chapter Twenty-Two
When I stumbled out the back door, drunk on too much information, Magnolia was waiting for me. She appeared concerned, so I guess I must have looked as good as I felt.
“Are you okay?” She touched my arm as we moved towards the path back to my cabin.
“Are we ever okay?” I stopped walking in the middle of the trail and put a hand on Magnolia’s arm. “I need to go for a walk. If you see Lucas, will you let him know?”
“Of course.”
I walked past the houses and into the woods beyond. The forest here was unlike anything I’d ever encountered. In Manitoba, where I’d grown up, the woods were dense and populated with evergreen and birch. The trees were plentiful, but none of them radiated the age of these oak. In New York there were trees, but Central Park wasn’t a real forest. No matter how deep in you were, you could still see skyline.
Here, the space between the trees was wide open, but the oak branches spread wide and heavy, blotting out the moon. Their arms created a canopy of spring buds, making the area beneath feel warmer somehow. In spite of the darkness of creeping shadow, I felt protected. Once I’d made my way through, I found the creek on the edge of Callum’s property and sat on its bank, feeling the dampness of the grass seep into my jeans.
Holden sat down next to me.
“Have a nice chat with your uncle?”
“I have a sister. And a brother.”
The vampire whistled his appreciation for the bomb I’d dropped. “Instant family.”
“Right?”
“So, you are unhappy? You look like someone slapped you.”
“I feel like someone slapped me.”
“You were a fan of being an only child?” he teased.
“I don’t think I’m ready to make jokes about this yet.”
He didn’t apologize, but he did say, “Okay.”
“Callum wants me to find my sister. He won’t agree to my marrying Lucas unless I do.”
“So? She’s a girl. You’ve found girls before.”
“I don’t like it.”
“What’s to like?”
“If someone had come after me when I was young, I would have thought they were doing it to kill me. That’s what I believed Callum’s pack was capable of, and I still think I might have been right. If Eugenia wanted to come home, she would have done it by now. Why should she trust me? I don’t even know why Callum wants her.”
“Werewolf motivations are the most obvious things in the world. Everything comes back to pride and power. If the girl was part of your uncle’s pack and left without his permission, it makes him look weak. If he can get you to bring her back, he shows the pack he has made you loyal and he still has power over his own kin.”
I stared at him, mouth slack. “Did you pull that out of your ass?”
“Yes. But it sounded good, didn’t it?”
I nodded and looked back at the sluggish water made beautiful by the glimmer of moonlight dancing over its surface. “You’re right about one thing. It’s always pride and power. Pride, power and pack. The three things that matter to wolves.”
“They’re simple creatures.”
“So are vampires—blood, sex and subservience are all they care about.”
Holden smiled. “I know one or two who don’t care about sex.”
I made a pfft noise and rolled my eyes. Before I’d left Callum’s office he’d explained that La Sorcière made her home in the Maurepas swamplands, the big-ass national park we’d driven through before we hit Baton Rouge. The problem with Maurepas, he’d told me, was it was not only massive, but the witch had a nasty habit of shifting her location. It made her…tricky to find.
“I’ve always wanted to tour a swamp,” I said sarcastically. “Number twenty-seven on my bucket list is Go on a Witch Hunt in a Swamp.”
“Have fun with that.” Holden made a disgusted face every time I said swamp. For a man who had spent his human life shoveling shit for a living, he sure had become a snob in his post-death years. Frankly I was shocked he was willing to sit on the grass in his Hugo Boss pants.
“I have to get the girl.” I gave him a loaded smile and leaned in close. At first his eyes narrowed and his lips curved upwards in anticipation—until he saw the look in my eyes and then he scuttled backwards out of my reach.
“You have to get the girl. There was nothing in your promise about bringing a vampire along to help you.”
I fished my cell phone out of my pocket and held it to my ear. “Hi, Sig. Yeah, Louisiana is swell. I’ll give your love to Lestat and Louis. Now, about how Holden was supposed to not let me out of his sight.”
My phone chirped, telling me there was no signal.
“I hate you,” Holden growled.
Point made, I slipped the useless phone back into my jeans. “If you can use it as an excuse to show up here, I’m going to use it as an excuse to make you come with me into the godforsaken swamp.”
“I suppose I should be thankful you didn’t flash your Tribunal ace for once.”
“That was my next stop on the guilt-trip train.”
“So you and me…alone in the swamp.” He waggled his brows suggestively, and I sneered.
“Yes. Nothing says romance like slogging through the murky water while the alligators look on. Be still my heart. Take me now.”
He darted in to hold me to the suggestion, but I put my hand up and pushed his face away. “You’re worse than a horny teenager.”
“I always thought you Americans used vacations as an excuse to sleep with handsome new men.”
“You’re an old man,” I reminded him. “And I thought you Brits were all uptight about sex. I guess we were both mistaken. Now stop trying to kiss me.”
“Then stop kissing me back.”
“That was one time.”
He gave me a look that plainly said, Let’s not bullshit ourselves, here.
“Well, however many times it was, it won’t happen again.”
“We’ll see.”
I got to my feet and wiped off the butt of my jeans. “I need to go tell Lucas what Callum asked me to do.” An involuntary sigh escaped my lips. “Can’t wait for that discussion.”
Holden didn’t say anything, but I knew all too well he’d be listening in on the whole damned thing.
“Absolutely not.” Lucas had been sitting on the couch when I started my story. When I got to the part about my siblings, he’d shifted to the edge. By the time I’d told him about Callum’s request, he was on his feet and pacing in front of the fireplace like a wild animal trapped in a cage.
“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 a*shole.”
“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 f*cking 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.”