The amulet swings from the end of the necklace. “Please tell me, Rita.”
She takes a deep breath and then—“It’s a binding amulet.”
My heart squeezes in my chest. The world spins.
I drop into one of the vintage waiting room chairs that sits in front of her desk and bend over, head in my hands.
Nothing is making sense.
Rita must be lying.
But why would she? This isn’t some kind of gotcha game. Rita would have no reason to lie.
I suck in several deep breaths. No one says anything as I try to get a handle on the swirling thoughts in my head.
“Jessie,” Rita says. “I’ve wanted to tell you, but your sister asked to keep it between us for now and—”
I lurch upright. “Kelly knows it’s a binding?”
Rita frowns. “I suspect your mother told her on her deathbed.”
Of course. Of course! “What else don’t I know?” On my feet, I put my hands on the mess on Rita’s desk and lean into her with venom in my voice. “What else have you been keeping from me, Rita?”
The boldness comes out of nowhere, and guilt turns sour in my stomach at the surprise that registers on Rita’s face.
This is so unlike me. I’m only bitchy with Bran because he’s earned it.
“I’m so fucking tired of the secrets!” I yell.
A hand comes to the back of my neck, fingers gently pressing at the knotted muscle. The rich tenor of Bran’s voice is at my ear. “Calm down, mouse.”
Rita blinks in quick succession as the surprise morphs into agitation. I can see the regret pinched around her brown eyes. “I wanted to tell you. I really did, but it wasn’t my place.”
Bran pulls me back. “Do you know what was bound?” he asks her.
Rita shakes her head. “Bindings, for the most part, can be applied universally. I only ask the why if I suspect its being abused. In this case, it was a mother asking for her child.”
“How do we undo it?” Bran asks. I’m glad he’s thinking rationally, asking the right questions. I can’t keep my thoughts straight. I just want to scream with rage. I can feel it burbling up at the base of my throat. But I clench my teeth together to keep my voice locked away.
“I need a new moon,” Rita tells us.
I pick up the amulet again and turn it over in my hand.
Bran says, “When is that?”
Without looking at the calendar, Rita answers right away. Witches and shifters always know the cycle of the moons. I couldn’t care less. Usually.
“This coming Thursday.”
Two days after my Pledging.
Great.
“Will you do it?” Bran asks her.
“Of course.”
“Do you need anything from us before then?”
I catch the thinly veiled contempt that comes across her face before she says, “Us? Is there an us, Mr. Duval?”
It’s funny hearing Rita use the title considering that in appearances she’s nearly thirty years older than he is.
It’s a sign of respect, I realize, one you give to your elders.
And Bran is our elder by several hundred years.
“The only reason I’m here asking these questions is because Bran clued me in,” I say. “He didn’t have to, but he did. So yes, there is an us. For now, anyway.”
“You’re cute when you’re defending me,” Bran says.
I whack him in the abs, but he barely flinches. It’s like hitting a wall of iron. “Stop doing that.”
“Stop doing what?”
I wave in the air. “This. Being this way. Saying those things. Acting all—”
Annoyingly hot and stuff.
Bran is smug from his lofty height.
“Thank you for telling me now,” I say to Rita, eager to get the hell out of here. “And I really appreciate you undoing the binding.”
“It’s your right to have it undone. I should have said something earlier.” She takes a step toward me. “But Jessie, give some consideration to the consequences.” Her gaze is heavy and intense as she adds, “We have no idea what we’re unbinding. Just be prepared for that.”
I give her a quick nod and shove Bran out the door.
I barely look up as we exit the coffee shop. I don’t feel settled until we’re back into the night, and Bran is behind the wheel of the Bimmer and I’m in the passenger seat. He turns the engine over and pulls out of the parking spot, making his way down River Street.
Pressure is building in my chest, making my ribs ache. What the hell is going on? Up until this moment, I’d wanted to think that Kelly pawning me off on the Duval House was just some kind of big sister I-know-better-than-you move. But now…now it’s so much bigger than that and it’s growing by the second and—
I have a sudden flash to the conversation I overheard between Bran and his brother Damien. In all of the chaos with Kelly, I completely forgot about it.
