Deep Dark Secret (10 page)

“Someone told me her boyfriend…” the word gave me pause, “…the guy she was with last night, got thrown out for getting into a fight. Is that true?”

“Two-dollar draft Tuesdays?” He snorted. “Lots of fights happen on Tuesdays, sweetheart.”

I kicked myself for not thinking to bring a picture of Gabriel with me. “Thanks for all your help.” I put a twenty on top of my empty shot glass and left.

Two bars and too many drinks later, I had an interesting mental picture of Trish Keller’s life and absolutely no news about Lucy Renard. The two were polar opposites—one a slutty party girl, the other a bookish introvert. Tomorrow night I was going to check out the campus and ask around in Gabriel’s Medieval Lit class, see if anyone remembered anything about Trish that might be helpful to clearing my ex of the murder charges. I also needed to get into Lucy’s room and snoop around for any indication of where she might have gone.

Guess the little home-schooled half-breed from Canada was going to university after all.

Lucas’s town car was parked in front of my apartment building when I got home.

“Awesome,” I grumbled. I’d been so dead set on putting my personal life on the back burner, I’d forgotten my personal life sometimes had a mind of its own.

Dominick was waiting on the landing outside my door, texting someone, looking generally bored. He knew as well as I did that the wards on my apartment kept most of the mean and nasty things away. They did not detract ghosts. Or uninvited werewolf kings, apparently.

“You could have waited inside, you know.”

“That sort of prevents me from guarding the entrance.”

“Suit yourself.” I went to grab my keys, but it occurred to me that was probably unnecessary since Lucas had already let himself in. “Is your brother in there?”

“What do you think?” His tone was dark as he pocketed his cell phone. This was not the happy-go-lucky Dominick I was used to.

“What did I do to piss him off? He knows Lucas and I have the same bond. I thought they understood how this whole mess worked.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think he was expecting you to pick Lucas.”

“
What
? What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t
pick
anybody.”

Dominick looked baffled by my response, and his former anger fizzled. He reached out to brush my hair aside. Everything kept coming back to this stupid, goddamn hickey. He was about to say something when my front door jerked open, and Lucas filled the frame with unusual menace.

“I think you’ve said just about enough,” he told Dominick.

To the bodyguard’s credit, he didn’t balk under the withering glare. “I don’t think
you
have said nearly enough.”

Lucas scowled and stepped out of the doorframe, giving me space to pass. How nice of him to give me access to my own fucking apartment. The second he closed the door I was standing in front of him with a finger jammed into his chest and a serious itch to go for my gun.

“You have a lot of explaining to do.”

“That seems like a common theme with us.” He ignored my phalangeal assault and guided me towards the couch. I didn’t feel much like being guided, but it would have been stupid to have our conversation standing up, so I moved across the room and intentionally sat on the armchair instead of the loveseat.

“So, what’s the deal with this?” I pushed my curls over my shoulder to show him my neck. “It isn’t healing, and it’s freaking everyone out.”

His eyes flicked to the fist-shaped hole in my hallway wall. “Apparently.”

“Either tell me what’s going on or get out. I’m not in the mood for cryptic werewolf bullshit tonight. And I’m minus one Queen’s Guard thanks to you.”

“I’ll talk to Desmond.”

“And tell him
what
?”

“That you and I are mated.”

“Right. Soul-bonded. I’m pretty sure he knows that,” I said sarcastically.

“No, Secret. Not soul-bonded. Mated.”

My hand flew to the mark on my neck, and I thought about how it had felt when he’d bitten me. The electricity, the fire filling me up until I brimmed over. It hadn’t just been lust. It had been magic.

“What the fuck did you
do
to me?”

“I asked you to let me do something, to trust me, and you did.”

“I wasn’t expecting to be mate-raped,” I yelled, hurling a pillow at him.

He caught the pillow and set it down, looking far too calm, though he did flinch when I used the word
rape
. “You’re overreacting. If you’ll calm down and stop throwing things, I will explain.”

