Where Winter Finds You

by J. R. Ward

  “Well,” she said. And could go no further.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  As it was hard to know what he was apologizing for—the sex, even though it had been incredible? the strange connection, even though it had seemed so real? the shooting, even though she hadn’t been injured and it was hardly his fault?—she recognized that her head was in a total tangle, and the only cure for the condition was sleep.

  Assuming she would be able to get any today, and not just on account of her noisy neighbors.

  “So I’m going to head back home now.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes and had to force a smile. “Thanks for this—”

  “I’m glad you came to see me. It was unexpected—I wish I’d known you were coming.”

  “I—ah… I didn’t know this was your club, actually. Emile and I came here to calm down his girlfriend.”

  Trez’s eyebrows lifted. “Emile. Has a girlfriend?”

  * * *

  Well, wasn’t this a happy piece of news, Trez thought. For that waiter. Because if the sonofabitch human was taken? It was going to dramatically improve his chances of seeing his next birthday.

  “Yes, he’s dating a woman I work with.” Therese smoothed back the hair that was flowing over her shoulders. “Looks like I lost my clip, too.” She shook her head. “Anyway, yes, he’s with the dreaded Liza—although to be fair, I’m sure the girl’s mother probably loves her.”

  “Is she giving you problems?”

  Is she a problem I can solve for you, he thought to himself.

  “No, not like you’re inferring. She’s just jealous.”

  “Does she have reason to be?” Maybe his optimism was misplaced.

  “No.” Those eyes, those beautiful pale eyes of hers, swung up and hung onto his stare. “There is no reason for her to be worried about me. Not on my end, at any rate. And I’ve made this clear to Emile.”

  Trez tried to keep his smile to himself. Failed miserably. “Well.”

  As Therese flushed, she went back to looking at the personal effects that had been thrown on the table. “Yeah, so the plan was for him and me to come talk to her. Calm her down. She was drunk and… whatever. It’s not my problem.”

  He was more than happy to change the subject. “So you were going to move? Thanks to that tip?”

  And P.S., there was only one blond male that Trez could think of who would eat so much that a security deposit’s worth of a tip would be warranted.

  “Yup, I was going to ask you about the rental.”

  “It’s still available,” he rushed to point out.

  “And I’m broke again.” Therese took a defeated breath, but she didn’t wallow in any kind of poor-me. “It’s just a setback, though. A delay. It’ll happen.”

  She put her purse on the table and reached inside to unzip a pocket. Taking out a cell phone that was not turned on, she shook her head. “At least they didn’t get this. Maybe because it’s dead. Or they just missed it.”

  “You out of battery? Would you like to charge it in my office?”

  “Nah, this is my old one. I don’t turn it on.”

  When she glanced at the door, he felt the way he had when they’d been talking back at the restaurant. There was something about her leaving that always made him antsy—as if, maybe, he would never see her again.

  As if, maybe, he would lose her permanently. Again.

  This is my queen, he thought to himself. Back to me… by some kind of miracle.

  “I’m glad I am your dream,” he said softly.

  His female’s eyes returned to his and she opened her mouth to say something. Then closed it.

  As the silenced stretched out between them, he knew what she wanted. And he wanted to give it to her. For hours. For whole nights and days.

  Stepping into her body, he put his arm around the small of her back and drew her against his hard muscle. He was erect again. Desperate again. But there was no chance of doing anything about it. There was too much going on on the far side of the door—and then there was Xhex and her miss-nothing symphath shit.

  Trez lowered his mouth, but stopped with a mere half inch between them. “I want to be in you again.”

  Her sigh was as lovely as she was. “When?”

  Now! Fucking now! his libido roared. NOWNOWNOW—

  “Nightfall tomorrow. I’ll come to you at the rooming house.”

  “I have to work.”

  “You can be late.”

  Therese shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “Then after your shift is over. I’ll come and get you.”

  “Okay.” She reached up to his nape and put her breasts to his chest. “It’s a date.”

  “And I’ll find us some proper privacy.”

  “I don’t know where this is going,” she whispered.

  “Yes, you do. And so do I.”

  They were talking quickly, their sentences bumping into each other’s, as if she worried they would lose out on the future in the same way he did.

  Trez sealed her mouth with a kiss that took him right back to when they’d been joined, so rushed, so hasty, so raw on the floor of the hidden passageway. And the next thing he knew, he put her on the corner of the table, other people’s crap hitting the floor as his hands went to places that would get them into a compromising situation quick.

  Places like zippers.

  Trez cursed against her lips. “I need to stop before I can’t.”

  “Me, too. This is crazy.”

  Getting his body to pay attention to commands was not the easiest thing he’d ever done, but he eventually managed to peel himself away. The re-tuck he had to pull was more like putting a two-by-four in a flour sack—and the way she looked at him while he was touching himself did not help him cool off in the slightest.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” he said in a guttural voice.

