42nd & Lex (28 page)

When Mark broke into the apartment, he had
been babbling that I was “just as pretty as
he
said you were.” The
he
could be Serge. The bits and pieces I remember from the conversation between
Lucan and Serge last night seem to fit that implication as well. Serge wants me
and not necessary for a girlfriend, at least not in the long term. The thought
sickens me.

It is almost three o’clock by the time I have
enough ammunition from Sarah and Mark’s financials to use at the hearing. I
reach into my purse for my cell to call Lucan only to realize it isn’t there.
The last place I remember having it was in my apartment last night. I must have
forgotten to grab it in my foggy state. Maybe Lucan will go back over and pick
it up for me. I’m certainly not going back there any time soon. I dial him on
the office line instead.

“Hey,” he answers.

“Hey,” I reply. “I'm on my way up in a few. You
home?”

“Yes, love. I’ll come down and get you.”

“That’s okay. Max is still here. He will
walk me to the elevator. He was a Patron, did you know that?” I ask, not really
knowing what kind of answer to expect.

“Aye.” His reply is hesitant and full of
worry. “I guess we have a lot to talk about tonight don’t we?”

“Yup. See you in a bit.” I hang up before he
can argue with me about heading upstairs alone. He must be in shock or he would
have at least fought me a little.

“You ready to go?” Max asks from the doorway.
“I've got some good leads on Hicks and Ainsworth. I summarized and emailed them
to you. God, that man is shady. Hicks I mean, not Mark. He’s a boy scout, not
so much as a parking ticket.”

“Thanks. I kinda figured as much, on both of
them. Just let me put all this stuff back in the file. I'm going to take it
upstairs with me.”

Max and I walk to the elevators and push the
buttons for our intended routes of travel. “It’s nice not to have to ride the
elevator down to the lobby and go back up again,” I say to fill the silence
while we wait. “You probably weren’t going to buy that I forgot something and
needed to go back up again.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing these last
few weeks?”

“Yeah, just to keep up appearances. When you
and Lindsey saw me coming from the service elevator, I was coming up from the
parking garage. Lucan gave me a car to use.” I give him an apologetic smile and
shrug.

“Wow,” is all Max replies. “Wow.”

Our elevators arrive before he can say
anything else. After Max is sure no one else is inside mine, he hugs me goodbye
and gets in his own car. “See you Monday in court,” I say, waving goodbye. “It
will be fun.”

“Ah, yeah, right. Please be careful, Abri. This
is some scary shit you’re playing with,” he says as the doors shut.

Playing with? I’m not playing with anything.
Sure, I might not have met Serge if I hadn’t gone to the Enclave with Lucan, but
I would have still run into Mark when Sarah hired me to do her divorce. So
Serge would still be in the picture. At least this way I have Lucan by my side.
The thought of facing Mark and Serge without knowing what they were, without
Lucan, makes my stomach heave again. 

Once upstairs, I take off my shoes and look
under the bed for my slippers but they are nowhere to be found. “Lucan, have
you seen my slippers? I had them on last night when we came back.”

“Go look in the closet, love,” he calls from
the guest bathroom next to the kitchen. “I'm just cleaning up. Zaid and Amelia
are coming over tonight.”

“Great! I need to apologize to them for my
antics last night. Are we going out again?” I yell, unnecessarily, from the
closet. My slippers are on a shelf next to my Jimmy Choos and the few other
pairs of shoes I’d brought over this week. Lucan has cleared off a space for me
in the closet and hung up my clothes, including my holey sweats, next to his. Wow.

“I hope it’s okay,” he says from behind me.
“I thought it was stupid to leave your things in a bag like you were a guest
here or something. I cleared you a drawer in the bathroom too.”

“It’s great. Thank you. So I'm not a guest
here anymore?” I smile.

“Nope, you’re…family—uh, well, that doesn’t sound
right, does it? One wouldn’t do this to family.” He bends down to kiss me,
lifting me into his arms.

“I would hope not. I understand what you
mean though. We’ve reached the bathroom/dresser drawer phase of our relationship.
And in under a month, that has to be a world record.”

