Forever, page 4
“Who’s dead,” she asked grimly. Because that tight expression on his face was hardly bearer-of-good-news shit.
“I think you’ve got the answer to that.”
“Excuse me?” When he didn’t come in, she put her hands on her hips. “Are you looking for an engraved invitation? Or do you just want to play doorstop.”
By way of reply, those purple eyes narrowed on her, and she knew exactly what he was doing. But instead of getting all thought up about him going symphath on her, she just got good and relaxed in her shitkickers and let him do his thing. He was going to scan her grid anyway. Arguing with the motherfucker was a waste of breath.
“You mind coming in?” She indicated the hall around them. “You’ll be warmer, for one thing. For another, I’ll be warmer. But fuck the weather, you’re about to set off an alarm that we don’t need to deal with, thank you very much.”
Rehv stepped into the corridor, and the door eased shut behind him. As the lock was returned to its secured position, the symphath in her flared up in response, but she didn’t give in to the payback scan. At least one of them could remain polite.
As the silence stretched on, she glanced up at one of the ceiling fixtures, which was out. How many half-breed symphaths did it take to change a light bulb? Answer: None. Because they’ll just manipulate an army of humans to do it for them. Or vampires. Or Shadows. Or…
Wolven, a voice in her head whispered.
No, we’re not going there, she thought to herself.
“Are we done yet?” She motioned over her head. “You finished checking I’m okay, or shall we stand around for another hour while you diagnose me with shit I already know about—”
“Xhex.”
“Yup.” When nothing else came back at her, she shrugged. “What you got? Come on, I have work to—”
“You can’t be out killing our kind. Humans? Fine. Messy, but you know the drill—”
“Excuse me?” Xhex lifted her brows and leaned in a little. “What the hell are you talking about.”
“I got a call about another piece of your handiwork. I don’t need it, and neither does anyone else. You keep dropping Trez’s patrons around Caldwell and it’s going to land on Wrath’s front door. I don’t give a shit if they’re getting silly—”
“Stop right there.” Xhex put her dagger hand up. “I have no clue what you’re talking about, and you better get your facts straight before you come in here and start throwing around unsubstantiated accusations—”
“The victim’s eyes are missing.”
“So? Maybe he was an organ donor.”
“Xhex. I warned you in the spring—”
Raising her voice, she mowed over the convo. “I’m in charge of security here, not corporal justice. If someone fucks around, they’re tossed and that’s where it ends as long as they don’t go stupid on me. What happens outside this club isn’t my problem, and people can find their graves just fine without my help.”
“Please don’t do this.” Rehv shook his head. “Don’t try to lie to me.”
Okay, if this were anyone but him? Talk about losing eyes. Limbs. Internal organs…
“I’m not doing this.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “You can just read me for confirmation—”
“I would, but your grid is fracturing, so there’s nothing to fucking read, Xhex.”
She opened her mouth. Closed it.
Rehv’s voice softened. “I warned you this spring, but like you don’t know what’s happening to yourself? You need to be honest here, and not with me.”
April’s little funfest of nightmares and mental scramble came back like a bucket of chum hitting her head and dead-fishing down her entire body: She instantly remembered all those days of waking up in mid-panic, not knowing where she was or who she was with.
That fucking lab. Even after all these years, it was still with her. Then again, if someone was used as a pincushion by a bunch of humans in white coats, it was hardly the kind of thing anybody “got over.”
“I have no problem being honest,” she said. “What I don’t like is somebody crashing my party when they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.”
“You never followed up on that contact I gave you—”
“The fuck I didn’t. I agreed to meet the guy. I went up to Deer Mountain. I sat at that summit, in the middle of the night, and he never showed. Afterward, he never answered my messages and I haven’t heard from him again—so unless you have Dr. Phil on speed dial or any other bright ideas, will you quit making it like I’m falling apart—and, once more with feeling, I didn’t fucking kill anybody tonight.”
Rehv rubbed the top of his head, his broad hand passing over the stripe of hair. As he switched his cane from one hand to another, he looked like someone he loved was dying in front of him—and the show of emotion was so shocking, it dimmed her pissed-off a little.
“Fine,” she muttered. “I was feeling rough back then, but the mood just drifted off—and I will take this relative peace and quiet, thank you very much.” She shrugged, then glanced over her shoulder. “Ask the boys around here. Like, tonight, some a-hole was hitting on a woman in the bathroom, and I just kicked his ass out. He hadn’t crossed any physical lines with my patron, he was just a leech. And you know what? When he swung at me? I didn’t even nail him in the nuts—I’m about to give myself a tolerance sticker.”
“That’s the male who was killed. Someone saw him here in the club—and knew you kicked him out.”
“So maybe they stabbed him.” When Rehv frowned, she threw up her hands. “Look, what do you want me to say?”
They stared at each other for what felt like an eternity, the thumping backdrop of the club the soundtrack to all the tension.
“I even gave someone directions to the fucking bathroom,” she exclaimed. “I’ve turned over a new leaf, and if you don’t believe me, that’s on you. Talk to John Matthew. I’m not waking him up in the middle of the day anymore, I’m not—why am I doing this. It’s not my job to make you feel better about where I’m at.”
