She would happily walk to Istanbul to meet the car. Whatever it took to get back to a place—and an existence—she could understand.
Carefully, she steered her mind away from last night. At least, she told herself to do so, but the scary thing to her was that the entire experience of being attacked, nearly killed, and turned into a vampire didn’t shake her composure nearly as much as what had happened between her and Dima.
The sex—no matter how earth-shatteringly good it had been—wasn’t really the problem. Ava was thirty-four; she’d had good sex before. She’d even had fantastic sex a time or two, but it had never affected her the way this had. No man had ever gotten into her mind before, beneath her skin and into what made her Ava. No one had ever been allowed to do that, not the mother who had tried nor the father who hadn’t bothered.
So how had this man—this vampire—who was practically a stranger to her, managed it?
She wrapped her arms around herself, huddling her shoulders against an internal chill as she gazed out the loft window. She hated this unaccustomed feeling of vulnerability. Ava had worked long and hard to brick up all the little cracks and chinks in her defensive wall. That had been how she’d survived her first career. She’d learned to smile not just for the camera but for all the agents and editors, the designers and paparazzi, who each felt they deserved a tiny little bite of Ava and her success. Smiling had kept them from understanding that the face and figure they schmoozed and sucked up to had been as far removed from the real Ava as she had been from herself. The real Ava had been tucked up inside her head piloting herself around like a puppeteer in the rafters above the stage.
Ironically, it had also satisfied her mother, who had believed herself the real one in charge. Ava had never been able to decide if her mother’s obsession with her aristocratic bloodline had made her more or less likely to know those smiles had been false. On the one hand, Isabella de Castille had been the one to teach her daughter that a woman should be pretty and happy on the outside so that people would love her, so a person would think Isabella would know that appearances could be deceptive. But then again, Ava’s mother hadn’t cared about much other than appearances; her father hadn’t cared about much other than himself.
Isabella had been royalty, or at least a third cousin, twice removed from it, and the man she’d married—briefly and histrionically—had certainly seen himself as royalty. Tristan Markham believed that a successful multi-national company such as he ran conferred on one a state near godliness, and he’d been determined that both he and his immediate family should behave themselves as befitted their positions, even after he’d decided he no longer wanted to be a husband or father. He couldn’t completely hide Ava’s existence; therefore he felt he had every right to control her behavior. Weakness he would not tolerate, nor would he countenance anything other than a bright façade of father-daughter devotion. Love had had very little to do with either of Ava’s parental relationships.
Self-defense had therefore molded Isabella and Tristan’s daughter into a consummate liar, the kind of woman who carried herself like the queen of the universe even when she’d had the self-esteem of an outcast lemming. Ava had learned to act as if she ruled the world and to plow through pain wearing a smile and a ten-thousand-dollar haute couture gown. “Vulnerability” had been erased from her vocabulary before her fourteenth birthday.
Sucking in a deep breath, she forced her arms to drop to her sides and deliberately straightened her spine.
Chin up, hips out, hands loose, she reminded herself. Sex could not make her vulnerable, and neither could Dima; even discovering herself to be a newly turned vampire couldn’t do that as long as she refused to allow it. She just needed a little time alone, a few hours in her own home to get her bearings and figure out what she would do next. Once she had time to think, she felt certain everything would make more sense.
Please, God.
Her course of action set, Ava stepped away from the window, slipped on her coat, and tightened the belt around her waist. Reflexively, she reached for her purse, cursing mildly when she remembered she’d lost it during the attack. She knew there was no hope in hell she’d get it back—even in a good neighborhood on the Upper East Side, a Kate Spade packed with luxury leather goods and high-end accessories, once out of its owner’s hands, was gone forever.
Ava sighed as she made a mental note of the problems losing it would force her to deal with. She’d have to report her credit cards as stolen, of course, and start the process of getting a new ID. Living in the city, she didn’t drive and so used her passport as her primary photo identification, which would turn out to be a mixed blessing; while she wouldn’t have to deal with the interminable lines at the DMV, she would just be trading them for the interminable red tape of the State Department.
The small leather notebook, sterling silver Tiffany pen, and other assorted frills she carried with her could all be replaced, of course, and her PDA was backed up on her office computer, so once she bought a new one, she wouldn’t be losing any of her data. Still, she hated the bother of having to shop for new items when she’d been perfectly happy with the old ones.
As she checked her watch and headed for the door, on her way to meet her car, one final task occurred to her. Just to be safe, she should have the locks changed at her office and her apartment, so instead of getting copies of her keys, she would just get totally new ones from the locksmith when they completed the changes—
“God damn it,” Ava hissed, stepping into the hall outside of the loft and slamming the door shut behind her. She had no keys! She was locked out of her own bloody apartment!
She uttered an indecipherable sound of frustration and located the building’s converted freight elevator at the end of the hall. So much for her fantasies about going home and locking herself into the familiar, safe cocoon of her own home. Without her keys, she would never be able to get inside. The super in her building was an unbending petty dictator, and despite the fact that he had known her for the last seven years, the lease stated he could not let her inside without seeing photo ID, which she no longer had, and she knew better than to ask him to bend the rules. He’d just as easily bend the beams of the Brooklyn Bridge with his bare hands.
