Soulbound: A Lone Star Witch Novel (16 page)

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t answer them. I just said I wouldn’t answer them now.” He starts to walk toward the door, the arm he has around my waist propelling me along with him.

Nate’s redheaded partner is there before we take more than a couple of steps and I find myself caught in the middle of three very pissed off men. Oh, Declan is holding it together better than the other two, but it’s obvious that he is just as angry. Or at least it’s obvious to me—his body is rigid against mine, his jaw so tense that I’m amazed he hasn’t yet cracked a tooth.

“You want to sit back down for me, buddy?” Nate’s partner asks.

“I don’t actually.”

“That wasn’t a request.”

“Really?” Declan tilts his head, looks the guy up and down. “It sounded like one. It probably should be one, unless I’m under arrest. Am I?”

“Not yet,” Nate answers him. “Would you like to be?”

“Not particularly. Especially since the last time I saw Lina she was alive, and on stage with me, putting my set together for tonight’s show.” His smile is full of insult. “But arresting me is the only way you’re going to keep
me from walking out the door with Xandra, so do what you have to do, officers.”

It’s a deliberate—and petty—insult, one that busts both Nate and his partner down at least one rank. I see it register on them both, watch as Nate’s stance becomes significantly more threatening.

Not that Declan looks threatened. But then again, he’s a three-hundred-year-old warlock who also happens to be a fire element. I can’t imagine that much frightens him.

Suddenly, I’ve had enough of all three of them. Using every ounce of strength I have left—which isn’t much, I admit—I shove against Declan. Since he’s focused on Nate, it works, his hold slackening just enough for me to slip away.

As soon as I’m free, I head for the door as fast as Lily’s Jimmy Choos can carry me. “Don’t worry about me, gentlemen,” I toss over my shoulder. “I’ll catch a cab.”

My annoyance carries me down the stairs and through the lobby, but the last little burst of adrenaline runs out once I’m at the precinct door. I’m tired, so tired and all I really want to do is curl up into a little ball and hide from the whole world. At least for a little while.

And it totally sucks that Nate got so wrapped up in his little dominance display with Declan that he completely forgot about me. Because I’ve been around enough men to know that that little match upstairs was about a lot more than who was going to take me home.

And who the hell do Declan and Nate think they are, laying claim to my welfare when neither one of them has any right to make any decision for me, anyway?

I stumble down the stairs to the street on legs like spaghetti. Look up and down the street for a cab, but the abundance of earlier has obviously dried up. Which means I’m walking. Thank God the rain and wind have died down—I don’t have the strength left to fight them.

Hell, I don’t even have the strength left to fight the shoes. Bending down, I slip them off and then walk barefoot toward the corner, ignoring the chills that wrack my body. I’ve gone only a couple of steps when a sleek, black Porsche pulls up beside me. I’m not sure what it says about either of us that I’m not even surprised when I see Declan behind the wheel.

“Get in, Xandra. I’ll take you home.”

Part of me wants to fight him on general principle, but the truth is, I don’t have any fight left in me. I’ll take the ride home and worry about telling him off later.

When I open the door and slide into the car, Declan’s relief is almost palpable. Which is strange—I can’t imagine why my going along with him would matter one way or the other.

He doesn’t say anything as I fumble my seat belt on, just hands me a Snickers bar before flipping the heat to high and pulling smoothly away from the curb. He turns at Red River, then again at Eleventh Street without any prompting. It freaks me out.

“How do you know where I live?”

“Don’t confuse me with that bumbling detective,” he tells me. His voice is smoother now that we’re alone, and I can hear the power in it. Not just the strength, which he had no problem showing Nate and his partner, but the magic he somehow managed to keep under wraps.

“Have you been spying on me?”

The look he gives me says very clearly that he considers my question beneath him. It might have shut me up when I was nineteen, but now all it does is make me mad. “Declan, it’s been almost nine years since we’ve seen each other. Frankly, the fact that you know where I live smacks of stalkerdom.”

“Eight years.”

“What?”

“It’s been eight years, five months and three weeks since
I last saw you. Not nine years. And why should it upset you if I know where you live? Have I ever bothered you?”

