But we tried. Armed with my cell phone and a flashlight, Quinn and I spent the next hour tramping around the property, looking for anything resembling belladonna. I had to go slow, and a lot of my energy was devoted to hiding how weak I felt.
It was, unfortunately, a complete waste of time.
“It’s too overgrown here,” I said finally, panting a little. “There could be belladonna under or between any of these plants and we’d never know, especially in the dark.”
“You’re right.” He checked his watch, looking defeated. “It’s almost four. We might as well go back to your place. You look like you’re about to fall over.”
“I’ll have you know,” I said severely, “I’ve got another six or seven minutes of standing before I fall over.”
“Color me chastised, then.” He offered his arm so gallantly that I had to accept.
We called the Pellars on the Jeep’s bluetooth, but Simon was a little snappish at the request for an update. He suggested that I get some sleep and try him in the late morning. Well, he didn’t so much suggest it as bark it and hang up. We headed back to the cabin.
Walking through the front door felt wonderful. I’d locked the dogs in the back bedroom when we stopped to change clothes—animals don’t much care for vampires—so my bedroom was blissfully empty. I was ready to collapse onto the bed, but Quinn closed the door behind him and pounced on me. Lifting me by the hips so his face was level with my belly, he blew a raspberry into my skin. “Hey,” I said, laughing. “What’s gotten into you?”
He let me slide down his body until we were face to face. “Nothing, I just . . . feel weird all of a sudden.”
“Weird how?”
“Sort of . . . calm.”
I stroked his cheek. It was true, the shadows of Maven’s attack had fallen away from his eyes. “Is that a bad thing?”
“Of course not, but . . .” The little thinking wrinkle between his eyes grew deeper, which I privately found adorable. “You have to understand, humans feel this huge variety of moods and emotions, but we don’t usually operate on that kind of scale. To have my mood change all of a sudden, especially in the middle of a crisis—” he broke off abruptly, ducking his head to kiss me. It started out relatively chaste, but then Quinn’s tongue darted into my mouth and it got interesting really quick. “Sorry,” he murmured when I finally came up for air. Quinn didn’t technically need it. “Was I saying something?”
“I think you were suggesting we move to the bed.”
Afterward, I pushed aside a tangle of sheets so I could rest my body against his. He kissed the top of my head, and I tilted my face up to look at him.
“So, Elise wanted to know if we’d go out with her and Natalie.”
“A double date? Like, with me?” he teased.
“None of the other guys I’m seeing are available,” I informed him.
He laughed, then went quiet, the smile fading off his face. “You know why we can’t, right?”
“Yeah, I know.” He wasn’t human. If Elise saw the two of us together, she’d start to wonder why our relationship didn’t seem to be progressing, why I still wasn’t bringing him to family events. Once that domino fell, it was only a matter of time before she started asking dozens of other impossible-to-answer questions. Why didn’t we hang out in the daylight? Why didn’t he ever eat? Why did my animals hate him? Right now, my entire family thought of Quinn as that guy from my old softball team who was my occasional plus-one. None of them could ever think Quinn and I were serious.
Which meant that in addition to my witch abilities, there was another big part of my life my family could never know about. I felt the chasm between my two lives get a little wider.
Quinn saw it on my face. “You wish we were a normal couple,” he said quietly.
“It’s not that. I mean, yeah, it would be nice if we were both just human, and if Charlie was just human, too, but . . . I guess I’m realizing for the first time that I like some of that cheesy couple stuff,” I confessed. “Double dates. Game nights. Saturday afternoon trips to Whole Foods.”
“We could have a game night. Let’s see, we’ll get Maven, Hazel, the werewolves, of course—”
I tried to smack him with a pillow, but he yanked it out of my hand with vampire speed. “No fair,” I complained.
A grin spread across his face, and he propped his head up on his elbow. “Okay, here’s something normal we can do. Tell me something about you that no one knows.”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Seriously?”
“Yep. We’re doing this.” He turned sideways, propping his head on his hand. “I’m waiting.”
I thought it over for a moment, but nothing came to mind. I don’t actually keep a little mental database of things I don’t tell people about myself. “There’s nothing. I’m an open book.”
He threw back his head and laughed that full-throated, unrestrained laugh that I loved. “Lex, you are one of the most self-contained people I’ve ever met, and I mostly hang out with vampires.”
“Fine. I . . . um . . . I’ve been going to school.”
His eyebrows lifted. “To CU?”
“Yeah. I’ve been auditing classes.”
“Since when?”
“A couple of months after I got back from Iraq.”