Uncross My Heart

by Jennifer Colgan

  “Good lord. Were you this whiney when you were undead? You sound like my Great Aunt Martha.”

  “I’m cautious. What’s wrong with that?”

  Zoe pinched the bridge of her nose. No point in arguing, at least on an empty stomach. She managed a tight smile when the waiter returned with menus and tall, icy glasses of water. She had less trouble talking Julian into spicy crab cakes and curly fries than she did getting him to remove his hat and enjoy the perfect weather.

  By the time they’d finished eating, she’d managed to put the disturbing encounter with Hester Oakes and Julian’s determination to become undead once again out of her mind. For a moment or two everything seemed pleasant and perfectly normal.

  Then her cell phone chirped. With a sigh, she flipped open the phone, and Tanya’s voice spilled out of the receiver. “Where are you?”

  “Nobody says hello anymore,” Zoe lamented. “I’m having lunch.”

  “It’s two-thirty.”

  “A late lunch. What’s up?”

  “Did Bryan stay at your place last night?”

  Zoe leaned over the phone, holding it close to her ear and ignoring Julian’s curious gaze. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  “I just called your home phone, and Bryan answered. He seemed very casual about being in your apartment. You said you didn’t need babysitting. What made you change your mind?”

  Zoe squinted at the distant horizon. Had both of her closest friends lost their minds at once? “He was in my apartment?”

  “Apparently. Why?”

  “I have no idea. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “So he didn’t stay the night?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m sorry. I must sound like a lunatic…I just… I know sometimes things happen that we can’t control. And let’s face it, he was totally up your butt yesterday about the break-in, in addition to the fact that he’s been so secretive lately. We both knew something else was going on last night. We were just waiting for you to call us back and spill.”

  Oh, right. She had promised to fill them in. With a sidelong glance at Julian, she continued. “Look, Bryan didn’t stay with me last night. I can tell you that much. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but I’ll see what I can do to find out. I’ll fill you in at Milo’s tonight. Meet me early, okay?”

  “I’ll be there. God, Zoe, you must think I’ve totally lost it.”

  “No!” Yes.

  “I’m just worried about him. About both of you.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.” She hung up and met Julian’s gaze across the tiny café table. “I need to get back home. Some weird stuff is going on.”

  “You mean more weird than me?”

  She laughed. “Actually, yes. My friends are starting to freak out. I need to get home and run some damage control.”

  “Well, I’m not leaving until they wrap up the rest of my crab cakes. These are the best things I’ve ever tasted.”

  “See? Being human does have some advantages. Maybe you should consider what Hester said.”

  Julian’s eyes clouded for an instant. “I can’t. Like this, I’m weak. I’m prey for Lambert, and he’s just waiting for the right moment to destroy me completely.”

  Zoe rose from her seat. The lightness of the moment fled with the spring breeze. “I don’t want to see that happen, Julian, but vengeance can be self-destructive. You might be playing right into Lambert’s hands by planning to attack him. He had to know your first thought would be to reverse what he did to you. What if he’s just waiting for you to make your move?” And when had she started believing him?

  Julian didn’t answer right away. He turned his gaze toward the water and the salty breeze stirred wisps of his dark hair, making him look young and slightly vulnerable. “I don’t disagree with you, but all that applies to humans, not vampires. Power and influence replaced my soul a long time ago, and that’s what I need to get back. Guilt, fear, anger, none of those enters into it. It’s all about restoring the proper balance in my world, which, whether you want to believe it or not, has influence on your world. If vampires stop playing by the rules we established to protect ourselves, humans will begin to take notice. I’d rather self-destruct in the attempt to set things right than fail to try.”

  She wanted to counter that, to make him see reason, but she didn’t know how. He was thoroughly convinced he had no choice but to fight this battle. “Well, get your doggie bag, then. I’ll bring the car around.”

  She was quiet during the ride back to Baltimore, and Julian didn’t like it. Her sunny chatter and even her annoying attempts to psychoanalyze him had kept him mildly entertained for the early half of the day. Now he felt as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. He’d obviously upset her, and it bothered him that he found her silence disquieting.

  “I’ll do my best to see that you’re not hurt by this,” he said when they reached the street behind her apartment building where she parked her car. “I do appreciate your concern for my well-being, but it’s not necessary.”

  “I’ll try to get over it,” she said as they climbed out of the car. “It’s your life, after all.”

  Life was the one thing he didn’t have. He had an existence, one that had suited him well for over a century. Now was not the time to become nostalgic for something he’d willingly given up so long ago.

  Clutching his foil-wrapped crab cakes and feeling rather guilty, he followed her up the stairs to her apartment.

  A slender brunette waited at the top of the stairs. Her limpid brown eyes held a mixture of emotions and her hunched posture told of emotional conflict. Zoe cast a worried glance back at Julian, who could do nothing but return the girl’s curious stare.

  “Hi, Zoe. Um…who’s this?”

  “This is…well, let’s go inside first, okay?” Zoe opened the front door and they all filed inside. The brunette gave Julian a thorough once-over as he passed her.

  “Did something else happen with Bryan?” Zoe asked once they were safely inside.

