“But he hates me. There’s no way he can be impartial.”

  She interlaced her fingers between her knees. “It’s not about partiality, it’s about power. Besides, Thomas never lets his emotions override his judgement. It’s one of his many infuriating qualities.”

  “I’m so fucked.” I put my head in my hands.

  “The Regent of the North is technically entitled to a vote as well, and I heard word he’d be in town for this one.”

  I had no idea how all this stuff fit together, but I’d run into Halfdan the Shaper back when I’d been dating Patrick. There’d been a big territory dispute between him and the local werewolf pack, and I’d been stuck in the middle of it, as usual. I was pretty sure I wasn’t really on his radar anymore, which is how I like to keep it when it comes to shady vampire power brokers.

  “That just leaves the Council members: the High Priestess, the Emperor, Justice, Temperance, and Death.”

  I looked up again. “And Death?”

  “They’re just titles and largely symbolic.”

  “Death?”

  “I told you, they’re just symbolic, but he is a bit of a fucker. His name is Diego de Flores. He was an inquisitor in life and it shows. He’s coldhearted and ruthless to the point of sadism, and he doesn’t like me very much. But he cares about the truth, and if he genuinely believes you’re innocent, he’ll say so.”

  “But I’m not innocent.”

  “Everyone’s innocent of something. The hearing isn’t about whether you stabbed Aeglica. It’s about whether you murdered him. Whether you planned his death with, as they say, malice aforethought, and whether I ordered you to do it.” She gave me an odd little half smile. “You know, you’re sort of making history here, sweeting. We’ve never actually put a mortal on trial before.”

  For some reason, I didn’t find that particularly comforting. “What makes me so fucking special?”

  “Well, not to put too fine a point on it: me. I have enemies, Kate, and they can use this. In a way, I’m as much on trial as you are.”

  There was a pause. I wasn’t quite sure, but I think I was giving her a look.

  She patted my arm consoling. “Don’t get me wrong. This is only the second time a Prince of England has been destroyed, so you really have achieved something.”

  Here lies Kate Kane. She achieved something. Beloved daughter. Sorely missed.

  “Okay, so what about the rest of them?” I asked.

  Julian eased herself down beside me, tucking her velvets up so they didn’t trail in the dust. “The High Priestess goes by Sybil. She was a high priestess of something, back in the day. She’s three parts bonkers and, frankly, I don’t know why she’s here.”

  “Great.”

  “The Emperor is Abu Ishaq Jabril al-Rashid. He’s a risen vampire, like Aeglica was.”

  Risen vampires are a whole different deal to turned vampires. Basically they’re people who were so pissed off about dying that it just didn’t stick. They’re insanely hard to kill—though, as I now knew, not impossible—and they were far more likely to have their own weird powers. Obviously, every vampire bloodline ultimately traces back to one of the Risen at some point.

  “There’s an unconfirmed rumour,” added Julian, “that Sir Caradoc killed him at the Siege of Jerusalem back when they were both mortal. So he might be bearing a useful grudge.”

  That was all very well in theory but I had no idea how it would work in practice. So, that guy who killed you that one time. Bet you’re mad at him, huh? How about letting me off?

  “He’s one of the big players in Istanbul, which means he’s very, very good at politics.”

  I slid her a sideways glance. “Why, what’s up with Istanbul?”

  “It used to be Byzantium. It was also briefly capital of the Roman Empire. Its vampire population is more than a little factionalised.”

  “Who’s next?”

  “Justice. That’s Kemsit. She’s another Risen. She spent her first centuries of unlife buried in the tomb of King Aha. She’s a little . . . disconcerting.”

  That did not sound good. “Disconcerting how?”

  Julian shrugged. “She looks about twelve, she’s five thousand years old, and she has a creepy obsession with death and judgement.”

  That sounded even worse. “Next?”

  “Temperance is Dr. Acton Knight—”

  “Wait. You mean Patrick’s dad?”

