Bound At Midnight

Chapter Five

Sera didn’t sleep, she laid on the four-poster bed fully dressed, boots and all, staring at the ceiling while New Orleans breathed outside the window.

The back garden was dark and fragrant — she could smell jasmine and something earthier beneath it, something that belonged to the bayou, drifting in through the gap she’d left in the window because she needed to know she could get out.

Old habit, every room she’d ever slept in, she identified the exits first and made peace with sleep second.

She counted three ways out of this room. The window, twelve feet to the garden below, manageable, the door — locked from the inside, her key. A servants’ passage she’d spotted in the wall panelling that the house’s age made obvious to anyone who knew what to look for.

Three exits.

It should have been enough to let her rest, but It wasn’t, her mind kept circling back to Lazarus, to the way he’d said long enough with that half-second pause, to the way the fire had surged when their hands met — which she had a dozen rational explanations for, all of which felt thin and unconvincing in the dark.

To the way he’d looked at her in the hallway outside this room, i know, he’d said softly like a man making a quiet confession to himself more than to her.

She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, she needed Maven, she reached for her phone and pulled up the message thread — short and coded the way Maven had insisted on for years, because the old woman didn’t trust technology but trusted exposure even less.

I’m inside, Sera typed, VE, voluntary, tell Cress i’m safe, don’t come here yet, the response came in under a minute, which meant Maven hadn’t been sleeping either.

I know where you are, we need to talk, not by phone.

Sera stared at that for a long moment, you know where i am meant Maven had felt the blood truce snap into place — ancient workings of that magnitude sent ripples through the magical community like a stone through water, and Maven was attuned to every ripple in this city. It had been one of her first lessons, new Orleans talks, you just have to know how to listen.

She typed back, tomorrow, i'll find a way, she put the phone face-down on the nightstand and closed her eyes, she must have slept eventually because she woke to grey morning light and the smell of coffee, which was disorienting enough that she sat up fast, hand already reaching for the obsidian stick on the pillow beside her before her brain caught up with her body.

A tray sat on the small table by the window, coffee, dark and strong-smelling, with a plate of food, and a folded note beneath the cup.

She crossed to it carefully and picked up the note.

The east wing library is unlocked, breakfast is not optional — you burned significant blood last night and your body needs fuel regardless of your feelings about accepting hospitality. — L.V.

Sera read it twice.

She was annoyed by it, she was more annoyed by the fact that he was right — she could feel the deficit in her body, the particular hollow ache that came after heavy blood casting, a reminder that her magic fed on something that her body needed to survive.

She drank the coffee standing up, out of a refusal to make herself comfortable, and ate half the food for the same reason — enough to be practical, not enough to feel like she was settling in.

Then she went to find the library.

The east wing was quieter than the rest of the house, the morning light came through tall windows in long pale columns, catching dust motes and the spines of more books than she’d seen outside of Maven’s private collection. The library was two storeys tall with an iron walkway running around the upper level, and it smelled like aged paper and cedar and something faintly metallic she couldn’t immediately place.

She was reaching for a leather-bound volume on the upper shelf — a text on pre-colonial supernatural law that she’d been trying to locate for three years, when she heard the door open below.

She looked down over the iron railing,

Lazarus stood at the library entrance, looking up at her, he’d changed from last night — dark trousers, a charcoal shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, which was somehow the most human she’d seen him look so far.

He had a book in one hand and a cup of something that was very clearly not coffee in the other.

“You found it,” he said.

“You said it was unlocked.” She pulled the pre-colonial law text from the shelf and held it up, “Is this available to borrow?”

He looked at the title from fifteen feet below with those sharp grey eyes. “That text hasn’t been touched in forty years, Take it.”

She descended the iron staircase and moved to one of the reading tables, setting the book down and opening it with the careful reverence she reserved for old things. She felt his presence move into the room properly, she heard the quiet sound of him settling into a chair on the far side of the library.

They both sat in silence for a while, it should have felt uncomfortable, but It wasn’t, which was its own kind of uncomfortable.

“You identified the servants’ passage,” he said eventually, without looking up from his book.

Sera went still, “Excuse me?”

“In your room, the wall panelling.” He turned a page.,“You found the passage, I noticed you measured the window drop as well, when you crossed to look at the garden last night.”

She stared at him, “You were watching my room?”

“I was in the garden.” He looked up then, and his grey eyes were level, unapologetic. “I don’t sleep, I walk the grounds at night.

The window you left open overlooks the east path.” Something moved in his expression — not quite amusement but adjacent to it. “I wasn’t watching your room, I noticed you cataloguing exits, It’s what I would have done.”

The admission landed in the space between them in an odd way.

She looked back at her book, “And what does that tell you?”

“That you’re careful,” he said, “And that careful people survive longer than brave ones.”

She turned a page she hadn’t actually read,

“Voss,” she said, without looking up,

“Yes.”

“Last night you said Silas Grey has been looking for a pure cast bloodline for fifteen years.” She kept her voice even, clinical.

Researcher’s voice, “My mother died ten years ago, that means he was already looking when she was alive.”

The library was very quiet,

“Yes,” Lazarus said.

“Did he find her?” The question came out steadier than she felt, “Before she died — did Silas Grey find my mother?”

The pause before his answer was three seconds long.

She counted every one of them,

“Sera—”

The library door burst open, Dorian stood in the doorway, and for the first time since she’d met him, all the easy charm had drained entirely from his face.

“We have a problem,” he said. “Someone unlocked the east gate from the inside, an Ashen scout got into the property.” He looked between them, “Brother — they left something on the doorstep.”

Lazarus was already moving,

“What did they leave?” Sera asked, closing her book, Dorian’s eyes found hers. “A photograph,” he said quietly.

“Of your friend Cressida, taken this morning.”

The blood drained from Sera’s face.