Lucky Break Read Online Free PDF Page A

the family?” I asked.
    â€œHumans aren’t vampires,” Tom said, “and they definitely aren’t Marchands.”
    â€œUnlike me,” Nessa quietly said.
    â€œTell me about the last incident,” Ethan said.
    Nessa nodded. “It was October or November, the year before last. We woke to find blood painted across the door.”
    Ethan frowned, looked between them. “I’m not familiar with the symbolism. Does that mean something here?”
    â€œIt’s an insult to Taran,” she said. “An accusation that he’d been blooded, that he’d given up his true nature to me. But Taran talked to Rowan, and there’d been nothing since then.”
    â€œBecause Rowan was the perpetrator?” I asked.
    â€œWe don’t know,” Nessa said.
    â€œLikely because Rowan’s the de facto leader of the family,” Tom said.
    â€œHe isn’t very old to be a leader,” Ethan observed.
    â€œNo, he isn’t,” Tom said. “That’s the nature of a war of attrition. The old guard is taken out, leaving the children—relatively speaking—in charge.”
    â€œYou’re the sheriff,” Ethan said, his tone less than subtle. “Isn’t it your job to keep the peace?”
    Tom’s eyes hardened. “I don’t know how things work in Chicago, Mr. Sullivan, but I’m the only human straddling two supernatural communities that have been at war for over a hundred years. If peace was that easy to come by, the wider world would be a very different place. Sups don’t care much for prisons, and politicians in the county seat, which is miles from here, don’t care much about an interspecies dispute that keeps, as they’ve told me before, ‘the herds thinned.’”
    â€œIn other words, there’ve been no human deaths,” Ethan concluded, “so the humans aren’t interested in helping resolve things.”
    Tom nodded. “That would be accurate.”
    I understood bad blood and revenge. But it all seemed so unnecessary. “Why not just leave?”
    Tom glanced at me. “Because they’re stubborn. Because they’ve got connections to the land. Because they’ve raised families here and they know the world is getting smaller, in part because of what happened in Chicago.” There was a bite in his reference to the fact that Chicago, through another House, had been the first place supernaturals—vampires—had come out of the closet.
    â€œThat puts them both here, facing each other down, virtually unfettered.”
    â€œAt least until we kill each other off,” Nessa said.
    â€œA dire thought,” Ethan said, and there was an edge in his voice that Nessa detected. She glanced up at him.
    â€œI’m so sorry,” she said. “It had been so long since the last attack. I thought, after Taran’s last talk with Rowan, that we were finally done, finally moving forward. That there would be peace here for all of us, and we could get to the business of living. But it seems the violence, the hatred, is unavoidable. I’m so sorry for bringing you into it.” She looked down at her hands again, grief settling into her shoulders. “I’m so sorry.”
    Ethan put a hand over Nessa’s. “We’re here now, and we’ll do what we can.”
    â€œLet’s go back to Taran,” Tom said. “Have you or Taran had any unusual visitors? Anything otherwise unusual happen?”
    Nessa shook her head. “Nothing involving me. Like I said, he was absorbed by his work as usual. If he’d been in any trouble or had any problems, he didn’t mention it to me.”
    â€œWhat about his family?”
    â€œI didn’t talk to them,” she said. “But they were still close. Taran was the unofficial family archivist, so they’d talk about the family’s history, the valley.” She sighed deeply, looked up at