A nod from Linus told me he had what we came for, so I no longer felt obligated to play nice.
“I’m engaged,” I announced with no small amount of glee. “That’s why Lacroix can’t hand me over to you, or anyone else. I don’t belong to him. I never did. I wasn’t his to give.”
Volkov loosed a bestial roar and thrashed against his restraints.
“You are mine.” He gnashed his teeth. “I smell my blood on your skin. It intoxicates, solnishko.”
Tension shot down my spine, but I kept putting one foot in front of the other as I walked away.
Rue waited until all three of us clustered in front of the door before releasing the lock and letting us out.
When Linus excused himself to the kitchen, I stood in the hallway with Boaz.
“You’re Boaz Pritchard.” Rue looked him up and down. “I didn’t put it together at first, seeing as how you’re here with Linus.” A nasty smile cut her mouth. “I should have known where Grier goes, you follow like a dog on a leash.”
Leave it to her to zero in on the one member of our party neither of us had warned her away from.
“You’ve got some chip on your shoulder,” I said casually. The contact lenses made it so that’s all you focused on when you first looked at her, but I was paying closer attention now. “How did it get there?”
“I don’t have to explain myself to you.” Pivoting on her heel, she walked off and left us alone.
“I recognize her.” He kept his voice low. “She went to school with us.”
“Your year or mine?” Public schools hustled a lot of kids through their doors, but I felt confident I had never met her. “I’m drawing a blank.”
“She was younger than me, older than you. There’s no reason why you would remember her, but I can tell she remembers you.”
I watched her go, annoyed I couldn’t pin down the memory. “Why’s that?”
“She came on to me. I politely declined. She wouldn’t take no for an answer. It got ugly. I was forced to break it down for her how I didn’t date girls younger than me. I was into age and experience.” He grimaced. “She left me alone after that, until I hit Cass Manfred’s graduation party. Rue crashed it, and so did you and Amelie. Rue caught me walking your troublemaking ass out the door with my arm around your shoulders so you couldn’t escape. She misunderstood and started screaming at me when I came back in to find my drink.”
“You do tend to have that effect on women.” I shrugged. “Why take it out on Linus?”
“He’s engaged to you?” He shrugged back. “Maybe she wanted to hurt you the way you hurt her.”
Without a scrap of doubt, I could tell him, “Linus would never cheat on me.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” he said with equal certainty, “and that leaves antagonizing him.”
“What you’re saying is, she’s got poor taste in men and a death wish.”
Laughter huffed out of him. “Yeah.”
“You have to apologize to Adelaide.” I bit my tongue, but it was too late. The damage was done. “Sorry, I have no right to stick my nose in your business if I ask you to keep yours out of mine.”
“I don’t know what to do with her,” he admitted, growing somber. “She cares about me. It’s not love, nothing like that, but she could squeeze out tears if I was found in a ditch one night.”
More than a few, if her earlier display was any indication of how deep her feelings had grown.
“That’s setting a high bar.” I snorted. “Do you feel anything for her?”
“I don’t want to keep hurting her.” His worried eyes found mine. “But I don’t know how to stop.”
That wasn’t an answer, but maybe he didn’t have one, and maybe not blurting out a meaningless sure or of course was a step in the right direction.
“You can learn.” I passed on the best advice I had to offer, given how new I was to being half of a whole. “Take notes from successful couples. Think Neely and Cruz or Lethe and Hood. Watch how they make it work, how they treat each other. Modify their formula to suit your needs. Go from there.”
Linus rejoined us with a cooler in hand, and Boaz tensed his fists at his sides but deflated in the next heartbeat. “I’ll work on it.”
Eager to get while the getting was good, I started toward the exit.
We found Rue propped against the reinforced door, playing an app on her phone. “You’ve got three minutes left.”
“I’m afraid a new clock is ticking.” Linus hefted the cooler. “We need to go.”
“You never leave early.” She kept pressing buttons, but the jaunty music had died. “Why break tradition?”
“Open the door.” Mist swirled across the surface of his skin. “Or I will open it for you.”
Panic thrust its balled fist down my throat, cutting off my air, and I sucked in a whistling breath between my teeth.
I was back in prison.
The way out was blocked.