Lucan kisses my neck as he carries me
towards the bed. That’s all it takes and a delightful shiver runs down my
spine, pooling in my belly. Before we can go any further, the iron beast starts
up across the room announcing Zaid and Amelia’s arrival. With a sigh, Lucan
sets me back down. While he goes to greet our guests I put my shoes back on and
comb my hair. My face is flushed but not too bad. I hear the grate sliding open
on the elevator and Zaid’s voice fills the room.

“I thought we were free of these rat trap
lifts here in America! I hate these things, the size of a cracker box. Amelia
wanted to move into a building on the fourth floor. It took five minutes to
chug up in that bastard just to take a look at the place. No way,” he rants. I
can hear Amelia’s soft laugh as I open the bathroom door. Lucan is laughing
too.

“There she is!” Zaid booms. “How you feeling
today, Mitra?” In the short time I had spent around Zaid, I had learned he liked
to use foreign words when he spoke English. Mitra is Sanskrit for friend. I
Googled that last night after he’d used it the first time. I wonder if he uses
English words when he speaks Sanskrit, or if he even speaks Sanskrit.

I hear Lucan stifle a giggle. He’s listening
in. “Better. My head is a little sore, but I’ll live. I think my cell phone has
gone missing though. I meant to tell you that earlier, Lucan. I can’t find it.”

“I think you are in the market for a new
one, my dear,” Zaid says, pulling a squashed black square from his coat pocket.
“I found it this morning when I went back to check your apartment. I rekeyed
the locks as well.” He hands me the remains of my Blackberry and a new set of
keys. 

“Thank you, Zaid. That was sweet of you.” I take
the phone and keys from him. “Here,” I say, handing Lucan one of the keys on
the ring. “This one is yours.”

He takes the key from my hand and as our
fingers touch, I hear him think that it isn’t necessary and that I should just
move in here with him. The man never ceases to amaze me. This is an even bigger
jump than a bathroom drawer, one I’m not sure I’m entirely ready for. “
We’ll
talk later,”
I think back.

“So, kids, what are we doing tonight?” Amelia
asks. She’s been quiet so far and I can’t help but wonder if she’s mad at me
for my behavior last night, or at least disappointed. After all Lucan is her
friend and I walked out on him. “I am starving, what about you, Abri?”

I decide to let that go for now and enjoy
the evening— after I apologize. “Totally. But first, I want to apologize to you
two. I was a total spaz last night. Forgive me?”

“Oh, Abri, of course!” Amelia exclaims and
Zaid nods in agreement. “Like I said, I didn’t really take it in stride when
Zaid told me about it all either. And I apologize for being tight lipped when we
were waiting last night. I knew you probably wouldn’t take it any better than I
did and we’d just met. I didn’t want you to hate me. I hope you don’t hate me
now, actually.” Oh geez, she is worried about the same things I am.

“Apology accepted! I could never hate you,
either of you. I’m just glad to have someone else to talk to about all this and
that you’re not mad at me. This is not really something I can tell my other
friends.”

“Well, any questions you have, I will do my
best to answer,” Amelia confirms. “How about Zaid and I make you some Italian
food and we crack open a bottle of wine or two?” Amelia hugs me and wipes her
eyes. I can tell they are happy tears.

“Sounds good to me. Lucan?”

“Aye, I can never pass up Zaid’s cooking.
Abri, would you come with me to the wine cellar?” he winks.

“Okay. I didn’t know you had one of those
here.”

Lucan and I take the stairs down one level
to what had been the lounge area of the Cloud Club. Lucan has sectioned the
floor off into several guest suites and a weight room but the Club’s original
bar still dominates the center of the space. During Prohibition, the back of
the bar was outfitted with lock boxes to hide the members’ hooch. Lucan has
transformed the boxes into a giant wine rack. He reaches for a set of antique
keys hanging on a peg behind the bar and opens one of the lockers. Inside is a
very old looking bottle of wine.

“This one just happened to be here when I
renovated the place. It’s a rare vintage. I’ve been saving it for a special
occasion.”

“I think having your friends in town is
special enough. Can’t you just picture stodgy old businessmen smoking cigars in
here and drinking bootleg whiskey? We should throw a party down here sometimes.
I mean, when things aren’t so crazy,” I say, running my hand along the polished
wood of the bar. 