The next things I’d start throwing were weapons, and the broadsword mounted on my wall was looking mighty inviting right then. I was sick and tired of Lucas behaving like my naivete about werewolf culture and ritual gave him the right to act on my behalf. I wasn’t a child, and I wasn’t his pawn.

“Start talking.”

He sighed. “The soul-bond is one part in a more complicated process. Werewolves use it to find their mates.” The glare I fixed on him must have told him what I was holding back from saying out loud, that I already knew this part. “But true mating is a different thing altogether.”

I grabbed another pillow and hugged it to my chest. Taking a weapon off the wall would be too obvious, but if there was a way to beat him to death with fabric and feathers, I would find it. And if he danced around the point of this conversation with a long, drawn-out explanation, I would find a way to make it
really
painful.

“Long story short,” I warned him.

Lucas shot me a look, one that might have made lesser wolves cower. I simply returned it in kind. “I sealed our mate bond when I bit you. I took in part of your essence and fed you part of mine. We are one now.”

“If we’re so bonded, why can’t I taste you anymore?”

“Because the side effects of the bond are no longer necessary. Now that we are truly mated we don’t need the soul-bond. It has done its job.”

“And the mark?” I prodded the bruise on my neck.

“It will heal. It’s a sign of the completed mating. Once it’s gone, people will recognize my power in you. The other wolves in our pack and in others will finally see you as their queen.”

I got to my feet and put the pillow down, then tracked across the room. Lucas seemed to think I was coming towards him, because he opened his arms as if to embrace me. I pushed his arm aside and brushed past him, then stood by the door.

“If we are one, can you tell what I’m feeling?”

“When the emotions are strong, yes.”

I jerked the door open. “Then you know why I’m telling you to get the fuck out.”

“Secret—”

“No, don’t
Secret
me. Don’t condescend. Don’t stand here like you care that I’m mad. You did this without asking me, because you knew it would benefit you, and now you’re going to pretend to be apologetic?”

He said nothing.

“Answer me one thing,” I said.

“Anything.”

“Would you do it again, knowing how mad I am now?”

Lucas opened his mouth, then shut it and looked down at the floor. I had my answer. “I did what I had to do. We need to be a united front or it all falls—”

“Get out.”

“But—”

“No, Lucas. This time I have the last word, and you don’t get to do anything about it.” I shoved him out the door and locked it behind him.

When I woke the next night, Desmond still wasn’t home, but it was obvious he’d been in the apartment. Several of his shirts were missing, and his toothbrush was gone from the bathroom. Each space that had once held something of his felt like a hole punctured in my heart. I’d called him a dozen times, but he never answered, and I couldn’t figure out how to tell him what I needed to on a thirty-second voicemail message. I’d asked him to call me back, but he hadn’t.

Dressing quickly, I pulled on a cowl-neck angora sweater in a purple-gray—the color of Desmond’s eyes—and a pair of jeans. I wasn’t expecting to get bloody tonight, and I wanted to look like a typical coed.

As I reached for a pair of earrings on the nightstand, I noticed the sheets on the opposite side of the bed were indented, like he’d stopped to lie down beside me when he’d come to gather his things. I sniffed the sheets, and the smell of Desmond was like a fingerprint, unique and obvious. I smoothed the cotton under my hand and sat on the impression of his body.

I wanted him to come home.

My cell phone rang and I lunged for it, not bothering with the caller ID screen. “Desmond?”

“Did you lose your dog?” Holden asked.

I bristled. “What do you want?”

“I’m standing on your landing looking at a lovely bouquet of roses that are on the verge of wilting in the cold. Why don’t you let us in?”

I went to the door and jerked it open. Holden was holding out the vase containing two-dozen long-stemmed red roses and a card. I didn’t need to open it; I recognized Lucas’s handwriting. Taking the vase from Holden, I brushed past him and out onto the street in my bare feet, where I threw the vase and the flowers into the garbage bin in front of my building, then returned to the apartment as if nothing had happened.

“What do you want?” I asked again.

“I’m here to help you find Lucy.”

Incredulity must have shown on my face, because he shrugged. “Rebecca asked me to.”