“But your grid—”
“Annnnnnnnnd maybe you’re reading me wrong. But like your opinion, that’s none of my business or my problem—”
“Yo, Alex? You got a sec?”
Twisting around, she’d never been so grateful for an interruption by one of her staff. “What’s up.”
Although who cared. She’d chew her own leg off to get away from this symphath intervention.
Her bouncer spoke up louder as the music changed. “Bruno’s passed out on the floor of your office with blood all over his hand, and I dunno whether we should call nine-one-one or not.”
“Coming,” she called out over the din. After the guy walked off, she looked at Rehv. “If there are dead vampires showing up in alleys, talk to the Brothers. And if they’re missing eyes? Lys is a readily available weapon, and I haven’t used mine in a couple of years. So we’re done. Thanks for stopping by and fucking my vibe.”
Rehv switched his cane back and forth again. Then he rubbed his eyes like he was tired. “I’m just worried about you. And I’m not wrong about your grid.”
She walked up to the male. “A piece of advice? Not that you want it. Go back to the training center, find your mate, and spend a little time with her, if you know what I mean. You’re teed up about this, and the concern is great, blah, blah, blah, but I’m okay. Not dwelling on my past has turned out to be a far more effective strategy than confronting it. Go figure.”
She gave him a pat on the shoulder that felt as patronizing as it no doubt came across; then she walked away. The sense that she was leaving drama behind was a relief.
The idea that the King of symphaths might be the one losing his fucking mind?
That was downright terrifying.
FOUR
THERE WERE PLUSES and minuses to everything in life. Take first-floor bedrooms, for example. Con: If someone wanted to break in, it was easier. Pro: Fire safety.
Along that easy access angle came the benefit that, if you were a wolven, who had just shifted to go out into the darkness to find your mate—only to discover that he was sitting on a log in the forest, trying to give himself even more lung cancer…
You didn’t have to go through a house the size of a football stadium, all birthday-suit naked with tears rolling down your face, to get back into your clothes after you changed back again.
As Lydia resumed her human form, her body reassembled itself in a smooth morphing that had little in common with the An American Werewolf in London or The Howling gory-style torture. The second she was back up on two legs, with nothing but bare skin to insulate her from the elements, steam wafted off of her, the body heat created by her racing retreat from the forest evaporating into the cold air. She also lost about fifty percent of her hearing and seventy-five percent of her sense of smell—but all that was incidental because she’d lost one hundred percent of her mind.
Although that had nothing to do with the shifting.
Shivering, she went over to the sliding door, and as she reached out to put her forefinger on a sensor, she caught sight of herself in the reflective glass. Her hair was longer than it had been for years, the sun-streaked blond ends grown out dark from so much time indoors, the ragged tips down below her shoulders. Her body had always been lean, but now it was scrawny from her having only picked at her food for months. Her face was hollow, her eyes pits of emotion.
She looked like a different person. Then again, she had been transformed.
With a shaking hand, she put her fingertip on the reader, and when there was a click, she opened the slider and stepped back into her bedroom. Their bedroom—
Why in the hell is Daniel smoking? What the fuck is wrong with him. Why in the hell is Daniel smoking—
That refrain had been going through her head since she’d seen him hiding in the woods with a literal coffin nail all lit up, but it wasn’t the only repeater: What the hell does it matter.
The latter was even more devastating.
Closing herself in, she went over to the bed. Standing next to the salad of messy sheets and comforters, she stared through her tears and tried to figure out whether she was heartbroken or mad. Then she segued back into whether her emotions mattered. Which they didn’t. Parsing out the nuances in the shit stew she was in when it came to her feelings was like getting upset if he was smoking: Nothing was going to change the trajectory they were both on.
Wiping her face with her palm, she picked a pillow up off the floor and thought back to the beginning of their relationship—when they’d just been dealing with people at the Wolf Study Project being killed, and bomb threats, and her getting stalked, and, you know, easy-peasy stuff like gunshot wounds, poisoned wolves, and embezzlement. Back then, there would have been good reasons for bedding to be in disarray. Happy reasons.
Erotic reasons.
Closing her lids, she remembered the first time Daniel had kissed her in the kitchen of her little rented house. She could picture him so clearly, leaning into her, their mouths meeting for that electric moment, the contact soft and explosive.
She had known then, deep inside, that he was going to change her life. And she’d been right. It had just not been in the ways she’d expected at the start.
Standing naked over their bed of chaos, she thought back to the way they’d spent the night together. The black satin sheets were in disarray because he’d been sick twice, both of them scrambling for the bathroom each time, him because he was worried he wouldn’t make it, her because she was worried that it was so much more than vomiting.
He’d always had side effects that were worse than the cancer, the symptoms draining and distressing, the unknowns and complications slipping underneath the umbrella of doom to rain on their heads. It was a constant scramble, and so of course their relationship had become all about his health. They were always on the front lines of his body and what was going on inside of it, always monitoring and assessing every twinge and each grand mal issue—and then, on top of that, were all the protocols, the scans, the plans. The failures.
