Chapter 109: Leona's Plan

POV: Niko

He looked at her.

She looked back with that specific smile she kept in reserve for moments she had engineered in advance. He had seen it exactly twice before and both times it had preceded something he would rather not have sat through.

"Miss McPherson." He said. Carefully.

"Leona." She corrected. Same as always.

He glanced at the room. Carly was back on the dance floor, far enough away that this conversation was not immediately visible to her. He was not sure if that was deliberate on Leona's part. He was fairly certain it was deliberate on Leona's part.

"Is there something I can help you with?" He asked.

"There is, actually." She said. "Walk with me."

It wasn't a question. It landed like one, had the grammatical shape of one, but the undertone of it was an instruction. He had grown up with a father who spoke that way and he recognized the construction immediately.

He walked with her.

She led him through the gymnasium doors and into the corridor outside, which was quiet and dimly lit and significantly more private than the event they had both just left. She turned to face him with her hands folded in front of her, the composed and deliberate posture of someone who had decided exactly what they were going to say before they arrived.

"I'll be brief." She said. "I know you prefer that."

He said nothing.

"You care about my daughter." She said. Not a question either.

"Yes." He said. One word. Giving her nothing extra.

She nodded. "And she cares about you. That part is obvious even to people who would rather it weren't." A small smile. "Including me, in some of my less generous moments."

He watched her face carefully.

"I want to talk to you about something." She said. "Something that concerns you both. Something I have been working on for some time and that has reached a point where it seems more sensible to speak to you directly than to continue working around you."

He felt the specific alert that came from years of navigating people who buried their purpose in pleasantries. He had been doing this long enough to know that the longer the preamble, the more significant the thing at the end of it.

"Say it plainly." He said.

She looked at him for a moment. Something moved through her expression that was close to respect.

"The Monroeson family." She said. "Your bloodline. Your family's history in this region." She tilted her head. "You are aware that the founding families of Black River Falls have a particular significance in the supernatural community here."

"I'm aware." He said.

"The Monroeson line, the McPherson line, and two others form the original covenant that established this town as a protected supernatural settlement." She said. "That covenant has been maintained for over two centuries. It requires active participation from each founding bloodline. It is not, technically, something that can be sustained indefinitely by proxies."

He had known about the covenant in the general sense. The way you knew about things that were foundational to the place you lived without actively studying them. He had not known the specifics of what sustaining it required.

He was starting to understand the direction of this.

"Your family has been absent from their covenant obligations for four years." Leona said. "Since you left. Your parents have been inconsistent. The Monroeson contribution to the covenant has been maintained minimally at best."

"What does that have to do with Carly." He said.

Leona looked at him steadily. "The McPherson line and the Monroeson line are linked in the covenant. Their obligations are paired. If one bloodline fails in their contribution, it increases the burden on the paired line."

He processed that.

He was very still.

"Are you telling me." He said slowly. "That my family's absence has been affecting Carly."

"I'm telling you." Leona said. "That my daughter has been compensating for the gap your bloodline has left in the covenant since she was fourteen years old. The witch's call she has been developing. The specific kind of power she carries. The way it has been growing faster than is typical for her age." She paused. "It is not entirely natural development. Some of it is the covenant redistributing the weight of an absent partner."

He felt something cold move through him that had nothing to do with his temperature.

"She doesn't know." He said.

"No." Leona said. "She doesn't."

He looked at the gymnasium doors.

Through them, muffled, the sound of the music and the crowd. Carly somewhere in there having built the most extraordinary room he had walked into in recent memory, on a night she was still working through everything else, not knowing any of this.

He looked back at Leona.

"Why are you telling me." He said.

She held his gaze. "Because the solution to this problem involves both bloodlines, and you are the Monroeson who is actually here." She said. "Your parents will not cooperate. I have tried. Reba and Deacon are too young to carry the covenant weight. You are the oldest Monroeson child present and willing, which makes you the relevant party."

"What does reestablishing the covenant require." He said.

She looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone who was deciding exactly how much to say and in what order.

"That." She said. "Is a longer conversation. Not tonight." She glanced at the doors. "Tonight I simply wanted you to know. And to know that I know."

He narrowed his eyes. "Know what exactly."

"That you care about her." She said. "That whatever happened last week and whatever is currently being worked through between you, you are not going anywhere. I wanted to confirm that assessment before I invested any more time in the longer conversation." She tilted her head. "Was I right?"

He looked at her.

Leona McPherson was not Carly. Had none of Carly's warmth or the genuine kindness underneath the ambition. She was something else, something considerably more calculating, and he was not going to forget that for even a moment of this conversation.

But she was also telling him something true. He could feel the truth of it in the way she said it, the specific quality of information that had been carried for a long time and was being released deliberately.

"You were right." He said.

She nodded. Something shifted in her expression that was not quite satisfied but was adjacent to it.

"Then we will speak again." She said. "After the holiday. There is a great deal to discuss."

She turned.

She walked back toward the gymnasium doors.

She stopped with one hand on the door and looked back at him over her shoulder.

"For what it's worth." She said. "The way you looked at my daughter tonight. The way you have been looking at her all evening from across the room while convincing yourself you were giving her space." A small smile. "She deserves to be looked at that way. I'm glad someone finally managed it."

She pushed through the doors.

He stood in the corridor alone.

He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and looked at the ceiling and processed the entire conversation in rapid sequence, pulling it apart and putting it back together and looking at the shape of what she had told him.

Carly. Fourteen years old. Carrying something that wasn't fully hers to carry. The witch's call growing faster than it should have. The power that had brought a room full of supernaturals to their knees in a cafeteria.

He thought about the nosebleed.

He thought about her fainting after the witch's call in the cafeteria.

He thought about her at twelve years old, bleeding from her ears, blacking out, a scared kid looking for comfort, her mother saying accidents happen, you'll be more prepared next time.

He was going to be sick.

He was not going to be sick because he was a vampire and that was not how that worked for him. He was going to stand in this corridor and breathe and think clearly and not do anything impulsive.

He breathed.

He thought clearly.

He did not do anything impulsive.

He pushed back through the doors.

He found Carly on the dance floor with Katy and he stood at the edge of it and watched her and felt the specific weight of what he now knew sitting in his chest alongside everything else that had been sitting there all week.

She caught his eye across the floor.

She looked at his expression.

Something in her face shifted. The question forming before she could stop it.

He shook his head slightly.

Not tonight.

She held his gaze for a moment.

Then she nodded.

She trusted him with that.

He was going to have to be worthy of it.