by Lisa Edmonds
“I know I said I took the day off, but I need to go inspect a house for a client. Come with me? It’s a new home, so there won’t be anyone else there. We can chat on the way.”
“Sounds good.”
He sighed. “And then tonight I’m having dinner with Lily’s father, Zachary. The dinner is at his brother’s house.”
“The brother who’s on the Were Ruling Council?”
He nodded.
“Should I be worried about this at all?”
“Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “Zachary and I will talk and I’ll make my position clear. I’m expecting an apology for what Lily did and for the evening to end amicably.”
My stomach growled. “Is that offer still open for making us breakfast?”
He chuckled. “It’s lunch now, but yes. Hop in the shower and I’ll have something ready by the time you’re done.”
I leaned over and bit his arm.
“Hey,” he protested. “What was that for?”
“Just making sure you’re real.” I rolled to my feet and headed for the bathroom.
I showered and dressed and hurried downstairs for lunch. Even though we weren’t expecting to see anyone, since our errand was work related, I went with business casual: a sleeveless emerald green blouse, slim slacks, and ankle boots, with my hair in a French braid. My amulet nestled reassuringly between my breasts.
Sean went upstairs to shower and dress while I ate. He came down just as I finished loading the dishwasher, wearing a blue Maclin Security polo shirt and khakis. I noticed the outline of his amulet under his shirt.
“A delivery van just pulled up out front,” he said, heading for the door. “Are we expecting something?”
I dried my hands on a towel and joined him in the foyer. “I’m not—not to this address, anyway.”
Sean opened the door as the driver emerged from the van and slid the door open to grab a small rectangular box from a bin. He shut the door and hurried up the sidewalk with the box.
We stepped onto the porch to meet the driver. “Delivery for Alice Worth,” he said briskly, holding out the box.
I didn’t take it from him. “I wasn’t expecting anything,” I said with a frown. “Who is it from?”
He glanced at the box. “It’s not printed on the label, but it says there’s a card inside.” He offered me the box again and frowned when I hesitated. “I’ve got a lot more deliveries to do this morning, ma’am. I’m sure if you don’t want it, you can find someone else who’ll drink it.”
I blinked and took the box. It was surprisingly heavy. “Drink it?”
He held out a little electronic device. “Sign, please. Yeah, drink it. I’m from MacDougal’s.”
Sean whistled. Despite my love of Scotch whisky, I’d never even stepped foot in MacDougal’s. Customers shopped by appointment or had to be buzzed in by the staff. It was the sort of place where Charles would feel quite at home, however. If he’d sent this gift as a thank-you for saving his undead life, I would have a very difficult time refusing it.
I signed for the delivery and the driver half-jogged back to his van to continue his appointed rounds. “He’s like a young, skinny, blond Santa,” I said, cradling the box as we went back inside.
Sean chuckled. “If you were a delivery driver, working for MacDougal’s and bringing joy to everyone you meet wouldn’t be a bad gig to have.”
I set the box on the dining table. The label revealed nothing about its contents, reading only A Gift For Miss Alice Worth and Sean’s address.
“Do you think Vaughan sent it?” Sean asked, handing me his pocketknife to cut through the thick embossed seal.
“Who else would send me a bottle of expensive Scotch?” I opened the lid and carefully took out the wooden box inside. When I saw the label, my mouth fell open. “I…” I coughed. “Wow.”
Sean was already searching for the whisky online. He held up his phone so I could see the results. There were way too many numbers after the dollar sign.
I shook my head. “I can’t accept this, not even for saving Charles’s life. He should know better by now.”
“Where’s the card?”
I spotted the card at the bottom of the outer box. I tipped it out onto the table and Sean picked it up. He opened the little envelope and read the card. His expression went flat.
“What?” I asked.
He handed me the card and envelope. The card was handwritten. Miss Worth, please accept this gift as recognition of your immeasurable value. May our partnership be a long and profitable one. I will see you soon. Darius Bell.
