"What is it, Jenny?"
"Will you read me a story before bedtime?"
Relief cascaded through me. Normalcy. I didn't think it was possible to ever have it again. Maybe it was just redefining the concept of "normal." I looked at her and tapped my chin thoughtfully. "Hmmm. I don't know. Can you afford my superior reading skills?"
"Maybe," she said. "What do you charge?"
"Two hugs and one kiss."
With tilted head and pursed lips she considered the cost. "That's kinda steep."
"Got a counteroffer?" I raised my brows at her.
She grinned. And I grinned back. Then my sweet baby launched herself into my embrace and wrapped her little arms around my neck. "I can afford your askin' price," she said.
I held on to her and squeezed, trying to gather her warmth, her love into me. I wanted it to soak into my skin. I never wanted her to doubt, to worry, to fear. Oh, the things a mother wanted for her kids. The things we couldn't ever really give them. Because to be human meant you doubted, worried, feared. No matter your age. Not even being a vampire would help me protect my kids against the disappointments and the hurts the world offered.
I looked at Bryan. He was watching us, a longing in his eyes that battled with his obvious pride. I loosed one arm and beckoned him into the cuddle. He hesitated. I realized he didn't fear getting close to me, but he hadn't decided if it was worth letting go of his manliness for a minute to enjoy an old-fashioned, girl-infested hug.
He scooted close and I enclosed him with us. For a few perfect moments, we sat there on our new couch, my family and I, and reaffirmed our faith in our bond.
"I love you," I said. "I love you so much."
"Aw, Mom." Bryan broke free. He didn't move away, but his face pinched with revulsion. "Don't go mushy on us."
"Too late."
"She loves The Secrets of Droon. So did Bryan when he was her age. I kept his collection for Jenny and we started reading them a few weeks ago. We're on the seventh book," I told Patrick.
"How many books are there in the series?"
"I dunno. A zillion, I think."
"Ah. It might take a while to finish the series."
I laughed. "Yeah, probably."
Hand in hand, Patrick and I walked down the block, like a regular couple out for a nightly stroll. After the kids were tucked into bed, all the while complaining about their 4 a.m. bedtime (but Moooom, Wilson and Miranda and Joey and Sue Ann all get to stay up until 5 A.M.), it was nearly time for Patrick and me to meet Lorćan.
"We should probably fly there," I said.
"Fly where?" asked a petulant female voice. Nara the Nasty shimmered in front of us, blocking the path.
Oh goodie. My favorite person. Her ensemble screamed "vampire slut." The tight red leather minidress barely covered her vagina. The bustier pushed up and put together her generous boobage and caused what I called the Jell-O Effect (… watch them wiggle, see them jiggle…). The high heels she wore were ankle busters; the red straps crisscrossed all the way up her calves. She looked exactly like a vampire chick on the prowl for a human snack.
"Isn't this cozy?" She sent Patrick a blatant do-me-now-big-boy look, obviously pretending I didn't exist.
Patrick's thumb stroked across my palm and pleasure tingled through me. He was mine, right now anyway, so I kept my mouth shut. But being quiet didn't mean I had to be nice. I moved closer to Patrick, dropping his hand to snake my arm around his waist; my thumb hooked into the loop on his 501s. His arm settled around my shoulders. This was a move that Nara noticed. And didn't like.
"Where are you going?" she asked. The "with that bitch" wasn't spoken, but I knew she was thinking it.
"Why do you care, Nara?" Patrick asked politely.
Her eyes widened and her lower lip trembled. Wow. I wondered how long it took her to perfect that move. "Of course, I care. I have always cared. It is you I love, Padriag."
Love? She loved him? Yuck. I should've figured something had gone on between them after the Alexis Carrington treatment she bestowed on me. If we were going to have a real Dynasty moment, we'd start bitch slapping each other soon. I relished the idea of smacking Nara.
"You love only yourself," Patrick said, his voice weary. I got the impression this was an oft-repeated discussion. And Nara didn't seem like a girl who took hints to leave. Hell, she didn't seem like a girl who took "no" for an answer.
