by Jenna Black
“I will delay them so you can get away.”
Gray paused and looked at the older vampire in surprise. “Why would you do that?”
Drake shrugged. “Because I know you didn’t do it.” A hint of a feral smile twitched his lips upward. “And because even four of them can’t overpower me when I’m ready for them. Now hurry and get out of here before they realize the second vampire presence they sense in here isn’t Thomas.”
Still Gray hesitated. “Thank you. And be careful.”
“You too,” Drake said, then started to close the window—with Gray still perched on the ledge.
Gray dropped to the sidewalk below just as a loud bang signaled the front door had given way. Hoping Drake’s claims weren’t just empty boasting, he ran.
CAROLYN WOKE FROM A heavy sleep to the sound of a ringing phone. She lifted her head and rubbed the grit from her eyes. The clock beside her bed declared it was three-thirty in the morning. She smothered a yawn.
The phone stopped ringing. Either the caller had given up, or Hannah had answered. Carolyn told herself to go back to sleep, but instead she sat up in the bed and turned on the light. Phone calls at three-thirty jn the morning were rarely anything good.
Moments later, the light in the hallway switched on, and Hannah emerged from her bedroom, cordless phone in hand. Her wild curls were loose and tousled from sleep, and Carolyn could see the impression of her pillow on her cheek. Her oversized nightshirt declared her a Naughty Girl. Her eyes were half-closed, and the lack of any obvious alarm on her face eased Carolyn’s nerves.
Hannah held out the phone to her without a word, not bothering to smother her yawn.
“Hello?” Carolyn said into the phone, knowing that it had to be Gray. No one else knew she was staying with Hannah.
“Hey,” he said, and even in that one word she could hear the strain in his voice. “Everything all right over there? Your governess kept pleading the fifth.”
Carolyn snickered and rolled her eyes at Hannah, who made one of those “who me?” faces. “Everything’s fine, except for being awakened at an ungodly hour by a phone call. What’s going on?” A chill crawled down her spine as she woke up a little more. “Where are you, and how did you get access to a phone?”
“It’s a long story, and I’d rather not go into it right now. I’m at a pay phone. Can I come over?”
“Yeah, sure. Where are you?”
“Look out your window.”
She nudged the curtain aside and saw Gray standing at the pay phone on the corner. He waved, and she beckoned him toward the door.
Hannah gave her a penetrating look when she hung up the phone. “Inviting him into my apartment?”
Carolyn smiled sheepishly. “I guess that was pretty rude of me. Sorry.”
“Do you suppose it’s true that vampires can’t enter a residence unless they’re invited?”
“My guess would be no,” Carolyn answered as she pulled on a battered chenille bathrobe and headed toward the front door, Hannah on her heels. Carolyn quirked a brow at her. “Don’t you want to put on a robe or something?”
Hannah grinned. “He already knows I’m a naughty girl. I’m not afraid to flaunt it.”
Carolyn smiled and shook her head, though butterflies fluttered in her stomach. What was Gray doing here? The only thing she knew for sure was that it was a bad sign. She buzzed Gray in, then opened the door for him. She couldn’t help noticing the nervous glance he cast over his shoulder before she closed the door. His face looked even paler than usual, and trouble brewed in his eyes. Carolyn’s mouth went dry.
“I think I’ll go make a pot of coffee,” Hannah said, leaving the two of them momentarily alone. However, Hannah’s apartment was small enough that she could easily overhear any discussion from the kitchen, so it was a false sense of privacy. Carolyn had no doubt her friend’s ears were straining to follow the conversation.
Gray declined to sit, instead pacing the length of the cramped living room as Carolyn looked up at him. “What’s happened?” she asked again.
He scratched the back of his head, and for a moment she was struck again by how good he looked with long hair. Then she scolded herself for the inappropriate lust attack.
