“We’ll call the police,” Michael said. He was pulling out his cell.
“No!” Lockhart shoved at the door, and Eve let him open it wider so he could thrust his desperate, sweaty face closer. “No, please, he said—he said he’d kill my wife if you did. He said you know what he wants. Please. You’ve gotta help.”
They all went still and silent. Lockhart wasn’t lying; his distress hung in the air around him like a white-hot electric cloud, and Michael could smell the adrenaline flooding through his bloodstream. Claire sent him an anxious, pleading look; Shane had gone tense and unreadable.
It was Eve who punched Michael on the shoulder, swung the door open, and said, “We can’t let this happen. You know that.”
His hand flashed out without any real planning, grabbed her shoulder, and pulled her back across the threshold when she stepped outside. “No,” he said, when she opened her mouth to yell. “Eve, it’s you he wants. It’s you. And you can’t do this.”
She gave him a blackly miserable look, one that chilled him in places he hadn’t know he could still feel the cold. “Do you think he’ll do what he says?”
Yes, Michael thought, but he kept himself from saying so. He tried not to project what he felt for Eve onto Lockhart, desperate to save his own wife, but he couldn’t help it. He’d always been way too softhearted about these things for a vampire—he knew that. But falling in love with Eve—falling more in love with her every day, it seemed—he couldn’t not know what Lockhart felt.
Eve was still pinning him with that bleak stare. “Michael. We can’t let her die. I can’t.”
“And I can’t let you go.”
“Dude,” Shane said, “what makes you think you let any of us do any damn thing?”
And he shoved past, out the door, and down the steps, with Claire fast on his heels. That left him and Eve standing together, with Lockhart looking at them in silent, tormented distress.
“He’s right,” Eve said. “What makes you the boss of me? Are we partners, or not?”
He didn’t like it, but he let go. “Partners,” he said. “Which means what you do affects us both. All right?”
She kissed him. It was a quick, warm, sweet thing, and it made him crave her in too many ways to comprehend, and then she was gone, heading after Claire and Shane toward the Lockhart house.
Michael closed and locked the door behind them, because . . . Morganville.
? ? ?
Lockhart’s front door was wide-open, throwing a warm, buttery glow of light down the cracked front steps and shimmering on the shiny wood floor visible inside. As Michael approached with Eve, Claire and Shane stopped at the foot of the steps, and Claire looked back at them. “How do you want to do this?” she asked. Lockhart pushed past them into the house, stumbling in his eagerness, and disappeared around the corner. Like the Glass House, this house was basically a square, but it was about half the size. They’d taken good care of it, Michael could tell; what he could see inside looked clean and neat, and on the walls were framed photos of a happy family. There were kids. Two of them.
Eve took a deep breath and said, “Well, it’s me he wants, so let’s see what happens. Michael’s got my back.”
“He’s not the only one,” Shane said. “I’m on Mission Protect the Goth, too.”
Claire didn’t need to add that she was, too. They all took that for granted.
Michael fought an almost overpowering urge to hold Eve back, to keep her safe, and let her walk ahead of him up the steps and down the polished wooden hallway. He felt Shane behind him, solid and steady, and knew Claire would be analyzing everything, thinking through the possibilities. Nobody better to have going into a bad situation than Claire, even if she looked deceptively fragile.
Eve, on the other hand, looked badass, and she knew it. And as she turned the corner, he saw her put on attitude like armor as she stopped, set her feet in a battle stance, and sent the man seated on the sofa across the room a cocky tilt of her head.
“You wanted me? You got me,” she said. “Now let her go.”
Kiril Rozhkov had Mrs. Lockhart sitting close against him, a position she obviously hated. He had his arm around her shoulders, but every muscle in her body was tensed and quivering, and the look in her eyes was one step away from madness. She didn’t look hurt, and Michael smelled no spilled blood. So far, so good.
Rozhkov took his time looking Eve up and down. “You are not as I expected.”
“No? Goody. Get your damn hands off her.”
“I think I will wait,” he said, apparently not bothered at all by Eve’s tone of utter disrespect. “Your great-grandmother was named Ulyana, yes? She was born in Minsk?”
“My great-grandmother?” Eve shook her head. “No idea. I never knew her.”
“But your mother’s family is Russian.”