Since I had inadvertently made BabyJon an orphan, I figured the least I could do was raise him. He was my only shot at motherhood; obviously, dead people don’t breed.
He squirmed in my arms. I smiled at him. Jet-black hair and crystal blue eyes, plump where babies are supposed to be plump. (Enjoy society’s acceptance of your body fat while it lasts, baby brother.) He had four teeth so far, and his lower lip was a waterfall of drool.
“Why not put him in his seat?” my husband asked, shaking out the Wall Street Journal like it was a beach blanket.
“Because we’re not going anywhere right this second.”
“Not yet!” Jessica called from the cockpit. She took off her headphones—she thought they made her look cool, when I knew she was listening to the latest Shakira album—and headed toward us.
She plopped into the seat behind us and curled up like a cat. She was so small, she actually pulled it off.
“So we’re really doing this thing?”
Sinclair looked around as if verifying the cockpit, the pilot, his papers, my magazines. “It appears so.”
“Because, for the record? I think it’s nuts. What happened to that poor girl wasn’t your fault.”
“Sure,” I said, shocked at how bitter I sounded. It felt like I was sucking on a psychic lemon. “I’ll blame the next-door neighbor’s dog.”
“Not Muggles?” Jessica gasped, which made me snicker in spite of myself. She could always do that. I was awfully glad she hadn’t died.
“Even if Elizabeth felt no sense of responsibility, bringing the body back is respectful.”
And it lets you get a good look at the maybe-bad guys, doesn’t it, hot stuff? But I kept that stuff to myself; it was pillow talk, and none of Jessica’s business.
She probably knew, though. Sinclair would no more let an advantage like that slip (meeting a powerful force in neutral territory) than he would go outside without pants.
“But I would like to add once again—”
“Oh, here we go.”
“I don’t think you should accompany us, Jessica. It’s likely to be dangerous.”
Jessica waved her sticklike arms around. She could put an eye out with one of those things. “Since Betsy came back from the dead, what isn’t? Shit. I can’t even go to the Mall of America without running into a sniper team.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Yes, but not by much.”
Sinclair shrugged. “As you like.” He knew, as we all did, that it was Jessica’s plane. And that she’d insist on coming even if it was his plane.
In some ways, and I know this sounds terrible, but in some ways it was almost bad that I’d cured her cancer. Now she was in the middle of this whole “lust for life” thing and was being more of a tagalong than usual.
I’d cured her by accident, which was terrific. But I’d also made her fearless by accident, which wasn’t. There’d come a day—the law of averages demanded it—when I wouldn’t be around to save her teeny butt.
“You know, Sinclair’s got a point,” I began, knowing I was wasting my time (I had no actual breath to waste). “Who knows what the reception’s going to be like? There’s still time to get off this crazy train and—”
“Taking off right about now, ma’am,” Cooper called.
“You did that on purpose,” I muttered.
Up front, Cooper was doing his flight check while Jessica climbed out of her seat, walked to the front (the fore? The cabin? I was many things, but a pilot wasn’t one of them), and took her seat next to Cooper.
She couldn’t fly and only had a passing knowledge of the instruments Cooper used, but it was her plane. I figured someday she would summon the nerve to ask him to teach her.
Jessica’s presence was less problematic for Cooper than for me, which is a horrible thing to say about a best friend. As I said, I’d cured her of a lethal blood disease, totally by accident.
But while the vampire in me had once cured her cancer, it had also attacked her. It had also ripped her boyfriend from her and leeched off her generous spirit.
Every time I looked at her I worried, and resolved to deserve her, and then worried again.
To distract myself I stood up, popped BabyJon into his car seat, made sure it was secured to the airplane seat, and then sat back down to buckle my own seat belt. Little brother stared out the window without making so much as a peep.
Wait. Buckle my seat belt? Should I bother? Could a plane crash even hurt me? I looked down at Eric’s waistline and saw that he hadn’t bothered.
Huh. Well. Old habits, you know?