Her gaze slid to me then up to Patrick's face. I saw the calculation in her eyes, the slight smirking curve of her lips. "You know I don't mind sharing. Not for a night. And it's not like we haven't done a threesome before." One slim pale shoulder lifted. "I'm not attracted to her, but I will do as you wish. As always."
Patrick tensed, holding on to me so tightly I couldn't move. That bitch. That arrogant, stupid bitch. Let me go. I'm going to claw out her eyes.
Be still, love. Will you give her what she wants?
You're damn right I will. I'll break more than her fucking hand this time, too.
Please, Jessica. We have more important worries than Nara's petty attempts to tear at our bond.
Argh! Fine! But… argh!
"Don't talk that way in front of Jessica," Patrick warned in a low voice. "You think to embarrass me, but you will only embarrass yourself."
I felt Patrick's weariness. Yeah, this was definitely an ongoing battle. How long had he been putting up with this woman? And why?
"What do you want?" he asked, his tone uninterested.
"You." She sashayed toward him, her hips undulating in a way most men probably found sexy. It reminded me of the way clothes tumbled around in a dryer. "For seven hundred years, I've paid penance for my mistake. When will you forgive me?"
"Never."
Her nostrils flared and I saw the flash of temper in her eyes. She got ahold of herself, though, and allowed her mouth to curl into a sensual smile. "You haven't claimed her. She claimed you and you did not reciprocate. She refuses to bind with you." Her voice dropped into a sexy purr. "We claimed each other, lover. I happily completed the binding with you. And I would again."
The words echoed in my mind like a blast of dynamite. Nara… and Patrick… and the binding? Anger burned through me as I turned to Patrick. "Please tell me that she is not your ex-wife."
"Jessica." He loosed himself and stood next to me, his fists clenched at his sides, his gaze begging me to understand, to accept.
Triumph flared in Nara's gaze. "You didn't tell her that we had been bound?" She tapped a red-painted nail on her lips. "Ah. I get it. You're trying to make me jealous, aren't you? I know she looks like Dairine. But sweetie, that doesn't make her your sonuachar."
"She is my sonuachar. But I will not force her to live a life she doesn't want to live or be with a man she doesn't love. Her happiness is worth far more than my own. This is a concept you have never understood."
She rolled her eyes. "You've always been difficult. But I enjoy a challenge, as you well know."
"Are we done?" I asked. "Because I'm really bored."
Her lips peeled back into an ugly scowl. Her pretty face twisted with her hatred. "You will regret taking Patrick from me. You will pay with pain and with blood."
"You're pathetic," I said. "A sad, bitter woman who seriously needs some therapy. Three's a crowd and I'm tired of sharing my space with you. Go the hell away."
I looked at Patrick. Maybe I wasn't sure about the soul mate thing or if I wanted to marry him or if it was wise to do the mattress mambo with him. But I had never felt more safe, more cherished, more beloved than when I was with him. I worried about the future, about my kids, about so many things. But I knew that I wanted Patrick. I really, really, really wanted him. And so, I whispered, "Claim me."
Chapter 16
"Jessica." My name was a prayer issued from his lips—and that tender refrain whispered through me like a silken promise. Patrick placed his hand on my neck and murmured, "Mine." I felt a tingling heat bloom and fade. Another honeysuckle? Or was Patrick's sym
bol different?
"No!" Nara's arm went up, her open palm swinging toward my cheek, but Patrick grabbed her wrist and flung it away.
"You cannot have him. He is mine!"
"No, he's mine," I said. "Fuck off."
Realizing she'd lost this round, she screamed in fury then… sparkled away.
"What a bitch!"
"Jessica…" He shook his head, smiling. "You are impudent."
"It's a gift."
"You are the gift."
"Patrick, you're twisting me into knots. You're all smoochy and lovey and saving-my-life one second and all brooding and dark and driving-me-crazy the next. I don't know what to do with you."
"I could think of several things you could do with me."
"Yeah. Tell me about it." I nibbled my lower lip. "So… Nara… you, uh, were married to her."
"It was more blackmail than marriage."
