Keeping Secret: Secret McQueen, Book 4 (17 page)

“I’m not asking permission. I’m telling you what I’m doing.”

He stopped prowling. “Don’t you see how dangerous this is? Not three days ago you were certain Callum was in league with your mother and working on a plan to have you killed. Now he wants you to go into the swamp alone, and you’re
going
?”

“I don’t think he has anything to do with the attempts on my life. Not anymore.”

“And why is that? He puts an arm around you, calls you family and suddenly he’s innocent? When did you get so naive?”

“
Hey
, let’s not go there.” My hands were balled in fists by my sides. I would love to have one conversation with him that didn’t end in a fight, but it didn’t look as if this would be the one.

“Don’t act like an idiot, and I won’t treat you like one.”

I crossed the room with such speed he was still looking at where I had been standing when I slapped him across the face. If I’d been trying to hurt him, I would have punched him instead, but I was just reacting to the sting of his words by inflicting a little pain of my own.

The silence between us after the smack of my hand meeting his face was almost deafening.

“I’m doing this for us, you asshole.”

“Let me come with you, then.”

I shook my head and took a step back, not wanting to be touching. I couldn’t think right when I was close to him. Our physical chemistry was the kind that caused explosions, and we were both running hot. I needed to stay level-headed, and the second he touched me my rage would flicker out and the heat would become something different.

That would be our whole lives together. Somewhere between driving each other mental and having mind-blowing make-up sex. I was all for the sex part, but right now I had a point I needed to make.

“I can’t bring you. I need her to trust me if I’m going to get her to come back with me, and if I go busting into the woods with the whole damned pack in tow, she’ll never agree to come. Plus, we’ve been here three days and no one has tried to kill me yet. I think it stands to reason whoever has it in for me is still in New York.”

He couldn’t argue with that. If someone wanted to kill me out here, there was plenty of opportunity. One eagle-eyed sniper in the oak trees was all it would take. Hell, if Callum was involved, he could have made any number of unfortunate accidents happen. Instead he welcomed me into his pack and asked me to do one favor.

“He said he’ll give us his blessing. You once said you would do anything for the pack. Let me do this. If I can bring her back, I will have helped strengthen our pack.”

“Say that again.”

“Say what?”

“The last part.”

“Our pack?”

Lucas let out a breath I hadn’t realized he was holding in. “You really are doing this for us, aren’t you?”

“I’m not running into the fucking swamp for
fun
.”

“Can I convince you to take Jackson?”

I shook my head. “No. But I promise you I’ll be safe.” I obviously couldn’t tell him I’d have a guard with me because he would shit bricks and die if I announced I’d been hiding Holden in a crumbling pigeon coop this whole time.

“I’d never have been able to talk you out of it anyway.”

“No. But if you’re starting to understand that, it means this marriage thing might actually work.” I smiled and crossed the room again, only this time it was to hug him instead of smacking him around. “Thank you.”

“Just come back to me in one piece. I paid a hundred grand for wedding dresses. I’d like to see you wear one of them.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I picked up Holden at the St. Francisville city limits, far enough from Callum’s compound I didn’t think I was being watched. We drove in silence because I was sick of the classic-rock radio station, and there was nothing I felt needed to be said.

It took us a little over an hour to get from St. Francisville to Maurepas, and the only time Holden spoke on the whole trip was just beyond Baton Rouge when he not-so-politely reminded me that if he’d been allowed to drive we would be there by now.

Night was waning and I didn’t feel like tempting fate by going into the swamp tonight. An old budget motel was on the side of the highway about ten minutes from the main park entrance. The motel’s backyard slopped into the edges of the swamp itself, and a homemade sign next to the office said
Watch for Gators
.

A balding man with a beer gut and a faceful of acne scars gave Holden and me a key to room 5 and kept sneaking glances past us out the window to the parking lot where we’d left the Mercedes I’d borrowed from Callum. I was in jeans, but Holden was wearing a smart blazer and looked like he’d sprung to life from the pages of a fashion magazine. The desk clerk appeared to trust us about as far as his twig-thin arms could throw us.

“You folks planning on staying long?”

“Just for the day. We’ve had a long drive and we’re hoping to get some sleep before we make our way to New Orleans,” I lied smoothly. “We might want to go into the swamp tomorrow. Can you recommend a good tour?”

The man gawked at me as if I’d requested a guided tour of the seven levels of Hell but handed me a crumpled pamphlet that had been crudely made on a home printer. It said
Swamp Tours!
and even I thought the exclamation mark looked like it was trying too hard.

“’At’s Arnie’s tour. Ain’t much, but he got a boat an’ he’s a dead eye if you run into any gators.”

“Well, that’s a promising pitch,” Holden said.

“Sounds great, thank you.” I slipped the pamphlet into my purse, next to my gun. “Have a great night.”

Grabbing Holden by the arm, I dragged him from the office, but not before he said, “Can’t keep her off me.”

In the room I found the phone had no dial tone.

“It’s like we’ve stumbled into the premise for a terrible horror movie,” I grumbled, slamming the handset down in frustration.

“Yeah, unsuspecting couple alone in a motel run into vampires and…oh wait. We’re the vampires.”

“Have you ever seen a horror movie? If you’re at a budget motel next to the swamp, it’s not vampires you need to worry about. It’s like…sludge creatures or inbred mutants.”

Holden flopped next to me on the sagging bed. The headboard had one of those Magic Fingers vibrating features, but I didn’t think the bed could handle anything so forceful without collapsing.

“I’ll take the mutants,” Holden said with a chuckle. “I bet their blood tastes great.”

