I got to my feet and put the pillow down, then tracked across the room. Lucas seemed to think I was coming towards him, because he opened his arms as if to embrace me. I pushed his arm aside and brushed past him, then stood by the door.
“If we are one, can you tell what I’m feeling?”
“When the emotions are strong, yes.”
I jerked the door open. “Then you know why I’m telling you to get the fuck out.”
“Secret—”
“No, don’t Secret me. Don’t condescend. Don’t stand here like you care that I’m mad. You did this without asking me, because you knew it would benefit you, and now you’re going to pretend to be apologetic?”
He said nothing.
“Answer me one thing,” I said.
“Anything.”
“Would you do it again, knowing how mad I am now?”
Lucas opened his mouth, then shut it and looked down at the floor. I had my answer. “I did what I had to do. We need to be a united front or it all falls—”
“Get out.”
“But—”
“No, Lucas. This time I have the last word, and you don’t get to do anything about it.” I shoved him out the door and locked it behind him.
When I woke the next night, Desmond still wasn’t home, but it was obvious he’d been in the apartment. Several of his shirts were missing, and his toothbrush was gone from the bathroom. Each space that had once held something of his felt like a hole punctured in my heart. I’d called him a dozen times, but he never answered, and I couldn’t figure out how to tell him what I needed to on a thirty-second voicemail message. I’d asked him to call me back, but he hadn’t.
Dressing quickly, I pulled on a cowl-neck angora sweater in a purple-gray—the color of Desmond’s eyes—and a pair of jeans. I wasn’t expecting to get bloody tonight, and I wanted to look like a typical coed.
As I reached for a pair of earrings on the nightstand, I noticed the sheets on the opposite side of the bed were indented, like he’d stopped to lie down beside me when he’d come to gather his things. I sniffed the sheets, and the smell of Desmond was like a fingerprint, unique and obvious. I smoothed the cotton under my hand and sat on the impression of his body.
I wanted him to come home.
My cell phone rang and I lunged for it, not bothering with the caller ID screen. “Desmond?”
“Did you lose your dog?” Holden asked.
I bristled. “What do you want?”
“I’m standing on your landing looking at a lovely bouquet of roses that are on the verge of wilting in the cold. Why don’t you let us in?”
I went to the door and jerked it open. Holden was holding out the vase containing two-dozen long-stemmed red roses and a card. I didn’t need to open it; I recognized Lucas’s handwriting. Taking the vase from Holden, I brushed past him and out onto the street in my bare feet, where I threw the vase and the flowers into the garbage bin in front of my building, then returned to the apartment as if nothing had happened.
“What do you want?” I asked again.
“I’m here to help you find Lucy.”
Incredulity must have shown on my face, because he shrugged. “Rebecca asked me to.”
“Rebecca ordered you to.”
“Semantics.”
“You know I could just as easily order you to go away.”
“You could. But you won’t.” He wasn’t paying much attention to me and was wandering the apartment instead, looking in every room. “Where is your wolf?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Trouble in paradise?” Holden smiled, and there was something menacing about it. He was a little too happy to discover I was on the outs with my live-in lover.
“It’s none of your business.”
He stepped closer. Too close. My breath hitched, and I ducked away from him.
“I think it is my business,” he whispered. “Even if you don’t want to admit it.”
“Now isn’t the time.” I pulled my jacket on and slipped a pair of old Converse sneakers on.
Holden stopped in front of me. In a movement faster than a heartbeat, his head dipped to my neck, and I could feel his breath cool and even over the mark on my neck. His tongue slid out, and the moment it touched my skin I shuddered violently. He pulled back and cupped my chin in his hand, his coffee-colored gaze boring into me.
“You let someone mark you.”
I tried to smack his hand away, but he held firm, reminding me he was stronger than I was. “I didn’t let anyone do anything.”
“And yet.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Good thing we have a long walk to Columbia then, isn’t it?”
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next half hour I did nothing to improve Holden’s opinion of werewolves.
“You should have him killed. Sig would do it.”
“I don’t want to have him killed, you idiot. He thought he was doing the right thing.”
“By forcing you into a union you didn’t want?”
