“Ella?” Finn said. “You asked these guys here?”
“Of course I did.” She sneered. “Did you really think that I came to your lame-ass party just to flirt with you? Please.” She laughed, but it was an ugly, ugly sound.
Finn’s face hardened, and he got to his feet, his hands clenching into fists. Ella glared right back at him. Neither one of them noticed me as I grabbed Finn’s baseball bat, took hold of the porch railing, and pulled myself onto my feet.
“You were just pretending to like me so your friends could come to my house and steal from my dad.” Finn’s voice was cold and harsh, but I could hear the hurt in it. He’d really liked this girl.
Ella raised her eyebrows. “So you’re not a complete idiot after all. Good for you. Too bad you’re not going to get the chance to rat me out to anyone.”
She reached into her back pocket and came out with a switchblade, then flipped the weapon open with practiced ease. The sharp edges of the blade glinted a dull silver in the light streaming from the windows.
Ella grinned and stepped over her vampire friends, slicing the weapon through the air as she drew closer and closer to Finn—
But I stepped in front of him, raised the bat, and hit her across the face with it.
Crack!
Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head, and she dropped to the porch without another sound. I stood over her, making sure that she wasn’t faking, but she was out cold, just like the three vamps.
“Home run, bitch,” I muttered.
Finn touched my shoulder. “You didn’t have to do that. I could have disarmed her.”
“I know you could have, but I wanted to take care of her.” My hand tightened around the bat. Even though Ella and her friends were out of the fight, I wanted to keep right on hitting them. I wanted to make them hurt just as much as they’d planned on hurting me. But I swallowed down my screams of rage and focused on Finn.
“I’m sorry, Gin. So sorry. I had no idea what she was up to.” His shoulders slumped. “I thought . . . I thought she really liked me.”
This time, I reached out and touched his shoulder. “It’s okay.”
He shook his head. “No, it’s not. I would promise you that it won’t happen again . . .”
“But?”
“But we all know that I’m a sucker for a pretty face.” Finn grinned, then winked at me.
He was trying to charm me again, trying to get me to smile and laugh and forget about the horrible thing that had almost happened. It shouldn’t have worked, but his grin and the light in his eyes were both too infectious to ignore, and I found myself snickering, just a little bit.
“There we go,” he said. “That’s better, isn’t it?”
And it was. Not a lot, not enough, but it was better than before.
Finn’s gaze moved slowly, from me to Ella and the three vamps sprawled across the porch to the party inside, which was still going strong. He winced. “How are we going to explain this to Dad?”
“We?” I snorted. “There is no we in this equation. There is only you, being a jackass over a pretty girl.”
Finn glared at me a moment, and then his face melted into a sheepish smile again. “Yeah, you’re right. Just do me a favor, okay?”
“What?”
“Don’t forget about me, since Dad will probably banish me to my room for the next ten years.”
I rolled my eyes. “I couldn’t forget about you even if I tried.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?” he asked, making an X over his chest.
I rolled my eyes again, but I mimicked his motion. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Now, that’s what a guy likes to hear.”
Finn slung his arm around my shoulders, grinning at me again—
Cold water hit me square in the face, snapping me out of my dream, my memory. I gasped and opened my eyes . . .
Just in time to get hit in the face by another round of cold water.
Some of the water went up my nose, while still more trickled down my throat, and I doubled over, sneezing and coughing at the uncomfortable sensations. When I’d finally gotten the worst of the water out of my lungs, I reached up to wipe the rest of it off my face.
That’s when I realized that I was shackled to a chair, with silverstone handcuffs glinting on both my wrists. I rattled the cuffs, but they were securely anchored to the metal chair.
“Well, that finally woke her up,” a familiar voice called out.
I raised my head.
Deirdre Shaw was sitting across from me.
For a second, I thought she was the one taunting me. Then I noticed the gleam of silver on her wrists and ankles. It took me a moment to process that they weren’t heavy bracelets. They were handcuffs.
Deirdre was shackled to a chair just like I was.
29
My muddled mind struggled to catch up to my eyes and process what was going on.
Deirdre a prisoner, just like me? Then that meant . . . that meant that she was in serious trouble too. That she wasn’t the one in charge.