I sighed. “Andre, really, it’s called manners. You ask. I answer. We both win.”
He carried me to his car and placed me in the passenger seat. As soon as he closed the door I lunged for it and yanked.
Locked from the outside. “Andre!” I bellowed. “Let me out!”
In the next moment, he was in the driver’s seat, turning over the ignition.
“Andre,” I warned. He wasn’t going to do this, was he? Memories of our first, horrific date surfaced.
Damnit, he was.
He shifted the car into first, and with a squeal of burning rubber, the car peeled out of the parking lot.
“Oh my God,” I said, glancing back at the inn. My mouth was opening and closing. “You can’t just—just abduct me!”
The muscles in his jaw were clenched tightly.
“You know, sometimes you scare the crap out of me,” I said, watching Andre’s expression flicker between fear and anger.
Andre’s hands flexed around the wheel. “You have the same effect on me,” he said. He drove down the city streets, completely at ease here in this strange country.
I rubbed my temples. “So, where are you taking me?”
“The airport.”
The balls of this man. “Andre, I’m not leaving this place in the middle of an investigation.”
“You already know who’s behind it,” Andre said, glancing over at me. “Case closed.”
I swallowed. The devil.
“Andre, my hands are tied,” I said, my voice dropping low. “If I walk away from the investigation, I’ll lose my spot on the Politia.”
“Better than losing your life, soulmate,” Andre said.
It dawned on me, what this was. Panic. Andre was panicking.
“I’m not leaving, and you can’t make me get onto that plane—not if you want to continue dating me.”
Andre looked at me, frowning, and pulled the car to the shoulder of the road.
He shifted the car into Park and bowed his head over the steering wheel. “There’s more than one reason why I want you to leave Romania.”
I stilled at his words and waited for him to continue.
He sighed. “I can’t shield you from the coven’s justice system if you’re here.”
My brows pinched together. He’d been shielding me this whole time? “But I thought that …”
“That the trial was solely against me?” he said. He shook his head. “It is, but you’re a vampire as well, and victim or not, you were involved.”
I bit my lip. I hadn’t thought much of Andre’s trial. If I was being honest with myself, I thought it was a joke. Andre was the king of the vampires; I assumed that gave him complete power over his subjects.
Clearly I was mistaken.
“How did you manage to keep me away from the trial all this time?”
He didn’t say anything, which was answer enough. Bribing and threatening—that was how he did it. That, and making sure I never left the Isle of Man. Between him, Peel Academy, and the Politia, I was almost untouchable. Almost.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally said.
Andre reached out to me and ran a thumb over the skin of my cheek. “Because I knew that if I told you, you’d somehow get yourself involved.”
“No, you don’t know that,” I said heatedly. “You never gave me the chance to decide for myself what we should do.”
His hand dropped, and it tightened into a fist. “I’m still not giving you the chance.”
I wanted to scream in frustration at him. “I’m not going to the airport.” I’d glamour him before that happened.
“They will learn of your existence here,” he said. “There are eyes and ears everywhere; it’s only a matter of time before someone on the council learns of your arrival in Cluj. And once they do, you will be called in.”
“And what is so wrong with that?”
Andre growled. “You are asking to be subjected to some of the cruelest beings that walk this earth. I can assure you, most of these men and women were not good people in life, and they’ve had centuries to wipe away the last of their humanity. If they learn the truth about what happened that night at Bishopcourt, they will kill you, and not even I will be able to stop them.”
What he wasn’t saying was that he’d been lying to them to protect me. Lying to his coven about what happened that night. Which meant they still didn’t know about the prophecy. Because if they did, he was absolutely right, they’d kill me to save themselves.
I believed him. God help me, I believed every word he said. But it wasn’t enough to make me leave this place, not yet.
“Andre, I’m not leaving Romania tonight.”
“Gabrielle …” His voice was full of dark warning.
My lips spread into an amused smile. “Are you trying to intimidate me with that voice of yours? ’Cause it ain’t gonna work.”
“Don’t make light of the situation,” Andre said.
“I’m not. I’m going to help solve the investigation and get the hell out of here before one of your friends eats me.”
“No one’s going to eat you, Gabrielle.”
“Okay, fine—stake me, draw and quarter me, roast me over an open spit, …”
“Leave Romania,” he whispered.
Persistent vampire.
“No.”
“Please, Gabrielle.” This was the closest he ever got to begging.
“Quit and go back to the Isle of Man,” Andre continued. “I won’t let anything happen to you.” Oh, I bet he’d love me quitting. He’d probably throw a party in my honor the day that happened.
“Much as I appreciate the offer, I want to go to school and lead a normal life for as long as possible,” I said.
“You call this a normal life?”
I gave him a look. “You know what I mean.”
Andre closed his eyes. “If you don’t leave here, this place might kill you.” He talked as though Romania itself wanted my blood.
I gave a hollow laugh. “I’m destined to die in about a year anyway, so what’s the difference?”