Madre de Dios, could anything else go wrong for her? Being turned against her will into a vampire hadn’t been enough; now she would have to go begging for assistance from friends who were already pissed at her. She didn’t even bother to consider going to Danice or Corinne to borrow their copies of her keys; they each spent more time away from home these days than at it, and tracking them down in Faerie was not something she knew—or wanted to know—how to do.
It would have to be Reggie or Missy, which meant it would have to be Missy. Even though Ava knew both of them were upset with her at the moment, Reggie was more likely to take Dima’s side and yell at her for not obeying his orders to stay in his loft where she was safe.
Well, that was not quite true. Missy would probably take Dima’s side as well—she was the wife of a council member, after all—but at least she was less likely to yell about it. At the moment, Ava had to take whatever infinitesimal advantages she could get.
With a very resigned sigh, she met the sleek black Town Car that stopped for her at the curb, and gave the familiar company driver Missy’s address before she let him help her into the backseat. Allowing her head to fall back against a cushion of black leather, she closed her eyes and prayed that things please, please start going her way for a change.
I mean, wouldn’t the law of averages say they’d have to? she asked herself, feeling a headache begin to stir behind her temples. How long can one person’s streak of bad luck really last?
Chapter Thirteen
“I had to ask,” she muttered when the door to Missy’s house swung open, pulled not by Missy, but by her larger, hairier husband.
Graham scowled down at Ava, clearly less than thrilled to find her standing on his front doorstep at 9:22 on a Monday night. “A
sk what?”
“Nothing,” Ava dismissed. “I was talking to myself. Is Missy here?”
“Of course she is. She just finished putting the boys to bed.”
When he said nothing else, just stood in the door and continued to frown at Ava, she sighed and gave him a pointed look. “Well, can I talk to her?”
“About what?”
“Graham! What on earth are you doing? You can’t just leave people standing on the doorstep. Let her in, for goodness’ sake.”
Childishly satisfied at getting to hear Missy scold her obnoxious husband, Ava raised her chin and stepped haughtily around the Alpha Lupine and into his front hall. She just barely resisted the urge to chant Nyah-nyah-na-nyah-nyah under her breath as she stepped past.
Missy stood on the stairs to the second floor, one hand on the banister and the other planted on her hip.
“Don’t look so smug, Av,” she said, her lips firming. “I have the same question for you. I thought Dima said tonight would be too soon for you to go out and that you wouldn’t be able to make it here to talk to the council until Tuesday?”
The pointed question halted Ava in mid-step. She had forgotten that motherhood had given Missy a decided talent for maternal scoldings. It was like some kind of strange side effect of the hormones.
Straightening her spine, Ava looked up at her friend, pointedly refusing to turn around and glance at Graham. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need to see him to know that he was smirking behind her back.
“I feel just fine,” she said coolly. “Dima was being overly cautious, but I didn’t come to talk to the council.”
“Then why did you come? You don’t usually like to visit when you know Graham might be home.”
When isn’t he home? Ava wondered sourly. The man’s job was running the private club for Others that just happened to occupy the building next door, which used to be part of the same mansion as the house they currently stood in. Even when Graham was at work, he was still right there, hovering.
“It’s a bit of a story,” she hedged, superconscious of the werewolf at her back. “I don’t suppose you’d like to offer me a cup of coffee?”
Graham brushed past her, not bothering to hide the fact that he was rolling his eyes. He paused at the bottom of the steps, his wife’s position on the third placing them eye-to-eye for a change. “Don’t mind me,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll just check on things next door. Just buzz the staff line if you need me.”
He kissed her, the kind of sweet, affectionate kiss husbands gave wives all over the world every day, so Ava wasn’t quite sure why watching it made her feel so uncomfortable. Maybe it was because even in that tender gesture, she could see a flash of heat spring between the couple.
Or maybe it was because even the heat was clearly tinged with a strong mutual love.
Or maybe she was just overtired.
She kept her eyes on Missy, who kept her eyes on her husband until he disappeared behind a concealed door in the wall adjoining the club.
“It’s too late for coffee,” Missy said when she finally turned back to her friend. “That much caffeine will keep you awake all night.”
Ava’s mouth twisted. “I don’t think I need to worry about staying awake all night anymore, Melissa.”
“Fine. Then it will keep me awake all night. But I made some hot cocoa for the boys earlier, and there’s still some left. I’ll heat it up.”
She didn’t really want cocoa—she hadn’t wanted coffee, either—but she still followed Missy to the back of the house and into the large, well-appointed kitchen.
“I assume this is when you tell me what you need,” the woman said as she flicked a knob on the gleaming stainless-steel stove. “Somehow I get the feeling you didn’t come over for a little girl talk.”
Ava pulled out a stool from its place at the center island and slid onto it. Fatigue was making her shaky. She needed to sit down. “I got locked out of my apartment, and I don’t have my ID on me, so my nitwit super won’t let me in. I need to borrow the spare key I gave you.”