I stared at the wooden box as if it was a venomous snake. “How did he even know I love Scotch?” My voice vibrated with fury. “That bastard.”
“What do you want to do with it?” Sean slid the wooden box back into the outer box, put the card and envelope on top, and closed it.
“I don’t know. I’m sure as hell not going to drink it. I don’t even want him to think I accepted it, but I have no way of giving it back to him since no one knows where he’s staying these days.” I took the box to the pantry and stuck it on the top shelf, where I didn’t have to look at it. “I’ll figure it out later. Let’s go look at that house.”
We left Rogue inside and headed out in Sean’s Mercedes, since the truck was still sporting two large dents. He’d made an appointment to take it to a body shop tomorrow.
On the way to inspect the house, I told Sean what Suriel had said to Malcolm about why he’d been bound to me and that I would save Aden. When I related Suriel’s promise about returning for Malcolm when the time came, Sean took my hand and squeezed. “He means a lot to me too, and not just because the kid knows his way around a joke.” He smiled. “Where is our spirit, anyway?”
“At the moment, back at my house keeping an eye on things and working on some spellwork in the basement.” I’d summoned him briefly while Sean was showering, just to check in. “He says there’s a Vamp Court SUV parked in front of the house, presumably guarding it against Bell’s people.”
He sighed. “I’m glad to hear that. I’d like to think Bell isn’t dumb enough to mess with you or your home, but sometimes desperate men do dumb things.”
“That’s why I’m going to let the Court keep an eye on it, just in case.”
“You said last night there were some other things you needed to tell me. We’ve got at least twenty more minutes of driving. What else is going on that I need to know about?”
Telling people things—even Sean—continued to be difficult for me. My instinct was always to keep things secret, especially when they might reveal a vulnerability. When it came to Sean, I had to fight another, more complicated feeling: a reluctance to give him more reason to worry. I’d promised not to tell him I was okay when I wasn’t, and he’d recently clarified that telling him there was nothing to worry about, or not telling him when there was a problem, fell into that same category. As such, I had a couple of things I needed to disclose.
“First item,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows. “There’s a list? Do you have a PowerPoint?”
“Hush. Sunday night, when I went to help Charles, everything went pretty smoothly up until I destroyed the Tepes stone.” I told him about the unseen force that had attempted to strangle me and the voice I’d heard. “When I looked up the words on a translation website, they turned out to be Romanian for ‘Fear me.’”
“Romanian, huh?”
“Yup.”
He pondered that. “So, you destroyed an item once belonging to, and then were threatened by, none other than Vlad Tepes?”
“It’s possible,” I admitted.
To my astonishment, Sean chuckled. “Our resident Dracula fanboy, Ben, would lose his mind if he knew.”
My mouth fell open. “Are you not freaked out by this?”
He grew serious. “Of course I’m concerned, but I don’t think we’re in danger of a visit from Tepes. A vampire that old and powerful must have much bigger fish to fry, I woul
d think. I’m going to focus on more immediate threats unless we have any reason to believe Dracula is headed this way.”
He had a fair point. Tepes might be angry that I’d destroyed one of his objects of power, but vampires of his vintage had a long view of things, and Sean was right: no doubt he had more important issues to deal with. No sense fretting about a problem until it became one.
“Second item. As I said when Bryan told us about Charles’s condition, I was looking forward to settling our account so I no longer felt indebted to Charles for saving my life at the construction site. However, he insisted on granting me a boon and I was too tired to argue about it. On the way out, Adri advised me not to decline the boon and gave me a very cryptic warning that I might need it soon because ‘powerful forces’ are at play.”
“Now that does worry me.” He turned onto the on-ramp and accelerated to get on the highway. “That’s all she said? Powerful forces?”
“She said she couldn’t tell me anything more than that. She was probably risking violating her oath to the Court as it was.”
