by Deanna Chase
“Is he following us?” I checked the rearview mirror and saw nothing but midafternoon traffic. Then I eyed Link. His ears twitched, though he didn’t move. He was okay. The little guy was tougher than he looked.
“No.” She sucked in a staggering breath. “Not that I can tell.”
I sped through my third yellow light and headed down North Broad Street. “Where to? Back to my store?”
Phoebe, visibly shaking, didn’t answer.
“The Void?” We should tell them about the new daywalker. Besides, I had the pictures and we needed an analyst to track down identities.
“No. Not yet.” She sat back in her seat, her eyes closed.
I gripped the steering wheel so tight my fingers started to cramp. “We need to tell someone.”
“Not the Void.” She twisted and peered at me. “What do you think they’ll do when they find out there’s another daywalker? They already want to study you and David for the effects. If they know another one exists, they won’t hold back. And you won’t be held in secret either. The orders will come down from the top. This is a game changer.”
Son of a…shit! I ran through the possible options. We couldn’t exactly go home. The vamp would track us there in no time. My shop? Harrison was there…maybe, if he hadn’t taken off after I disappeared. Allcot’s? I was under his protection now, but every fiber of my being screamed to stay away from him. He would protect me, but what would it cost in the long run? What would I owe him and how would he collect? Not to mention the vampires there would slowly zap my energy simply by existing. We could go to Tal’s place. As far as I knew, no one knew where he lived. But if we went there, how long would it be before he became a target?
“Go to Allcot’s.” Phoebe slumped down in her seat and slid her sunglasses in place.
“Seriously?” That meant turning around and heading straight back into vamp territory. Was she crazy? We’d almost died. Who knew where that vampire was now?
“We need help tracking this psycho, and Allcot has the resources. Besides, there is no way he’s going to let anything happen to you. You’re too valuable to him.” Her tone was flat, emotionless, as if she didn’t care. But I knew her better. That was the tone she used when she was moments from losing control.
Her words sent a tremor of foreboding skating over my skin. She was right about Allcot. He would protect me. One day I was going to be just as tied to him as Carrie was. I shivered and focused on Phoebe. When she was like this, I followed her directions with no questions asked. Even when she was flat out blindsided, her instincts were always spot-on. I ignored the blinking warning light in my brain and made a U-turn.
“Take the side roads,” Phoebe said, rummaging in her duffle bag.
I did as she said, not saying a word. She was the queen of disguise and moving places unseen.
She pulled out two new wigs and a black T-shirt.
I raised a quizzical eyebrow.
She tossed a mousy-brown wig that had been styled into a short bob in my direction. “Put it on.”
I took a right onto a street filled with deserted homes that had been left in despair after Hurricane Katrina and pulled over. Phoebe changed her shirt and had her new platinum-blond wig in place before I could even remove the blond one I’d put on earlier. She used her deft fingers to help me secure the new wig in place and handed me wire-rimmed glasses. After shoving them on, I pulled out into traffic, both of us magically transformed by her bag of tricks. There wasn’t anything we could do about the car, but she’d chosen a Toyota Camry for a reason. Nondescript. There were a ton of them everywhere.
We finally reached Allcot’s French Colonial home after taking multiple unnecessary turns and doubling back twice. Phoebe had kept a vigilant watch but hadn’t detected anyone following. My shoulders eased a bit. Phoebs excelled at her job.
I pulled the Toyota into Allcot’s long driveway and parked behind the silver Mercedes I recognized as David’s car. Nervous anticipation conflicted with the dread coiling through me at the thought of seeing my ex yet again. Damn. Where was the nervous anticipation coming from? Nothing had changed. I still didn’t trust him. Plus, I belonged with Tal.
Phoebe jumped out of the car and cast me an irritated glance as I lingered. She wasn’t waiting for anyone. Link stirred, barely lifting his head as I opened the back door. I clutched him to my chest and joined Phoebe on the front porch.