“God, Holden, it’s not like he tricked me into marrying him.”
“No, marriage can be ended in divorce. This is metaphysical. Those kinds of bonds are not so easy to break.” He sounded so aggrieved by Lucas’s actions he seemed to forget he wasn’t so innocent himself when it came to this sort of thing.
“Yeah, it really sucks when someone takes advantage of a metaphysical connection and uses it to violate your trust, doesn’t it?”
He looked hurt. “That’s not the same. I needed your help to save my life.” I had brought up an unusual and invasive moment in our past when he’d used a bond between us to sneak into my dreams. He hadn’t done it since, but it wasn’t the kind of thing that was easy to forget.
“And Lucas did this because he thought it was necessary to protect his pack. You’re not as different from the wolves as you’d like to think.”
“Why are you defending what he did?”
In truth, I hated that I understood Lucas’s motivation as well as I did. It proved he really was a part of me now, inside my head and heart, making me more empathetic to his actions. “I’m not saying what he did is right. I guess I just understand the logic. However flawed it might be.”
“You don’t care that he’s using you,” Holden said, giving me a sad look he’d honed to perfection over several centuries. That look must be a real panty-melter for women who loved doe-eyed poets.
We were standing in front of an old brick building, a trickle of brave students moving down the paths in groups, trying to get from one building to the next without freezing to death. Holden and I wore no hats or scarves, and our jackets and gloves were more about comfort than actual necessity. Still, it was impossible to miss the cold space between us.
“He might be using me. But it’s not like he’d be the first.”
Lucy Renard’s dorm room wasn’t anything like I imagined a young woman’s dorm room to be. Her space was neat as a pin, everything in its place, and I bet if I lifted the edge of her comforter, the sheets would be tucked in with pristine hospital corners.
If Lucy had run off on some impromptu vacation, she wasn’t a very gifted packer. The room’s closet was divided in half, and each section had been labeled, one for Lucy and one for her roommate Katie. Katie’s side was more how I pictured most rooms on campus to be—a big heap of wrinkled clothing stacked up with no rhyme or reason.
Lucy’s side put the shelves at Bergdorf to shame. The clothes were hung according to color, and the hangers were evenly spaced. Everything looked ironed, and tucked into the top shelf was one of those plastic boards people used to fold their shirts into perfect little rectangles. Her shoes were neatly sorted in what appeared to be the most used at the front and special occasion at the back.
Her toiletries were still in their cubby at the top of the closet, and there was only one pair of shoes missing.
“How old was this girl?” Holden asked, startling me. I’d forgotten he was there.
“Eighteen.”
“Have you ever seen an eighteen-year-old this…meticulous?”
“I’ve never seen anyone this meticulous.”
On her desk was an alphabetized stack of folders, one for each class, but they only held old assignments, nothing to indicate any sort of sinister plot against Lucy. I fired up her laptop and was delighted to find that her webmail stored her password for her.
Mom. Re: Valentine’s Day Card. Boring.
Andy B. Next Tuesday! I opened that one. It was just a message from a classmate asking if she was going to be at the bar next week. Lucy hadn’t replied.
G.H. Seminar Selections. G.H.? I clicked on the link, hoping it was a coincidence.
Lucy,
Professor Mayhew mentioned you wanted to do your presentation on Spencer’s The Faerie Queene. Several other students have expressed an interest in this same poem. Why don’t you come by my office on Friday, and we can discuss some other options?
Sincerely,
G. Holbrook
“Son of a bitch.” I slapped the laptop shut and scrubbed my face with my hands. So Gabriel knew Lucy. And he’d asked to meet with her roughly the same time she’d gone missing. Then he’d gotten accused of murdering another girl who happened to be in the same literature class as Lucy. I was all for minor coincidences, but this stunk to high heaven.
“What?”
“Do you ever get the distinct impression you’re being played?”
He arched a brow and looked at the closed laptop. “Did you find something?”
“No. Nothing yet. But I have about twenty minutes to make it to Lucy’s Medieval Literature class.”
Medieval Literature was an evening class held in one of the older humanities buildings on the Columbia campus. The room was small, only holding enough seats for about fifty students, and the whole place smelled of dust and stale coffee.