Turning in my seat, I regard Bran with suspicion.
He gives me a quick look before returning his eyes to the road. “Well spit it out.”
“Everyone is keeping secrets from me, including you.”
“Me?”
“I heard you talking to your brother. You said, ‘If there is something special about the girl…’ And now look, we find out I’ve been bound for some unknown reason. What did you mean by that? What do you know? What does Damien know?”
“I thought I smelled a mouse outside.”
“Besides the point!”
Bran slows and downshifts to turn onto a side street, away from the main part of downtown. He licks his lips, teeth raking over his bottom lip. I see the moment he makes a decision.
“All right. Fine. Maybe I’ve kept some things from you too, but only because there are still a lot of unanswered questions, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in my multitude of centuries, it’s that making assumptions can cost you more than you’re willing to pay.”
“That sounds like a really fancy way of saying you’ve been lying to me.”
“Lies are different than unspoken truths.”
I grumble and face the road again. “I’m officially extremely excited about leaving this fucking town.”
Bran shoots me a look. “You’re still planning on leaving?”
“Of course. Even more so now. Because everyone is keeping shit from me.”
“Don’t you want to know why?”
“No.”
“Now who’s lying?”
I cross my arms over my chest and slump in the seat. Deep down, I do want to know, but I’m too afraid of what the truth might reveal.
Bran slams on the brakes and whips the wheel around. I brace myself with one hand on the door handle and the other on the dash. “What are you doing?”
“You’re right. You deserve transparency.” He takes us back the way we came. “I promised you I’d help you, so I will.”
“And how do you plan to do that?”
We don’t head downtown though. Bran takes the next left turn, and the headlights sweep over a roadside sign that reads So Good Food—where you can fill up on so good food for just $10!
That’s a Locke House restaurant.
“Earlier you asked me how I knew certain details about the Locke house.” Bran shifts and the car picks up speed again.
I’m momentarily distracted by the movements, but I shake myself out of the hypnosis. “Right. Yeah. I did say that.”
Bran smiles at me, his face highlighted by the soft neon glow of the dash lights. “I know things because I have a spy in Locke House.”
I have to say, I’m not surprised by this news. I’m gathering that Bran Duval deals in information. It’s cleaner than fists and blood.
It makes me like him even more.
When So Good appears on the horizon, the back deck that sits over the river is lit up with big-bulbed string lights. Bran slows and pulls into the parking lot.
“Here?” I say and sit forward in the seat.
The parking lot is packed. It’s a Saturday night, after all, so I’m not surprised. I am surprised, however, that a Duval vampire is totally casual about stepping foot inside.
“Your spy is here?”
“Yes, but maybe don’t call them my spy when we walk in the door.”
We climb out, and laughter and revelry filters out the open windows and from the deck. Bran leads us up the three wide steps to the wrap-around porch and then holds open the screen door for me.
I’ve been to So Good many times before but usually with Kelly, and sometimes with a Locke or two. Never with a Duval.
I’m braced for the same reaction that we got at the coffeeshop, but no one pays us much notice as we step inside.
I relax a little. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought.
“This way, mouse,” Bran says at my ear and then steers me toward the back with a hand at my hip.
We go down a hallway, bypassing the dining room all together. When we come to a closed door with a metal placard labeled MANAGER, Bran knocks.
Within seconds, the door pulls open, and a woman peers out at us.
It’s Runa, one of the higher-ranking Locke vampires. I’ve always thought of her as one of the cooler ones with her nose piercing and her full-sleeve tattoos. Her hair is dyed lavender and shaved on one side of her head, and long on the other. Today the long side is braided into a thick fish-tail braid.
Her bright blue gaze sweeps from Bran to me and then back to Bran. Her eyes narrow, and then she speaks to him in a language I don’t recognize.
He replies immediately in the same language.
I think it might be Italian or Latin
Then she slams the door in our faces.
“What was that all about?” I ask.
“Come on.” Bran guides me back through the restaurant, then out the front door and back into the car.
“What is happening? What did she say?”
Bran starts the car up and drives us a few miles down the road. “Runa just told me to go fuck myself.”