“Freak. Give me your phone.” I held out my hand.

“Say please.”

“Please.”

He put his cell in my open palm, and I was relieved to see at least one of us had decent coverage. My phone had stopped beeping about service and had begun to laugh at me whenever I turned it on. It was crammed inside my purse so I didn’t yield to the urge to destroy it. Brand new and totally useless.

I dialed
Grandmere
’s number by heart and listened to the rings, hoping she wasn’t out doing some spring ritual. She tended to sleep irregular hours, a habit she’d picked up raising me, and even though I’d been gone for years, she still hadn’t gone back to sleeping through the night.

“’Allo?” Her Cajun accent sang through the line and gripped me like a long-distance hug.

“
Grandmere
, it’s me.”

“
Mon chérie! Comment ça va? Ou et toi?
”

“I’m good,” I replied in English. “And I’m in Louisiana.”

For a moment I thought the connection had dropped, then she spoke again, her accent thicker somehow. “You’re with the pack?”

“Callum asked Lucas and me to come down. He’s…hesitant to let us go through with the wedding.” For the next ten minutes I told her everything I had learned in the last week. About Ben and Eugenia, and while I skipped over the attempts on my life, she was still pretty wound up by the end of my story.

“Grandbabies!” she chirped.

Leave it to her to get only one thing out of the whole conversation…that she had
more
grandchildren.

“You might have mentioned sooner that your mother was a big-bad witch living in the swamps.”

“Oh,
bébé
, how was I to know? My mother, we was…wild. She was always running away. Even now, as an old woman, she still hides from me. She gave me my magic. I need nothing else from her.”

“But—”

“
Non
, no but. You and your
mama
are not best friends,
oui
? Why should you expect me to plait braids with mine while we make potions? Family, it is not always pretty,
chérie
, you know this.”

I had to give her that. “What’s her name, your mother.”

“
Je ne sais pas.
”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“She is mad. She believed to know her name meant one could steal her power. If she gave no name to anyone, she could not be the target of any vengeful magic. I never knew her real name, and likewise I had no name until my father gave me one. She turned me over to him after that. Said she could not trust someone weakened by a name.”

Clearly insanity ran in my family.

“
Bébé
?”

“
Oui
?” I slipped into the habit of speaking French with her too easily.

“Do you have the necklace I gave you? The tiger’s iron?”

The necklace made me cranky because she’d once used it to help a sorcerer find me, but I knew she’d never have lied to me about what it did. Tiger’s iron warded against evil, and considering how much trouble I found myself in lately, I’d started carrying it with me again after my first assassination attempt on the highway. Fat lot of good it had done me in the bridal salon…though I suppose making it out alive had to count for something. Currently it was in a zippered pouch inside my bag. I wasn’t wearing it, which might have dulled the magic.

“I do.”

“You put it on before you go looking for
La Sorcière.
”

“
Grandmere
, you sound scared.”

“I am. You wear that necklace, girl.”

“Why?”

“Because if you ever needed a ward against evil, now is the time,
bébé
.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Arnie the swamp tour guide was the oldest living human I’d ever seen.

His lower jaw had shifted forward, giving him a toothless underbite. His nose was a huge, bulbous point jutting out from an otherwise sunken face. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, and the sound of his lips smacking against his gums was louder than whatever he was saying.

His boat was a low wooden skiff that looked like it might sink under our collective weight. Arnie hiked his overalls up over his bare chest, a tuft of white hair peeking out from the bib. When he shuffled his way to the boat with one giant oar in hand, I turned to Holden with naked concern written over my features.

Holden imitated the twanging banjos from
Deliverance
.

“Sure,
that
pop-culture reference you know.”

“You got a pretty mouth, girl.” He winked.

“I hope you get eaten by a crocodile.”

“Alligator,” he corrected.

Arnie cleared his throat and angled his chin at the empty bench in the skiff.

“Close your eyes and pretend it’s Venice,” Holden suggested.

The moon was only a few days short of being full, and there was enough space between the sycamore trees and their blanket coverings of Spanish moss for a little light from the sky to make it all the way down to the brackish green water. Along the shore, the reflective eyes of wild animals shone like fireflies before vanishing.

We’d had to pay a premium for the night tour.

Arnie flicked on a spotlight mounted at the front of the boat, and a hundred yards away something splashed off the shoreline to escape being seen. I wondered how I would fare in one-on-one combat against an alligator. I didn’t particularly want to find out.

Holden plunked onto the bench and threw a booted foot over the side of the boat. “Come on, dear, let’s not hold up the tour.”

“’Urry up,” Arnie said.
Smack, smack
. He spit a wad of chewing tobacco into the water. Did they make a geriatric version of the stuff? Something you could gum into pulp when you didn’t have teeth left to chew with?

I sat next to Holden and pulled my leather jacket close around me. My gun was holstered beneath it, and I was glad to have it. I’d even thrown subtlety to the wind and strapped my dagger to my thigh. Arnie took one look at the Japanese-style knife, like a mini katana, and rolled his eyes. He must have thought I had a fantasy about being Angelina Jolie in
Tomb Raider
.

Once we were both in place, Arnie used the oar to push us off, and I was surprised by how sturdy the boat felt once we were on the move. Holden pulled his foot back inside after Arnie gave him a warning smack with the oar. Guess we weren’t going gator hunting with Gucci loafers tonight. What a shame.

We floated farther from Arnie’s brightly lit cabin and into the true dark of the swamp with only our spotlight and the moon to guide us. In the real darkness on either side of the skiff I felt like unseen eyes were watching us. I shuddered.