“Right,” Beth breathed. Well, they had kept saying only a hunter could know where they were. They’d been right; they just hadn’t even considered the UK hunters. And why would they? She’d never even met Odilia before. This wasn’t about her at all. It was about Scotty. Odilia was having a “little princess” moment. A “he’s my daddy and I don’t share” hissy fit, Beth thought with disgust, but simply asked patiently, “I presume there is a reason you’ve been doing all this? Scotty, perchance?”
“Of course, Scotty,” Odilia snapped. “You are not good enough for him.”
“Yeah, I’ve kind of heard that already. More times than I care to count, actually, and I’m really kind of getting tired of hearing it,” she muttered.
“Well then, maybe you should start listening,” Odilia said coldly. “You do not belong with him. He is mine.”
Frowning, Beth tried reason. “Odilia, I realize Scotty raised you and is like a father to you, but—”
“Father?” she said with amazement. “We were lovers!”
Okay, that caught her completely by surprise.
“I thought you said he raised you,” Beth said finally.
“I said he took me in,” Odilia snapped. “I did not say he adopted me.”
“Well then . . .” She stared at her with confusion.
“His house in London is huge,” Odilia said with a shrug. “I was given a wing along with Mrs. McCurdy, the woman who was brought in to take care of me as a child. Scotty had his own wing. But he wasn’t there often,” she added irritably. “I saw him maybe a handful of times before I reached the age of majority and then mostly at a distance. But he wrote letters. I wrote letters. He kept tabs on me through Mrs. McCurdy. He was always out traveling, hunting, chasing down rogues. And then of course I had to leave London or risk exposure, because I wasn’t aging. I traveled the Continent for a while, went to see the Americas, returned to the Continent . . . and then I heard that Jamieson was back in London. Scotty, of course, was hard on his trail almost immediately. It took me some time, however, to get back to England. The night I got there was the night they caught and killed him.”
“The night I was rescued,” Beth murmured.
Odilia nodded resentfully.
“I didn’t see you there,” Beth said quietly.
“I had gone to Scotty’s house, but he had already left. It took me some time to find out where he was and follow. It was all over when I got there. The carriage taking you and Alexandrina Argenis to the docks was leaving just as I finally arrived. I could not find Scotty at first, though, so went into the house. I . . .” She closed her eyes, and Beth knew exactly what she’d found. Blood everywhere, Jamieson’s remains, the bodies of the other women she and Dree had been going to save, the rotting corpses of men, women, and children strewn about and left to rot, and a stench so foul . . .
Beth lowered her head and closed her eyes briefly, trying to clear the smell and images from her mind. Just thinking about it put her right back in that house, in the middle of the madness and horror and—
“It was so like my home when I woke up after I turned,” Odilia said unhappily. “Worse, really. I think I would have gone mad if Scotty hadn’t come in when he did and ushered me out. He put me right into a carriage and sent me back to his house, promising he’d return as soon as he could.”
Odilia’s face twitched and she admitted, “Everything is kind of a blur after that until he came home. I remember getting to the house and going in, but everything felt . . . separate from me somehow . . . and I was suddenly so exhausted. The housekeeper tried to convince me to go to bed, but I wanted to wait for Scotty. I wanted to hear what happened. I needed to. I felt like . . . I was desperate to hear it, so she brought me a cinnamon bun and let me be. I was not hungry—I was still feeling unconnected—so just sat there, not doing anything or even thinking really, until Scotty got home and came to find me.
“He told me what had happened, but kept sniffing the air as he did,” Odilia said with remembered amusement. “And then he finally asked what that cinnamon scent was and I said it was the bun the housekeeper had left out, but I did not want it. He picked it up, gave it a sniff and then took a bite, and seemed quite surprised that it was good. He just gobbled it up.”
Beth didn’t comment. She wasn’t surprised. It made sense. She and Scotty had met earlier in the evening. They were life mates. His hungers would have been reawakened by that meeting. All of his hungers.
“I was shocked and just stared at him,” Odilia continued. “I knew how old he was and that he didn’t eat anymore. Yet he was eating. When I pointed it out to him, he kind of froze, and just sat there for a minute, and then he turned and stared at me for the longest time. I was about to ask him if he was all right when the butler came to inform him that Magnus had arrived.
“Scotty excused himself and left to speak to Magnus, but he hadn’t quite pulled the door closed, and I heard them out in the hall by the front door. Magnus had come to inform him that a couple of the younger hunters had told him they’d been able to read Scotty’s thoughts after the raid on the charnel house. He wanted to know why Scotty hadn’t told him that he’d met his life mate. Scotty said he hadn’t realized it until just now himself. That he’d come home and eaten a bun, and when he realized what he was doing, had tried to read me and could not.”
Beth stiffened. “What?”
“He could not read me,” Odilia said slowly and clearly as if speaking to someone hard of hearing. She followed it up with a triumphant smile.
“But—” Beth shook her head with bewilderment. That couldn’t be. He was her life mate, not Odilia’s. How could he not read her either? The only time you couldn’t read another immortal was if they were older, insane, or your life ma—
Oh, she thought suddenly. Beth had already deduced that the woman was off her rocker. She should have realized this wasn’t a new status. But why hadn’t Scotty known that back then? He’d . . . not raised the girl, she realized. Had seen her only a handful of times. Mrs. McCurdy had raised her and apparently never bothered to mention to her employer that the girl he’d put in her charge was a nutter. Great. But why hadn’t he sorted out since then that the woman was insane?
“Magnus, of course, congratulated him,” Odilia continued, drawing Beth’s attention back to her story. “And told him he’d leave us be to enjoy our discovery of each other, and then he departed. I rushed out into the hall the moment he was gone and hurried to Scotty, and he took me in his arms and kissed me so sweetly.”
Beth’s eyebrows rose. She would not describe any of her own kisses with Scotty as sweet. Hot, passionate, hungry, devouring, frenzied, consuming, vigorous, even almost violent, yes. But sweet? Nope. Poor thing, she thought, eyeing Odilia with pity. The woman had no idea what she was missing.
“And then he swept me up in his arms, carried me to my room, and made gentle, tender love to me,” Odilia said on a sigh.
“Sounds like a bad romance novel,” Beth said dryly.
“It was beautiful!” Odilia shrieked. “The best night of my life.”
“Lame life, then,” she said with a shrug.
Odilia’s face was purple, her eyes narrowed to slits, and Beth truly thought she’d pushed her too far. But then the woman suddenly relaxed and even gave a snort of laughter. “You are jealous.”
Beth didn’t deny that. Why bother? It was probably true. Oh, not of the night Odilia had just described. That might be a nice change in maybe five or six hundred years, but she preferred the passionate lover Scotty was with her. She was jealous that he’d slept with Odilia at all, though, which was silly. She’d had lovers over the last hundred years. Okay, so in her mind they’d unknowingly had his face in her bed, but still . . .
“It was so lovely,” Odilia remembered softly. “And I was so happy. I worshiped Scotty. He was so handsome, so smart, so kind, and he’d taken care of me. He was wonderful, gentle, and caring. I had never had a lover who made me feel the way he did. For three months, every day was a sweet revelation.”