Page 11 of Just Dare Me
Rook takes his third helping out to the couches. Oliver sits with Charlie and Ren at the table. They’re eating from bowls of sugar cereal, intently studying a maze on the back of the box.
I sit at the island with Parker. He cuts a thin, dainty bite from his steak. As he chews it silently, he places his knife and fork gently on his plate, then dabs at the corners of his mouth with a cloth napkin. “She didn’t say who should be at this meeting?”
I hold my steak in both hands, biting huge chunks straight off the bone, talking around the mouthful. “Nuh-uh. All she said was her people wanted to meet my people.”
“Red flag, right there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would she choose you as a liaison, when she could simply contact the Agency to arrange a discreet and secure meeting at her leisure? Madison West would be immensely interested in opening a dialogue with the Windsor clan, and everybody knows it. They would be treated like royalty, enjoying a direct audience with our director. Why slink in the shadows of a back alley to exchange insults with a field agent?” He gives me a quizzical look.
“Oh, I was waiting for you to say ‘No offense,’ but I guess not.”
“Don’t you see? She went directly to you, and didn’t care to specify who else should be at this meeting. Obviously, you are the only one whose attendance she wanted to guarantee. Anyone else is irrelevant.”
“You do a good impersonation of her.”
“She wants you for something, and she’s taking care to avoid official channels to get it. I don’t like it.”
“You know what she didn’t like? When I told her to stay away from Jay. It’s like she’d never stopped to consider—it had never crossed her mind—that there’s people out there who would dare to hate her. How delusional is that? Do all vamps think they’re a gift from the gods?”
“No. Just the queens, and they are quite serious about it, believe me.”
“Wait, for real?”
“A vampire queen is enabled and encouraged, both by her sire and the entire clan, to see herself, and to be seen, as an everlasting personification of all that should be venerated.”
I make a buzzer sound through a full mouth. “Try again, with smaller words.”
“They’re treated like living idols. Literally a gift from the gods. There’s not a second of her life in which she is not worshipped in every way possible.”
“In other words, this Dominique chick’s a spoiled brat?”
“She should be pitied, really. With her sire dead, she will be exposed to the social complexities of ruling a clan, full of never-ending power struggles and emotional manipulation from those she thought she could trust.”
“So her rose-colored glasses get ripped off.”
“Ripped off, stepped on, and crushed into a million tiny bits.”
“Wow, that’s something to think about.” I chomp another bite off the bone. “Okay, I thought about it, and I still don’t feel bad for her.”
“Don’t feel bad, feelcautious. In such a compromised emotional state, who knows what she’ll do?”
“You mean, she could throw a temper tantrum?”
“She’s obviously making a play of some sort, and for it she needs you.”
“I guess we’ll find out on opening day. I’d ask you not to tell Madison West about this, but I know that’s not going to happen.”
“I had considered it.”
“Stop.”
“Honestly. Tell me your reasoning.”
“Duh! Because she’ll flip out and turn this little meet-and-greet into a full-scale operation that Dominique will see from a mile away.”
“Very likely. So the question is, should we bother the director with something before we even hear what it is? For all we know, Dominique only wants to take poker lessons from you.”