Dear God, always the failures.
Turning away, she went to the pile of clothes that she’d taken off before she’d left. She’d folded them carefully, even though they weren’t worth much, because establishing even a small amount of order seemed important. The layers went back on sequentially: underwear, socks, pants, shirt, sweater, down-filled vest. That last one was probably unnecessary. She had no idea where she thought she was going.
The next thing she knew, she was making the bed as if she expected some agent from the Federal Bureau of Mattress Control to assess the effort and decide if she should be put in jail for felonious sheeting. When everything was smoothed and tucked, and the pillows back at the headboard, and the extra duvet folded at the foot, she stepped away and double-checked that things were even on both sides.
Then she marched into the en suite loo, got her Clorox wipes container out from under the sink, and began yanking the damp white sheets out of the top. As she returned to the bedroom proper, the fresh linen scent blooming in the overheated, stuffy space was fresh air’s poor relation, but it was better than nothing. With Daniel’s neuropathy, he was always cold, so they’d been running the furnace in this part of the house since before Labor Day—something she didn’t like, but was more than willing to put up with for his comfort.
But the fragrance wasn’t the point. She had to disinfect surfaces that were not infected.
Because… reasons.
Moving throughout the black-and-white room, Lydia wiped everything down, from the lacquered chests of drawers, bed stands, and seating area, to the flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, to the framed mirror and the jambs around the doors. She left the oil paintings alone, the abstracts that matched the black paneling covered with glass that she was worried the wipes would leave a fog on. And anything that had fabric she also gave a pass to.
After all the effort… she felt little satisfaction and needed something else to do.
Closet. Walk-in closet.
Even if her wipes were fairly useless, surely there had to be something to fold in there. Put in a drawer. Hang up, stuff in the laundry bag, line up shoe-to-shoe.
Emerging into the windowless enclave, she ran out of steam as the motion-activated lights came on. At a good thirty-by-fifteen feet, the closet seemed as big as the house she’d rented in Walters, and the space was kitted out with custom-made black-lacquered cubbies, bureaus, and compartments. There was also a section of shelves to put shoes on, and a center built-in with enough drawers to stash a dozen wardrobes the size of Lydia’s. Overhead, a pair of rock crystal chandeliers provided glowing illumination, and under her feet, the black carpet was plush as a mattress—
And there it was.
All the way in the back, tucked in as if it were a dirty little secret, her single suitcase was a narrow, bright blue panel that reminded her she was a guest in this massive mansion—and that her stay was going to terminate when Daniel… terminated.
“So are you going to put that luggage to use?”
At the sound of his voice, she closed her eyes. And before she could think of anything to say, or even turn around, his harsh breathing registered. Pivoting, she looked at him in alarm. His knit hat was off-kilter, his face bright red, his mouth open, the wheezing so pronounced that she snapped into nurse mode, even though she wasn’t one.
“Sit down,” she said as she lunged for him. “Come here—”
He batted at her hands and took a step away. Lost his balance and dropped his cane. Stumbled and fell into one of the empty compartments where suits should have hung on matched hangers. His body nailed the back panel loud enough to echo, and for a moment, he just went still. Like he was a brittle object, broken.
“I’m okay,” he said in a weak voice.
When she tried to help him out of the nook, he shoved her hand to the side again. And then they just stayed separate, him conforming into the base of the sectional, her sitting back on her ass on the thick, luxurious carpet. The fact that they were surrounded by empty segments where things should have been seemed apt.
God, his breathing sounded so bad.
Lydia pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her cheek on them, her head turned away so she was staring at her suitcase. Why had she bought one that was such a bright color, she wondered numbly. That was not her style.
“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “About the smoking.”
She took a deep breath. “What you put in your body is your choice.”
“If it makes a difference, I can only handle two draws on the damn things. Then, you know, the coughing takes over.”
Every time Lydia blinked, she saw the image of the tumors in his lungs, glowing on that laptop.
“So what were the results,” he asked.
“Not good,” she said. “Gus can give you the details.”
“He doesn’t have to. The fact that you aren’t yelling at me says it all.”
There was a rustling, and then a series of coughs—and it seemed the height of cruelty that the choking sound, that combination of gasp and wheeze, was what made her want to scream at him. What did that say about her?
“You can leave,” he told her. “Or I can. This whole thing has been… bullshit, really, and you can get out—”
“I can?” She looked over at him sharply. “Explain to me how that works—and no, it’s not about filling a suitcase and driving off. You think you’re not going to be on my mind anywhere I go? There’s no escaping you.”
When he winced, she cursed. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You just told the truth. That’s all—and I don’t blame you. If I could run from me, I would, too.”
As she tried to think of what to say, her focus lasered on him, in a way that suggested she kept most of his physical details dimmed these days because it was just too painful to catalogue the changes. Now, though, she couldn’t avoid anything about the way that his torso curved into an awkward S, the cabinetry behind him dictating his position, his body too frail to do anything but conform to its environment. And then there was his face, so pale now as to have a gray cast, the dark bags under his eyes a combination of exhaustion and malnutrition.
