“Perhaps I should have compared it to a timed quiz. Once the pencils are down, it’s done. All that singular focus on each individual question evaporates, and you’re left sweating the results of the whole.”
“Let’s stick with the mural analogy.” A pained groan rose in me. “Your quizzes are brutal.”
“You quizzed her?” Milo chortled. “That’s hardcore.” His shoulders bounced. “Let me guess. Anatomy?”
“Make it stop.” I turned my face into Linus. “Please.”
Amusement laced his tone. “Aside from our curriculum—”
“—which did not include anatomy lessons,” I grumbled against his side.
“—what were you discussing before I interrupted?”
Uncomfortable with asking a favor of a stranger, despite my earlier resolve, I wriggled in my chair. “Anca offered to help locate Severine’s missing collection.”
Aware of what the admission cost me, he squeezed my shoulder for support. “She’s a talented researcher. If anyone can uncover its location, it’s Anca.”
Milo cleared his throat then attempted to mimic Linus. “That Milo chap is a right golden egg too.”
“A right golden egg?” Linus shifted his weight toward the monitors. “I don’t talk like that.”
“You’re going too heavy on the Brit,” Anca agreed. “Linus doesn’t use British lingo, assuming that’s what accent you were butchering.”
“The sun’s coming up,” Bishop spoke over them, and I started at his voice. “Time for me to crash.”
Curious if biology or scheduling was the reason, I glanced back at him. “You’re bleeding.”
“You told us to get square.” Clem entered behind him, also bloodied. “Now we’re good.”
Suddenly, their decision to work together to deliver the vampire assassin to his home made a lot more sense.
“Make no apologies,” multiple voices chorused to Bishop from the screens.
“Survive,” he answered, then exited through the door we entered with a wave over his shoulder.
Hearing Maud’s credo adopted and adapted by them…
I ducked my head and brushed away tears, grateful Linus had ensured her words lived on outside of us.
“I should be going too.” Anca covered a delicate yawn. “You’ll be gone by the time I come back online, but I’ll stay in touch and update you on my progress.”
Stifling my own yawn, ready to get this show on the road, I smiled. “I’d appreciate that.”
“Thanks for offering to help,” Milo parroted my voice. “Your big, strong man brain is such an asset to the team.”
“You got the asset part right,” Anca countered, her screen going dark before he got in a parting shot.
“I get no respect,” Milo pouted in his own voice. “None.”
“Thank you, Milo,” I said obligingly, “for offering to help.”
“You didn’t mention my big, strong man brain, but it’s still more credit than these losers give me.” With a final sniff, he blacked his screen.
“They like you.” Linus took my hands and drew me to my feet. “I knew they would.”
“They’re loyal to you.” I cozied against him when he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Anything they’re feeling for me is spillover from that. They want to help me, because it helps you.” I rose on my tiptoes and pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “They see you too, Linus. They know you’re a good man, and they trust you to lead them.”
The sigh he pushed out wasn’t agreement, but at least it wasn’t argument either. Maybe he was starting to come around to the idea he was more than he ever imagined himself to be, and that it had nothing to do with his money, his name, or his titles. He was a remarkable man because of his heart, his mind, and the simple kindness and thoughtfulness that came so easily to him.
How the Grande Dame managed to raise him boggled the mind. Then again, he had more or less raised himself, with help from her staff. Not that he would admit it, but that fit too. He had made himself what he was, and what he was, I found extraordinary.
Clem, never a fan of PDA, grunted, “How do I track pulp-for-face?”
The failed vampire assassin had been released back into the wild with trackers in his clothes and on his person. Bishop had taken care to plant one or two for him to find so he would begin to relax, thinking he was in the clear. As expected, he located and smashed the obvious devices. However, he missed one. As long as it kept going, I wouldn’t have to resort to bleeding for answers.
“He isn’t moving.” Linus pulled up an aerial map of the city with a red dot blinking over an apartment building that had seen better days. “Either he hasn’t been contacted with a new assignment, or he’s afraid to get caught out in the open.” The tracking sigil would have terminated if, well, he had been terminated. “He knows it won’t look good for him walking out of here alive. He won’t even be able to tell them where here is, which means he has no bargaining chip to earn his way back into their good graces.”
