“Not your…fault.”
That’s not how it felt. “I ditched you to go say hello to my house.”
Heavy footfalls yanked my attention to a commotion across the yard.
A second unit, more heavily armed than this one, jogged in from the direction the watchmen had gone. Two men peeled off toward the driveway with a mangled body strung between them. The others melded into the group facing us down, and a man stepped from the middle of them.
“What the hell happened to that vampire?”
Stomach roiling over the carnage, I didn’t register the speaker’s identity at first. When I did, a new type of sickness uncoiled through me, and I almost wished I had kept my focus on the maimed vampire.
Boaz might have looked good enough to eat, but he acted mad enough to spit nails.
“Security…team,” Linus panted. “Don’t harm…the…pack.”
“The pack?” Boaz flexed his bloodied hands at his sides. “There are no warg packs in Savannah.”
“They’re not wargs.” And I was under no obligation to tell them more than that. Boaz maybe. This gaggle of gun-toting zealots with itchy trigger fingers, not so much. “I appreciate the assistance, but your presence isn’t necessary.” I folded my arms across my chest. “I’ve got things handled here. You can run along back to wherever you’ve actually been the last few weeks.”
A slow whistle rose from the back of the crowd, and I spotted Becky wincing like she wished a hole would open up and swallow Boaz before I buried him in front of his men. When she noticed me, she waggled her fingers in a weak hello, but I was done playing nice.
“You heard the lady,” he called over the murmurs. “Clear out.”
Neither of us budged until the yard was empty except for the three of us, and I was pretty sure Linus had fallen back asleep. Actual sleep this time.
“Amelie called.” He glared down at Heloise’s corpse like what would happen next was all its fault.
“I handled it.” Sparing a final glance at my cousin, I amended, “I was handling it.”
“This—” he pointed a shaking finger at her remains, “—will start a blood feud. The Marchands will come for you, and this time the gloves will be off.”
“Funny,” I murmured, riveted on the hand still curled as if to hold an artifact she no longer possessed, “I don’t see any gloves.”
Dame Marchand’s interest in acquiring me had lit a torch within my heart. Maybe my parents had loved one another. Maybe they had both fought to keep me. Maybe the accident that claimed Mom’s life wasn’t so accidental. And if that were true, then how had my dad died?
“You could have been killed,” he rumbled.
“Yeah, you’re right.” I was done tiptoeing around the truth. “And there wouldn’t have been a damn thing you could do about it. Not even from across town.”
Calling him out had Boaz flinching. Hard. “How did you find out I was in Savannah? Amelie?”
Now it was my turn to flinch. “Amelie knew you were still in town, and she didn’t tell me.” The confirmation stung. “That’s why she’s got you on speed dial.”
“Don’t blame her.” He cast the house a lingering frown, searching the windows. No doubt for his sister’s silhouette. “I made her promise.”
“Why would you do that?” I voiced the conclusion I’d come to in Atlanta. “If the Grande Dame issued a gag order for you, you couldn’t have told Amelie. Since you obviously did, that means you decided to withhold that information. You both chose to keep this from me.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Are we together or not?” That’s what hurt most. The wondering. “I thought we were trying. I thought that meant something.”
“It did.”
Past tense.
That sick clench in my gut twisted. “Are you breaking up with me?”
Judging by the look on his face, I wondered if he had already, but I missed the memo.
“This is so fucked-up.” He stared at the ground. “The one time I want to stay with a girl, and…”
If this was the end, I wasn’t going to make it easy. I was going to make him spell it out. “And?”
“I can’t,” he rasped.
“Can’t or won’t?” I kept my chin from hitting my chest by sheer force of will. “I thought you were all in.”
For as long as it lasts.
“The deal changed.”
“When? And why wasn’t I told?” The way my palm itched, I didn’t trust myself to get closer without slapping him. “Is that what the secret phone calls have been about? Is that why you haven’t spoken to me unless I initiated contact?”