“Rebecca
ordered
you to.”

“Semantics.”

“You know I could just as easily order you to go away.”

“You could. But you won’t.” He wasn’t paying much attention to me and was wandering the apartment instead, looking in every room. “Where
is
your wolf?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“Trouble in paradise?” Holden smiled, and there was something menacing about it. He was a little too happy to discover I was on the outs with my live-in lover.

“It’s none of your business.”

He stepped closer. Too close. My breath hitched, and I ducked away from him.

“I think it is my business,” he whispered. “Even if you don’t want to admit it.”

“Now isn’t the time.” I pulled my jacket on and slipped a pair of old Converse sneakers on.

Holden stopped in front of me. In a movement faster than a heartbeat, his head dipped to my neck, and I could feel his breath cool and even over the mark on my neck. His tongue slid out, and the moment it touched my skin I shuddered violently. He pulled back and cupped my chin in his hand, his coffee-colored gaze boring into me.

“You let someone mark you.”

I tried to smack his hand away, but he held firm, reminding me he was stronger than I was. “I didn’t
let
anyone do anything.”

“And yet.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Good thing we have a long walk to Columbia then, isn’t it?”

Over the next half hour I did nothing to improve Holden’s opinion of werewolves.

“You should have him killed. Sig would do it.”

“I don’t want to have him killed, you idiot. He thought he was doing the right thing.”

“By forcing you into a union you didn’t want?”

“God, Holden, it’s not like he tricked me into marrying him.”

“No, marriage can be ended in divorce. This is metaphysical. Those kinds of bonds are not so easy to break.” He sounded so aggrieved by Lucas’s actions he seemed to forget he wasn’t so innocent himself when it came to this sort of thing.

“Yeah, it really sucks when someone takes advantage of a metaphysical connection and uses it to violate your trust, doesn’t it?”

He looked hurt. “That’s not the same. I needed your help to save my life.” I had brought up an unusual and invasive moment in our past when he’d used a bond between us to sneak into my dreams. He hadn’t done it since, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that was easy to forget.

“And Lucas did this because he thought it was necessary to protect his pack. You’re not as different from the wolves as you’d like to think.”

“Why are you defending what he did?”

In truth, I hated that I understood Lucas’s motivation as well as I did. It proved he really was a part of me now, inside my head and heart, making me more empathetic to his actions. “I’m not saying what he did is right. I guess I just understand the logic. However flawed it might be.”

“You don’t care that he’s using you,” Holden said, giving me a sad look he’d honed to perfection over several centuries. That look must be a real panty-melter for women who loved doe-eyed poets.

We were standing in front of an old brick building, a trickle of brave students moving down the paths in groups, trying to get from one building to the next without freezing to death. Holden and I wore no hats or scarves, and our jackets and gloves were more about comfort than actual necessity. Still, it was impossible to miss the cold space between us.

“He might be using me. But it’s not like he’d be the first.”

Lucy Renard’s dorm room wasn’t anything like I imagined a young woman’s dorm room to be. Her space was neat as a pin, everything in its place, and I bet if I lifted the edge of her comforter, the sheets would be tucked in with pristine hospital corners.

If Lucy had run off on some impromptu vacation, she wasn’t a very gifted packer. The room’s closet was divided in half, and each section had been labeled, one for Lucy and one for her roommate Katie. Katie’s side was more how I pictured most rooms on campus to be—a big heap of wrinkled clothing stacked up with no rhyme or reason.

Lucy’s side put the shelves at Bergdorf to shame. The clothes were hung according to color, and the hangers were evenly spaced. Everything looked ironed, and tucked into the top shelf was one of those plastic boards people used to fold their shirts into perfect little rectangles. Her shoes were neatly sorted in what appeared to be the most used at the front and special occasion at the back.

Her toiletries were still in their cubby at the top of the closet, and there was only one pair of shoes missing.

“How old was this girl?” Holden asked, startling me. I’d forgotten he was there.

“Eighteen.”

“Have you ever seen an eighteen-year-old this…meticulous?”