“I’ll keep an eye on him,” Clem offered, settling in. “Might as well be productive.”
The pack hadn’t extended an invitation to cover three, so we weren’t risking a plus one.
Leaving Clem to amuse himself in the control room, Linus and I got in the van he expertly guided into the early traffic already promising a miserable morning commute.
Smoothing my thumb over my phone’s screen, I wondered, “How long do we have?”
“Between twenty minutes and three hours,” he said, smiling, “depending on construction, the number of wrecks, lane and ramp closures, and general congestion.”
How the prospect of sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic made his eyes dance was beyond me.
Ignoring his obvious love for this city, a skill I was perfecting the longer he stayed in Savannah with me, I dialed up a guaranteed distraction, hoping she might offer us insight into the pack’s militarization tactics now that my tactical-minded other half was present for consulting.
“I don’t like this,” Lethe growled in my ear from the comfort of my couch in Woolworth House after I explained the situation. “I talked to Mom yesterday, and she didn’t breathe a word about this. When the pack goes on the offensive, it’s protocol to alert all members, even those not in residence. Especially the freaking beta. She slipped this past me on purpose, which means she wanted to get the drop on you. I can’t advise you if I don’t know what the hell is going on.”
“Do you think Linus is in any danger?”
A snort escaped her. “Not with you by his side.”
The flare of pride at being considered formidable by a predator of her caliber gave me a case of the warm and fuzzies. “I protect what’s mine.”
“Pups.” She sniffled. “They grow up so fast.”
“I’m not actually a puppy.” Though I wasn’t sure how long gwyllgi lived, or how old Lethe and Hood were for that matter. With fae in their lineage, they could be old. Seriously old. “I’m a grown woman.”
“How were you not born gwyllgi?” As usual, she totally ignored me. “You’ve got the killer instinct and the stomach for it.”
The abundance of compliments made me wonder if pregnancy hormones weren’t to blame for her effusive, by Lethe standards, praise. But I wasn’t stupid enough to even hint I might suspect as much.
Since the clock was ticking, I asked, “Can I talk to your other half?”
“Sure.” Without putting down the receiver, she yelled, “Hood. Grier wants to talk to you.”
A few seconds later, ears ringing, I overheard his hello kiss to his mate then he answered, “Hey.”
“We might have a problem.” Briefly, I outlined the issues. “I told Lethe, but she seems…”
“Like she’s caught a case of the weepy-gooeys?”
“I’m not sure I’ve ever heard it called that, but sure. She’s sniffling and very mushy.”
“It’s probably the H word neither of us are dumb enough to use. Otherwise, she seems fine.”
A peculiar note in his tone had me asking, “What aren’t you telling me?”
“She attempted to knit the baby a pair of booties.”
“Aww. That’s sweet.”
“She got mad at the yarn, muttered something about it defying her, and hurled it across the room. It kind of…hit the birdcage.”
“Oh goddess.” I pressed a hand over my heart. “Is Keet okay?”
He might be undead, but he still had feelings.
“Lethe has been watching old Disney movies with him so he doesn’t get lonely. The yarn was this off-white shade, and I guess he decided to reenact that scene with the two dogs and the spaghetti?”
I dropped my head into my hands. “And?”
“He bit off a long string and offered it to Lethe. Except, she didn’t take it. She opened the cage and made a grab for him. It scared him so bad, he dropped the string and flew past her. But he saw the ball of yarn on the floor and snagged the loose end.”
“Go on.” I sighed. “Tell me the rest.”
“He flew around the chandelier a few times and now it looks like drunk teens TP’d the whole thing. And while he was up there, out of reach, he might have eaten several inches of yarn. We lured him down with lunch meat, but he’s been pooping string ever since. We didn’t know if we should just let it kind of hang there or cut it—”
“Dowhateveryouthinkisbest,” I blurted in a rush to avoid hearing more details. “I trust your judgment.”
A tiny roar belted out in the background, and Hood cleared his throat. “They’re watching The Lion King.”
“Tell Lethe to keep an eye on him. He might decide Scar is cooler than Simba, and then we’ll all be in trouble.”