Rivera straightened up to his full height and glared at the vampire, although his drunken wobble ruined his attempt to be intimidating. “You don’t get to order me around, Hugh.”
The vampire gave him a cold, thin smile. “Oh, I do tonight, Damian, when you’ve brought such unwanted attention to the group. He’s not happy with you, letting your assistant go around town and murder all those innocent women. And he’s especially not happy that the two of you were stupid enough to get caught and he had to send men to bail you out.”
His words made me think about those three SUVs full of men that had showed up at Rivera’s estate, the ones that had seemingly come out of nowhere, since they weren’t part of his regular security team. The alarm that I’d tripped at Porter’s cottage had signaled another alarm up at the mansion. That second alarm must have triggered some sort of Circle security protocol. That’s where all the extra men had come from. I was sure of it. But the knowledge couldn’t help me right now, so I filed the information away for another time.
Rivera airily waved his hand, dismissing Tucker’s concerns. “Mason will get over it. He always does, just as soon as I line his pockets with more of my mother’s money.”
Once again, my ears perked up at that name. Mason had to be their boss, the man behind this sick, twisted curtain that was the Circle. For a moment, I savored the fact that I finally—finally—had his name. In fairy tales, names often had great power, like the miller’s daughter saving her child by guessing Rumpelstiltskin’s moniker. Well, names had power in Ashland too. Names led to records, and records led to homes, bank accounts, and businesses, all of which would eventually lead to a real, live person who I could find, drag out into the light, and kill.
But the longer I thought about it, the more the name Mason bothered me. A little warning bell chimed in the back of my mind. I’d heard that name before. I knew that I had. But where? When? Was he some Ashland mover and shaker Fletcher had mentioned to me? Some bigwig my mother had done business with? Or someone even closer and more personal than that?
Try as I might, I couldn’t find the answer in the dregs of my mind, so I let it go—for now. Besides, at the moment, I did have the slightly more pressing problem of getting out of this cottage alive.
Rivera waved his hand again, as if he were going to keep talking about the mysterious Mason, but Tucker stared the other man down. The vampire didn’t look at me, but his lips pressed into a hard, unhappy line. He realized how sloppy Rivera had just been, saying his boss’s name out loud in front of me.
“Get out,” Tucker snapped. “Now.”
Rivera opened his mouth to protest, but Porter laid a warning hand on his shoulder, and the two men left the cottage, shutting the door behind them. Tucker tilted his head to the side, listening to the sounds of their footsteps on the porch. I thought back to the memory I’d had of him in the woods the night Mab killed my mother, how he’d been able to see and hear me even in the dark. He seemed to have more finely tuned senses than any other vampire I’d ever met. I wondered if it was a natural ability or if it came from all the blood he drank. Or maybe it was even a combination of the two.
Rivera and Porter must have stepped away from the cottage, because the sound of their muffled conversation faded away altogether. Only then did Tucker look over at me. I stared right back at him.
I thought that he would make some dismissive, cutting remark, but instead, he carefully studied me, as if comparing me with some other image in his mind. The prolonged silent scrutiny made me uncomfortable, although it didn’t creep me out nearly as much as Porter’s examination had. Then again, Tucker just killed people. I could understand that. But Porter’s sadistic ritual? That was as strange to me as little green aliens falling from the sky.
After several seconds, Tucker shook his head, as if trying to clear away a bad, bad memory—or a ghost that haunted him still. But I knew from personal experience that ghosts didn’t disappear that easily, and he couldn’t help himself from staring at my dyed blond hair again.
“I never really noticed before now, but you look just like Eira. Even more than Bria does, in a way.” He tried to make his voice low and emotionless, but he didn’t quite succeed.
I thought back to what I’d overheard, how Damian had mocked the vampire about his feelings for my mother. I decided to twist that knife in even deeper.
“Well,” I drawled. “You would know, since you were apparently in love with her.”
Once again, Tucker’s lips pressed into that thin, unhappy line at my exposing one of his deep, dark secrets, but he didn’t ask me how I’d found out about his feelings for my mother. I didn’t mind his silence, though. It was just more confirmation about what was really going on here.
And I realized something else. Damian Rivera had been right. No matter what had happened between them, no matter that she’d been murdered years ago, Tucker still carried a torch for my mother. I wanted to know why and exactly what there had been between them. But more than that, right now, I wanted to hurt him the same way that he’d hurt me by not saving her.
I glanced at the mirror again, my gaze fixed on my unnaturally blond hair. “You’re right. I do look like her.” I turned back to him. “Although I don’t remember my mother looking like this. Do you know what I remember about how she looked? The one thing that sticks out in my mind above all others?”
“What’s that?” Tucker asked, genuinely curious.
I stared him straight in the eyes. “Her dead, charred, ashy body the night Mab burned her to death. That’s what I remember about how my mother looked, you son of a bitch.”
Tucker flinched and actually swayed on his feet the slightest bit, as though I’d slapped him across the face and then punched him in the gut for good measure. I itched to do both of those things and more. So much more, including ramming one of my knives straight through his pitch-black heart over and over again, until there was nothing left of it and him but tiny bloody ribbons.
“My mother was a beautiful woman,” I said. “Long blond hair, blue eyes, pretty features. So you can imagine how horrible it was to see all of that reduced to ash in an instant. Her hair, eyes, face, all gone and replaced by blackened skin and charred bits of bone. But do you know what the worst thing was? The one thing that still haunts me to this day? The one thing that still appears in my nightmares over and over again?”
For a moment, I thought that Tucker wouldn’t ask me the inevitable question, but he slowly wet his lips, and I got the feeling that he just couldn’t help himself. “What?”