires – more specifically the Retinue and day walker for the Segher House – Reyes Alfonso. Monsieur Alfonso, seeing the potential in you, makes you an offer you can’t refuse. You will work under him until such a time as you will take his place, and in exchange the House puts you through college, amongst other things. You somehow managed to obtain your undergraduate degree from Columbia University in just over a year and then graduated with an MA and PhD from M.I.T. in a record-breaking three years. All of this done by the time you were twenty-two. Very, very impressive, Monsieur Thurman. Of course now you work full-time for Segher Technologies and are the current Ret and day walker for the Segher House.”
“Assistant Ret. Now that I have suffered through an abridged retelling of my life, perhaps I may ask you one or two things about your own?”
“I would be delighted to answer your questions, mon cheri,” Cat said with a wink.
“I would’ve thought life as a Toussaint Enforcer would be just a little more exotic than say, sitting on Assistant Rets in elevators on Christmas Eve. Have you been ordered to kill me? Because if you haven’t, perhaps you would be so kind as to get up so that I might attempt to redirect the blood flow back in the direction of my hands and legs.”
“I think it might be just a little too soon in our relationship for you to be making blood jokes yet, Mousey.”
“And here I was thinking we were getting on so well,” Moused smiled up at her.
Laughing, Cat scooted off him and sat with her back against the elevator wall.
Moused sat up slowly and stretched out his arms, before moving to rest against the wall adjacent to the one Cat was leaning on. As her knees were raised, allowing her to rest her chin on them, Moused had the room to be able to stretch his legs out in front of him.
“I am obviously not here to kill you,” she said in a soft voice, “otherwise you’d be dead already. But you evidently worked this out for yourself, or one of your werewolf watchdogs would have broken into this elevator by now. I know you must have some sort of device or means of summoning security. It is your business after all,” Cat said with a knowing smile.
“While that may be true,” Moused answered, “I was thinking more about where my death would get you. Not on Hendrick Segher’s good side, that’s for sure. With his resources you can pretty much assume that payback would be a bitch.”
“Are you sure of this? You are just a human after all.” Cat’s twitching lip betrayed the fact she was teasing him…again.
“Human or not, I am a card-carrying member of the Segher Family and Hendrick will take it very personally should so much as a single hair on my head get a split end unexpectedly in your presence. I know this will be hard for you to understand, but he feels the same way about members of the Nowhere Pack too. They are aligned with us and are considered family. Contrary to your Family’s beliefs, it is possible to build solid, personal, long-lasting, relationships outside of the vampire world.”
“Henri would say seeing is believing and only time will tell. Real time, that is. Not what can be measured in a human lifespan.”
“Are you here representing Henri Toussaint?” Moused asked.
“Yes and no,” she answered cryptically, leaning her head back while keeping her eyes locked on his. “You obviously know who I am and who I work for. That in itself is quite impressive.”
“Don’t be too impressed just yet, as I only discovered your identity about an hour ago. I haven’t had time to conduct a thorough background search on you…yet. In the little that I did get a chance to read, before you accosted me in this elevator, enlightened me about rumors going around that the Toussaints are looking to join with another Family. From the glance I took of your financial records, I’d say aligning with a stronger Family is really your only option. Henri Toussaint gave Hendrick a little help when he found himself unceremoniously evicted from his home five years ago, but then publically shunned him when the Segher House made the decision to align, politically, financially and personally with the werewolf pack from Nowhere. The Segher House has had no contact with another Family since this shunning. Due to this, it never occurred to any of us that the Toussaints might consider our House as potential allies. I still may need some convincing if that is indeed why you’re here now. Is that why you’re here now?”
“Well, let’s just say that while it’s true that we are looking to merge with another Family, the Segher House is not at the top of Henri’s list. More accurately, the Segher House isn’t even on the list. Henri is very old and very set in his ways. He entered his ‘Giving In’ years a decade ago, yet he still h
olds on. He hasn’t left his rooms in twice as long. Maintaining the Toussaint name is all he cares about, despite the fact there are so few of us left. I think he will Give In within the next year and the other Families, knowing this, are circling as if we have an all-you-can-drink blood buffet going on.”
“He’ll want a House with financial backing, but one looking for the prestige of his name then,” Moused said, thinking aloud.
“Exactement. You should see some of the offers coming in – from dregs of vampire society our Family would never even allow ourselves to be in the same room with back in the day. Now here we are, nothing but our name and our honor, forced to consider aligning with the likes of the Santander Family or the McGees.”
“Both of which acquired their wealth through drug running, racketeering, extortion, investment scams and bookmaking,” Moused added, grateful for the first time to Reyes for his incessant grilling over the histories of the other Families.
“Yes, and both are desperate to be considered as more legitimate in the vampire world. The Toussaint name backing them could do this.” Cat sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, giving Moused a few seconds to full out stare at her.
Her cheek bones were high and her lips heart-shaped. The severe lines of the bob cut framed her face like it was a painting. A