“You’re bothering me now.”

He makes the turn onto Guadalupe smoothly. “No, I’m taking care of you. I thought the difference between the two was obvious.”

“I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“No offense, Xandra, but I don’t think you know what you need.” He pulls to the curb in front of my house but I’m so outraged that all I can do is stare at him with my mouth open and teeth bared.

He smiles—a smug, infuriating grin that makes me want to scream—then bops me on the nose like a child. I gasp, a million different insults rushing to my head at the same time, so many that I can’t wrap my tongue around any particular one of them. Before I can get over being tongue-tied, he’s out of the car and opening my door for me with an old-fashioned flourish.

“I can open my own doors,” I tell him stiffly as I climb out.

“Just like you can do your own spells.”

“You
asshole
.” I lash out before I think it through, my closed fist connecting with his mouth and snapping his head back.

I stare, fascinated, as blood leaks from a cut on his upper lip. He wipes it away with a careless flick of his hand, but the look in his eyes is anything but careless. I should probably apologize—for self-preservation, if nothing else—but I can’t bring myself to do it. It’s nice to know he’s got one human vulnerability. Besides…

“You had that coming,” I tell him.

“You’re right. I did. I apologize.” He steps closer and I realize that weird electric current is back. Or, more accurately, it’s been back for a while, humming right under the surface, just beneath my skin. But now that Declan is so close, it’s intensifying until I can barely think.

Until all I can do is feel.

That’s dangerous, though, so I fight against the feelings. Do my best to ignore them. Which is nearly impossible, especially when Declan reaches out a hand and strokes my cheek.

“What happened to your face?” he asks.

I don’t know how to explain when I’m not sure I understand it myself. “I fell.”

“At the lake?” His fingers probe the wound gingerly.

I jerk my head away. “It was slippery.”

“I bet.” He pauses for a second. “Thank you for finding her.”

As if I had a choice. I start to snap at him, but his words seem sincere, as does the sudden sadness on his face. “Were you…together?”

“Not for years. But she was a good friend.”

I hate the relief sweeping through me at that news. “I’m sorry. For Lina, I mean.”

“Yeah, me too. But that’s life, isn’t it?”

He sounds callous, but only if you don’t read between the lines. Declan looks…weary, and I’m reminded of just how long he’s been alive. I think of what I’ve seen in my twenty-seven years on Earth and wonder how the hell he even gets up in the morning. I have a feeling he’s seen more death and destruction than any person should have to.

I lean forward, give him a brief hug because he looks like he needs one, though I refuse to examine the need I have to soothe him.

“Thank you.” He smiles as he strokes the backs of his fingers down my cheek. “It’s nearly time,” he murmurs.

“For what?”

He doesn’t answer as his fingers toy with my lower lip for one second, two. I can barely breathe. My diaphragm feels frozen even as every nerve ending I have is lit up like Times Square.

“Declan…” I don’t know what I want to say, don’t know what I’m asking. Only that now isn’t the time for this—whatever
this
is. Not when I still stink of death and not when I can actually see flames flickering in his eyes. He’s on edge and I’m tapped out. It’s not a good combination for anything, even conversation. Especially conversation when I know that I need all my wits about me if I have any hope of holding my own with Declan. Already, something he said is niggling at me, but I’m not lucid enough to figure out what it is.

He pulls away abruptly. “I’ll walk you to your door.”

“It’s a safe neighborhood. I think I’ll be okay.”

“When are you going to figure it out?” he asks, escorting me onto my front porch. He holds his hands out for my keys and for some reason I give them to him.

“Figure what out?” I ask as he inserts the correct key into the lock without asking.

“It’s not the threat you can see that you have to worry about.” I start to ask him what he meant by that, but he distracts me when he continues. “Are you going to be able to sleep?”

I look at him like he’s crazy as he opens the door, then hands the key back to me. “Oh, yeah. Because I want to relive tonight over and over again.”

“I can help you sleep, if you’d like.”

“No, thanks.” I know he means a spell, and while it’s tempting to let him do that for me, the truth is, I just don’t trust him enough. This is the man who left me alone on the worst night of my life. The fact that he’s here now, seeing me home when I don’t need him, doesn’t make up for the fact that he skipped out when he did. “While I…appreciate the offer, I’m pretty sure I can take it from here.”