She pressed the doorbell continuously until the door finally burst open.
A short, round, middle-aged woman dressed in a black-and-white maid uniform scowled at us. “Where’s the fire?”
“Get Davidson Laveaux,” Phoebe demanded.
The maid’s eyes narrowed and her scowl deepened. “There’s no one here by that name.”
“Bullshit.” Phoebe stuck her foot in the door to keep it from being closed in our faces.
The unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked came from behind the maid.
“Phoebs,” I said, “back off.” I stepped in front of her, still clutching Link. “Tell Davidson Willow Rhoswen is here. It’s an emergency.”
Her face went slack and her eyes widened. “Identification?”
I set Link down while Phoebe and I handed over our licenses. The maid studied them with a careful eye, waved her backup gunman off, and opened the door in invitation.
I hadn’t expected anyone to let us in without checking with David first. He must’ve given them a standing order concerning me. I wasn’t sure if I was okay with that, but right then I was grateful.
“This way.” She closed the door behind us. We followed her up the massive staircase and down the hallway toward the room I knew David inhabited. “Wait here.” She knocked once before letting herself into his sitting room.
A few moments later, she pulled the door open again. “He’s in his room.” She waved for us to enter the sitting room and then disappeared down the hall.
Phoebe collapsed onto one of the black leather armchairs and pulled her wig off. She tucked her legs under herself and closed her eyes as if she knew this was the only moment of peace she was bound to get for the foreseeable future.
Link placed his front paws on the edge of the other chair, his legs still shaky from the aftereffects of the electrical current. I reached down and lifted him into the chair. He licked my hand and curled into a ball, tucking his head against a woven pillow.
I crossed the room, limping from the lingering pain in my knee, and knocked on his door.
“Come in,” David called.
The door creaked and I poked my head in. “David?” I glanced around, not seeing him at first.
“Wil?”
I spun to my right and spotted him coming out of his giant walk-in closet. I let out an audible gasp. “Holy fae, what happened?” I ran over, inspecting his reddish-purple skin. “It looks like you’ve been deep-fried.”
He grimaced. “Sunburn.”
Phoebe stalked into the room and stopped mid-step. “Fuck, Laveaux. Did you fall into a crawfish boil?”
Ignoring her, he tugged a T-shirt over his head and winced as the fabric settled against his skin.
“How’d this happen?” I wanted to touch him, make sure he was all right and still the solid, marbled vampire he’d been the night before.
“I told you, it’s just a little sunburn.” He peered at me. “Why are you here and where’s Harrison?”
“We ditched him,” Phoebe mumbled.
“Why?”
“We were doing our jobs,” I said. “Investigating for the Void.”
“That sounds like Phoebe’s job.”
“You’re right,” I said. “But I couldn’t sit back and wait for whatever comes next. I can’t be a sitting target.”
“So you ditched your security?” The muscle in his jaw pulsed. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“Leave her alone, David. It’s been a clusterfuck of a day.” Phoebe ran a hand through her dark, spiky hair. “All we were doing was investigating the man who attacke
d her. Since he’s locked up at the Arcane, no one was supposed to be there. We were caught off guard. The only consolation is, we’re pretty sure our attacker was, too.”
“You were attacked?” he asked, his face tight with irritation and worry.
I nodded, avoiding his gaze.
He turned to Phoebe and started punching in a message on his cell phone. “This is how you keep your partner safe?”
“She’s alive, isn’t she?”
David glared at her.
Phoebe pasted a bored smile on her face, but I knew she was putting on a show for David. She’d never let a vamp know when she was off her game. “I need a computer.”
“Why?”
“To keep Willow safe,” she parroted his words back to him.
“And you can’t use your own because?”
“I don’t have it with me.” She retreated to the doorway. “Just point me to a laptop. You’ve got to have at least one or two around here.”
He clenched his teeth and then jerked his head toward an armoire. “There’s one in there. You can sign on as Guest, password Cryrique.”