“Aren’t you nervous?” I asked.
“Extremely.”
“I’m being serious.”
“Oh.” The newspaper slowly came down. “My pardon, dear one. Nervous about what? Facing down an unknown number of opponents as strong and fast as we are? Or surviving a plane flown by an Irish-man?”
“Nasty! What’d the Irish ever do to you?”
“Never mind,” he muttered darkly. “It was a long time ago.”
“Just focus on not dying, and we’ll be fine.”
He smiled and cupped my chin in his hand. In a second, our faces were only inches apart. “I shall promise not to die, but only if you do so as well.”
“Deal,” I murmured, having no idea what I was agreeing to. Being this close to Sinclair often had this effect on me.
“Taking off now, ladies and gents,” Cooper said, the party pooper.
Sinclair took his hand away and picked up the paper; I just stared at the ceiling. That was how we began the long taxi toward a place I had never been and didn’t particularly want to go.
With a corpse somewhere under my feet. Mustn’t forget that.
Chapter 5
A few hours later, we were descending the stairs (except for Cooper, who stayed behind to do whatever it is pilots do after passengers exit) to the Logan Airport tarmac.
I winced when I saw Antonia’s coffin brought out and carefully laid down.
For such a huge airport, I was surprised at how quiet Logan was . . . it seemed almost deserted. I figured that was because we were at the part where they parked the private planes.
Three people were waiting for us on the tarmac, clustered around a vehicle that was a cross between a limo and a hearse.
I recognized them right away. Michael Wyndham, Pack leader (and, though this wasn’t the time or place, so so cute, with golden brown hair and calm yellow eyes). His wife, Jeannie, a blonde with a head full of fluffy curls (must be hell in the humidity). And Derik, one of Michael’s werewolves, also yummilicious with short-cropped yellow blond hair and green eyes. Was being gorgeous written into the werewolf genetic code?
Well, wait. Jeannie was human, though the others weren’t. We’d met the week I got married (long, long story) and I’d gotten a bit of her history then. I guess, for Michael and Jeannie, it had been love at first sight.
As opposed to the loathe on first sight it had been for Sinclair and me. Ah, memories.
If nothing else, I hoped that my prior meeting with Jeannie might help smooth things over. The woman had helped me pick out my wedding gown, for heaven’s sake. There was a bond there, dammit.
I’d met Derik and Michael that same week, and though Michael gave off “cool leader” vibes, Derik was a ball of good-humored energy.
Usually.
We faced each other through a long, uncomfortable silence. Finally, I cleared my throat to say something when Derik walked over to the coffin and started to—
Oh, man. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He . . . was. He was lifting the lid off.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” my husband said quietly, and I seized his hand and squeezed, which would have pulverized the bones in an ordinary human’s hand, but would have as much effect on Sinclair as a mosquito bite.
He squeezed back, which hurt.
“Derik, Eric’s right,” Michael warned. Under the fluorescent lights, he was as pale as
milk. They all were, actually. Poor, poor guys. I wasn’t sure who I pitied more: the dead Antonia or the living Pack members.
“I need to be sure,” Derik insisted, and I winced again. The poor guy had pinned all his hopes on the chance that we’d gotten another werewolf mixed up with Antonia, which was so dumb I wanted to cry.
The lid was all the way up. Derik stared inside for a long moment and then, with infinite care, slowly lowered the lid.
Then he started to howl.
Chapter 6
We were all shocked, even his friends were shocked. Derik, normally a man of sunny temperament (at least from what I’d seen a few months back), was roaring like a rabid bear. Then he raised his fists over his head and brought them crashing down on the coffin lid, which instantly gave way.
Suddenly it was hard for me to swallow. Suddenly I wanted a drink in the worst way. Any drink. A smoothie, a frozen mudslide, blood, gasoline, Clorox, whatever.
Derik was glaring at me with eyes that were hard to look away from. “You might have washed her face, at least.”