“I am so screwed,” he said, letting out a deep breath as he stopped his pacing to meet her eyes. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but someone came to my house tonight and hit me with the most powerful glamour I’ve ever felt. When I snapped out of it, I was at a murder scene.”
Carolyn gasped. In the kitchen, Hannah ceased any pretense of making coffee, standing in the doorway and staring.
“One of the victims was killed Banger-style. The other was a Guardian. Someone had driven a stake through his heart. Drake was there, too. He said the Guardian called him in a panic just a few minutes before.”
Carolyn beckoned for Gray to come sit beside her on the sofa, and he obeyed, his eyes haunted. Hannah turned back to her coffee-making, and soon emerged from the kitchen carrying two cups of steaming coffee, which she set down on the coffee table.
“I assume you don’t drink coffee?” she asked Gray.
“No.” He clasped his hands together in his lap. Hannah sat across the table from them on an ottoman, crossing her legs under her. The nightshirt just barely kept her decent in that position.
Carolyn cupped her coffee in her hands, trying to fight off the chill. She had worked countless murder cases as a cop, but she had never before known any of the victims or the suspects personally. This felt massively different, and her mind struggled to retain any semblance of rational thought.
“Not long afterwards, a mob of angry Guardians appeared at the door,” Gray continued. “Drake provided a distraction to help me get away.”
“Interesting,” Hannah said. She no longer looked even vaguely sleepy, her warm brown eyes alight with intelligence. “Do you have any reason to think he’s not the killer himself?”
Gray shrugged. “Not really. I suspect he’s strong enough to have overcome me with glamour, but …”
“But this killer isn’t stupid,” Carolyn finished for him, “and it would be damn stupid to make himself a prime suspect by hanging around the murder scene until you came to.”
“Exactly,” Gray said, nodding. “I think he was called to the scene so he would be under suspicion too.” He grunted in frustration, leaning back in the sofa and shaking his head. “I can understand why the killer would want Drake out of the picture. The guy is a very dangerous hunter. But why me? I’ve never been a part of the Guardians. I’m a threat to no one. Before, we thought maybe the Banger was framing me to distract Jules, but now I have to run for it, so it’s not like Jules will be stuck guarding my house and following me around. I mean, if he finds me, I’m a dead man. So I don’t understand …”
“Have you made any enemies since you became vampire?” Carolyn asked.
“Yeah. Jules.” His head snapped up. “It would be the perfect cover …”
“Huh?”
He met her gaze, a strange gleam in his eyes. “What better way to deflect suspicion from himself than to kill his own girlfriend? He plays the part of revenge-maddened lover, pointing his finger at me as he does so. Then when he’s on watch, he tricks Thomas into thinking I’ve skipped out so he can kill again. It must have been a pain in his ass when I was confined to the basement.”
Carolyn saw his hands clenching into fists, saw the flush of temper in his cheeks. She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. “Easy there. Don’t jump to conclusions. There’s been an awful lot of that going on.”
For a moment, the expression on Gray’s face darkened even further. Then he seemed to snap out of it, the tension draining from his body. He sighed, his fists unclenching. “You’re right. There has. But I still think Jules has to take his place on the list of suspects.”
“I’ll grant you that,” she agreed, though her gut told her Jules wasn’t the killer. She remembered the look on his face when he’d
gone after Gray, just after Courtney’s murder. It was possible the guy was a great actor, but she didn’t think so. “But keep thinking—do you have any other enemies?”
He shook his head. “Not that I know of.”
“There’s always me,” Hannah said with false cheer, earning herself another of his dark looks.
“I’ve pretty much lived like a hermit ever since … well, just ever since. If you don’t interact with people, you don’t make enemies.”
Carolyn’s heart squeezed gently. Gray had always been something of an introvert, but he’d never let that stop him from socializing and making friends. How terribly lonely he must be if he’d cut himself off from all human contact for three years.
“Maybe it’s not an enemy,” Hannah mused. “Maybe you’re just a convenient scapegoat. It might not be anything personal at all.”