  The dark-eyed sylph sketched a weak smile at Julian, embarrassment pinking her cheeks. “No. I’m sorry, Zoe. I came over here to apologize for freaking out. I had no business questioning you or thinking you might be doing something with Bryan behind my back. It’s not like I have a claim on him anyway. I just feel like I’m…like we’re losing him. Since he started that new job, he’s become a different person, and I’m so worried.”

  Ah. So this was Tanya. Unspoken guilt seemed to hang in the air between the two women and, as a man, Julian felt the sudden need to excuse himself to the kitchen before he got caught in a feminine flood of hugging and weeping. Fortunately, his vampire hearing seemed to be largely intact, so while he snooped in Zoe’s fridge and cupboards, he could still listen to the proceedings in the living room.

  Tanya didn’t ask, she just raised an eyebrow in Julian’s direction as he beat a hasty retreat to the kitchen with his crab cakes.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” Zoe said.

  “Even Bryan?”

  “He’s okay, but no one else. That’s the guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “The one whose house blew up yesterday.”

  “How did he end up here?”

  “I brought him here. I met him in the…basement of the shop.”

  Tanya’s expression blanked. “Right.”

  “No, really. He was there yesterday when I went downstairs to turn down the heat. When those men broke in upstairs, we ran. Then his house blew up, and he had nowhere to go, so I’m kind of…hiding him.”

  “Hiding him from whom?” Tanya craned her neck, as if she might get a good look at Julian through the closed kitchen door.

  Enemy vampires just didn’t seem like the best answer at this juncture, so Zoe only shrugged. “I’m not sure. He thinks someone is after him, and they may be trying to kill him.”

  Tanya stifled a gasp. “You have to call the—”

>   “No. No. Not yet. Look, he just needs a place to stay for a few days. He has a friend in Ocean City who may be able to help him, so this is all temporary.”

  “So he stayed here last night?”

  Zoe nodded. Tanya looked relieved and shocked at the same time. “Does your mother know?”

  “Are you completely insane?”

  “Are you? What do you know about this guy other than he’s absolutely gorgeous?” She fanned herself, and a smile crept across her lips. “Not that gorgeous isn’t reason enough to let him stay.”

  “He just needs a friend right now. That’s all. Please keep this quiet, okay?”

  “Okay. Sure. But promise me you’ll be careful. Just because he’s good looking doesn’t mean he’s trustworthy.”

  “I promise.” Zoe put her arm around Tanya’s shoulders and steered her toward the door. “I’ll talk to Bryan for you too. I think he’s under a lot of stress with this new job. He’s working so hard to get to the top, and you know how focused he is.”

  Tanya nodded. “But he’s just not himself at all.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it.”

  Once Tanya left, Zoe leaned against the door and sighed. Why couldn’t it be one crisis at a time? She hated multi-tasking when it came to emotional turmoil, and she had plenty of that right now with the infamous Julian Devlin. One moment he was playing on her sympathies, looking sexy and a little lost, and the next he was making her insanely jealous with his gorgeous witchy friend. She had to get all that straight in her head before she found herself falling for him. The last thing she needed was to end up competing for the affections of a former vampire with one of the Charmed Ones.

  She stopped herself from going down that road and forced her addled thoughts back on track. Her next mission was to check on the shop, then locate Bryan and find out what really was going on with him. He must have had a good reason for being in her apartment, but maybe Julian was right after all. It was time to find a new hiding place for her spare key.

  She found him standing next to the sink, licking peanut butter off a spoon. “They didn’t have Skippy when I was human,” he said. “If they had, I might have considered staying alive.”

  “Well, knock yourself out. You should try it with grape jelly on bread. It’s a taste sensation, and it will keep you busy while I’m gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “I’m going to the shop. Then I’m going to Bryan’s office, then I’m meeting my friends for dinner. Will you be all right for a few hours by yourself? It’s not that I wouldn’t invite you, but I didn’t think you’d want to go out in public too much.”

  His curious glance morphed quickly into one of concern. “Maybe I should go with you to the shop. Lambert might be having the place watched to see if I show up there again.”

  “Then don’t you think you should stay away?”

  “I don’t think you should be there alone. When we’re done checking the place out, I’ll come back here. Don’t worry, I can let myself in.” He gave her a knowing smirk.

  Zoe sighed. She was definitely going to move that key.

  The shop looked perfectly normal from the front. Nothing appeared to be broken or disturbed. The alarm hadn’t been reset, and Zoe wondered if the police would charge her for a false alarm if she didn’t file a report within thirty days, like Officer Wells had mentioned.

  “Wait here and let me look around,” Julian said once she’d let them inside. He stalked ahead of her, sweeping the aisles with a hawk-like glance. “Turn on the lights.”

  She obeyed, illuminating one bank of fluorescents at a time as he advanced through the store.

  “Everything looks okay,” she said when she’d worked up the courage to follow him. Maybe it was just her rattled nerves, but there seemed to be a gloomy air to the place. She never had turned the heat down, and now the humidity was high, along with the musty scent of old things. Her landlord would probably complain about the utility bill on top of everything else.