This was my evening for wincing, except this time it was almost a flinch. Because Derik was right . . . but then, was I wrong in trying to show respect for whatever rituals they had?
Jessica coughed and spoke up, attempting to save my ass. “We, um, didn’t want to offend you guys.”
“Offend?” Derik spat. And in a flash, I remembered Antonia once telling me that her only real friend in the Pack was Derik. “Offend?”
Crash! More fist-sized holes in the lid, which he seemed determined to convert into thousands of velvet-tipped toothpicks. I took a step forward . . . only to feel Sinclair’s hand close around my bicep and gently pull me back.
He was right, of course. This wasn’t about me, and stomping into the middle of it would have been grossly inappropriate. And yet. And still. I couldn’t stand seeing anyone—even a bare acquaintance—in so much pain.
My feet seemed determined to disobey my brain, because they took another slow step . . . and Sinclair tugged me back, not so gently this time.
“You never should have gone!” Derik was yelling into the coffin. “You stupid bitch! You left your Pack!”
Nobody said anything to that, big surprise. Because, again, it was the truth.
“All right, that’s enough,” Michael said calmly. His copper-colored eyes looked almost orange in the fluorescents. “Let’s take her home, Derik.”
So into the back Antonia went, the way back where there were no seat belts, because none were needed.
Jeannie drove; Michael sat beside her in the front. Derik sat across from us in the back. Looking through us, not at us.
No one said a word during the entire ninety-minute drive to Cape Cod.
Chapter 7
Jesus!” I gasped, staring out the window. Sinclair flinched, but I was used to his twitches. “This is where you live?” I asked, feeling like I had straw in my hair and cow shit on my heels. All I needed were a few “hyuk, hyuks!” to complete the picture. “You live here?”
“Yes,” Michael said shortly as he drove to the main entrance. I pressed my face up against the window so hard my nose squashed. Thanks to no longer being addicted to oxygen, I didn’t fog up the glass, at least.
It was a castle.
No, really. A castle. On Cape Cod! And I wasn’t the only impressed yokel: both Jessica (who’d napped all the way here, like BabyJon) and Sinclair (who’d grown up on a farm a zillion years ago) were staring out their windows, too.
Gravel crunched beneath the wheels as we neared the castle of red bricks and red stones with about a zillion windows, set square in the middle of a huge field of green, with the Atlantic Ocean right behind it and stretching all the way into a gray forever. If it looked this magical at night, how, oh how, would it look during the day?
I promised myself I would find out. If you’re going to get stuck with an eternal membership card of the undead, being the prophesied queen was the way to go. Not only did I wake up in the afternoon, instead of sunset, but I could go outside. I’d never burn up, not to mention worry about wrinkles and freckles. It was like getting your hand stamped at a club, only a zillion times cooler.
I realized I was still sitting in the car like a startled blond lump, and yanked on the door handle. I could hear the murmur of waves as I got out of the limo. Could smell the salt in the air, the sweetness of the grass field. Tilted my head back and looked at a sky of stars I had never seen before, dangling over the pure ocean.
I almost went into sensory overload, to be honest; it was a gorgeous night and, by God, it smelled gorgeous and I was absolutely loving my enhanced senses (which had not always been the case, believe me—don’t even get me started on Marc’s aftershave).
Until I got here, I hadn’t known that gorgeous could be a smell.
“It’s late,” Michael said curtly, striding up to the main doors with Jeannie almost in lockstep beside him. Sinclair was also abreast of them. (How did he do that, just fall into step right beside the biggest and strongest like he belonged there?)
So I tried to stop gaping and trotted after Jessica, who was trotting herself to keep up. I’d unhooked BabyJon’s car seat and carried it with us, though it suddenly felt like it was full of several gold bars as I hurried and sniffed and looked around and kept my grip hard enough so that the seat didn’t bang against my shins. Good Lord, I was really getting out of shape if a simple walk to a house . . . castle. . . . taxed my attention, not to mention my balance.
“And we have a lot to talk about.”