  “Oh, is that what he told you?” She managed not to laugh at me, but she made damn sure I knew she’d managed it.

  “Yeah, I used to go to dinner with the family all the time.”

  “And you never noticed that they looked nothing alike?”

  “He had two gay dads. I was pretty sure he was adopted.”

  “Well, he was in a sense.” Julian smirked. “He’s one of Acton’s waifs and strays. To be honest, you probably know Acton better than I do.”

  “We haven’t spoken in ten years.”

  Julian blinked at me. “Vampire. Ten years is nothing. I have people I consider to be reasonably good friends who I haven’t spoken to since the nineteenth century.”

  So, to get out of this alive I had to win over two vampires princes, one of whom I’d had thrown out of a window by the guy I’d killed, a bloke I’d met once when I was seventeen, a crazy priestess, a power player from the place that invented plotting, a five-thousand-year-old adolescent, an honest-to-God member of the Spanish Inquisition, and my ex-boyfriend’s dad.

  I was so very, very fucked.

  Want to read more of Shadows & Dreams?

  Visit riptidepublishing.com/titles/shadows-dreams-kate-kane-paranormal-investigator-2.

  EXCERPT: PORTRAIT OF A CROSSROADS

  Since finding her father’s body at the bottom of the basement stairs, Annette’s been drifting through her days, watching cars pass down the rural Ontario crossroads beside her house. Then she meets Sadie, a tattooed, world-weary, newly single portrait artist. Something about Sadie awakens something in Annette—the essence she captures in her subjects, perhaps, or the way the old familiar crossroads seem so fresh and promising from the view out Sadie’s window. Their slowly heating friendship melts into passionate nights, and somewhere along the way, Annette discovers that her lover has helped her to discover her own endless worlds of possibilities.

  Available now.

  Ebook: ISBN: 978-1-62649-011-6

  riptidepublishing.com/titles/portrait-crossroads

  Sitting on her bed in her upstairs bedroom, Annette heard a moving van pull in next door.

  She didn’t have to look to know what it was doing. Living near the four-way intersection of two country highways, she was used to the nuances of the sounds vehicles made. She knew the deep rumble of transport trucks and the whooshing sound of their air brakes at the corner. She knew the jangled sound of cement trucks and the way they squealed when they stopped. Then there was the frequent hum of cars as they traveled the road between Burford and Brantford, Ontario. The intersection wasn’t populous enough to have a name. There were only six houses on it, all lined up on one corner. The other corners were farm fields.

  Curious, Annette stood and looked out the window. A Ryder truck had backed up to the two-level brick, a house she’d always liked to think of as old until her father, before he’d died, had popped that bubble of romanticism. “It was built eighty years ago, tops,” he’d said. “Cracks in the drywall. No foundation.” Annette suspected he hadn’t really known what he was talking about, but she’d always listened and nodded.

  She supposed it was time to go downstairs. It was early July, and the summer days were dripping by. She turned off the fan before she left her room—there was the electric bill to consider, after all—and on her way down the steps heard Christian’s motorcycle pull into the driveway.

  She reached the front porch in time to see him take off his helmet. In those moments, when he removed the headgear and his hair blew in the breeze, she was proud he was her older brother. He was twenty-four now, six years older than her and three years older than her other brother, Angel. Christian hauled his leg over the bike and took heavy steps up to the porch.

  “New people moving in, huh?” he said, looking back at the van.

  “No,” Annette said. “One of them is moving out.”

  “Which one? The one with the tattoos?”

  “I don’t know. There were two women. It just looks like one of them is going.”

  Christian popped a cigarette in his mouth as two men carried a loveseat up the ramp to the van. “They can’t keep anyone in that house more than five years. Cracked drywall. No foundation.”