“I thought she was your spy?”
“Oh she is.”
“I’m so confused.”
“We have a standing meeting every other week, but I needed her sooner than that. We can’t use phones to communicate. Too obvious. So I asked her if she thought Julian would be pissed if I bit you in the restaurant, and Runa told me to—well, you know.”
“Okay…so now what?”
“She’ll meet us at our usual spot. We just have to give her a while.” He sends a devilish look my way. “However will we pass the time?”
“Very funny.”
Bran takes us to an upscale part of town where the river widens and spills into Midnight Lake. Here the houses are further apart, and each comes with its own dock and boathouse. They are as fancy as the people that inhabit them.
We turn down a winding driveway back through the trees and finally come up on a modern house, constructed of black steel and glass and stone.
“Whoa.” I duck down so I can see the house better through the windshield. “Whose place is this?”
“It’s mine.”
Car parked, he pulls up on the parking brake.
“Are you serious? Why would you live in suburbia next door to me if you have a place like this?”
“I have many places like this.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question.”
He climbs out, so I’m forced to follow. At a large steel door on the lower level, Bran punches in a code into a keypad, and the deadbolt thunks open.
The interior is dark and cold. It smells like Bran but only vaguely, like it’s been a few weeks since he inhabited the space.
He punches in a second code into a security system, shutting it down, then flicks on a light. The entire ground floor lights up with soft, inset lighting.
I don’t wait for an invitation.
The main living space is massive and open-concept with a modern kitchen to the right and a living room and dining space to the left. In the far corner, floor-to-ceiling windows overlook Midnight Lake, and the dark, still water is dotted with the lights of the night, making it look like an impressionist painting.
The house is neat as a showroom, and it makes me fucking giddy. There are no empty wine bottles in the sink or stacks of random bills on the concrete counters. No shoes kicked off into a corner or sweaters hung over chairs.
“If this place were mine, I’d never leave it,” I tell him.
He’s at the built-in bar behind me pouring himself a drink. “It’s a little cold for my taste.”
“So why did you buy it?”
“I didn’t buy it. I built it. And mostly to piss off Julian Locke.”
Laughter spills out of me before I think better of it. “Why?”
“He wanted to buy this waterfront and put in a marina. So I bought up the waterfront instead.”
I roll my eyes. “And then built a million-dollar house just to prove a point?”
Drink now in hand, he leans against the bar and meets my eyes. “Precisely.”
“Why don’t you like Julian?”
“That’s a very long story.”
“We’ve got time.”
He slings back the drink. “We don’t, actually.”
The front door bangs open, and someone darts inside, a blur to my mortal eyes.
Runa grabs Bran by the throat and slams him against the wall. “You can’t come into my bar demanding my attention. You’re going to get us caught!”
I go still beside the leather sofa, trying not to be conspicuous.
Bran’s eyes fire amber. The line of his jaw flexes as he grits his teeth.
I’ve yet to see someone get the best of Bran, and while I have no idea what the dynamic of this relationship is, there’s a roiling trepidation in my gut that tells me it won’t end well.
Bran grabs Runa by the arm, his hand circling her wrist. His gaze is pinned on her, face blank.
Then I hear a bone snap and Runa falters.
“You do not come into my house,” Bran says after the second crunch of bone, “and threaten me.”
Runa lets go of Bran’s throat and cries out as her knees buckle.
“I don’t work for you,” Bran goes on, his fiery gaze following her as she crumples to the floor. “If I want your services, I’ll get them however I wish. Do we understand one another?”
My heart is beating hard in my chest, and I bump into the sofa without realizing I’ve been backpedaling.
Sometimes, it’s easy to forget the danger of a vampire.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how insignificant we are in the eyes of an immortal.
“I can’t hear you, Runa,” Bran says even though she hasn’t answered him. She’s been too busy crying out in pain.
“Yes! All right! I hear you.”
Bran lets her go, and her hand flops uselessly against her arm.
I slap a hand over my mouth as the urge to vomit sneaks up on me.
I guess I was wrong about Bran’s currency. His investments are in information. But he deals in violence. And right now, he’s spending what he’s earned.