“Amelie put my family in a tight spot,” he said quietly. “We have one chance to dig ourselves out of the hole with the Pritchard name intact.”
An automatic step back bumped my hip against the van door. “You wouldn’t.”
He bowed his head. “I don’t have a choice.”
“Macon—” No, I wouldn’t throw his little brother under the bus. After counting to ten, I tried again. “You don’t care about reputation. You never have. You’ve spent your entire life cultivating an image, and newsflash—it’s not one of the dutiful son.”
“I hated being boxed in.” His head jerked up, eyes blazing. “I hated being told what my life would be and who I would spend it with. How many kids I would sire and how much money I was required to add to the family coffers before lining up a successor.” Muscle bulged in his jaw. “I wanted out, so I acted out. I tossed my good name in the mud and then I rolled around on it.”
A slow burn started behind my eyes. “You told me I would be the one to make choices to preserve my line, my home, and my legacy.”
“I also said you might not have a choice in the matter,” he bit back.
At the time, the comment wedged beneath my skin like a splinter. “Did you mean it as advice for me, or as a reminder for yourself?”
“You’re Dame Woolworth. That means you have the power. Whoever you marry will give up their last name and take yours. Whoever you wed will give up their family and become yours. Whoever I marry will take my name and my place. She will become the Pritchard heir. She will inherit my family, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
“You could say no.”
“You still don’t get it.” He threw up his hands. “I’ve been groomed all my life, not to take control of the family, but to be a guiding influence for the wife I would one day acquire. She’s a business decision, Grier. She’s three big, fat checkmarks in the columns that matter most to my parents.”
Tears veiled my eyes, and I couldn’t see him through them, but I would be damned if I let them fall.
“She’s an only child with a small family to support. She can afford to give up her name to take mine. She’s the best hope we’ve got of coming out the other side of this scandal.”
“What’s her name?” I noticed I was rubbing the skin over my heart and dropped my hand. “You haven’t spoken it once.”
“Does it matter to you?” His bitter laughter almost choked him. “As long as she shows up to the Lyceum on time, it doesn’t to me.”
“This is why you were pushing me away.” The radio silence was a precursor to this. “Were you going to tell me before I heard it from someone else? Before rings were exchanged?”
“Yes.” His fists tightened at his sides. “I’m not that cruel.”
“You got engaged behind my back. How is that not cruel?”
To think I had wanted a surprise in the romance department. Well, it didn’t get more shocking than this.
“Our situation is complicated.”
It hit me then, what he wasn’t saying. “You’ve known about this for a while.” It was the only thing that made sense, the only reason he wasn’t tearing everything down around him. He’d had time to get used to the idea, to make peace with it. “But you worried how I would take the news because of Amelie. You strung me along so I wouldn’t boot her to the curb when I found o
ut.”
“You’re all she’s got right now.”
“What? Your darling wife won’t look kindly on her sister-in-law?”
“Amelie is part of the deal.”
Part of the deal. A deal. Not a marriage.
What a proper scion he was turning out to be. His mother must be so proud.
“She’s been disowned,” I rasped, shaking my head. “That can’t be undone.”
“I can’t give her back her name, but I can give her a place, a home, access to her inheritance.”
“Your mother—”
“Will no longer be Matron Pritchard.” His jaw set. “If I step up, she steps down. That’s my price.”
My lips parted, but nothing passed them.
“The best thing for the family is to distance ourselves from the atrocities that occurred during her tenure as matron.” How formal he sounded when he spoke, how practiced, as if reciting a speech. “The candidates they selected for me to choose from were desperate. Who else would marry into our line after this scandal? The former Matron Pritchard knew she had to act fast to mitigate the damage.”
“Amelie will still be ostracized.” Putting a roof over her head and money in her pockets wouldn’t change that.
Quiet stretched long between us, the silence filled with things unsaid that could never be spoken between an engaged man and his…
Girlfriend? Friend? Neighbor? No, I was nothing to him now.