  Annette said nothing as Christian headed into the house. Sitting on the swinging seat, she used her feet to create a gentle rocking. She looked down at her favourite sundress, which was white and flowed around her slender legs. She’d just shaved her legs using a fresh pink razor. She tried to get the most use she could out of them before she had to count dimes to buy a new package. There were no stores nearby, and Annette currently had no job, and it was the sort of thing Christian and Angel never thought to grab when they shopped.

  Overhead, a plane from the Brantford municipal airport sounded like a cross between a Toyota and a Cessna. When the planes were small, as they often were, it was hard to tell whether the sound was a vehicle or an aircraft. Hearing one now, she couldn’t help but think of the day she’d found her father. The air show had been on, and large B-52s had loomed overhead like menacing birds, their engines loud enough to rattle the dishes. She’d listened to the cups and plates tremble in the cabinet as she’d stepped carefully down the uneven basement steps and saw him hanging from a rafter.

  Looking over now, she saw a lithe woman walk out with the movers and gesture toward the truck. Annette leaned forward and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. That was one of the women who lived there. She looked tall, and her olive-toned skin bore a hint of a deeper tan. A tattoo of a vine climbed one of her lean calves. Annette assumed the other woman was moving—the one with the short platinum hair—because she’d wheeled a large suitcase down the driveway and thrown it in her car. She’d driven away, and Annette hadn’t seen her since.

  The tattooed woman turned slowly toward her and Annette realized she was staring. She took a quick breath and shifted her gaze to another cluster of cars lining up single file for the light. They were mostly family cars: Chevys and SUVs. Some of them were probably going to the beach, Annette figured, but there’d be none of that for her today. She sat back in the swing and rocked it with her bare foot until Christian opened the screen door.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m going to barbecue. Terri’s coming over. Can you help me peel potatoes?”

  Annette got up and headed into the kitchen, where Christian already had a pot of potatoes in the sink. He’d stripped down to his tank top to show the dagger tattoo on his shoulder, the same tattoo every man in her family had, a tradition started by their grandfather. She remembered seeing it on her dad’s shoulder when he walked around without a shirt in the summer, his leathery skin sunburned a deep red that turned the tattoo from pale blue to purple.

  Christian handed her a peeler and they stood at the sink, peeling potatoes in unison. For long moments, they shared the same comfortable silence Annette had always associated with her brother. The only vehicle they had was his motorbike, so when Annette needed to go somewhere, she climbed on the back. When she thought of him, she thought of those long rides with only the sound of the rumbling engine between them and the wind that blew her shirt sleeves like sheets on a clothesline. They seemed happiest without words.

  An hour later, Annette sat in the backyard with Christian, Terri, Angel, and a few of their friends. They all smelled of leather and fresh beer, and had colourful tattoos poking out of their shorts and shirt sleeves.

  Annette saw the woman next door standing in her backyard, her dark hair tied in a short ponytail, her hand shading her eyes as she looked upward. Annette turned and looked in the same direction and saw a small plane in the sky.

  “We should invite her over,” Annette said, watching Angel lick chicken wing sauce off his fingers.

  “The woman next door?” he said. “They’re fucking dykes, man.”

  Annette watched the dark dusting of stubble on his face as he took a swig of his beer. His bottle-blonde girlfriend sat next to him, her tanned breasts exposed by the low cut of her tank top. Behind him, Christian hoisted Terri over his shoulder and smacked her ass before she shrieked and he put her down.

  Annette looked over at the woman again, wondering if she would look back. But she just nodded to herself, as if satisfied, and headed back into the house.

  The next day, Annette sat on the front porch and watched a little plane fly low overhead and disappear over the house. She was in another sundress, her legs even more tan than the day before.

  She put her hands on the stack of college brochures in front of her. They were thick and smelled like fresh ink, their covers colourful and happy. On one, three students stood under a tree, their smiles showing rows of perfect white teeth. On another, students hunched over desks, hard at work on exams.

  She opened the first one. Sheridan College. One of her friends was going there. The next was Mohawk College, which was the closest to home. But even as she pondered the list of potential majors, she couldn’t decide which one she wanted.

