“Understand what?”
“What it’s like to be different, to not belong anywhere.”
“You belong,” I tell her, wondering what she’s getting at.
“I’ve never belonged Tegan, only now with the war and everything, my difference seems to have become all the more obvious. To the vampires I’m a dhamphir who should be among her own kind, and to the dhamphirs who live on the North side I’m a spoiled bitch coddled by her powerful vampire brother.”
“Well I suppose when you put it like that, it does sort of make sense,” I tell her, “although I would never describe you as being coddled.”
She offers me a weak smile. “The aggression is suffocating me, I can’t go anywhere at night other than the club, because the vampires in this city see me as some kind of a threat. They think that because I’m so close to my brother, who has the
favour of the Governor, that I might be spying and giving top secret information to the North siders.” She stops and turns to me. “Now I can understand why you ran away, Tegan. It’s not nice having everyone out for your blood. In your case, literally.”
“Ethan would never let anyone touch you,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she replies, her voice dejected. “So long as I never leave his fucking side.”
“Have you ever thought of maybe going to live with the other dhamphirs?”
She shrugs. “Not really. But it doesn’t matter, they’d never accept me, I might as well be a vampire as far as they’re concerned.”
Silently, I wonder if Gabriel could help Delilah, somehow convince the dhamphirs to open up to her. But that would mean uprooting her whole entire life, and I don’t know how far she’d be willing to go in order to gain the freedom she wants back.
“It will be okay,” she goes on, “soon Whitfield will be the sole Governor of Tribane, and then the vampires will settle down and forget about the dhamphir living among them.” She closes the drawer and hands me a pair of black leggings and a navy wool cardigan. “These are the most elasticated things I own,” she says, offering them to me. I take them and begin slipping the leggings on underneath the robe, Delilah turns around as I pull on the cardigan. I’ll have to go without underwear for the time being.
“Do you really think Pamphrock will just hand over his power like that?” I ask.
“You don’t know how ruthless Whitfield is, or the lengths to which he will go to get what he wants.”
“What do you mean?” I question her further, hoping she might give me some indication of what he plans to do with Rebecca.
“Let’s just say he has something very special that belongs to Pamphrock, and the only way for him to get that very special something back is for him to step down as Governor.”
There’s no doubt she’s referring to his daughter right now. Ethan has already given me a cryptic answer similar to this one. I want to ask her what the special something is, but I have a feeling it would be pointless and only cause suspicion. I have my invitation to accompany Ethan to Whitfield’s party, the only problem is that the party is being held to celebrate his victory. If I’m going to be successful in getting Rebecca back to her dad, I need to make sure that victory doesn’t come to pass. And therefore, I need to figure out a way to get into his house sooner.
I suddenly realise how much I can emote to Pamphrock’s situation, since I’m kind of in the same boat myself. He wants his little girl back and I want my dad back. At least he knows where exactly Rebecca is, I couldn’t be any more clueless as to my dad’s whereabouts. Only I’m ninety-nine per cent certain some warlock or witch has him. Especially after what the dying witch had said about a ‘ritual’.
I sit down on Delilah’s bed for a moment. “Tell me something, just how well does Ethan know Whitfield?” Because I need to know how much they trust one another, something deep down inside of me wishes I could convince Ethan to sever his ties with the man, get out while he still can. It’s probably futile, but I can’t help wishing.
She studies me closely. “Why do you ask that?”
“I just don’t like him, and I’m wondering if I should even be having anything to do with Ethan if he’s partners with a man like Whitfield.”
She seems to accept my answer, then says, “They go way back, I wasn’t even born when Ethan first met Whitfield. They were both fighting in the American Civil War, I think it was the year 1862. Some vampires like to fight in wars, as you might guess, there’s lots of blood to feast on, as well as the opportunity to wreak havoc without any repercussions.”
For a moment I picture Ethan in battle, and a shiver runs down my spine. I would not have liked to be fighting for the opposing side. I do the maths in my head, Ethan must have already been well over 100 then, and then I think further, realising he was born around 1733. God, he really is old.
“Well that’s not at all disturbing,” I say on a sigh.
“You need to stop thinking of vampires as human Tegan, their lives are so much longer, it means their priorities are less – moral. They don’t feel emotions as intensely as humans.” I could counter that there are a lot of very amoral humans in the world also, but I don’t bother.
“What about you, you’re hardly that much different from a vampire. And I think crying in your bedroom because your brother is being strict with you is a fairly intense emotional reaction.”
Delilah shrugs. “Yes, but I will only live half the lifespan of a vampire, and I’m relatively young by supernatural standards.”
My interest piques. Finn had mentioned Delilah is around eighty. “When were you born, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Delilah shoots me a sidelong glance, but I think she’s glad of the opportunity to think about something other than her current situation. “I was born in 1923, my mother was a Swedish woman who our father Alin had a short term affair with. All of our father’s affairs were short term. When she gave birth to me and he heard she’d had a girl, he came and took me from her. For some reason he’d only ever had boys up until that point, and it seemed to fascinate him that he should be capable of fathering a female.”