The Vampire’s Servant
Chapter 145

We didn't get much of use after dinner. Just more about how Fenton believed he was going to win. How I was going to fail and go insane. And more insults about me, my friends, and my family.

Everyone else headed to bed at eleven, but I stayed up until one in the morning working on reading through the spell book. Amy was contacting all the witches and covens in her collective, looking for people who might be descended from Fenton. I had a great deal of hope. When I finally went to bed, Gray was there. He was sleeping and looked very peaceful. I got into my pajamas and crawled into bed next to him. His arms went around me almost instinctively and I started drifting off to sleep.

-

Morning came and I was so ready for training. Marius and Talia both commended me on my pace during the morning run. I was a little way behind them, but I didn't mind. I was thinking of other things while running.

Mostly, I was thinking of what kind of spell would be cast on one person but keep on after that one was dead. Preston told me that most spells would wear off once the person died unless it was cast on a family.

The spells tied to the wards kept the other two spells focused on the area. Preston was pretty sure that this spell was cast on the title of 'Master of the territory. He said it was rare, but there was precedence for it. In one town, the local coven had cast a spell on the title of mayor. Anyone accepting the title would be unable to use the office for selfish means.

He thought it was amusing because of how often people got involved in politics for selfish reasons. The more power the position had, the more it took to cast the spell. A coven could cast it on a mayor, but it would take several covens for a governor and still more for a senator or president. No one could get that many covens to cooperate for a spell like that. Sadly.

Learning to fight with Marius was a trial. He really didn't hold back and I was learning more about the tricky things he would do in a fight. He told me that he would sometimes use his mind control to make his opponents disoriented and then he would attack. He couldn't do that to me, but it gave me ideas.

By the end of training, I was a little tired and had a few bruises. That made Gray growl at Marius. I was healing a lot faster than normal, though, because most of my bruises looked old by the time we went in for breakfast.

After I had eaten my pudding, and a few other things Gray had put on my plate, I went up to shower and change. Gray, Harmony, and I would be going in to school a little later, since we didn't have a first period class.

We spent our morning in the office with Preston and Talia. Marius had left to do more research and work on his torture plan. I was grateful he was coming to help train me every morning. I wanted to be stronger, to keep everyone safe.

Harmony, Preston, and I had to work to ignore Fenton. He was still trying to distract us and get under our skin. We had successfully ignored him for most of the morning. Until Lisa came in with his food.

She had something a little different this morning. It smelled like real food and not raw fish. Lisa smiled at me.

"I thought it couldn't be healthy for him to just eat fish all the time, so I went online and looked up recipes for homemade cat food. I hope you don't mind." She said.

"I appreciate it. Keeping him healthy is important." I replied, turning back to my work.

She opened the smaller slat in the cage where we would put in Fenton's food without risking him escaping. I glanced over as he approached the bowl and sniffed it. He started eating and I was relieved. "You may do a lot wrong, but at least you keep your n****r in line." Fenton said.

Preston and Harmony gasped. I didn't know that word. From the angry look on Harmony's face, though, I could tell it wasn't good.

"How dare you!?" Harmony shouted. "After she went through the trouble to make you something other than fish. You can't talk about her like that!"

"Harmony, it's alright. I couldn't understand what he said, but I'm used to that. You don't grow up in a rural area without hearing some bigoted bullshit. I'm going to do my other work now." Lisa told us and left the room.

"In my time, that wasn't as offensive as it seems to be now. I'll have to tuck that away for future use." Fenton chuckled.

I sighed. He was really trying to break our focus in any way that he could. Harmony was really easy to anger, she'd always had the hotter temper among the three of us. She got really offended on behalf of others too. She blew her top the first time Fenton called Sean a slur.

One thing that actually upset him, was that the only time I rose to his bait was last night. He would always stop laughing and yell at me. He had no idea what sort of environment I had been raised in. Yelling didn't fluster me, it only made me work harder. "Aren't you going to defend your little servant girl?" Fenton asked incredulously.

"She's not bothered, I'm not bothered." I replied and focused on my work.

"How can you not be bothered?" Harmony asked.

"I don't know that word or what it means. I only know that you find it offensive. If I take the time to learn, I will also find it offensive, I'm sure. Right now, that word is not nearly as important as a word I heard yesterday. A word I'm intent on finding. If you keep letting him rile you up like this, I'm going to have to ask you to work in the library, Harmony." I said, curtly.

"More like a vampire every day." She muttered and returned to her book.

I smiled. That may be an insult to some people, but it wasn't to me. It just made me happy. I needed to be more like a vampire in order to run this territory and this team.

An hour later, Gray said it was time to go to school. We would only be there for an hour and a half. I was looking forward to finishing my test and coming home.

The test had been pretty easy. A lot of the stuff had been covered in the test prep we did in the last week of school. If all the exams were this easy, I knew I could pass them and make Victor proud.

I sent Gray in, alone, to try and get Fenton to talk. He was more forthcoming than he had been last night. He said that, even if we did find the spell, we wouldn't be able to break it without him. Then he devolved into more name calling and mockery.

Once everyone was home, we went into the office. Harmony, Cam, Sean, and Rosario decided to take their books into the library. I felt that was for the best. Preston was pretty good at ignoring Fenton and I didn't let him under my skin.

When the alarm to heat the beds went off, I went up to Victor's room and turned on the blanket for Finn and Talia. Today was the first day Victor would need to be fed. I went down to the kitchen to see what we had for him.

The bags of blood were all negative types. No AB negative, though. That was rare and the donors who had it made more money as live donors than as bag donors. I wanted Victor to have what he liked. I wanted him healed as soon as possible. My blood was more powerful than a regular human's.

