Blood And Budgets |16+

Chapter 9: The Basement in Romania

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The call came at 3 AM, which was technically Vex's lunch hour.

I was asleep on his couch—my couch now, apparently, since my apartment had become a fae delivery address—when his phone buzzed. Not the normal buzz. A specific ringtone, one he'd programmed in 1987 and never changed: a wolf howl, low and mournful and absolutely Marco.

Vex answered before I could sit up. "This is a bad time."

"Baby, it's always a bad time with you." Marco's voice was tinny, distant, wrapped in Prague static. "But this is worse. Your mother called me."

Vex went still. The kind of still that preceded violence or flight or something older than both. "Beatrice doesn't have your number."

"Beatrice has everyone's number. She has the numbers of people who haven't been born yet. She called to ask about Eleanor. Specifically, she asked if Eleanor was 'as bright as the rumors suggest.'" A pause. Static. Then: "I told her I didn't know. I lied. I do know. I smelled her on you, Vex. In the cemetery. At the farm. She's a beacon, isn't she?"

Vex's hand tightened on the phone. I could see his knuckles whitening from across the room. "Marco—"

"I don't care. I mean, I care, but not the way you think. Beacons are... they're not just food, Vex. They're not just light. They're balance. The supernatural world needs them, the way fire needs oxygen, the way you need—" He stopped. Exhaled. "Your mother knows. She's telling people. The old families. The courts. The things that sleep under mountains. She's making it known that there's a beacon in your territory, and you're claiming her, and that makes you either very powerful or very stupid."

"Which did she say I was?"

"She said you were her son. Which, in Beatrice-speak, means she's planning something." Another pause. "Get out of the city. Take Eleanor somewhere warded. Somewhere old. The basement in Romania—"

"No."

"Vex—"

"I said no." Vex's voice dropped into the grave-register, the coffin-register, the voice that had faced down gods and mothers and his own hunger. "I'm not locking her in a basement. I'm not hiding her. I'm not—" He stopped. Looked at me, and his eyes were black and blown and absolutely terrified. "I'm not my mother. I'm not going to fix this by taking away her choices."

Marco sighed, loud and wolfish and absolutely exhausted. "Then you're going to die, baby. You, her, probably me when I fly back to help. But fine. Fine. I'll be there in two days. Try not to get eaten before then."

He hung up. Vex stared at the phone like it had betrayed him. Maybe it had.

"Romania," I said, because someone had to say it.

"Romania," Vex repeated, and the word sounded like a death sentence. "My father. The basement. The place where my mother puts things that disappoint her."

"You said he was alive."

"He is. He's also mad. Has been for centuries. Beatrice broke him the way she's trying to break me, and when he wouldn't bend, she locked him away and forgot about him." Vex set down the phone. Moved to the window. Pulled back the curtain exactly one inch, and I saw the fae waiting—a shape in the fog, patient and pretty and absolutely not human. "The basement is warded. Old magic. Older than Bethany, older than the coven, older than anything in this city. If we went there, we'd be safe. We'd also be prisoners. The wards don't distinguish between protection and cage."

I stood up from the couch. My back hurt. My neck hurt. Everything hurt, and none of it was from fighting. It was from waiting. From being wanted by too many things.

"Then we don't go to Romania," I said.

Vex turned. "Eleanor—"

"We don't run. We don't hide. We don't let your mother decide what we are." I walked to him, took his hand, felt the chill of his skin and the tension in his fingers and the choice he was making, every second, not to pull away. "Vex. You told the fae I was yours. You told Bethany you were choosing. You told Marco you weren't your mother. So prove it."

"How?"

I thought about that. Thought about the fae outside, the vampires circling, the witches watching. Thought about Beatrice, who had made Vex a hybrid because she was bored and now wanted to unmake him because he was happy. Thought about the basement in Romania, and the mad poet locked inside, and the centuries of loneliness that had made Vex who he was.

"We fight," I said.

"With what? You don't have magic. I don't have an army. We have a deer farm, a coven of mildly inconvenient witches, and a werewolf ex-boyfriend who thinks we're all going to die."

"Exactly." I squeezed his hand. "We have Bethany. We have Marco. We have the fact that everyone in this city thinks you're a joke, thinks you're weak, thinks you're half a monster. And we have the fact that they're wrong. You're not half a monster, Vex. You're half a man. And that half is the one that wins."

He stared at me. Then he laughed, startled and genuine, the laugh that made his fangs seem almost friendly.

"That's the least strategic battle plan anyone's ever proposed."

"Good. Your life was too strategic anyway."

He kissed me. Quick. Desperate. Grateful. Then he pulled back, and his eyes were amber and ancient and almost hopeful, and he reached for his phone again.

"Bethany," he said, dialing. "I need a favor."

"You're calling in a favor?" I asked. "You said you'd never—"

"I'm not calling in a favor. I'm offering a trade." He held up a finger, waiting for the answer, and when it came, his voice was smooth and theatrical and absolutely terrifying in its confidence. "Bethany, High Priestess of the Coven of Mild Inconvenience. I have a beacon. You want to study her. I have a problem. You want to solve it. Let's negotiate."

He hung up. Looked at me. Smiled, small and real and absolutely unhinged.

"She's coming. With cookies, probably poisoned. And Marco's flying in. And the fae are waiting. And my mother is planning." He moved to the bookshelf, pulled out a volume I didn't recognize, and opened it to reveal a hollow space containing a key. Old iron. Heavy. "And we're going to need this."

"What is it?"

"The key to the basement in Romania." He held it up, and it caught the lamplight, and it looked like a promise and a threat and a choice all at once. "Not to hide. Not to run. But to free my father. To show Beatrice that her cages don't hold. That her broken things can heal. That her son—" He stopped. Swallowed. "That her son is not a mistake. He's a man. And he's choosing."

I looked at the key. At Vex. At the fae in the fog and the wolf in Prague and the witch in her moon leggings and the mother who had never once, in four centuries, chosen anything except power.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?"

"Okay. We free your father. We build our weird little army. We show your mother that hunger isn't the only thing that wins." I reached out, touched the key, felt the cold iron against my skin. "And then, Vex Aldridge, you take me to dinner. With utensils. No blood bags. And no basements."

He laughed, and it was real, and it was scared, and it was ours.

"Eleanor Vance," he said, "you are the most inconvenient person I have ever met."

"Good," I said. "Your life was too convenient anyway."

The key turned in his hand, and the fae watched from the fog, and Marco's plane was somewhere over the Atlantic, and Bethany's cookies were probably poisoning someone, and Beatrice was planning, always planning, and we were just two disasters in a locked apartment, holding an iron key and each other, choosing to fight instead of run.

It wasn't a plan. It was barely a hope.

But it was ours.

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[End of Chapter 9]

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