In my haste to welcome our potential allies, I’d forgotten one critically important detail. The part about how Volkov wasn’t technically my ally.
His fingers latched around my wrist where my bangle wasn’t, and he dialed up his lure to smolder. Warmth spread up my arm, through my chest, past my jaw, until sparkles danced across my field of vision. Heat pulsed low in my stomach, and I smiled at him, tipsy, as the purse thudded at my feet.
One slow pull, and I stood in the circle of Volkov’s arms before I registered making the decision to move.
A lightbulb flashed over my head. The vampires. They were the ones who had tampered with Woolly’s wards, tweaking them, testing them, until she allowed one in the house. And I had been too weak to notice them severing our connection until it was too late.
No wonder Volkov hadn’t risked coming inside again. The potential of me locating the damage and repairing it now that I had access to Society resources was too high.
The porchlight flashed in panicked bursts until the bulb fizzled from the overload, and the porch went dark. That explained why my lightbulb moment had been literal.
“There’s someone I would like you to meet.” He nuzzled me, the rasp of his beard delicious against my skin. “Will you come with me?”
“Grier,” Amelie cried out. “Don’t—”
One of the guards lunged at her, smacking against the invisible barrier filling the doorway, and she screamed.
“Come with me,” Volkov coaxed, the scent of him effervescent in my blood. “Would you like that?”
“Mmm.” I curled against his chest, breathing him in, and let him guide me down the stairs. The driver tipped his chin at me and opened the rear passenger door. Another male sat across from me, our knees brushing. A trill of fear shot up my spine, and my heart rate spiked. “I remember you.”
“Shh.” Volkov joined us, hauling me into his lap with gentle hands. “Pay him no mind.”
“We should have done this from the start,” the male sighed, his voice husky and deep. “I wasted a week of my time on recon when you could have hooked her from the start and saved us all this trouble.”
His voice sounded so familiar… I angled my head for a peek at his face, but Volkov cupped my jaw and turned me back to him. Try as I might, I couldn’t look away from the storm gathering in his thundercloud eyes.
“I had hoped to earn her trust.” His thumb kneaded the thin skin over my carotid. “I wanted a willing partner.”
“You can make her willing.” The other male cracked his knuckles in rapid succession. “After a few months, she won’t know the difference.”
A flicker of panic tripped my pulse, but Volkov used his scent to ease my fears.
“The master should have left this matter up to me.” His fingers traced the high curve of my cheekbones. “I could have made her see reason. All I needed was more time.”
“Is that why one of my guys spotted her wearing that necromancer’s shirt to bed?”
A growl pumped through Volkov’s chest that rattled my teeth. “Mine.”
The vibration soothed me, and I snuggled closer against him, burying my face in the curve of his throat.
“Dial it down a few notches.” The other male coughed a few times. “Or I’ll have to crack a window.”
The words no sooner left his mouth than fists pummeled the glass near my head. A man with warm, brown eyes, his lip snarled up in a promise of retribution, bellowed my name. I lifted my hand in a tiny wave that Volkov stilled by pressing my fingertips to his lips.
With his skin on mine, his scent in my lungs, I slid into a sleep too deep for the banging to disturb me.
Fourteen
The glittering chandelier overhead blasted my pulse up into the stratosphere.
It was all a dream. Part of the nightmare. I’m home. In the foyer. That’s my chandelier.
“Woolly,” I murmured, lips dry and tongue thick.
“Miss?” A willowy brunette who looked no older than me bustled into the room with a pressed suit hanging from each hand. The door standing open behind her appeared to lead into a closet filled with similar outfits and a rack of coordinating shoes and accessories. “Oh, dear, you are awake at last. How marvelous.”
The room, which was not my foyer, swam into slow focus around me.
Rose-pink walls. Gleaming white furniture. Shimmering gold accents.
Bookcases crammed with children’s books lined two of the walls. Dolls slumped on every available surface, their porcelain faces sullen, all hope lost that tiny hands would ever lift them for play again. A hard lump under my hip produced a plush rabbit with a sculpted face. A dozen other stuffed animals in varying colors and sizes littered the queen-sized bed, walling me up in the center of the mattress.
All those eyes staring at me… Creepy.
A shudder rippled through me when I shoved upright and ended up palming the porcelain face of a bear. I knocked it away and wiped my hand down my shirt then startled. “Where are my clothes?” I clutched at the pink flannel button-down pajama top I wore and gaped at the matching pants and fluffy socks that completed the ensemble. “Who dressed me like this?”
“Oh, I did.” The woman hung her burdens on the back of a door then faced me and…curtseyed. That’s when what she wore registered. A pink dress, the same color as the walls, tickled her ankles. She wore a frilly white lace apron over the top, like frosting on a strawberry cake, and an equally ridiculous cap over her hair. “I told the master you were too grown for the likes of all this, but he insisted you use your old room, and one doesn’t argue with the master.”
“My old room?” Clearly, all the sugary pink was rotting her brain. I had never seen this pastel prison before in my life. “Where am I?”
“Oh, miss.” She wrung her hands and glanced toward the door. “Please don’t get worked up again.”
Again? What was that supposed to mean?
A well-aimed kick sent plushies flying and gave me room to scoot down to the foot of the bed. My legs dangled, the mattress stacked so high she might as well have been calling me Pea. As in The Princess and the…
“Who are you?” I hopped down, saved from slipping on the hardwood floor by the grabby soles of the socks. “Why am I here?”
“I’m Lena, miss.” Scurrying around the bed, she bundled the plushies in her arms. “This is where you belong. Where else should you be? What a silly question.”
With her occupied on the far side of the bed, I ran straight to the door and tried the handle. Locked. Had I really expected anything less?
“You’ve got the wrong girl.” I flew to the window and jiggled the latch. Locked. Who used a keyed lock on their freaking windows? “This is so very far away from where I belong.” Or was it? She never had answered my question. How close was I to home? To help? I gazed out the window at the expansive grounds, the manicured gardens and the encroaching forest that stretched as far as the eye could see. “Where is this place?”
“This is your home. The master has awaited your return for ever so long, miss.”
An arrangement of white roses sat on a desk beneath the window, their perfume turning my wish for home into a physical ache. I pretended interest in the flowers while weighing the gilded vase. It was metal, not too heavy, but perhaps sturdy enough. I dumped out the flowers, the water cascading over the desktop and splashing across the planks. I gripped the vase and swung it as hard as I could into the window. The metal thumped dully and bounced off the pane, slipping from my wet fingers to clatter on the floor.
Bulletproof glass.
“Dearie me.” A fang pressed into her bottom lip as she rushed to clean up the mess. “He won’t like this at all.”
The sound caused a scuffle to break out in the hall, or maybe the window was rigged with an alarm. Either way, the door burst open, and Volkov prowled through, elongated canines on display until spotting first the mess, then the maid, and lastly me.
“Grier?” He breathed my name. “What happened?”
“Where am I?” I flattened my back against the wall. “What have you done?”