Eh? Oh, right. Michael was talking. I should absolutely be listening.
“Gee, ya think?” Jessica whispered to me. “And here I thought we were here for the lobster.”
I smothered a laugh, knowing that even if Antonia and Garrett weren’t dead this was no time to get the giggles. We had a pretty scary itinerary and never mind the seafood jokes (though I wondered if I could eat clam chowder). Maybe it seemed weird for a vampire to fret or be stressed—this vampire, at least—but despite how it always looks in books and movies, whole weeks—months—could pass by without any life-or-death bullshit.
Not last week, though. I thought the early part of the week had bitten the big one, what with the Fiends going all, you know, fiendish, solving the murders, avoiding my own murder (something I was starting to get good at just from sheer repetition, and wasn’t that the opposite of amusing), and being a helpless witness to a murder/suicide in my foyer. Okay, technically Jessica’s foyer.
So Antonia was dead, Garrett had killed himself, but the fun wasn’t over yet, which is why I was standing in front of the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Mississippi River.
Yeah, I figured we’d all earned about six years off—shoot, I was still a newlywed, I had a pile of thank-you notes yet to write—but the joke was on me, as it so often is, and all the tears and terror and bullets meant for me had only brought us to Wednesday. Now it was the weekend, and Sinclair and I had a fresh set of problems.
First and foremost, how big a mess was this? How much blame would fall on my friends and me, how much did we deserve . . . or need to dodge? Most important, what were the werewolves cloistered here going to do about it? About us? And how could I explain Antonia’s former-Fiend boyfriend to werewolves, without going too far and screwing over my own people?
Had Antonia ever even told her Pack she’d been sleeping with a vampire? I should have known the answer to that. But Antonia had always made it clear that her phone calls with Michael were Pack business, and we all tried to respect her privacy.
Only to the werewolves, it would probably look like negligence, or carelessness.
I had never wanted a drink so badly in my life.
We followed Michael up red brick stairs and into a vestibule the size of a ballroom. I stared . . .
Sure, why not? You’ve been gaping like a tourist instead of an invited head of state. Which is just fine, because you’ll never fool a real leader.
... while trying not to look like I was doing so. This place made our mansion on Summit Avenue—one of the prettiest, grandest, richest streets in the Midwest—look like a one-bedroom apartment in the warehouse district. Michael’s castle . . .
Yep, now there’s a real leader, so quit fakin’, bacon.
... was lit up in a blaze of lights (mostly from the overhead chandeliers) and what little furniture I could see was mahogany. The place smelled like old wood and cedar, floor wax and furniture. It was the most impressive dwelling I’d ever seen, and I’d only seen a tenth of a fraction of it.
We climbed a grandly sweeping flight of stairs (Marble floors! Marble floors! Werewolves must not ever slip, or maybe they just hated vacuuming.), followed the Wyndhams down a wide hallway carpeted in red (not the red you might think, an orangey red, a dark pink—no, this was red red, a deep, rich, true red), and were soon in a room twice as big as my kitchen that was clearly Michael’s office.
He probably filled out paperwork, or clipped coupons, or downloaded songs from iTunes when he wasn’t ruling the world from behind the ginormous desk almost directly across from us. And excuse me, had I described the grand piano-sized, reddish brown, beautifully appointed, gleaming chunk of wood as a desk?
More fool me. The President of the U.S. sat behind a desk. Elementary school teachers sat behind desks. Prison wardens. Librarians. DMV employees. Desk sergeants. (Thus the name!) Reporters. Loan officers.
Those were desks. This thing was a wooden monument to Michael’s status.
There were a few comfortable chairs scattered about, all dark wood with plush seats. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined two of the walls; the other walls had windows and pictures and such. One framed portrait caught my eye—obviously old, but the people were familiar to me somehow, which was impossible.
I stepped closer and stared harder. No, I didn’t know them. The man had lush dark hair and the woman had brown eyes—no, not brown, more golden than brown, more like—
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