He drove for a few minutes. This much silence usually ended with a hard question. I had a feeling I knew what it would be about: Valas.
I knew I needed to find a way to tell him about Moses. I’d almost told him a half-dozen times since our trip to the Bahamas, but something always silenced me before the words came out. Now, with Darius Bell an immediate threat, I felt even more pressure to share my biggest secret of all—but once again, the words got no farther than my head.
Finally, he spoke. “Alice, you know I make it a policy not to pry. I let you keep your secrets, generally speaking, until either you’re ready to tell me, or I feel like I have to push for an explanation because I think there’s a danger. This is going to be one of those times. I need to know the truth about why you’ve become one of Valas’s personal favorites.”
I’d known that question was coming since Monroe used the phrase in front of Sean and Darius Bell. Bell had to be wondering the same thing, since the reclusive, ancient, and very powerful head of the Vampire Court wasn’t known for taking much of an interest in any human, except those in her inner circle like Monroe.
Now the moment was here, however, I found the idea of telling Sean the truth about Valas’s involvement in saving his life wasn’t as terrible as I’d thought it would be. A month ago, I’d promised myself I’d do everything I could to keep Sean from finding out about the deal I’d made. Now, I felt very differently.
“What do you remember about me putting on the cuff in Jack’s basement and what happened afterward?” I asked.
He frowned. “I was in wolf form at the time, and in pretty bad shape. Most of what I remember is feelings and pieces of memory. It’s all very fuzzy except for when you activated the cuff and our mate bond formed.” His eyes glowed. “It was the most powerful and wonderful feeling I’d ever experienced. I felt…complete, even though I’d never felt incomplete before that moment. None of the descriptions I’ve ever heard about what a bond feels like even came close to doing it justice.”
I drank some coffee from my travel mug to hide my reaction to his words. The bond had felt wonderful to me as well, but hearing Sean describe it in such terms was enough to make me regret, just a little, that I hadn’t left the cuffs on instead of freeing us both. I reminded myself the cuffs were a prison and over time they might have changed us, making us crave power—not to mention I’d had no right to bind Sean to me for life without his consent, any more than Jack would have had the right to bind him to Lily.
“Then you died.” His voice went flat. “I remember going berserk in the cage, trying to get to something and kill it, but I don’t know what it was. There was a shadow there—maybe it was Death. Everything was a blur of rage and grief until the moment the damn cuffs fell off and I shifted back to human and found you in the cage with me, going cold.”
I decided to just rip the Band-Aid off. “The shadow you saw was Valas.”
Sean swerved to the shoulder and hit the brakes. I braced myself with one hand on the dash.
He pulled farther off the road until the vehicle was partly in the grass, hit the button for the hazard lights, and faced me. “You came to Jack’s house with Valas?”
“Valas came to Jack’s house with me.” It seemed like an important distinction.
A muscle moved in his jaw. “Why?”
“Because I couldn’t get to you any other way. Jack had decreed I wasn’t allowed to see you. I had two choices, as far as I could tell: fight my way through the pack to get to you, which I didn’t want to do, or find another way.”
“It was Valas who put them all to sleep, then, not you.”
“Yes.”
“Valas killed you and brought you back.”
“Yes. In a way, it was Death you saw—Death in the form of a fifteen-hundred-year-old vampire. She made it painless and faster than I knew what hit me. I never felt a thing.”
“I’d ask how she got in and out of the house without leaving a single trace of scent or magic my wolves or I could sense, but I suppose that doesn’t matter. Vampires that old have powers you and I can’t even begin to comprehend.” His expression was grim. “That clears up a couple of mysteries, but now I have an even more important question: why did she help you?”
“She helped us. The stability of your pack is important to the Court and Valas knows as well as you and I do that Jack would not be a good alpha. Your pack’s troubles would become the Court’s troubles sooner or later.”
“Alice,” he said quietly. “Why did Valas help us?”