  “Yes.” She kept her eyes on his arousal. “You will.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Xhex was scrubbing yet another human’s memories when she saw the door to the interrogation room open and Trez and that female step out. It didn’t take a symphath to know what was on both of their minds. For one thing, Trez had a tent pole in the front of his slacks. For another, that female—Therese—was looking at him under her lashes, as if she were remembering something the two of them had done, and not as in reading the paper.

  More like Netflix and Chilling—without the Netflix or the chill.

  It was unlikely that kind of thing had happened in that room just now, however. For one, they hadn’t been alone very long, and Xhex was willing to bet her boss worked fast with the females, but not that fast. For another, they were carrying each other’s scents when she had met up with them as they’d come out from the hidden passageway.

  So it had already been a done deal.

  Although that wasn’t even the interesting part.

  Narrowing her eyes, Xhex focused on the female—and not just because she was a dead ringer for Selena.

  Yup. She hadn’t been wrong. Therese had an extremely unusual grid.

  As a symphath, Xhex was able to read the emotions of other people, sensing shifts in feelings and internal orientations along a three-dimensional grid pattern, the highs and lows plotted along axes. Everyone had such a superstructure. Doggen, regular vampires, Shadows—even symphaths, although most of Xhex and Rehv’s kind could hide their structures from others of the subspecies. What was impossible—or should have been impossible—was for an individual to have two grids. In fact, Xhex had never seen such as thing…

  Until she had met John Matthew, her hellren.

  He had what was a bog-standard grid, just like everyone else, but there was something behind it, a shadow superstructure. It was like a mirror image of the primary grid, and the emotions were always plotted the same on both, the two working not in concert but identically.

  To this night, Xhex had no idea what it meant.

  At least not for sure.

  She had her su
spicions, however, ones that were too private and personal for her to share with anybody except John, but also ones that were too shattering for her to share with him. The truth was, she had started to wonder whether John was more connected with his father, Darius, than just on a sire/son basis. Except that was impossible, right? Reincarnation didn’t happen.

  Really. It didn’t…

  Yeah, except how else would anyone reconcile an identical copy of Trez’s dead shellan—who had a grid like that?

  “I don’t want to hear it, okay.”

  At the sound of the terse male voice, she didn’t bother shifting her eyes away from the female who was walking out of the club. “Where did you meet her?”

  “I’m not talking about her.”

  “She looks like Selena.”

  “Really,” he groused. “I hadn’t noticed. And I am not—”

  “I think she’s Selena.”

  As he froze where he stood, she wanted to slap herself. The guy was broken by grief, and therefore primed to do things that were not in his best interest with a female who looked like that. In spite of the grid issue. Or maybe because of it.

  Xhex shook her head. “I didn’t mean that—”

  “What do you see?” he demanded. He took her arm in a hard grip. “Xhex, what do you know?”

  The sense that they were being watched made her glance around—and yes, there it was. In the far corner of the club, a dense shadow that couldn’t be explained by any objects blocking any of the light. But it wasn’t the Omega. It was not evil. It wasn’t even a shadow.

  It was an optical illusion thrown up so someone standing behind it was not seen.

  And she had a feeling who it was.

  And why they were here.

  An abrupt sense of peacefulness came over her.

  “What do you see?” Trez put her face in his. “Tell me.”

  The way the male’s voice broke, the desperation in his face, the painful cast of his eyes, made Xhex abruptly hug him. How could she not? His suffering had been indescribable, but the end was in sight. She knew this without a doubt.

  Holding him close, Xhex said in his ear, “It’s going to be okay.”

  “What is?”

  As she eased back from her old friend, from her dear friend, she reached up to his face. “All is as it should be.”

  “What does that mean.”

  Xhex stared up at the male. Putting her hand on his heart, she opened herself to fully read his grid. It was the kind of thing she hadn’t been able to do before now, and not because he locked her out. She loved him like a brother, and his loss was so painful that getting too close to his emotions, in the way of her kind, was agony.

  Like putting her entire body on a red-hot grill—

  Sucking a breath in through her teeth, Xhex trembled. His pain was a tidal wave that stung her very marrow, and she had to brace herself to absorb the enormity of it. But she owed him this.

  Before she spoke, her eyes skipped to that corner of the club, to the shadow that was present, but couldn’t technically exist.

  “Do you know what you feel in here?” she whispered as she rubbed over his heart.

  “What?”

  “In here.” She pressed in. “Here in your core.” When he started to shake his head, she talked over his questions, his desperation. “Listen to me. You can trust this. Do you understand what I am saying? You can trust what is in here.”

  Trez swallowed hard. When his eyes went to the roof high above, she knew he wasn’t looking at anything. He was trying to keep tears from falling, here in this public place, with so many humans and staff around.

  “How do you know what I can trust?” he asked without meeting her eyes.

  “I don’t have a good answer for that, and not because I’m keeping anything from you. I just know… you can have faith in yourself. Even if it feels… impossible.”

  There was a long moment of stillness and silence, even as others in the club moved around and talked and even shouted. But she gave him all the time he needed to assess her aura and her expression. And she knew the moment he believed in what she was trying to tell him without actually telling him: Her old friend’s arms shot around her and pulled her in tight, the strength that he put into the embrace nearly crushing her.