  Julian wandered into the back room while Zoe checked the cash register. The hundred dollars in change she kept on hand was all there, and the small display case where she kept the few pieces of jewelry she’d recently acquired was largely intact, except for a spider web of cracks in the clear glass top. It didn’t make sense that someone would break in and not steal a single thing.

  She joined Julian in the back where he was examining the heavy door which led to the alley. It was closed now and banded with a strip of yellow police tape. The deadbolt hung from its rivets.

  Zoe sucked in a breath. “Wow. How’d they do that?”

  “Vampires,” Julian said. He pointed to a crack in the back wall where the door had scored the paint and dented the thin layer of drywall covering the building’s cinderblock frame. Zoe realized, had she been standing at the back door preparing to leave when the “vampires” broke in, she’d have been flattened.

  “This is a fire hazard,” Julian said. “This door should open out.”

  “Old building.”

  “You need a keeper.” A weary sigh accompanied his remark. His next disparaging comment trailed off when he turned around. For a moment, Zoe thought he was staring at her, but then she realized his dark gaze was fixed on a spot above her left shoulder. She turned slowly, afraid of what had captured his attention.

  On the wall that separated the front of the shop from the back room, someone had nailed a white sheet of paper—or more accurately, someone had rammed an inch-thick spike deep into the wall through a sheet of eight-and-a-half by eleven bond paper.

  Julian approached the wall cautiously. The note hung too high above his head for him to read it where it was, so he was forced to pull it down, tearing the paper to free it from the spike.

  Zoe stood on tip toes to read it over his shoulder. The words were neatly typed in a simple font.

  Devlin,

  Like you, I relish the game.

  If you want to live forever,

  meet me at Fairmont

  at 4:00 a.m. on Saturday next

  EL

  “I guess they knew you’d been here.”

  “He’s giving me a chance to turn the tables. Predictable.”

  “No.” Zoe shook her head. She snatched the thick paper from Julian’s hand. “He’s baiting you. If you meet him, he’ll kill you. Isn’t that obvious?”

  Julian grabbed the paper back. “If I don’t, I forfeit everything. I see now. Lambert doesn’t want me dead. He wants me dangling on the end of his hook for as long as possible, so he can enjoy watching me suffer. If I go, he’ll have some elaborate game set in motion designed to humiliate me further. If I don’t, he’ll merely up the stakes and offer me something that looks easy to attain just so I’ll get reckless and take the chance.”

  “How do you know that’s what his motives are?”

  “He’s a vampire. What other motives would he have? Everything is a game in our world, and in this game, he’s the cat, I’m the mouse.”

  “So then the only option is to ignore him entirely. Get on with your life, and he’ll get tired of taunting you.”

  Julian turned to her. “Don’t you see, Zoe? As a human, I don’t have a life. I’m alive, but I’m not living. Lambert and I know each other too well. A hundred years of familiarity breeds contempt. He played me well, kept our relationship civil all this time because it’s been to his advantage. He knows I’ll come because that’s how this game is played. Victory can’t be too easy, so he’s giving me a chance to fight for what belongs to me.”

  Zoe tossed her hands in the air. “This is ridiculous. You’re going to walk into his trap because that’s what he expects you to do?”

  “Yes. His traps are very clever. They always hold something valuable, and if I can figure out the secret of the trap, I can snatch the bait from him before he knows it’s missing. It may be the antidote to his potion, or a way to destroy him. His plan is to have me reach for it so he can pull it out of my grasp at the last minute.
”

  “But you already know that.”

  “Exactly. He’s going to savor this. That’s his weakness, and I can exploit that. I do have a chance to win.”

  Zoe didn’t like the gleam in his eye. Julian was going to get himself killed just to prove a point to his enemy. She turned her back on him and headed for the door. If she had been fooled into thinking Julian Devlin wasn’t insane, she certainly had no such delusions any more.

  She leveled a pointed gaze at him before she let herself out through the broken back door. “I still say the best way to win is not to play.”

  Julian spent an hour studying Lambert’s note and scribbling on a pad he’d found next to the cash register after Zoe left.

  For the first time since his transformation, he’d begun to think he could not only restore himself, but destroy Lambert in the same masterful stroke. Since the 1920s when Anton Brae founded the vampire hierarchy in Baltimore with only a handful of members from the old European bloodlines, Enoch had made subtle bids for supremacy, always pulling back, turning tail when Julian exerted his influence. Julian had never questioned that he might one day have to fight to keep all that he’d attained. Now that the day had come, he was up to the challenge.

  His only regret was that finding the note tacked to the wall of her store meant Lambert knew Zoe was involved. Battling for dominance in his thoughts right now, in addition to his plans for revenge, were ways to keep Zoe safe. He owed her that, at least until he turned. Then, it probably wouldn’t matter to him what happened to her. Until then, however, he had to protect her as his only ally, not counting Hester, of course.

  He decided before he left the shop that he’d stay close to her for now. Lambert was no doubt expecting him to remain hidden, and if Julian’s actions became unpredictable too soon, he would tip his hand and throw off Lambert’s plans.

  For now, he had to play the game by Lambert’s rules, but the time would come soon enough when Julian would hold the winning hand once again.