“Ooo-kay. I’m thinking there’s more of a story here than that …”
“You already know it. I got mugged, killed, kidnapped, and changed into a vampire. Somewhere along the way I lost my keys and my ID. The end.”
“But why do you need to go back to your apartment tonight? Dima said you’d be staying with him until you … got a better handle on things.” Missy’s eyes narrowed. “Come to think of it, where is Dima?”
Ava ignored the question. Answering it would only lead to an argument, and her head already hurt too much to deal with that. “Dima taught me how to—God, I can’t believe I’m saying this—drink blood, so what else do I need to learn? The secret vampire handshake? I think I can manage without, thanks.”
Missy set a mug down on the counter with a hint too much force. “Ava, where is Dima?”
God, Ava’s head was pounding. And frankly, the smell of the warming chocolate was beginning to make her a little sick. She swallowed. “He said something about going out to work for a few hours tonight. He’s on some kind of mission or something. He wasn’t very forthcoming with the details.”
“And he told you it was okay for you to go back to your apartment without him?”
“What, is he my father?”
“Based on what you both told us last night, yes, he is.”
“Don’t be cute with me, Melissa. You know that wasn’t what I meant.” Ava had aimed her tone at dismissive, but she missed by a few inches, landing instead at bitchy. Whatever. She couldn’t concentrate well enough just now to worry about it. “I’m a grown woman and I don’t need a vampire mentor to tell me how to live my life. I’m a capable, intelligent woman. I can figure things out just fine on my own.”
“When it comes to trading stocks or following a recipe for bouillabaisse, maybe, but this is a little more complicated than that, Av. There are rules that you need to know about, and they aren’t always the kind of thing you’d think of if you—”
Without thinking, Ava slammed her palms down on the butcher-block top of the kitchen island, leaned in menacingly toward her dear, sweet friend, and snarled loudly. “Fuck the rules. Melissa,” she hissed, pulling her lips back to expose teeth that suddenly felt too big for her mouth. “I’m fucking sick to death of hearing about the rules! Do you understand me?”
Missy froze, her warm brown eyes widening, her breath freezing in her chest for a long, tense moment. Then, calmly, she took several steps to her right without ever taking her eyes off of Ava. Blindly, Missy reached for a slim black telephone, lifted the receiver, and pressed a single button from memory.
“Hi, Sam,” she said, her voice sounding as sweetly calm and even as always. “Can you do me a favor and grab Graham? Tell him I need him next door right away … No, nothing’s wrong. But ask him to bring along a bottle of Nosferatu, okay? Thanks.”
Ava stared at her for another minute, then closed her eyes and slumped back on her chair. Wearily she bowed her head and raised a hand, pressing the heel of her palm hard against the smooth plane of her brow just between her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Missy,” she mumbled, feeling the anger drain out of her as quickly as it had flashed, taking with it every ounce of energy in her body. “Please forgive me. I don’t know why I snapped at you like that.”
“It’s okay. I do.”
Ava opened her eyes and frowned. “What?”
Missy didn’t answer. Instead, she edged around the far side of the counter, placing herself between it—and by default, Ava—and the door to the hallway. Missy reached her chosen spot just in time to stop her frantic husband from leaping through it and onto her friend.
“Are you all right?” Graham snarled, grabbing his wife by the arms and running a searching gaze over her from head to toe, as if looking for injuries. “Did she hurt you? Do you need a doctor? A bandage? What?”
“I’m fine,” Missy soothed, grasping his elbows in turn.
He ign
ored her and turned his eyes on her friend.
They had murder in them. “I want her out of here. Now. Either throw her out now or I’ll do it myself, and I will not promise to be gentle.”
Startled, Ava stared at him. She knew perfectly well that Graham had never liked her—frankly, the feeling was entirely mutual; he’d never been good enough for Missy—but he’d never before threatened to throw Ava out of his house.
“No,” Missy said, her voice firm and just a bit louder than usual. “Will you calm down? Graham, listen to me.”
At another time, Ava might have indulged in a chuckle at the sight of her petite, curvy friend grasping her enormous, supernaturally strong husband by the arms and shaking him to get his attention. At the moment, though, Ava was afraid to. She had the disturbing feeling even such a gentle sound and accompanying motion would either split her head wide open or send her stomach shooting out of her mouth to land inside out on the stone-tiled floor.
“Graham, I’m fine,” Missy repeated. “Ava didn’t touch me. She just got a little grumpy, that’s all. Did you bring the Nosferatu?”
He stared down at her. “Are you kidding me? She threatens to bite you and you want me to feed her? Are you out of your pretty blond mind?”
“She’s here, and she clearly needs to eat something. Do you want me to send her outside without her dinner and let her find it on her own?”
Graham swore, creatively.
“Exactly. So either buzz Sam again or go back to the club and get a bottle before she passes out or rips one of our throats out. And I’m warning you, I do plan to use you as a Lupine shield.”
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