“I read the family histories for all the applicants,” he began.
“Oh goodie.” I clapped for him. “You and your new family should have tons to bond over then.”
“The Whitaker matriarch died three months ago, and the title of Matron Whitaker fell to her eldest daughter. She’s aware of our circumstances, and…” He wet his lips. “She lost her younger sister last year. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome kept her confined to the family home. She hadn’t been seen in public since she was a child.” His throat bobbed when he swallowed. “She was two years older than Amelie.”
While I pitied them such loss with one breath, I resented them with the next. But what he implied… It was an elegant solution. One that never would have crossed my mind. “She’s willing to let your sister masquerade as hers?”
“To provide for the family she has left, yes.”
“This only works if Amelie doesn’t stay in Savannah. People will recognize her. A new name won’t fix that.” The dybbuk scandal was big news thanks to my involvement, and the debacle too recent for the tittle-tattlers to forget. “You’re sending her away?”
“We think it’s for the best.”
We. Already they were a we.
Already the pair was working together, solving their problems like…a team.
Blurred vision kept me from seeing his expression. “Get off my lawn.”
“Grier,” he pleaded, coming toward me. “You’ve got to believe this isn’t what I wanted for us.”
Us. There was no room for us in we.
“Go.” I shoved him. “Leave.” He barely rocked back on his heels. “You’re not welcome here.”
“Grier,” he whispered.
“No.” I made a fist the way Taz had taught me, and I socked him in the jaw. Something in my hand popped, a knuckle cracking, but I was primed to go again when cool hands landed on my shoulders. I angled my head, catching sight of Linus behind me, and my bottom lip trembled. “He’s engaged.”
The cold fury banked in his ebony gaze as he stared at Boaz should have made me afraid for him. Instead it made me grateful to have Linus by my side. “You’re a fool, and you will regret breaking her heart for the rest of your long life.”
I’ll make sure of it.
Unsure if that last part had been spoken out loud or implied, it still flung open the floodgates. Stupid tears spilled hot and fast over my cheeks. Linus was an auburn blur, his touch the only real thing in this world.
This time, I let Boaz watch. Damn if I was going to hide one ounce of the pain he had caused for his sake. Forget pride. Let him see. Let him live with this. Let him fall asleep tonight and dream about my splotchy face, my tears, my misery.
The shirt I called Old Grier tore, and I split down the middle with it.
A chorus of growls rose in response to my anguish, and the watchmen prowled over to stand with me. Lethe and Midas flanked me, the former nuzzling my hand, while Hood stalked Boaz until he backed away.
“Goodbye, Boaz.” I glanced down at the watchmen. “Escort him off the property, please.” I brushed my fingers down Lethe’s nape. “Allow the Elite to claim my cousin’s body, and then I want them gone.”
With eager barks, they embraced their orders.
“You need to sit down before you fall down,” I warned Linus, looping an arm around his waist to balance him, happy to fuss over him rather than linger over Boaz’s announcement. “Should I call your mother?”
He offered me a weak smile. “Tomorrow.”
Considering I had hidden the car accident from my family, I could hardly complain if he kept his in the dark too.
“I heard about Meiko,” he murmured. “You were right. I should have taken her in hand long before this. It’s my fault she felt entitled to make a move against you.”
“This wasn’t your fault.” I worried my bottom lip between my teeth, wondering if it made him feel any better or if guilt would still cling to his bones as it did to mine. “She made the decision to compromise the Faraday. Not you.”
And she would pay for it in blood.
While there was no love lost between Meiko and me, Heloise had led her astray. My cousin had as much as admitted to manipulating her, knowing the jealous nekomata might appear human, but her instincts were animalistic. So was her reasoning. That didn’t excuse Meiko, but if I spoke on her behalf, it might keep the watchmen from killing her outright.
“Not my fault,” he echoed. “I enjoy saying those words more than hearing them.”