  “Thank you,” he gritted out.

  Xhex’s eyes returned to that far corner, to that inexplicable shadow that was created by magic. “Don’t thank me. It’s not my doing.”

  With a quick curse, Trez stepped back and tucked in his silk shirt. Like he was trying to tuck in his emotions.

  “I, um… yeah, well,” he said, “if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to head up to my office where I am totally not going to lose it all over the fuck.”

  “Good plan.” Xhex smiled at him. “I’ll handle everything down here.”

  “You always do.”

  Trez gave her shoulder a squeeze and then he strode across the empty dance floor, a tall figure with a powerful body and a terrible heartache that had, unexpectedly, been relieved by a miracle.

  Without warning, unease rippled through her, and she crossed her arms over her chest. Had she done the right thing? Had she said the right thing?

  Big Rob, her second in command, approached her. “Hey, you gotta minute? That cop wants to talk to you.”

  “One sec. Hold him in place.”

  Turning from her bouncer, she walked over to the shadow, and then pivoted around so that her back was to the corner, as if she were making some kind of measurement of the dance floor.

  In a quiet voice, she said, “Why can’t I just tell him? I don’t get it. If you’ve given him this gift, shouldn’t he just know that she’s back?”

  Xhex waited. And just before she was about to give up, a disembodied answer entered her brain directly, bypassing her ear canals.

  He is in the midst of his destiny the now. There are no shortcuts, even when there are gifts.

  She twisted around and looked at the dense darkness. “What about John. John is the same as her, John is—”

  That was before my time. I have no standing to rearrange the arrangements of my predecessor.

  “So it’s real?”

  The shadow disappeared, but as it left, she felt a warmth come over her. Shaking her head, she had to smile.

  Lassiter working magic, and taking names. As best he could.

  It almost made you forget his taste in TV shows.

  * * *

  Trez did not have a breakdown, as it turned out. Instead, he stayed up in his office until everyone, including Xhex, had left. Then, close to dawn, he went down to the club proper and stood in the huge, empty space. Slowly, he pivoted in a circle, taking in the bar, the sound booth, the interrogation rooms, the bathrooms where the fucking happened, the stairs to his private area.

  He’d bought the old warehouse for a song, torn out the interior compartments, and painted all the old glass in the blocks of windows around the upper quarter of the space. He’d also built out his office space, as well as the locker room for the working girls, and those one-person, but never used that way, loos with the drains in the middle of the floor and the hose hookups behind the toilets.

  He had never really thought of his business as dirty. He’d just been in it for the money.

  But the idea of Selena being here? And almost getting shot?

  Bringing up his hand, he placed it upon his heart, right where Xhex had put her own. You can trust what is in here.

  Yes, he thought. YES.

  His prayers, his desperate prayers that had been sent up to thin ether because he had believed in nothing spiritual at all, not even the distant stars, had been answered. Xhex had proved that tonight.

  She had told him, tonight, everything he had wanted to hear.

  With a fresh wave of gratitude and relief, he pictured Selena in her new incarnation. Remembered them being together. Recalled the feel of her core, the taste of her lips, even the sounds she made.

  His shellan was back
to him.

  His joy was so great, he could contain it no better than he had handled his grief, his emotions over-spilling. Overcoming. Overtaking. Except now, he didn’t mind it. He took out his phone and called up his brother’s contact. He needed to tell iAm, he needed to tell the Brothers, he needed to—

  A flash down on the floor caught his eye.

  Frowning, he walked over and bent down. The ring of keys was nothing unusual, exactly the kind of thing that could be found any night of the week after the lights went on. There was something out of the norm, however. The unadorned ring held, in addition to a silver key of unremarkable distinction, a copper one.

  The soft metal was old, utterly lacking the mellow, rose gold-like sheen of fresh copper.

  So it was from a vampire house.

  Bringing the thing to his nose, he breathed in deep—and caught the familiar scent of his female. These were hers. They had fallen out of her purse when her money had been taken.

  Rubbing the slip of copper between his thumb and forefinger, he thought of his reincarnated Selena. Of the fact that she didn’t recognize him in person, even though she knew him from her dreams, knew him from the feel of his body on hers, in hers.

  This key, which warmed to his touch, was not to the door to her flat in that fucking awful rooming house. It was to another house—a home. Where she had evidently come from.

  Except… how had that worked? How had she, as a Chosen, come from anywhere but the Sanctuary?

  As much as his soul was singing, and as fervently as he wanted to proclaim to the world his queen had come back unto him, his logical side couldn’t square up the past she had had without him. She was through her transition. Well through it. So how had that happened? How had his Selena died so recently, and yet been returned unto him in the body of a mature female?

  There was no reconciling the two timelines. No way to make that equation add, subtract, multiply, or divide. And yet Xhex wouldn’t mislead him. No way. Even though she was a symphath, history had proven that he could trust her, and she had very clearly confirmed what he had known all along, what had captivated him—and given that what he felt now was infinitely better than the suffering? He would take it and run with it. After all, wasn’t that what faith was all about?