  She remembered having hobbies. When she was eight, her dad had started paying for dance classes, and she’d ridden with her friend’s mom once a week with her leotard stuffed in a plastic bag. She’d done that for five years, pirouetting through recitals, curtseying through rounds of applause. She’d felt delicate and limber when she danced, even when her body had started to change and she’d flushed with embarrassment when she’d worn a bra under her sweater, hoping none of the boys at school would notice.

  She’d read, too. She used to love to read. She’d be assigned romantic classics—Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice—and devour them in a week. She’d ride her bicycle down the road to a nearby forest and recite “The Lady of Shalott” by a babbling brook like Anne Shirley had done in Anne of Green Gables.

  But somehow, in the last year, it had all stopped. She still went out with friends occasionally, the ones with cars that idled in the driveway as she grabbed her coat. But everyone else picked up and ran when the final bell had rung on her high school career, leaving Annette standing in place as streams of cheering students raced past her. She hadn’t been ready to leave high school. She didn’t know where to go now. At some point, she’d known what made her unique, but she didn’t know anymore.

  She left the brochures and walked to the edge of the porch, watching the willowy woman trim hedges in front of the house next door. The woman wore her hair in a little ponytail, and a billowing white shirt and jean shorts. Annette inspected the ink on her leg. It appeared to be a vine, maybe, or a thorny collection of roses. The woman snipped another branch and looked up at Annette, and from a distance, Annette felt the eye contact. It was sudden and numbing, and Annette waved. The woman waved back.

  Annette had never thought about the women being lesbians. She’d had plenty of friends she could see herself living with. When her dad died, she almost had lived with one of them. Her best friend Marnie’s parents had arrived at their front door asking to meet with Christian, who’d sat at the kitchen table speaking in a low, polite voice with them. In the end, Annette had watched from the top step as they left. “Let us know if you need anything,” Mrs. Williams had said, and when Christian shut the door behind them, he’d sighed. She’d had to ask him three times since then before he’d finally admitted to her what the conversation was about.

  Annette tried to recall if she’d ever seen the two women kiss. She’d seen them unload groceries together, a little domestic action that could happen between anyone. Before she realized it, she’d stepped off the porch and headed across the invisible barrier between their houses.

  “Hi,” Annette said.

  “Hi,” the woman said. She chopped at the bush again, snipping before she stood back and examined it. “I’m having trouble getting this cedar bush even. They told us when we bought it that it needed a special touch.”

  The bush did look a little butchered. One side was longer than the other, and there was a big empty spot cut all the way to the bark near the top. “What’s the problem with it?”

  “It has to do with the way the branches fall. Or . . . something. I wasn’t paying attention. Otherwise I’d know.” She took off her glove and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. Annette wasn’t sure how old she was. She guessed late twenties—older than Christian and younger than her old high school science teacher. But Annette suspected her guess was skewed by the mature situations in which she saw her. She was a responsible woman who could direct movers. She was a mature homeowner trimming shrubs. She had a calm presence overall, from the solidity of her hand movements to the sure way she smiled. Annette imagined her chest rising and falling in slow, even movements, as if her heartbeat never quickened.

  The woman dropped the other glove on the ground and extended her hand. “Have we ever met? I’m Sadie.”

  “Annette.” When they shook hands, Sadie seemed to pump hers harder than necessary, as if anxious to formalize the moment.

  Sadie dropped the clippers and sat on the front step, nodding at Annette’s house. “So you live there with your brothers?”

  Annette tucked her hair behind her ear and looked back at her house. It seemed funny from over here, with its white clapboard siding and its gravel driveway stained with oil. Gauze curtains hung in the front windows. They were pumpkin-coloured and had been there since Annette was little. “Yeah. Christian and Angel. It sounds religious, I know, but I think my parents just liked the names.”

  “I talked to Christian once. I ran out of gas for the lawnmower.”

  Annette was still watching her house. “Did he give you any?”