“The special occasion is that I didn’t lose
you,” Lucan replies, ignoring my party suggestion. Which doesn’t really matter
since a long kiss accompanies his response.

“How could I leave? We are meant to be,
right? I was stupid to run away last night. It is just so much to take in and I
haven’t been able to tell anyone, not Linds or Max. Well, Max knows some stuff
now, but not the really important stuff. Or at least the important stuff he
didn’t already know.” I am rambling.

Lucan scoops me up and sets me down on the
bar, my knees are now at his waist and I open them to allow him closer. I play
with the buttons on his shirt. He looks like he wants to say something
important.

“Abri, I understand why you left. I should
have handled it better and told you myself. I hate that you feel like you can’t
talk to anyone about us. I know that Max knows who I am and what I am. As for Lindsey,
I will let you use your judgment on that one. Vampires are secret by nature but
I'm not ashamed or fearful. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Linds and Max will be easy compared to
telling my mother. But that is so far down the line, I can’t even think about
it right now. Linds will probably be cool. She’s really into Charlaine Harris
and J.R. Ward romance novels so this is totally in her realm of believability. I
have a question though…”

“Aye…” Lucan raises an eyebrow at me.

“Where do you get the blood from? I mean, I
know from the Enclave, a Patron, but Max said—” Lucan cuts me off with a finger
to my lips. The amps tingle and I brush his hand away to rub my lips.

“So Max told you what a Patron does and
you’re worried I'm seeing someone else on the side.”

I nod, still rubbing my numb lips.

“Remind me to punch Max in the arm next time
I see him, will you,” Lucan says, not really meaning it. “I get the blood from
the Reserves. It’s like a regular blood bank. I have no idea who donates it and
I don’t really want to know. I have not had a Patron in a long time. I never
liked taking it from another person, willing or otherwise. It’s too barbaric…too
intimate. Once they perfected blood drawing and storage methods that kept it
like live blood I gave up free feeding, as they call it.”

I have been absent-mindedly running my
fingers under the edge of the old wooden bar while we talked and my finger has
met with a rather nasty splinter. It prompts me to ask my next question, one
I’ve wanted to ask since our first date. “Would you ever take it from me?”

Suddenly it is very hard to look Lucan in
the eye. My heart is thundering in my chest and I feel the heat rising in my
cheeks. Lucan looks as if he hadn’t seen that coming. He must not have been
listening in. He stops breathing and stills. Only his eyes dart around the room,
looking anywhere but at me.

“Abri, it’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?” I lift my hand from the edge of
the bar and rest my bleeding fingertip on his lips. Lucan springs backwards
into the wine lockers wiping his mouth furiously. His eyes are red and his
breathing has come back online with a vengeance. He is wild with fear. Not
anger, but fear. “I’m sorry Lucan. It was a bad idea. I'm sorry,” I sputter.

His eyes flash back to blue. “It’s okay. I
didn’t get any in my mouth.” He is still wiping furiously.

“What! I know you just said that taking
blood was barbaric and intimate, but we aren’t exactly strangers, Lucan. You
think I'm your friggin’ soul mate for christsake.” Offended, I make a move to
get off the bar but he stops me.

“You are my soul mate and that’s why I can’t
take your blood, not yet at least.” He gathers me into his arms and I yield. “I’m
sorry, love. I haven’t told you enough about this Sodalis thing.”

“Start talking,” I reply. It sounds harsher
than I intended and I squirm in his arms, trying to put some distance between
us. I fail miserably. Lucan is at least a hundred times stronger than I am
without even trying.

“So first off we are Sodali, true?” he begins,
relaxing his grip on me. “And we’ve already bonded ourselves with sex. So if we
were to exchange blood…”

“The trifecta, right?” I interrupt, quoting
his words to me from after we had sex for the first time.

“Right. And if we seal that bond without
completing the Sodali ceremony I’m S.O.L.,” he finishes.

“There is a ceremony?”

“Yeah, but let’s not worry about that just
yet. I'm sure Zaid and Amelia have dinner about prepared by now. Let’s go back
up.” He steps away from me as if our touching might reveal some thought of his
he doesn’t want to share. I have a few thoughts I want to share with him, but
they are of the kind my mother would have told me to keep to myself, so I don’t.
This Trifecta crap is infuriating.