“Before you get all huffy—”
“Too late,” she said, darting a glance at his co-conspirator.
“Sorry,” Toni shrugged. “Though to be fair, I was on the porch when he showed up. I couldn’t turn him away.”
These two really had to get a grip on the difference between night and day. “What is it, like 5:00 a.m.?”
“Hardly, genius. The sun is up. It’s 7:30,” Garrett said, pulling her toward him for a hug she would have given him gladly if it weren’t so frigging early. Oh, and if he hadn’t ignored her instructions to stay put in his information-finding mission.
She looked up at his hair. “Too short,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes.
It was a long-standing joke between them. His floppy, young Leonardo DiCaprio hair had always looked so cute when they were young. Any time he cut it too short, Alessandra and her mother both gave him hell for it. All the more reason for Garrett to do it, of course.
She should have played reverse psychology on him, but her brother was too smart for that.
“I told you not to come,” she groaned.
And especially not so early in the morning, she added silently.
“Yeah, I know. You can rail at me all day for my misogynist tendencies.”
“I’d never say that about you—”
“Uh-huh.”
Alessandra looked to Toni for help, but she put up her hands and shook her head. “I’m just the courier. I have to finish getting ready for work. Some of us in this house actually have a job.”
“I have a . . .” Realizing too late she shouldn’t have taken the bait, Alessandra snapped her mouth shut.
“Later, kids,” Toni said. “Lunch at Trousseau?” she called back, not waiting for an answer. She knew Alessandra didn’t have any particular reason to deny her. “Join us, Garrett.” Her voice echoed from down the hall.
“So,” he said, and Alessandra crossed her legs.
“I went through the box last night . . .”
The box. Though their mother had tossed away all of their father’s clothing after the funeral, burning all evidence of his existence from their lives, she had packed up a box of his belongings and asked if either of them wanted it.
Alessandra had not, but Garrett had readily accepted it. He’d taken it to college with him, probably to ensure Alessandra didn’t find it and throw it away.
“And I found something.”
He pulled out a yellowed satchel, its age apparent.
“It was the only thing in there I couldn’t identify. I would have thrown it out ages ago, but there’s some kind of dried flower or something inside, so I kept it thinking it might mask the old-stuff stink.”
Garrett had such a way with words.
“So what is it?” She opened the satchel and stared at the contents, unimpressed. “It looks like a bunch of dead branches to me.”
Garrett reached over and pulled one out. It was, indeed, a small branch. “I asked a friend of mine once what they were. His father owns a flower shop. He said they were wild roses.” Garrett shrugged. “But you have to admit it’s an odd thing for Father to keep.”
Father.
Garrett had always referred to him that way, as if he truly had been their father once, when nothing could be further from the truth. When memories of him did push their way into her conscious thought, Alessandra shoved them away. Much too painful to remember the man that hoisted her into the air rather than the one who abandoned them.
“I suppose. But I can’t say it helps much—”
“No, but when you called me . . . I don’t know, Allie, something told me to fish this out.”
Her heart lurched. Garrett had been the only male in their family, and for so long, he had been a boy. Those big brown eyes had always looked so innocent and loving. But somewhere along the way that had changed. He had become an adult without her noticing.
“Do you feel anything else?” she asked cautiously, remembering the sensation that had washed over her the night before. It went away just as quickly, and she wondered now if her mind had been playing tricks on her. Being a Cheld was anything but an exact science.
He frowned. “No. But there was no way in hell I wasn’t coming down here to see you after what you told me.”
She should have known better. Alessandra handed the satchel back to him.
What was she supposed to do now? Should she risk going to Kenton for comfort, for answers? Should she seek out Lawrence or his sister?
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” he said slowly, keeping his eyes pinned on hers.
What a mess.
There were actually a few somethings, but she wasn’t sure how much she should tell him. She wanted him to be safe.
“I’m not sure what you—”
“Allie.”
“So . . . how long are you here for?”
“As long as I need to be.”
She’d been naïve to think he could become involved in this partway. Eventually, Garrett would have to learn the full truth.
“You can stay for the day,” she said cautiously.
“The day—”
“And in the meantime”—no time like the present—“there’s someone you need to meet.”
Garrett stood, shoving his satchel into the side pocket of his shorts.
“OK,” he said in his typical go get ’em attitude. “Who? When?”
“Today,” she said. “And as for the who . . . we’ll leave that until after a cup of tea.”
For this conversation, she was going to need some caffeine.
Kenton wasn’t answering.
Was he miffed because she’d blown him off yesterday? Honestly, she had a hard time picturing that. He’d been alive for long enough that controlling his own feelings should be child’s play for him.
Lucky guy.
If she didn’t hear from Kenton until after lunch, Alessandra would take Garrett to his house. She thought it best for her brother to know the full truth, and in this case, experience would be a better teacher than words. Though she could tell him what it felt like to be around a vampire, he was more likely to understand if he felt it. Besides, she didn’t savor the idea of telling him about her relationship with Kenton. She had a good idea of what her brother would say about that.