Huffing out a laugh, I murmured, “I bet.”
“Hearing them, even when they’re meant well, doesn’t change anything, does it?”
“Nothing absolves the guilt, but it tells me I’m not alone.” I gave him a gentle squeeze. “You’re not alone, either.”
With his arm slung around my shoulders, I managed to get him to the carriage house. He fumbled the door open, and we sidled in together. As weak as he was, I decided on a mattress over the couch and aimed us toward his bedroom. Once he sat, my knees buckled, and I sank onto the floor in a heap.
“I’m sorry,” Linus said, and it encompassed my entire world and all of its fractures.
Fresh tears plinked on the hardwood, the puddle growing beneath me. “I don’t want to see her.”
“Amelie,” he said, but it wasn’t a question.
“She lied to me.” A watery laugh escaped me then, because it shouldn’t surprise me. Nothing she did ought to shock me anymore. “This hurts worse than the dybbuk.” How pathetic was it that I would take a near-death experience over heartbreak? “She always said she would choose me. That if Boaz and I happened, and then we didn’t happen, she said she would pick me over him.”
A grunt reached my ears as Linus slid onto the planks beside me. He was dragging a blanket behind him, and he wrapped me up tight, insulating me against his cold. I slumped against his chest when he opened his arms, and I cried until I got hiccups, until my snot had washed away his healing runes, until I lost my voice and figured it was a good thing because I had run out of things to say that didn’t boil down to it hurts.
The jagged mass twisting in my chest cut worse than Atramentous, worse than Volkov, almost worse than losing Maud. I kept looking down, thinking I ought to be bleeding to death, but the wounds he had inflicted were invisible, and I was only leaking through my eyes.
With exquisite gentleness, Linus gripped the wrist on my sore hand and turned it palm up. He must have fetched his pen from his pocket. He bit off the cap and held it between his teeth as he drew a healing sigil to fix w
hat I had broken punching Boaz.
“Is there a rune that fixes a broken heart?” I murmured against his shoulder.
Cool lips pressed against my temple. “No.”
“Figures the one time I would be willing to take an out, there’s not one.”
“He’s going to regret you for the rest of his life.”
The urge to wish that miserable future on him was too strong, so I kept my mouth shut.
“I ought to tell Woolly, but I don’t want to do it over the phone, and I don’t feel up to it tonight.” Bitterness swirled through me, draining through the pit of my soul. “She really does love him. This is going to break her heart.”
“Take my bed,” he offered. “I can sleep on the couch.”
“I’ve kicked you out of enough beds.” It’s not like where I started the night mattered much considering where I always ended them. “I’ll take the couch.” I unfurled the cover then helped him up and back in bed. “I won’t be sleeping much as it is.”
Linus shut his bruised eyes before his head hit the pillow, and I stood there for a long time, watching him sleep. Once I convinced myself he wasn’t going to kick the bucket if I turned my back on him, I pulled the sheet up to his chin. A down comforter stretched across the foot of the bed, and I tucked it around him. Recalling his soft admission from weeks earlier, that he got cold, I added the plush gray duvet he had wrapped me in to his layers.
Backing from the room, I left the door cracked behind me so I could listen to him breathe.
Alone in the living room, I couldn’t silence the noise in my head.
Boaz was engaged. My Boaz. Engaged.
No, not mine. Not really. Not if he allowed this to happen.
The sun rose while I sat there, hands folded in my lap, head hanging loose on my neck.
I didn’t know what to do with myself, how a world without Boaz looked, and I didn’t want to see.
When the phone rang, I didn’t want to answer, but a sixth sense prodded me not to let this call pass.
“Ma coccinelle,” Odette sighed. “Today the sea churns with the salt of your tears.”
Odette was the closest thing left I had to a mother, and hearing her voice unlocked a fresh wellspring of tears that flowed down my cheeks while I curled around my phone on the couch.
How to Break an Undead Heart Page 25