I pulled out my phone and dialed Drew. It seemed to take forever for him to pick up. I had to reach him though, I needed to talk to Silence about drawing my blood for Victor.

"Echo! I haven't heard from you in weeks! How's school? How are you? How's Victor? I heard about the curse. Do you need something from me?" He asked as soon as he picked up.

"Hey, Drew. I'm fine. School is fine. Victor is safe. I need to talk to Silence." I said.

"You know she's not awake yet." Drew replied.

"I need to come see her as soon as she can have visitors. Please." I told him.

"I'll call you once she's up and ready to see people. You sure it's not something I can do for you?"

"You could, but I wanted to check in with her. I'm the Master of this territory now. I need to be kept informed of how the vampires are doing. I worry about falling out of the loop. Everything will be fine, Drew. Trust me." I promised and hung up. I told Lisa and Wendell that no one was to feed Victor and I'd be doing it later. They were to tell anyone who wanted to feed him what was going on and that they were to speak to me. The girls nodded and said they would take care of it.

All I had to do was go back and work on the curse until I got the call from Drew. That was easy enough. All I wanted to do anymore was look through the books and try to break this curse. It was my responsibility to save everyone, to save Victor. While I was heading into the office, Gray came out. He had a concerned look on his face. I went to him and took his hand.

"What's wrong, Gray?" I asked.

"You're getting too wrapped up in your work. I know you can't feel what Victor and I feel, because you don't have our marks, but I can feel what you feel. I know that you're strained. Come with me. We're going to de-stress you." He said and pulled me back to the kitchen and out the back door.

For all that I'd had them use light tinting on the windows, it was still much dimmer than it was outside. I squinted at him in the early afternoon light. Gray ran off and returned with some trimming shears for the garden.

He pulled me over to my plants and dropped my hand. I looked at him confusedly as he handed me the trimmers. Gray smiled.

"Thirty minutes in the garden. Then you can go back to poring over your books." Gray told me.

"Gray, I have a lot of work to do." I sighed.

"Rosario said your garden has been sad since you haven't been out here much. I know you don't want your plants to be sad. I bet they're happy to see you." He winked.

I turned to the garden and started walking through the rows, clipping dead flowers and unruly branches. It was actually very refreshing. This was something I was used to and could do with confidence.

In the search for the answers, I felt nervous. Like I could mess everything up. I worked even harder to look confident because of it. Everyone responded well to it, too.

While I worked, plants with vines would reach out to me. Branches would reach to be nearer to my hands. I stroked the leaves of the plants gently. It was very relaxing.

I worked in the garden until my phone started ringing. It was starting to get dark, the sun was barely even visible above the horizon. That had to have been more than thirty minutes.

"You lied to me." I grumped at Gray.

"I tried to get your attention, but you were into what you were doing. I think you needed the break more than you realized." He replied with a soft smile.

Drew's name showed up on my phone screen and I answered it. I needed to get blood for Victor. Then I could go back to searching for answers. "Hello?" I answered.

"Mistress Nightshade, this is Silence. How may I be of assistance this evening?" Silence asked on the other end of the line.

"Silence, I need to speak with you privately. Do you have time to meet with me this evening?" I replied.

"I have an hour before I start interviews for a few prospective donors. Can you get down here in that time?" She inquired.

"I can be there in less than five minutes. Just stand in a clear area." I told her.

"I'll see you soon." Silence said and hung up.

I handed the shears to Gray and headed toward the house to wash my hands. He ran to put them away and met up with me in the hallway as I was coming out of the powder room downstairs. "What's going on?" Gray asked.

"I need to meet with Silence. I'm going to use my ability to travel over there and I'll be home as soon as I'm done. Make sure no one goes to feed Victor while I'm gone." I told him.

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"No. This is vampire business. I need you here looking after Victor and reading through the magic books. Please, Gray." I smiled and took his hand. "Can you do that for me?"

He looked at our joined hands and sighed. There was a little sadness in his eyes. I didn't know what to say to make him feel better.

"I will. Will there ever be a time when you do things like this for me, though? It feels like you're always focused on Victor. Even when the curse wasn't affecting him as much, I was like an afterthought. When do I get to be your focus?" Gray said softly, looking away from me.

"As soon as I've fixed Victor. I remember you saying we'd go on a honeymoon after our wedding. That will be just you and me. No Victor, no Val, no Harmony, and no curse. I love you, but I have to focus on other things right now." I told him.

"Tell me why you're going to see Silence and I'll trust that you're telling the truth. That you're not just blowing smoke up my a*s until you can have your Victor again." He insisted.

"I'm going to have her draw some blood for me so I can feed it to Victor. He needs powerful blood to help him heal. I have powerful blood and it's his favorite type." I answered.

"Why can't you just ask Silence to supply you with some powerful blood? Why does it have to be yours?" Gray pressed.

I sighed. "Silence may not have anyone as powerful as me. It's not like she's taking all of my blood, Gray. All we need is two bags. That should last more than enough time to get Victor back. One bag is about three cups of blood. That's six feedings right there. No risk to me. No waiting while Victor tries to heal using human blood. I know this will work, Gray. I can feel it."

This was taking too long. I didn't want to keep Silence waiting. I needed to get going. Gray still looked upset, but there was nothing I could do. No argument was getting through to him.

"I'll see you when I get back. This is really only a small thing, Gray. I promise, everything will go back to normal once I figure out the curse." I said.

He turned away from me. "Sure.... Normal.... I guess I shouldn't expect more. I'll do what you wanted. Have a nice visit with Silence."

Gray walked toward the office. I wanted to stop him and talk more, but I was torn because I also wanted to go take care of this blood situation. I'd figure it all out and talk to him later. Gray would understand. I'd make him see that this was the right thing.