Chapter 171

Grace

The winter morning twinkled outside my office window. Gabriel answered the phone, sounding more awake than I had expected, warm and oddly cheery.

"You're a morning person, aren't you?"

"I haven't slept," Gabriel chuckled. "I'm on my third cup of coffee, actually. If you're calling about the Duncan delivery, then all I can say is that the plane left Mooncrest and landed there."

"I'm not worried about that," I said, thinking back to the group of Enforcers that had gone with the few units of police and emergency workers I had been able to spare. "I wanted to pick your brain about... well, the whole case and how to go forward with the Senate requirements."

I told him everything that I had sketched out already, including working with Earth Therapy and the Duncan Pack.

He chuckled. "Honestly, resources, influence, and leverage of any sort would help, but if you want to be efficient about it, then go with the far-reaching options first."

Gabriel hummed. "Well, there's the Zaibatsu."

"The what?" I asked.

He laughed. "It's an organization, well, more of a pack or coven of shifters."

"Shifters… They're not a part of the States?"

"Moon, no," he laughed. "I think they hate the President more than the king does, and they aren't werewolves." He snickered. "The Zaibatsu work pretty closely with humans, and they specialize in medicine. I think they're technically more like an Inter-Species Medical Consortium. Northfall graduates in medicine tend to end up there."

Another pang of guilt went through me. I bet Eason had planned to go as soon as he'd graduated.

"Why?"

"They're interested in all sorts of knowledge, especially medicine. If you could get someone in, get inducted, hell, even get them to accept a piece of work by a werewolf, you'd open the door to getting access to all the research they have. It would help you and be something no one else has done."

I bit my lip. "You think they'd be agreeable?"

"It's a long shot, but worth looking into. Offer them something they don't have… unless you plan on transferring to Northfall and getting in that way."

"It's guaranteed?"

"They always get first pick. Northfall is basically their think tank."

I swallowed the little whimper of guilt that wanted to escape me and wiped at my eyes before they could even start to water.

"Okay. I-I'll look into it. And the rest?"

He sighed, "Hard to say. Let me think more about it… Though, I am proud of you for trying. Seems like you found a reason to grow, hm?"

My lips twitched. "Or got the shit scared out of me."

He laughed. "That too! They're not mutually exclusive. All in all, I think your defense is solid, though, and I would be honored to watch over you in place of that slime ball they want to throw your way."

"Thanks."

"I'll give you a call back when I have a bit more information and see if I can probe my contacts about the Zaibatsu."

I thanked him, hung up, and sank into my seat. The echo of his voice tumbled through my mind. I looked over at the map on the wall and took a deep breath. I wondered how many packs that were on this map no longer existed.

I couldn't let Mooncrest join the tally, and part of me knew that if this case went the way the President wanted it to go, that was very likely.

Human synthesis. The idea flickered in the back of my mind like a dying candle. It would be a quick and meaningless win in the long run. Making magical equivalents of human remedies would get me in the door, but it wasn't going to do much for the Senate requirements.

The President and the States at large didn't think much of humans aside from wariness because of their penchant for carrying silver. The additional export wouldn't do much since the States traded with the humans at a steady rate, per Gabriel.

I could use it as a small, tentative step... maybe even a practice run for a bigger target like a vampire coven.

The Zaibatsu...

My heart clenched with grief as I thought of it. I had never heard about it. It would be good, but I couldn't hope to get involved with it knowing its connection to Northfall. I wondered...

I wondered if Eason had been in talks with anyone with the Zaibatsu and if they hated me even more because I was the reason that Eason couldn't join. By now, I could only imagine that whatever trust Eason had from our parents and grandparents had been taken in Devin's actions, or he just couldn't access it because of his citizen status.

I frowned and drafted an email to the pack lawyer. I didn't let myself hope that none of that was true, but if it wasn't, maybe this guilt would ease a little more.

For now, I needed to focus. I needed an ally outside of the States, besides Charles, that couldn't be questioned and that I could forge on my own. Witches, vampires, or some other shifter, since those existed, apparently. I opened my laptop to start looking for information. I couldn't remember being taught much about them, but I also didn't remember looking that hard. The longer I looked, the more I found the same information over and over again.

There was no mention of other shifters.

Vampires were the undead and dangerous.

Lycans were barbarians.

Humans were vicious and totted around silver all the time.

And witches were spell-casting harpies.

I sat back, shaking my head. Maybe this is what was behind Charles' amusement about what little I knew. Had he known how little information was available, and why was it so inaccessible? Did that have to do with organizations like the Zaibatsu, or was this just because the President wanted to keep us all ignorant.

Probably both. If the President didn't want us to know, and the organizations outside of the States generally disdained us, what hope did we have?

I shuddered thinking about Cecil one day having the same conversation I had had with Charles about lycans and what they got up to in their spare time.

I dialed George's number, a nervous flutter twisting in my stomach.

"Hey, Grace, what's up?" I frowned.

"Eason?"

"The one and only?"

"Why..." I smirked. "Like that already, huh? Did I interrupt?"

"I wish," he grumbled.

"Aw," I cooed. "Dry as a desert over there, huh?"

"The oasis is literally behind a high and tall fence. I've been clawing at the drawbridge for days." I laughed. "What's up? George is actually in the shower, and I am trapped in the office waiting for him to open his pretty little safe so I can have my laptop."

I snorted. "Very firm hand."

"I wish he'd use it in a different manner, but I'm working on it. I can take a message if it's future lycan queen business."

I scowled, my face heating. "Actually, you'll do. Future Senator business. I needed to know as much as I could about vampires, witches, other shifters-- people that I could forge an alliance with, but I can't find much of anything but States-approved nonsense."

Eason chuckled. "They did leave me woefully unprepared. As soon as he's done washing his fine ass, I'll send over what I've got."

"What?" I blinked. "From your laptop?"

'I've got a direct line to the witch internet. Magical laptops and all that. George, bless his overprotective ass, hooked me up to the lycan network too. And between that and my Northfall access, I can get you anything you need."

My eyes widened. "Northfall? I thought... Since you couldn't go back..."

"Not go back?" Eason hummed. "I guess you could think of it that way, but no. I wasn't expelled. It's more like a... sabbatical, I guess. Funny thing about having printed receipts and your own bank account is that there's a paper trail. When my records vanished, I used the paper trail I had and all the records I could find to make them change my status to a sabbatical, and since I paid directly for my Northfall access, they had to allow me to keep it... They charge me a bit more for it now that I'm not classified as an active student, but it's worth it."

My eyes bulged as I heard a wry voice in the back of my mind. I think it was my mother's.

Follow the money, she'd said, looking at me with a smug look. She'd caught me doing something. I couldn't remember what, but it fit.

"Thanks," I said. "I'll... Call me back when you can."

"Sure."

I hung up and hit the call button. Amira answered.

"Could you look into the paper trail, specifically any transactions that still exist in the Mooncrest system about Eason and the others who were deleted as well?"

"Financial records..." She hummed. "They should have all been linked to the citizenship profiles, but I'll get with the pack accountants. Maybe orphaned transactions still exist."

I fucking hoped so. I sat back in my seat, hoping that maybe this was the first step to righting everything that I'd done to break our relationship. Then, my phone rang, and I sighed, answering.