The guard had the key in her pocket.
We were stuck in here, with the inmates, with Volkov.
Trapped, trapped, trapped.
A sour taste coated the back of my throat, but the convulsive swallowing wasn’t helping.
Linus brushed his fingers across my cheek, his fingers icy, his nails gone black as midnight.
The cold shocked me back to my senses, and I rallied as Rue glanced up at us.
“Give me a minute.” She took her time turning off her phone and situating it just so in her pocket. The keycard she pretended to have misplaced until Linus bared his teeth. “Found it.” She swiped it through the lock, but he was done waiting and yanked the door open. “Hey, you need to step off me. This is my job.”
“What was so important about those three minutes?” He swept past her, into the living room, searching for danger. “Rue?”
“I have my orders.” She thrust her shoulders back. “You ask for a slot, you use it.”
“Wrong answer.” Boaz captured her wrist and twisted her arm expertly behind her back where he secured her with a zip tie. “Looks like you’re headed for a time-out.”
Outside, Hood laid on the horn in one long bleat, a signal it was time for us to go.
“Have a seat.” Boaz shoved Rue down into a wingback chair and secured her ankles to its legs. “Comfy?”
Dread pooled in my stomach, but there was no time for an interrogation. “What will you do with her?”
“I’ll call this in.” Boaz stood and dusted his hands before pulling out his phone. “Let someone else get to the bottom of it.”
Across the room, Linus stood looking out onto the street, his expression tight.
Windows down, Hood yelled, “Move your asses.”
A prickling sensation stung like bees across my nape. “Vampires.”
“Get to the van.” Linus thrust the cooler into my arms then nudged me out the door. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The tattered wraith’s coat unfurled across his shoulders, and midnight pooled at his feet.
“I’m not leaving you.” I regained my balance, handed the cooler to Boaz, then shoved him toward the van. “Go.”
Planting his feet, Boaz refused to budge. “I’m not leaving either.”
And neither, it seemed, was Rue. Calling for a sentinel to escort her to their base would have to wait.
The moonlit scythe glinted in Linus’s fist, and I couldn’t see his face beneath his cowl as I cut my palm.
“Hand,” I demanded, and he offered me the one not holding an instrument of death. “Don’t give me the look just because you know I wouldn’t be able to see you giving me the look. Two sigils never hurt anyone.”
“Grier.” He caught my fingers in his. “I love you.”
“I love you too.” I wriggled free. “You’re still getting another sigil.” I drew it on his wrist, where his wraith’s cloak might offer some protection. “Boaz, you’re next.”
While Linus watched our backs, I drew several on Boaz in the hopes at least one wouldn’t smudge.
Outside forces might not budge the design, but even an impervious sigil could fall victim to the wearer’s sweat or a careless itch that got scratched all the same.
“You really do love him,” Boaz murmured. “You’re not afraid of him.”
“I really do, and I’m really not.” I finished with him then started on myself. “Did you think he was using his scythe on me behind closed doors?”
“Pretty sure he does, yeah.” He scrubbed his palm over his hair, awkward in a way he never used to be with me. “You were running around in a sheet after spending the night with him.”
The joke came too soon, but it still forced a mortified laugh out of me. “Do not say that where Lethe can overhear.”
Is that a scythe in your pocket, or are you just happy to see Grier?
Did Grier help you sharpen your scythe last night?
Did you scythe Grier last night?
And so on.
I would never hear the end of it. Ever. And forever was a long time for folks like us.
Cursing the three of us soundly, Hood let up on the horn and exited the van while cracking his knuckles.
The wash of red magic as he assumed his gwyllgi form reminded me to close my own ward. A quick swipe of my wrist sent magic humming as a wall of compressed air formed a hard shell around me.
No sooner had my ears popped than a group of six vampires rounded the corner with crowbars, sledgehammers, and bats in hand. They looked ready to smash the heck out of something, but that something wouldn’t be us.
“Good evening, gentlemen.” Linus strolled toward the vampires. “Can I be of assistance?”
“Ain’t you heard?” the one on the far right drawled. “Savannah belongs to the vampires now.”
“I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree.” Linus swept the scythe in a warning arc in front of him. “Savannah is under Society protection.”