I gritted my teeth as an angry wave of power passed through me. My eyes stung, and my night vision kicked in for a moment. When I saw Daniel’s mud-pie eyes rimmed with sorrow, a rush of reassuring love pushed the wolf away.
“I left, and she was pissed,” Daniel said. “But then she texted me the next day and said that she’d changed her mind, that she’d take my bike as payment instead. We were supposed to meet up again—I was waiting for another text from her that night at dinner when I ran out. Only when I got to her place, some house on the outskirts of the city, I discovered the person who texted wasn’t Mishka. It was her friend, Veronica. They were in the same coven—like a family—and when Veronica had returned that evening, she’d found that Mishka and the rest of her friends were dead, and that someone had made off with about ten thousand dollars of stolen cash. Veronica wanted me to help her track down whoever killed her friends and get the money back. She said she’d help me if I did—get into my head for me. I tried. I wasn’t even with Katie on Sunday like I told you. I was trying to follow a lead that turned out to be nothing.” He groaned. “And I can’t believe I made up that lie about being with Katie at my place. It was the first plausible thing that popped into my head. But it was also the dumbest thing I could have said.”
I almost laughed. “No, the alone-in-a-motel-room-with-Mishka thing tops it. But I did almost take Katie’s face off the other day. I’m just glad I didn’t act on the urge.”
Daniel’s eyes went wide. He rolled over flat on his back, I guess deciding not to pursue that line of conversation. “The lead I followed was a total dead end. I never did figure out who attacked that coven.”
“Um … Well, I’ve got good news and bad …,” I said, and then I told him the story about what happened at that house that day. How terrified I’d been the first time I saw Talbot cut off someone’s head, and then how he had staked Mishka with a chair leg just before she almost killed me. And then, in an effort to be truly honest, I told Daniel about how Talbot had taught me to heal the burns on my face.
“I can see why you were attracted to him,” Daniel said. “You always go for the dangerous guys.”
“Yes, but I only love you,” I said.
And then we fell silent for a long, long while.
I must have drifted off to sleep at some point, because my eyes popped open when I heard a shout and a scuffle outside the door. The first thought I had was that Jude must have come to his senses and was trying to rescue us. I sat bolt upright, but then I realized there was no noise at all.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asked. His voice cracked a bit. If he was like me, he was probably getting parched. It had been several hours since I’d had anything to eat or drink.
“Yeah, it must have just been a dream.”
“I had one, too,” Daniel said. He was quiet for a minute. “Do you think after Trenton, we could get married and settle down in an apartment in New York City or somewhere? I could be an industrial designer, and you could fight crime like a part-time ninja assassin.”
I almost laughed, but then I stopped myself, because I knew it would come out as a sob. I was quiet for a while as I composed myself. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, that would be awesome.”
I heard Daniel’s chains rattle as he changed positions. I took a deep breath and concentrated some power into my eyes until my night vision returned. I found Daniel kneeling on the concrete in front of me. I didn’t know if he could see me in the dark, but he had one of his special smiles—the one that said he was truly happy—on his lips.
“So you’ll do it?” he asked.
“Do what?”
Daniel shifted so he was on only one knee now.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Grace Divine, when all this crap is over, and we’re out of college, and you take some time off from kicking bad-guy butt, will you marry me?”
He might as well have just kicked me in the chest the way all my breath seeped out of me and my heart seemed to stop beating. “You can’t be serious.”