“True,” Carolyn agreed, “but if it’s not personal, then we’re going to have an even harder time unraveling everything. So for the meantime, I’d like to explore any possible personal connection.”
“Unless it’s Jules, then I can’t imagine it’s anything personal,” Gray countered. “I’m serious, Carolyn. I haven’t been in a position to piss anyone off for three years.”
“Then why are you and Jules at each others’ throats?”
Gray’s face clouded. “We just have a personality conflict is all,” he said, but he was a terrible liar.
Carolyn sighed. “How am I supposed to help you if you won’t tell me the truth?”
“I didn’t ask you to help me!”
“Then what are you doing here at three-thirty in the morning?”
He looked like he was about to snap back at her, but visibly swallowed the words. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his gaze away from her, every nuance of his body language slamming the virtual door in her face.
“When did you become such a hot-head?” Hannah asked. “You used to be on such an even keel that you might as well have been dead.”
“Hannah!” Carolyn barked, wishing Hannah didn’t blurt out everything that came to her mind.
As usual, Hannah was undeterred. “Now you seem to fly off the handle at a moment’s notice.”
Gray squirmed and some of the belligerence faded from his expression. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m being an asshole, I know.” He raised his chin. “It’s like I told Carolyn before. Gray James is dead. I just happen to bear a strong resemblance to him.”
Hannah shrugged. “Whatever.”
Gray’s eyes were shadowed and haunted, his cheeks almost gaunt, but Carolyn could still make out the shadow of the man she once loved in that grim profile. And though it was true that he was much more volatile than he once was, she wondered if the changes were really more than skin deep. Maybe what she was seeing now was the real Gray James, set free from the need to conform and “behave.”
Of course, she didn’t utter a word of this speculation out loud. It was obvious Gray didn’t much like the man he had become, and if it was easier for him to pretend that he’d been completely transformed when he’d become vampire, then for now she’d let him cling to that illusion. If illusion it was.
“So,” she said, “if you’re not here to ask for my help, then what are you doing here?”
He squirmed again and suddenly dropped his gaze to his hands, which were now folded in his lap. “Er—”
Hannah laughed. “He’s here to ask for help, of course.” She unfolded her legs and leaned forward on the ottoman, quelling her laughter and becoming all business. “You said you thought Jules would kill you if he found you.” Gray nodded. “And you said there was a mob of Guardians at the door when you fled the murder scene.” He flinched, whether at the memory or at Hannah’s bald description Carolyn didn’t know.
“Yes,” he said.
“So you basically have a lynch mob after you, and they’re all vampires.”
He lost the hangdog look and sat up straighter. “Yup, that about sums it up.”
“Which means you can’t go back to your house,” Carolyn said, continuing the line of thought. “Which means you have to find somewhere else to spend the day.”
“And you decided this would be just the place,” Hannah finished.
But Gray shook his head. “No. Jules doesn’t specifically know Carolyn is here, but he can make an educated guess. I expect that he will make an appearance here, maybe even before the night is out.”
“Oh, great. That should be fun. Thanks a lot, Gray.”
“Sorry?” he said tentatively.
“I guess we have to get you out of here, then,” Carolyn said.
“No, we don’t. I was just hoping you’d be able to lend me some money so I can get a hotel room. I had nothing in my pockets when I was abducted, and as you know I don’t dare go home.”
Carolyn frowned and bit her lip. “Are vampires really as vulnerable to sunlight as the legends say?”
“Pretty close. Direct sunlight would kill me very quickly. Indirect sunlight would hurt like hell and kill me eventually. But if I pull the drapes and bury myself under the covers, I should be all right.”
“And when housekeeping comes by?”
“I’ll put a do-not-disturb sign on the door and throw the deadbolt. I’ll be fine, Carolyn.”
“Yeah, Carolyn,” Hannah chimed in. “He’ll be fine. Now give him some money and let him get out of here before the lynch mob shows up.”