I swallowed hard, suddenly afraid of how he would react. “Because we made a deal.”
His face lost all expression. The anger I’d sensed earlier seemed to vanish, as if he’d locked down his emotions by sheer force of will. He’d never done that with me before, which told me he was both furious and afraid but trying to hide it, as an alpha would from his pack in a time of crisis. “What did she get in return?” he asked.
“That I can’t tell you. The terms of the deal were confidential.”
He rubbed his face. “Does anyone else know about your deal?”
“Charles does, but not the details. He figured out Valas had helped me and I couldn’t deny it because he’d sense I was lying. That’s it.” He’d also offered to give me valuable information I could use against Valas if she tried to turn our deal against me, but I kept that to myself for now.
He didn’t reply for a long time. I could only imagine what was going on in his head. Even with his emotions hidden, I knew he had to be angry and worried, and probably feeling guilty as well since I’d had to make the deal to save his life.
I touched his arm. “I will tell you this: I did not trade my life or agree to become a vampire in order to save you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I am not enslaved to Valas or the Court in any way. I made an offer and she accepted it, with a bit of haggling. Once the terms of our agreement are fulfilled, I can tell you everything, but for now, that’s all I can say.”
“If you don’t hold up your end of the bargain, what happens?”
I said nothing, but he probably read the answer in my eyes.
Golden magic rose and he growled. “I won’t let her turn you, Alice. I’ll stop her or I’ll die trying.”
I cupped his face with my hand. “You’ll do no such thing because I will meet my obligations. Valas finds me interesting because the first time we met I wasn’t as intimidated by her as she expected me to be.”
“Now there’s a surprise,” Sean said dryly. “You probably defied her openly in front of the whole Court.”
I huffed. “I was polite about it.”
His laugh was sudden and loud. He kissed me, then rested his forehead on mine. “Thank you for telling me this. I can understand why you wanted to wait. I wouldn’t have taken the news quite as well a few weeks ago, given how Vaughan manipulated you.”
“I had to be in a different place too,” I admitted. “It’
s not easy for me to reveal secrets, but I’m getting a little better at it.”
“Yes, you are. Is there anything else I need to know?”
You have no idea, I thought. Out loud, I said, “Yes, but not that I think I can share today. Maybe tomorrow. I need to pace myself with these revelations and not hit you with everything at once.”
He turned off the flashers, signaled, and eased back onto the highway. “I do need a little time to process your run-in with Dracula, Adri Smith’s cryptic warning, and your deal with Valas. We’re not too far from the house now, maybe another five minutes.”
“Okay.” I turned the radio up and smiled. “Hey, it’s our song.”
He blinked. “We have a song?”
My cheeks warmed. “Never mind. Forget I said that.”
“No, you don’t get to say that and then say never mind.” He glanced at me as he took an exit. “Why is this our song?”
I picked at a loose thread on the seam of my pants. “It’s dumb.”
“Alice, I don’t think it’s dumb.” He thought about it while he turned onto a country road and headed away from the highway. “It’s the song that was playing when you walked into Hawthorne’s the night we met,” he said in surprise. “I’m surprised you remember. I saw you walk in, but you didn’t see me—not until I walked over and introduced myself.”
“I didn’t see you until then, but for some reason I always think of this song when I remember that night.”
He grinned. “Maybe because you did ask me to take you home that night. And I’ve never stopped being thankful you did.”
“Me neither.” I smiled and put my hand on his leg.
Our destination turned out to be a lovely farmhouse on several acres of land. A FOR SALE sign hung on a post in the yard. We parked out front and got out.
We weren’t far from the highway, but as I followed Sean up the walk to the door, I couldn’t hear anything but wind and birds. It reminded me of Cole and Karen’s house, which I loved. I liked living in the city, but there was something to be said about country life.
Sean punched in a code on the lock box and it opened, revealing a key. He unlocked the door and ushered me inside.
