Home for the Holidays: A Night Huntress Novella Read Online Free Page A

him? Happen to recognize him?” I asked, changing the subject.
    “Sorry, never seen him before. The only thing I can tell you is that he had dark hair and could fly like the wind.”
    A brunet vampire who could fly. That narrowed it down to at least ten thousand—not much help at all. We were almost at the bottom of the hill. Up ahead, a Buick was parked on the side of the road, its lights off.
    “My car,” Wraith said, nodding at it. Then he held out a set of keys. “The proof you seek is in the boot.”
    Bones didn’t touch the keys, but a tight smile stretched his lips. “Don’t think so. You open it.”
    Wraith snorted in a way that sounded very familiar. “Think I’ve wired it to explode? You’re even more paranoid than your reputation.”
    “I’m also more impatient than my reputation,” Bones replied coolly. “So get on with it.”
    With another noise of exasperation, Wraith set down his long stick and walked over to the back of the car. The trunk popped up without even a spark and Wraith pulled out a flat, sheet-draped, rectangular object.
    “Here,” he said, holding it out to Bones. “I also have archives, but if this doesn’t convince you, those won’t either.”
    Bones took it and pulled the sheet away. It was a painting; old, from the state of the framing and the canvas, but I didn’t need more than a single glance at the subject to let out a gasp.
    Bones said nothing, simply staring at the image of a man who bore an eerie resemblance to him, only his hair was corn-silk blond and he had lines around his mouth that looked too harsh to be caused by smiling. He wore a ruffled shirt and an embroidered coat with so many tassels, buttons, and braids that it looked like it could stand on its own. A jewel-handled dirk sticking out of his belt completed the image of extravagance, as if the arrogance in the man’s expression wasn’t clue enough that he’d been born to a life of luxury.
    “Meet the Duke of Rutland,” Wraith said, his voice breaking the heavy silence. “In case his face isn’t proof enough, records show that he was christened Crispin Phillip Arthur Russell, the Second. My human name was Crispin Phillip Arthur Russell, the Third. Same as yours.”
    I flashed to eight years ago, when I was still getting to know Bones and he told me the reason behind his real name.
    Merely a bit of fancy on my mum’s part, since clearly she had no idea who my da was. Still, she thought adding numerals after my name would give me a bit of dignity. Poor sweet woman, ever reluctant to face reality . . .
    If the vampire standing across from us was correct, Bones’s mother hadn’t called him “the third” on a whim. She’d named him after the father he never knew he had.
    When Bones spoke, his voice was strained from the emotions I could feel him fighting to contain.
    “If you’re my half-brother, that makes you over two hundred years old. If you knew of our ties, why, in all that time, did you never attempt to find me before now?”
    Wraith’s smile was sad. “I didn’t know until recently when I heard your real name from some warmongering ghouls. I thought it was a jest, but then I found a picture of you. Our resemblance was enough to get me digging into my family history. In some very old archives, I found mention of a sum my father paid to Viscount Maynard for reparations concerning the viscount’s unwed pregnant daughter, Penelope. Then your name appeared in the Old Bailey trial transcripts, and your age matched how old the child would’ve been. If that plus our identical names wasn’t enough, meeting you is. You look and act enough like my father to be his dark-haired ghost.”
    Something else swirled amidst the wariness in Bones’s emotions, something so poignant it brought tears to my eyes. Hope . Was it really possible that after all this time, Bones had found a living member of his family? Wraith’s real name, resemblance, and the portrait were damn compelling, not to mention