Roksana didn’t know what her role would be in the upcoming war, but she could no longer walk the earth killing the undead, believing every single one of them to be a scourge on humanity when she knew differently. They could be bad or good or shades in between, just like humans. She wore one’s ring on her finger. Proudly.
Roksana took a deep breath and climbed out of bed. Her backpack sat on the ground near the bathroom door and she brought it into the bathroom with her, laying out a pair of black pants and a moss green sweater, though she didn’t remember buying anything involving color. Had Elias slipped it in? That thought put a smile on her face as she climbed into the shower, ducking her head under the hot spray and letting the water soothe her muscles. She planted her hands on the tile wall and tried to formulate a speech to give Inessa, but ten minutes later while blow-drying her hair, she still had nothing concrete. Probably didn’t matter anyway.
Her mother was nothing if not a wild card. Improvising would be key.
Roksana was surprised upon reentering the bedroom to find it was still empty. Where had Elias gone?
“Gross, Roksana. Day two and you are already a clingy wife,” she muttered.
Still, she frowned at the door, willing it to open while zipping on her boots and shrugging on her coat. She felt in the coat pocket for the red envelope from Tilda, holding it in front of her as she paced. What were the contents?
“None of your business,” she said firmly, tapping it against her thigh, a curious little tickle forming on the back of her neck. “Why don’t you just leave now? You don’t want Elias to come with you, right? This is your chance to sneak out and handle business without him. Really, your relationship is founded on frustrating one another. Think of the makeup sex later.”
What was she waiting for?
A kiss goodbye? A disagreement with her husband about him coming along?
Da. Kind of.
Where was he?
Roksana sat down on the edge of the bed, balancing the game piece on her knee. A laugh worked its way up from her belly, sounding odd in the empty room. “I know what you’re doing, vampire husband. You’re leaving me to my own devices, so I will open the envelope. You do not agree with my blind faith. That was very obvious. But it’s not going to work.”
She threw the red envelope up in the air and caught it, her smile slowly dissipating.
“Dammit.”
After a second of hesitation, Roksana shoved to her feet, shrugging her coat off on the way to the portable coffee pot located on top of the mini-fridge. She took it to the bathroom and filled it with water, hitting the button to make it boil, pacing back and forth while waiting. When it was finished, she cursed, holding the sealed part of the envelope over the steam, loosening the glue.
A folded sheaf of papers fell out onto the surface of the mini-fridge. She stared at them for several breaths before snatching them up. The words on the papers were sloppily handwritten and it took Roksana a moment to figure out what exactly she was looking at. Names and addresses? Of whom?
Then she saw her own name. First and last.
With the address of her crummy Coney Island apartment.
She flipped to the next page, recognizing two more names. Then a third and fourth.
These were slayers.
Slayers located in America, to be exact. Who had compiled a list of names and locations? They were meant to remain undetected. A list like this could endanger them if it fell into the wrong hands. Before Jonas took the vampire throne, his High Order predecessors would have found this information very valuable. And now…with vampire slayings on a steep rise, maybe Jonas would want this information so he could handle the problem.
But why did Inessa want these names and addresses?
As Russia’s slayer queen, Inessa wouldn’t be privy to this information. Only the American slayer queen would—
Had Tilda, a fae, been the American slayer queen?
Roksana refolded the papers and stuffed them back into the envelope, sealing it as much as possible. Inessa must have known Tilda would be abandoning her post. She must have wanted this information for safekeeping. To protect the American slayers. That was the only explanation Roksana could fathom. Her mother was trying to do the right thing. Keep this harmful information out of the hands of the wrong people. With the dark uprising taking place back in the States, Inessa didn’t want these slayer identities to become a tool to do harm.
Breathing easier, Roksana put her coat back on and secured the envelope in her pocket. Fear had been her chief emotion upon waking this morning, but she felt a lot more confident about facing her mother now that she’d discovered proof of Inessa’s good faith.