Lady Cassandra wasn't used to working nights. Eve found her yawning, and with her hair on curlers. She evidently didn't care to make an impression with her appearance. Which meant that the info she had was big enough to make an impression on its own.
"Are the werewolves working with the humans? The ones who have a sun bomb and are planning to kill me?" Eve asked straight away, skipping the pleasantries.
Lady Cassandra scowled.
"I tried to contact you as soon as I sensed that you were going to Bones R Ours," she answered.
"As soon as your spies told you, you mean," Eve pointed out. She wondered who in her company could have been one of Lady Cassandra's spies.
"How rude!" Lady Cassandra said. "The spirits don't spy for me, they warn me. And I can sense the shifting currents of the spirit world. Something is coming. Something bigger than all of us."
Eve shrugged.
"The werewolves have sunlight-based weapons, so I'm sure they're involved with whoever sent me that wooden stake. There was no need for me to come here to find that out. But I'm curious, just how involved are they?"
Lady Cassandra gave a pathetic sigh for effect, raising her eyes to the ceiling.
"They are funding the research on the sun bomb. But they don't actually know it," she said.
"I'm sure they must have some idea," Eve insinuated.
"Werewolves are not known for their curiosity," Lady Cassandra answered. "They do not question. They do not see beyond their immediate needs. The black market has weapons they can use, so they pay. They don't ask where the money goes, or what it's for."
"So the sun weapons are illegal then?" Eve asked, suddenly intrigued.
"Nothing is illegal before the authorities know that it exists," Lady Cassandra said. "But it could be argued that they are... a bit discriminatory. After all, they only harm vampires."
Eve nodded. Of course her lawyers would have harped on about the discrimination bit to have the weapons banned if they'd ever been made public. Lady Cassandra was perfectly right: the weapons could not have been sold openly without there being some legal battle over them. One big enough that she would have heard of it.
"I assume the CEO of Bones R Ours doesn't know that the defense system he bought with honest company funds might be less than legal?" Eve said.
"Werewolves do not question such things," Lady Cassandra repeated. "Nothing is illegal until specifically defined as such by the law."
Eve smiled.
"Thank you for calling me," she said. "I've greatly enjoyed our conversation. You've put my mind at ease. Send your fee to my Accounting department, they'll make sure it's paid."
She was almost out of the room when a thought passed through her mind.
"One more question," she said. "You cannot be keeping track of my movements just out of concern for my safety. How many more people have you informed of my current situation?"
It was Lady Cassandra's turn to smile.
"Business is business, even for us spiritual sort," she answered. "I've told everyone who is interested in paying for the information."
"The werewolves? They didn't seem to know. I never thought James could be such a good actor."
"Werewolves are not the curious sort," Lady Cassandra said, shaking her head. "But there are others who might benefit from the information, and who value it highly enough to pay full price for it. Even though they haggle to no end and I have to wrestle the money out of their greedy little hands every time.
"Goblins," Eve said. "How strange that they haven't offered me their protection so far."
"They are waiting for you to be desperate enough to come to them," Lady Cassandra said. "And the longer it takes, the higher their price will be."
"How charming," Eve noticed. "Perhaps I will have to do without their protection altogether. They are overpriced as it is."
"Ah, but what is money in exchange for a life?" Lady Cassandra asked melodramatically.
***
On normal days, Rex would wake up in the evening, when his siblings were at work, and he'd leave for his night shift at Blood Lust without crossing anyone on his way out. Going to bed before anyone else looked like such a bad idea in the morning, when he woke up and they weren't out of the house yet. He would have stayed hidden in his room until they left, but his need to use the toilet was greater than his fear of running into them. The closest toilet was down the hall. A safe trip, he assumed, short enough not to run into anyone. He was wrong.
There were three other doors down the same corridor, and all of them open. As he walked past Felicia's room, a pink dress flew at him and hit him in the face.
"That was for me!" Rina, one of his cousins, shouted from the open door on the other side of him.
He'd barely untangled his wolf ears from the ribbons on the dress when Rolf caught up with him.
"Eager to get to your girlfriend?" Rolf asked, slapping him over the back. "Isn't she asleep all day?"
"Bathroom," Rex explained, pointing to the door at the end of the corridor. That door seemed so hopelessly far away now.
"Grandma wants to see you," Rolf said. "She's not too happy. I bet it's about your girlfriend."
He lengthened the word girlfriend as he said it, and grinned. Rex ran into the bathroom, but any attempt to hide in there for longer than 5 minutes was dashed by loud pounding on the door, and a choir of voices yelling "I need to get ready for work!" and arguing with each other about which one of them would get to use the bathroom first.
***
Downstairs, in the huge Fidel kitchen, Rex's siblings and cousins were getting ready to leave, bickering over who got to drive or fighting over the last pancake. It was noisy, as it always was when everyone was at home. Even the older generation - Rex's parents and aunts and uncles - took part in the general noise. Only Grandma Fidel was quiet, and apparently still in a bad mood. When she saw Rex enter the kitchen, she signaled for him to follow her into the garden.
The Fidel house was built around a large garden, shaded by a cluster of old trees, planted by the Fidel ancestors themselves, back when the house was being built. Grandma Fidel had her own bench under an old cypress tree, where she usually sat to look at the Moon on summer nights. She sat on her bench now, forcing Rex to stand in front of her. He expected another lecture about his boss, but instead she started off with a different approach.
"So you seem to have a job now," she said. Her face showed that she wasn't pleased.
"I've had a job for a few days, Grandma," Rex said meekly.
"Good, good," Grandma Fidel said. "Your boss seems to like you too. A rare thing. Do you expect you'll be there long?"
Rex gulped. Every day, he feared that he might lose that job. Every day, he seemed to come within an inch of getting fired. But he couldn't admit that to his grandmother.
"I think so," he said.
"Good, good," Grandma Fidel said, looking just as displeased. "A good stable job is all you need. Now would be a good time to look for a wife. You have your own money."
Rex felt his eyes bulging out of their sockets. He had heard of Grandma Fidel having forced an aunt or uncle into marriage before, but she hadn't talked about this sort of thing to any of Rex's older brothers and sisters. Shouldn't they be the ones getting married first?
"I'll find you a nice wolf girl," Grandma Fidel went on. "Someone from a good family."
This explained everything. His grandmother wasn't going to lecture him on his choice of a girlfriend, she was going to just swoop in and change that choice. Rex found the whole thing so unfair especially because he wasn't even actually dating Eve. This was all Rolf's fault for talking nonsense. But it was too late to try to clear up the misunderstanding now. His grandmother would have just thought he was lying to get out of the arranged marriage.
"Thank you, Grandma," Rex said with all the deference due to the head of the pack. "I'll think about it."
Grandma Fidel's face elongated into a snarling wolf's head.
"You will not think about it, boy," she barked, "you will do it!"
"Yes, Grandmother," Rex mumbled.
He instinctively backed away from her, until his back was pinned against the tree behind him.
"Good," his grandmother said, turning back into full human form. She seemed appeased. "I'll arrange it with the girl's family today, and you can meet her for lunch tomorrow. Make a good impression!"