They spent the morning talking about the mystery of their ancestry.
“I told Toni we’d meet her at noon,” she said after a while, urging Garrett along. He’d started loading the dishwasher. “I’ll do that later.”
Garrett couldn’t go anywhere with things out of place. A coffee mug on the counter, no way. Her brother would make some woman a lucky girl. Of course, she had to admit to a certain bias.
“I’m coming,” he said, slamming the dishwasher shut.
She called in their order ahead, but when they arrived, the hostess didn’t escort them to the usual table. Instead, she began leading them to the back of the restaurant.
“Allie, I have a really strange feeling,” Garrett whispered in her ear. “Like that time you forced me on the haunted hayride knowing I hate ghosts.”
Yeah, she had done that. And she knew exactly what he meant. The feeling had started tickling at her the moment they arrived.
“I think I know why,” she said, spotting Lawrence and his sister sitting in a booth, as if they had been expecting them. Toni was nowhere to be found even though it was at least ten after twelve.
That was unlike her.
“Will you join us?” Lawrence asked, standing.
She looked around the restaurant, about to decline, when he said, “Toni isn’t coming.”
She and Garrett exchanged a glance.
“What the hell—”
“I know them,” she said to her brother. “It’s fine.”
But really, it was not fine. Their presence was not coincidental. Lawrence was, if nothing else, deliberate. This really did not bode well.
She took a cue from Lawrence and sat, urging her brother to do th
e same.
“I told you about Lawrence Derrickson and his sister, Laria.”
But it seemed her brother had already noticed Laria. With her long, sandy hair and green eyes, she was hard to miss.
“This is my brother, Garrett,” she said.
Though they went through the motions of introductions and greetings, Alessandra could tell they were not needed.
They recognized her brother.
“So what’s going on here?” she asked Lawrence.
That was when she noticed no one was seated around them. The waitress was not even looking their way. It was as if someone had arranged for them to have a private lunch, and she had a feeling Kenton wasn’t the only one prone to tossing around wads of cash to get his way. Undoubtedly they’d managed to preserve a wealth matching his—after all, Lawrence had bought the only other large mansion in town.
“We were coming to see you when I ran into your friend Toni on our way here,” Laria said. “She told us of your lunch plans.”
“Where is she?” Alessandra said, lifting her brows.
“Next door, still working.” Lawrence smiled. “I asked for her lunch to be delivered and said you’d explain later.”
“Why?”
Garrett looked at her as if to ask, Who are you and what did you do with my sister? Though she’d always been fairly direct, that quality seemed to have increased exponentially since this whole thing had begun.
“You are both in danger,” Lawrence said flatly.
Oh geez, not this again. She had a feeling she knew how it would go—Lawrence would claim Kenton was out to get her, and then, presuming the old wounds between the two had ripped open for some reason, perhaps Kenton would once more warn her away from the Derricksons. “If you’re going to tell me Kenton—”
“Not from Kenton,” Laria said.
“How much does he know?” Lawrence asked.
“Some,” she hedged, earning her a glare from Garrett.
“Does he know about us?”
The jig was up. She’d intended for him to find out from Kenton, but it ultimately didn’t matter who told him the truth. He simply needed to be told. “No,” she said. “I told him about the Cheld, but not the rest.”
Even though the entire back half of the restaurant was empty, Laria lowered her voice. “We are vampires,” she said in a whisper, admirably direct and to the point.
Alessandra nearly laughed at Garrett’s expression, remembering how shocked she’d been to hear that particular revelation just a few days before. And she would have laughed, too, but for the nastygrams her brother was silently sending her.
She took a sip of water, paying special attention to the ice. Alessandra loved round ice cubes for some reason, and these were particularly round. The little holes inside them were perfect for sticking your tongue into—
“Allie.”
She forced a smile. “Yes, Garrett?”
How best to help him through this revelation? It wasn’t every day your brother learned that sometimes, when things went bump in the night, your fears may not be unfounded.
Alessandra opened her mouth to explain, but Lawrence cut her off.
“How much did Kenton tell you?” he asked her.
She thought back to their last conversation.
“He told me all about the curse.”
Lawrence appeared surprised by that.
“He did?”
Was that so remarkable?
Apparently so. The fashionable Laria looked as if she’d just swallowed one of those perfectly round ice cubes whole.
“And did he tell you of the Balance?”
“Yes, although I don’t know all of the details. He said it was another long tale in a string of long tales . . . why?”
She didn’t like the look the other pair of siblings exchanged. In fact, Alessandra didn’t like anything at all about this conversation. It felt as if she and Garrett had been left out of a very bad joke. As if there was something big—monumental, even—they were missing.
Of course, Garrett had to feel even more left out than she did. She felt a pang of remorse for not having filled him in on everything she knew sooner.
“Would you please tell us what the hell is going on?” Garrett said beside her, turning in the booth to face her. He’d clearly picked up on her unease.