He takes a step back. “I guess this is good night, then. I’ll see you soon.”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s okay. I do.” He looks almost tormented by the thought, which only reinforces all the reasons I shouldn’t be standing here talking to him. “I’m going to go in now.”

He nods. “Eat your Snickers. It will help with the shakiness.” Then he touches me, a brief brush of his hand against my shoulder. I feel the tension slowly leak from my shoulders. “Good night, Xandra.”

“What did you do?” I demand as he turns and walks away without answering. “Damn it, Declan!” I start down the steps after him, intent on telling him off for messing with me when I expressly told him not to. Except I’m talking to myself, because Declan is already in his car and pulling away from the curb.

Which should be impossible, when one second ago he was standing in front of me. But my brain has been blown enough tonight without me having to worry about the laws of physics and how easily Declan breaks them.

Exhausted, annoyed, frustrated—with both Declan and myself—I turn and walk back onto the porch. I desperately want a shower and then, after that, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I know I should go to sleep—I’ve got to be at Beanz by four thirty and it is already well after midnight. I so should have finished up that cookie dough this afternoon. I could have had an extra hour in the morning.

Not that I could have known the night would end up like this. Hell, I’ve been living it for the past few hours and I still can’t believe it.

I shut the door behind me, lock both locks and put the chain on—something neither Lily nor I usually bother with. But after what I saw tonight, I have a feeling I’m going to be walking around jumping at shadows for quite a while.

“So, you’re not dead.”

Lily’s voice comes from the corner and I realize she’s
been sitting here in the dark, waiting for me for goddess only knows how long.

“You want to tell me what your disappearing act this evening was all about? And why you’ve forgotten how to answer a text—or your phone?”

I laugh at her tone, at how much she sounds like an annoyed mother whose daughter has just missed curfew. I laugh and laugh and laugh, the sound tinged with hysteria that I can do nothing about.

“Xandra.” Her voice filled with concern now, Lily stands up and snaps on a nearby light. “Holy shit! What happened to you?”

“It’s been a long night.” I head to the shower, conscious as I do that I’m probably dropping mud all over Lily’s clean hardwood floors. She’s not OCD about much, but the floors are kind of her thing. If they’re dirty, she freaks out.

Nothing I can do about that now. I’ll just have to mop when I get home from work.

Lily follows me toward my room, and the fact that she doesn’t say anything about the mess I’m making is a definite indicator of her level of concern. Though she does pause along the way to grab a trash bag.

“Tell me,” she says, gesturing with the trash bag so that I know to drop my clothes straight into it instead of on the floor. I spend a second mourning my favorite sweater, but in the grand scheme of things, a ruined sweater doesn’t seem so bad. Especially since I’m not sure I’d ever be able to wear it again anyway. Memories from tonight are not ones I particularly want to hang on to. Hell, I’m not sure I even want to tell Lily what happened. Not because I want to keep it a secret, but because I don’t want to bring the ugliness into our home.

Still, I owe her an explanation, so I begin the story with halting breaths and choppy sentences. As I talk, I begin to strip. First the shoes. “I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a
new pair,” I tell Lily as I hand her the beloved, and now ruined, Jimmy Choos.

It’s a mark of what a good friend she is that she barely hesitates as she tosses them into the trash bag. “They’re just shoes,” she tells me.

She must have been more worried about me than I thought.

I strip my sweater off just as Lily clicks my bedroom light on. She screams and drops the trash bag before I can launch the ruined garment into it.

I whirl around, visions of an attacker tearing in my head. “What’s wrong?” I demand when I don’t see any kind of threat.

But she’s just staring at me with horrified eyes, both hands clasped over her mouth.

“Lily? Are you okay?”

“What happened to you, Xandra?” She crosses the room, puts tentative fingers on my arm.

I glance down, try to figure out what has her so startled and nearly scream myself. My entire upper body is covered with bruises. My arms, my breasts, my stomach—and judging from the way Lily is tracing crisscrossing lines across my shoulders, so is my back.