His eyes went distant and I could feel him go back through the centuries. "She was beautiful. Seductive. Yet the only reason I agreed to the binding was because she had my father's swords."
"What?"
He nodded. "The swords had been stolen from my father—no one knew what had happened to them. Then, seven hundred years ago, Nara showed up and bartered with me. If I would bind with her, she'd give me the Ruadan swords. It's tradition with vampire bindings for the couple to exchange gifts—usually these objects have great emotional value."
"What did you give her?"
Patrick's jaw clenched. "Nara would settle for nothing less than the coin made from Dairine's fede. She hoped to force me into another binding to regain the coin."
I thought about the Legend of Ruadan the First and I realized why Nara would try to blackmail Patrick into marriage. "You and Lor are the sons of the first vampire. You said the vampires had a class system. So, she wanted the power and prestige that was part and parcel of being your mate."
I really didn't like her. She had taken advantage of Patrick. She was vindictive, greedy, and coldhearted. I sooooo wanted to hurt her.
"I can't undo the past," said Patrick. "I spent a hundred years in hell… I wouldn't give Nara another hundred, not even for the last reminder I had of my life with Dairine." He cupped my face and looked into my eyes. "I am connected to you. You are the one I want. You are mo chroí. My heart."
In the depths of silver, I saw the truth of his emotions for me. What I saw there scared the crap out of me. It was like gazing into eternity and knowing that I had a place in it. That I would never be alone and always be loved.
"Holy shit."
"Yeah. Holy shit." He kissed me lightly, silencing my questions. "Let's go meet Lor."
"Okay."
We broke apart, and holding hands again, rose into the air.
"Lor?" called Patrick. "Lor!"
"He didn't respond the other forty times," I said. "I don't think shouting it another forty will get you different results."
"How many times have you tried to connect with him?"
"Way more than forty… with the same results. My mental mojo is failing. Or he's ignoring me."
We circled the golf course of Putt 'Er There for the second time. Even with the tall grass, overgrowth, and untrimmed trees, it would be hard to miss a seven-foot-tall hairball.
At the broken windmill, we paused in our searching.
Maybe Patrick felt what I did, which was seriously creeped out. It seemed unnaturally quiet, the silence not even broken by the singing of crickets or the flitter of bird wings. The air was thick with moisture and heat, and heavy with the scent of honeysuckle from bushes that half-rimmed the small pond to our left. I looked at the water, the cool, strange calm of it, and saw the glimmer of something round and pale.
"What's in the water?" I asked as I leaned over the gray murk. I grasped a primitive understanding of the shape and size of it, but I wasn't ready to give name to what I saw lurking below the depths.
Patrick waded knee-deep into the water and reached in to grab the body. He pulled it out by the arms, and dragged it away from its iniquitous grave, until it flopped against the weeds and untamed grass of the golf course. I watched, my tears mute, as he knelt down and gently, lovingly pulled down the pink muumuu to cover the chubby white knees.
He wasn't thinking. Couldn't be thinking. Why cover her legs when her torso was ravaged, the dress hanging in shreds around the ugly gashes?
Like Emily, her face had been untouched. Her pretty, round face tinged blue, her eyes open and filmy, and… God. Oh God. Her neck was pristine, as white and strong and beautiful as I remembered. And below that perfect column of flesh lay blood and gore and ruin.
I felt sick and dizzy and sank to my knees next to her, my hand drifting over her leaf-strewn red hair. I stroked away the strands clinging to her cheeks and murmured, "Oh, Sharon."
Chapter 17
Patrick used his cell phone to call Stan. He told him to bring Damian to the golf course and to take care of Sharon. He also made Stan promise not to tell anyone about her death until we awoke and could handle the fallout.
"My kids," I said. "Are they okay?"
Patrick covered the mouthpiece. "Yes. Damian put extra guards around the outside of the house. Drake and Darrius will guard Bryan and Jenny's doors. I swear to you, nothing will get to your clann, Jessica."
"Thank you." I kissed his cheek and nuzzled his jaw. "Thank you."
He pressed his lips to my forehead and I wandered away so he could finish the phone call.