“Gladly,” Laria addressed him. She quickly explained the original curse, and how it had made them what they were—immortal beings. Vampires. “Lady Isobel was horrified at what she’d done,” she said. “She tried desperately to reverse the curse. At first, we assumed her efforts had not worked at all. But then her children began to receive their powers—”
Alessandra nodded. “You’re talking about the Cheld’s origin,” she said. “We know this part.” She’d already shared this part of the story with Garrett, thank goodness.
“But do you know the purpose of your abilities?” she asked.
She nodded. “To ensure—” she cleared her throat, “—vampires are kept in check, so to speak.”
Laria looked at her expectantly. “In check how?”
Okay, so Kenton hadn’t really gone into specifics.
“I’m not 100% sure,” she admitted. The Derrickson siblings exchanged another of those meaningful looks, and she blurted out, “Just say it. Tell us what it is you have to—”
“By rooting out those who would abuse eternal life and the power that comes with it,” Laria said coolly, as if they were discussing the weather. “By beheading, ripping out the heart or driving an aspen stake through the heart of any vampire who threatens humankind.”
“Aspen . . .” For some reason, that was the detail her mind hooked on to.
“The wood our brother’s coffin was made from,” Lawrence added. “The Cheld are the only real danger to our kind. The only ones truly able to end the eternal life of the cursed, aside from a more powerful vampire.”
Her head spun as she put the final piece into the puzzle.
The Cheld were the Balance to the evil of Lady Isobel’s original curse. A light to diminish the dark.
“Will I become a murderer?”
“I don’t know,” Kenton had answered.
But he’d come to Stone Haven to ensure she would not, hadn’t he? To ensure she would never have the chance to develop the powers that would allow her to kill his kind.
She only noticed Laria’s hand over hers when the other woman squeezed it, attempting to comfort her. The sympathy in the woman’s eyes was almost painful to behold.
She raised her chin to look Lawrence in the eyes.
“Lawrence, when you first came to town, you told me that Kenton wanted to kill me. Was that true?”
“There’s more you need to understand, Alessandra. About Kenton and his role—”
“Was. It. True?”
Each word ground out of her mouth, painful but necessary.
“He loves you,” Laria said. “And asked us to help protect you. If you knew what it took for him to do that—”
She summoned the full force of her abilities, refusing to look at anyone but Lawrence, and asked one last time.
“Did Kenton Morley come here to kill me?”
In the end, it wasn’t Lawrence or Laria who answered, but her brother. Though how he knew . . .
“Yes,” he said beside her. “Kenton, whoever he is, I believe did come here to kill you.”
Chapter 21
Two women huddled in the alleyway behind Murphy’s Pub, their wrists outstretched, looking at each other in bafflement. A third clutched her neck.
Dammit, Rowan.
The moment Kenton had sensed another vampire in town the night before, he’d contacted both Rowan and Drake. His younger brother, it seemed, was doing Lord knows what in Brazil. Rowan hadn’t responded.
The two first families always detected Cheld first, and he’d already confirmed with Lawrence that Torr was not in town and was apparently back in England.
That left Rowan.
And
his brother was clearly furious with him. Case in point, the mess he’d left outside of Murphy’s. If he’d needed to feed, one woman would have sufficed. This behavior was driven not by a need for sustenance but by a taste for sport and a wish to punish the older brother who’d always encouraged him to keep a low profile.
He’d searched for his brother for nearly twenty-four hours, but his brother had a talent for only being found when he wished to be. He’d been an accomplished hunter as a young knight—a skill set that had followed him through the centuries.
Not able to find him, Kenton had appealed yet again to Lawrence and Laria for help. Whatever they planned to do to keep Alessandra safe had to be done immediately. When they assured him it would be done that day, Kenton hadn’t hesitated. He’d agreed, again, to leave the life of the woman he loved in the hands of his enemies.
He remembered the confusion he’d felt all those years ago upon awakening one morning with the hunger for blood. Centuries had passed without him experiencing that disorienting feeling of confusion, but he felt it again now. Rowan, his brother whom he loved, had become his enemy.
His brother would already know where he was staying, of course—he hadn’t exactly attempted to keep a low profile. Without any other leads, Kenton left the alleyway and wound his way around the courthouse, moving toward the stairs behind it.
He froze.
“Sloppy, Rowan,” he said, referring to the three women behind Murphy’s Pub.
Turning, he waited for his brother to catch up to him. Everything about his brother ventured toward the extreme, including his swagger. No one would doubt them to be brothers, but Rowan’s personality lent him an edge Kenton lacked—and a sense of danger no woman in centuries had been able to resist.
And his brother knew it.
They embraced, but his brother immediately pulled back and took him to task, as Kenton had known he would.
“You’re up to something, Kenton.”
And so it began.
“A Cheld is here, in Stone Haven. And instead of telling us, you’ve ingrained yourself here, pretending to be a model citizen, and sent no more than one text message in weeks. Why?”
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