But Carolyn couldn’t just let him face this alone, not when his life was in danger. “I’m coming with you,” she declared.
“Why am I not surprised?” Hannah asked with ill-disguised sarcasm.
“No, you’re not,” Gray said, his eyes narrowed.
“Then you can’t have any money.”
He turned to Hannah and raised an eyebrow, but Hannah raised her hands and shook her head. “Don’t look at me! I’m not stupid enough to get in the middle of this.”
“But you want to keep Carolyn safe, don’t you?” Gray challenged.
“Hey, baby, I’m looking out for number one, and if I gave you any money under these circumstances, she’d kill me.”
Gray stood up and glared down at Carolyn. “I guess I’ll just have to go out on the street and rob someone. Shouldn’t be too hard with my glamour.” He took two angry strides toward the door.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Gray!” Carolyn said in exasperation, springing to her feet. “You keep telling me how you’ve changed, but you’re still playing this ridiculous, alpha-male, protect-the-helpless-woman game and it’s pissing me off.” He turned around to face her, and she read his intent immediately, lowering her gaze from his face to his Adam’s apple. “And don’t you dare use your damned glamour against me. I’m an adult, capable woman and I deserve to be treated like one.”
He hissed out an exasperated breath. “Why do you insist on seeing it as a bad thing that I want to protect someone I … care about? You’ve got such a massive chip on your shoulder I’m amazed you can walk straight!”
“I think I’ll just go to my room, and … uh …” Hannah crept out of the room without finishing the thought
“Oh, I’ve got a chip on my shoulder?” Carolyn said, stalking closer to him while still refusing to meet his eyes. “Then what do you call this ‘I can handle everything all by myself’ crap? You know you need help, but you refuse to take it. That’s a chip on the shoulder and a death wish all rolled into one.” To her dismay, she felt the distinctive burn of incipient tears in her eyes. Damn, it was like she was reliving every argument they’d had about her job in the weeks leading up to their wedding. “Why can’t you have a little faith in me?” she asked, her chest hurting as she fought to keep the tears at bay.
Suddenly, Gray’s arms were around her and her cheek was pressed up against his chest. She inhaled deeply. He wasn’t wearing any cologne today, so all she smelled was him. His hand touched the back of her head, his fingers running through her mussed hair. Under her ear, she heard the steady thud of his h
eart, and her mind flashed to memories of lying half on top of him in bed on lazy Saturday mornings. She swallowed hard, the tears still threatening to spill over if she wasn’t constantly on her guard.
“Carolyn, I’ve always had faith in you,” he murmured into her hair. “You were a damn good cop, and I’m sure you’re a damn good investigator now. I just … Can’t you understand what it’s like to worry about someone? Can’t you understand the instinct to keep those who matter to you safe?”
She put her hands against his chest and pushed away, looking up into his earnest eyes, trusting him not to use his glamour right now. “Can’t you?”
She saw her words hit home, but he looked even more miserable. “If I let you come with me, and something happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.”
She managed a weak smile. “Well if I let you leave without me, and something happens to you, I’ll never forgive you.”
His face softened and he laughed. “You’re a priceless gem,” he said, then leaned forward to kiss her lightly on the forehead.
Even when he moved away, she felt the touch of those lips searing her skin. Desires long suppressed stirred in her center, and though Gray tried to act casual she noticed the dilation of his eyes. And the bulge in his pants.
Yes, there was more than one reason she wanted to convince Gray to let her come along to his hotel room tonight. His nostrils flared slightly, and she was reminded of some predatory animal scenting its prey on the wind. “Go put some clothes on,” he said in a voice that would have sounded more natural if he were saying “take those clothes off.” “I promise I’ll wait for you.”
Carolyn wasn’t sure she could trust him to wait. But she also knew that if he really wanted to leave the house without her, there was nothing she could do to stop him. Nodding briskly, she hurried to her room to change at top speed.
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