She chuckled to herself as she retrieved the sleek black machine. “You realize of course, that if I wanted to break into this, no password would stop me.”
He turned to me and lifted a lock of my fake brown hair. One eyebrow arched in question.
“We weren’t sure if we were being followed.” I pulled the wig off and unpinned my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders.
“Yo. Laveaux. Did you hear me?” Phoebe asked, heading for the sitting room.
“I heard you,” he said, still looking at me. His intense eyes were making me squirm. “And you know our computers are heavily monitored. If you break into my private files, that’s grounds for detainment. And not the short-lived kind.”
I sighed. “Can you two play nice for once?”
David shrugged. “I’ve got no problem with the witch.”
Phoebe scoffed and I knew she was going to go on a vamp tirade. She didn’t care for David at all. He hadn’t been her favorite person when he’d been human, but since the day he’d dumped me by text message, she’d considered him a first-class jackass. His whole turning vamp situation hadn’t helped matters.
“Phoebs.” I sent her a pleading look. “Fighting isn’t going to help.”
“Who’s fighting?” She strode through the door and kicked it closed, leaving David and me alone in his bedroom.
His phone buzzed. “Harrison,” he said into the phone and paused. “Yeah, I’ve got her. Call Xavier in and get to the house ASAP.” Irritation rippled over his face. “No. Don’t tell the fae anything. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
“Talisen?” I asked. “Is he with him? I need to talk to him.”
David shook his head and pressed the End button on his phone.
“What the hell, David!” I backed away, clenching my fingers into fists. “He needs to know where I am.”
“No. He doesn’t. Not right now.” He retreated to his massive king-sized bed and sat at the end. “Want to tell me exactly what happened?”
Not especially, after that display of dominance. “Want to tell me how you ended up so sunburned?”
He shrugged, clearly trying to be nonchalant, but his movements were forced, almost as if he were guilty of something. “Too much time out in the sun.”
“David!” I cried. “Too much time in the sun? You weren’t like this yesterday.” I would’ve noticed, right? He’d been wearing a long-sleeved shirt the night before, though. I scanned the skin of his exposed areas. His face was as pale as ever. But his neck and the back of his hands were as red as the rest of him. “This happened today. How?”
“I already told you.”
It was a few minutes past one p.m. Even if he’d spent all morning lying in the sun, he couldn’t have been that bad off, could he? Vamps had super-healing properties. Wouldn’t that apply to a sunburn, too? Shit! Was whatever I’d done to him wearing off? “So you’re saying you lounged in the sun too long this morning and this is what happened?” I waved a hand impatiently. “And that either your vampire healing abilities have failed you or you looked way worse before I got here?”
He narrowed his eyes. “It’s just an experiment to see how long I can stay in the sun without any harmful effects. All right? Let it go, Wil.”
“That’s one hell of an effect,” I mumbled.
“I know.” He got up and stood in front of me, gently taking my hand. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
“I’m not worried,” I lied, yanking my hand back.
“Good.” He grabbed my hand again and tugged me forward to the edge of the bed. “Sit.”
I did as I was told, but instead of giving him my attention, I stared at my feet. The last time I’d been on this bed, I’d been wearing his pajamas and Allcot had just interrupted the start of a pretty intense make-out session. My gaze traveled to the wall near his door. The one he’d had me pinned to. Heat gathered at my center and started to spread.
Dammit. I did not want him to have this effect on me. I was with Talisen now.
“Wil?”
“Huh?”
“Tell me exactly what happened today.” He shifted, pulling his knee on the bed to get a better look at me. “Who are you so afraid of?”
I swallowed and met his worried expression. He had a right to know he wasn’t the only one. “We were ambushed by another daywalker.”
Chapter 11
David was silent for a long moment after I finished relaying the day’s events, including the evidence we’d found. His eyes darkened and his face turned stony. What was he thinking? Did he want to talk to the other daywalker? Did he have questions? Up until an hour ago, we’d thought David was the only daywalker in existence.