Everyone would think Lorćan killed Sharon. Though I didn't want to, I wondered… did he? Not even Brigid had believed me when I said there'd been two creatures. Had Lor implanted a memory to fool me? Had he invited me and Patrick to the golf course to show us his latest kill? I didn't know.
I couldn't help it. No matter where I put my gaze—on the sky, on the windmill, on Patrick… it was always drawn back to Sharon. I found myself reluctantly kneeling next to her again. My stomach felt queasy, but I managed to push down her eyelids. It made me feel better, as if she'd gone to sleep instead of dying so horribly. Had she known her killer? Had she fought? Or had she succumbed to glamour before getting mauled?
I stood up and hurried away. Patrick leaned against the windmill, watching me. He was still on the phone with Stan. I smiled and waved away his concern. I needed some space, but I wouldn't go out of his sight. Fear chilled me. Maybe as a vampire I should've felt brave and invulnerable, but I was scared shitless.
It was appalling to face the mortality of someone I knew. It wasn't the first time I'd seen a dead human body. Before Sharon, I had seen Emily, and before her… Rich.
Going to the morgue that night had been like walking into hell. After I got the phone call, the one that shattered a world already fragmented, I dropped off my kids at Linda's and drove to the square-bricked, two-story hospital. The coroner was one of three physicians who worked in Broken Heart—the other two rotated between other towns, but Doc Wallis was permanent and changed professional hats when needed. Our little town had one or two deaths a year, and none from murder. No one had died from homicide—that we knew about—for at least twenty years.
I trudged into the small room where autopsies were done. It didn't have big picture windows or TV monitors—devices used to distance the living from the dead. It smelled strongly of lemon-scented cleaner, but not even industrial-strength 409 had the ability to mask the underlying miasma.
Nausea crowded my throat; grief sat in my stomach like a bag filled with sharp stones. But I tucked in those emotions, wrapped them tight inside me, as I watched Doc Wallis open a square metal door and roll out my husband.
Rich's skin was waxen and pale. He didn't look asleep. He looked dead. I couldn't remember the last words we'd said to each other, but we'd done nothing but argue—about alimony and child support, visitation rights, whether to sell the house or fight over who got to live in it. We'd gotten to the point where every conversation ended with, "Talk to my lawyer." And yet, here I was, still his wife, completi
ng the final, awful duty that befell me as his legal spouse.
I identified his body.
I didn't cry until I had gotten into my car.
Rich's death offered no closure. Death never did, did it? I wasn't finished being angry with him. Just because he'd died didn't mean I could automatically and easily release my hurt or let go of the depth of the betrayal I felt.
And yet, not even I, who had relished every petty satisfaction derived from hurting him, wanted him to die.
I had been too swathed in my pain, my anger, and my cowardice to tell Charlene that her lover was gone.
She labored two floors above the morgue to have that baby, unaware that she'd never lay eyes on Rich again, and I walked out without checking on her. I asked Doc Wallis to drop the bomb after Charlene had recovered sufficiently from giving birth.
That was bitchy of me. Guilt still pricked me with sharp edges that I hadn't made the noble gesture. It was cruel to not build a temporary bridge to Charlene and her child—to acknowledge her right to grieve Rich's loss.
The divorce proceedings had been a slow and painful process and hadn't been close to completion. Instead of becoming Rich's ex-wife, I became his widow. And so, Charlene didn't get the casseroles and sympathy cards and daily help.
I did.
While Charlene learned the weary tasks of caring for an infant, I planned Rich's funeral. While she struggled to find a job to support herself and her baby, I collected his health insurance and sold his business. While she endured the censure of my friends and family, I enjoyed empathy and companionship.
Oh, I sucked. On a grand scale. For a long time, I hadn't had the emotional space to think about Charlene as a human being. She was the Other Woman. At some point, there had to be healing and forgiveness and getting-the-hell over myself.
All these revelations spun in my head while Patrick paced and talked to Stan and I paced and tried to avoid looking at Sharon's violated body.
I'm the Vampire, That's Why Page 13