The Familiar

XII. The Embassy

The ride was silent, Lucy sitting in the passenger seat of Sebastian's car while he drove. There was an uneasiness to him that Lucy wondered at. 

She turned to look out the passenger window. Perhaps Sebastian was regretting it? "We don't have to do this, if you really don't want to," she offered.

Sebastian blinked, his eyebrows raising. "I never said I didn't."

Lucy almost snorted. "You don't exactly seem thrilled either." She glanced at him when he sighed, before looking away again.

"I'm just nervous is all. I've never had a familiar before. And...well..."

His voice wore thin, and Lucy turned to him in confusion.

"Technically, my 'claim' on you doesn't really count, since I bit you after the Culling ceremony was over. A few days after. Bonding ceremonies are only honored as legitimate if they occur within a designated timeframe."

Lucy licked her lips. "So we'll just lie and say you bit me last Friday night."

Sebastian was silent again.

"What's the worse that could happen?" Lucy asked. "They just won't recognize it."

Her companion grimaced. "I'm afraid it's a bit more than that. I don't want to worry you."

"Too late," Lucy said with a smile, trying to ease the mood a little. 

Sebastian squared his shoulders and lifted his chin, a new determination in his expression. Whatever his plan was, Lucy would roll with it. She could improvise. She hadn't been suckered into those theater classes in high school for nothing. 

Lucy didn't know what she'd been expecting, but an imperial building that looked more like it belonged in Washington, D.C. or Great Britain or Italy wasn't it--complete with its own Roman columns. She half expected to find life-size sculptures of deities perched about on a column here, a fountain there. Eros shooting a heart-shaped arrow into a pool of water, a naked cherub. 

"This is the place?" she asked in awe, leaning forward in her seat to try to get a better, more full view. "So much for being inconspicuous."

There was an amused smile caught somewhere in Sebastian's grimace. 

He drove the car down an alley running adjacent to the building and turned down into a parking garage beneath it. 

The car rolled to a stop next to the guard's station, and Sebastian nodded in greeting at the man sitting there. The older man didn't say anything, just held out what looked like a finger scan. Lucy furrowed her eyebrows in curiosity as she watched Sebastian place the middle finger of his left hand onto the scanner. When he withdrew it, the guard looked down at the scanner before opening the gate. 

Sebastian drove through, looking for a spot to park. 

"ID not good enough?" Lucy asked. 

The boy beside her glanced at her before pulling into a spot. "IDs and faces can be faked."

Lucy blinked. "I'm sorry, what?" Faces could be faked? Were there...were there things other than vampires? She had a feeling there was something else he wasn't telling her. Well...many things. 

But Lucy understood trust--that it took a long time to cultivate, and just a short time to shatter. He didn't trust her enough yet to divulge all his secrets, all his peoples' secrets. She got that. It was hard, though, putting so much trust into him then. Because what other choice did she have than to trust him? The world might not be a friendly place to unprotected people who knew the truth. At least with him, she'd have both a vampire and the law on her side.