He stood and started pacing. While he wore a trail into his plush white carpet, he pulled his phone out of his pocket and hit a button. “Stevens, there’s a green Camry in the driveway. Take it to Willow Rhoswen’s house in the lower Garden District right away. This is sensitive. Make sure you aren’t detected.”
“Phoebe’s car? How will we leave?”
His head snapped up as he slipped the phone back into his pocket. “You won’t.” He strode toward his door. “Wait here. I have to inform Father.”
“No!” I jumped up and grabbed his arm.
He sucked in a gasp of pain.
Right. His sunburn. “Sorry.” I loosened my grip but didn’t let go. Something still didn’t sit right about his sunburn. Since he was a vamp, it shouldn’t hurt that much. But we had a bigger problem right then. “What will he do?”
“Father?”
“Yes, Allcot. What can he do? And what is this going to cost me?”
David’s brow furrowed. “You’re connected to this family now, Wil. When are you going to accept that? You’re Beau’s aunt. Father isn’t going to let anything happen to your nephew’s family.”
Yeah. Somehow I didn’t believe that was the answer.
“And as far as what he’ll do, I don’t know. But if I were him, I’d find out as much information from you and Phoebe as possible and then put a team out there to track that vamp. Find out what he wants. He can also put a team on researching the people in those photos you took.”
“I’m going with you,” I said.
“Fine. I’m sure Father will want to speak to you.”
I followed David out of the room. We passed Phoebe, who had her head buried in the laptop as she typed furiously. “Phoebs?”
She waved a hand, indicating she didn’t want to be interrupted.
“We’re going to see Allcot,” I said.
The typing stopped but she didn’t look up. Then she nodded and her fingers started to fly again. “I’ll be here.”
As David swept me into the hallway, my phone started playing “Glad You Came” by The Wanted. Talisen. I yanked my phone out of my back pocket, but before I could answer it, David plucked it out of my hand and turned th
e phone off.
“Hey!” I reached for it.
“Your phone calls are likely being tracked or tapped. You can’t use this phone.” He tossed it to the floor and smashed it with his heavy boot.
I stopped mid-step and gaped. “What the…? Jesus, David. You didn’t need to do that. What’s wrong with you?”
He glanced at me, his face unreadable. “I’ll get you a new one.”
Red-hot anger started to simmer beneath my skin. How dare he? “You could’ve asked me to not answer it.”
Something in my tone must’ve tipped him off that I wasn’t just irritated, but upset as well, because he turned to me and in a soft voice said, “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m only trying to protect you. If it’s being tracked, it’s a danger. I didn’t think you liked the phone that much. I mean, you never charge it.” His lips quirked up in a small smile. “I’ll send someone to get you another right now.”
“It’s not that, you idiot.” An angry tear I couldn’t hold back fell unchecked down my cheek. “I had pictures on that phone that weren’t backed up on a cloud or computer.” Mostly pictures of him before he turned vamp, but I’d walk over cut glass before I’d tell him that.
“Oh. Son of a bitch,” he said under his breath. “I’m sorry. Did you have pictures of Beau on there?”
“No,” I said quietly. “These were more recent.”
“I’ll have one of our techs try to recover them.” He bent to retrieve the scattered pieces.
I said nothing, just watched him straighten and pocket the dead phone.
Silence stretched between us, becoming uncomfortable. I cleared my throat. “Can we go see Allcot now?”
“Of course.” He took off down the stairs and led me to the back door.
“Wait. Isn’t he here?”
David shook his head. “No. He’s at Cryrique.”
***
David inserted a key into what appeared to be a service elevator and a button lit up. I glanced around the parking garage, feeling more than a little vulnerable. David was with me, but Link and Phoebe were back at his house. All I had was my life magic. I could alter plants and change vamps into daywalkers. Not much to work with on the defense front. Hell, I’d even left my stun gun in Phoebe’s car. It hadn’t seemed like a good idea to bring it into Allcot’s home.