Bran steps around her and gathers his empty glass and a bottle of scotch. “Would you like a drink?” he asks as if he didn’t just crush her arm.
Runa takes a hiccupping breath, arm held close to her chest. “Yes.”
I may have been surrounded by vampires my entire life, but I’ve never witnessed the intimate inner workings of the power dynamic. Everyone behaved in the Locke circle. And if there were showdowns between houses, that happened outside the awareness of the mortals. Or at least this mortal.
It’s unsettling how casual they are about this.
Bran dips down and offers Runa a glass. Her wrist is popping, her arm straightening out as her body heals the wound. She takes the glass with her good hand and slings back the dark caramel liquid, then huffs out a breath as the alcohol burns down her throat.
“Mouse?” He raises the bottle at me.
“Yes please.” My voice comes out a little too breathy, and his gaze lingers on me as the fire dies out of his irises.
He pours as he walks to me then holds out the glass.
He doesn’t speak, but I still hear him loud and clear. She deserved it.
Deep down, I know that the show of dominance is important in a world of dominant creatures, but damn if it isn’t a little scary.
And if I’m honest, hot as hell.
Which must make me sick as hell, right?
Hand unsteady, I take a sip then pull the glass away, but Bran stops me and urges me to tip it all back.
Our eyes are locked on one another while I empty the drink, and as the rich, smokey liquor goes down, tears well up beneath my lids.
“You good?” he asks.
If I said no, what would he do?
A pinch appears between his dark brows.
“Yes,” I answer. “I’m good.”
He gives me a quick nod before turning away. “Get up,” he tells Runa, and she climbs to her feet as he deposits the liquor back on the bar. “What can you tell me about Jessie in relation to the Locke house.”
Runa’s attention wanders to me. She stretches out her arm, wiggles her fingers. There’s a ring of bruising on her wrist, but at least her hand isn’t flopping around like limp cheese.
“That’s a broad question,” she says.
“Julian showed up at my house earlier tonight trying to stake his claim.” Bran is a blur as he crosses the room to stand just to the left of me. “Why would he go to all that trouble?”
“The MacMahon family has been pledged to the Lockes for decades. Of course he’d try to protect what he thinks is his.”
“But I’m not his,” I point out, my voice still a little shaky. “My Pledging is still a few days away.”
“Look, I wish I could help on this.” She tugs down the hem of her shirt after it rode up in the tussle. “But I’m rarely privy to Pledging details.”
Bran paces away. “Think harder, Runa.”
“I’m serious. I’ve got nothing.”
Bran darts to the kitchen. I hear a drawer open, then something slice through the air.
A wooden stake lodges itself in Runa’s right shoulder. This time, she bites back her cry as blood seeps from the wound.
“Try again.” Bran pulls a second stake from the drawer and tosses it in the air, end over end, catching it again. “I’m waiting.”
I’ve never seen a vampire staked before. I heard it’s messy and that when the vampire dies, they burst into ash, permeating the air with the stench of burning hair and cinders.
I really don’t want to witness that.
“Bran,” I start. It’s not that important. Not important enough to take a life.
But he cuts a withering glare my way, and I quickly clamp my mouth shut again.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” Runa says, voice wobbling on the pain. “I have—”
The second stake hits the air and whizzes past her head, sinking itself into the wall behind her.
“Okay! Fine!” She holds up a hand. “There is something. It was a long time ago.”
“I’m listening.” Bran pulls out a third stake.
She talks fast. “A bunch of the Lockes were at the MacMahon house for dinner. Jessie would have just been a kid at the time. One of the vamps, Sasha, took Jessie for a joy ride. Tossed her on her back and raced away. It was just for fun. We do it with the littles all of the time.”
Runa looks at me guiltily. “Except when Sasha came back, she was acting strange.”
I remember that night. I remember holding on to Sasha for dear life while I laughed and laughed as the world blurred past and then…nothing. There was a blank space in that memory. I could never remember the ride back.
“Go on,” Bran says.
“The next day,” Runa says, “Sasha was dead. Because Julian killed her.”
