He turned his hot gaze on me.
“She still believes in her cousin, Adam. She thinks I made it all up to get out of a murder charge.” I let him hear the sympathy for Courtney’s plight in my voice, knowing Adam wouldn’t approve. About wrong and right, Adam was pretty black-and-white. He’d be irritated with my attitude, and it would distract him. Keep the focus on Courtney and off the vampires.
Adam didn’t relax, but he did start walking again.
Usually I shower at the shop after practice, but I didn’t want Adam to get a good look at the crossed bones on the door. I wanted to keep him thinking about things other than the vampires until I knew what my options were. So we jumped in my Vanagon (my poor Rabbit was still in repairs from the damage a fae had done to it last week).
Maybe I’d move. If I traveled to another vampire’s territory, it might slow Marsilia down, especially if it was a vampire who didn’t like her. Running away would chafe, but if I stayed, she’d kill me—and Adam wouldn’t take it well and a lot of people would probably die besides me.
I could try to take out Marsilia.
I actually gave that serious consideration, which was a sign of just how desperate I was. Sure, I’d killed two vampires. The first one I’d killed with a lot of help and a boatload of luck. The second one I’d taken while he slept.
I had about as much chance of taking out Marsilia as my cat Medea did of taking on a mountain lion. Maybe less.
While I thought, I chattered to Adam all the way home. My home. Gas was expensive, and he wouldn’t mind walking the short distance back to his.
If he wanted to wait while I showered, I figured I could walk with him. I glanced at the sky and decided I had time to take a shower without risking Adam’s being the first one to talk to Stefan.
I needed to find out what the artwork on my door meant—and to make sure that running would work. Stefan might know, but neither question was something I wanted to ask in public. I’d figure out how I was going to get him alone when the time came.
“Mercy,” Adam said, breaking into my monologue about Karmann Ghias and air-cooled versus water-cooled engines as I turned into my drive. He sounded both amused and resigned. It was a tone I heard from him a lot.
“Hmm?”
“Why did the vampires paint a pair of bones on your door?”
“I don’t know,” I told him in a deliberately relaxed voice. “I don’t even know that it was the vampires. The camera didn’t catch who it was exactly. Zee and I just figured it was the vampires because of Stefan. He’s going to check with Uncle Mike to be sure it wasn’t a fae, though.”
“I won’t let Marsilia hurt you,” he told me in the quiet tones he used when making a vow of honor.
The wolves do that, some of the older ones, anyhow. I wouldn’t have thought Adam was one of them. He was a 1950s model, stuck forever looking like he was in his midtwenties. When I say older wolves, I mean a lot older than 1950, a couple of hundred years at least.
It’s not that modern men don’t have honor, just most of them don’t think of it that way. It gives them a flexibility that the previous generations didn’t have. Some of the old lobos take their vows very, very seriously.
What I wouldn’t have given to be stupid enough to believe that Adam could promise that Marsilia wouldn’t kill me-and even more to believe that he wouldn’t kill himself trying to keep his word.
I wasn’t resigned to my fate or anything like it, but if I had learned one thing being raised by werewolves, it was to keep a clear eye on probable outcomes and how to mitigate damage. And if Marsilia wanted me dead… well that was just the most probable outcome. Really probable. Enough so that I could feel another stupid panic attack hovering. My first today, if I didn’t count a little shortness of breath once or twice.
“She’s not dumb enough to attack me,” I told him, opening my door. “Especially once she hears I’ve officially accepted you as my mate. That puts me under your pack’s protection. She won’t be able to do much to me.” It should have been true… but I didn’t think it would be that easy. “Stefan’s the one in trouble.”
He got out and waited for me to round the front of the van, then he asked, “Would you go out with me tomorrow… to someplace nice? Dinner and a little dancing.”
It hadn’t been what I expected him to say, not when he was watching me with those cool, assessing eyes. It took me a moment to change subjects, my impending death at Marsilia’s hands being a little preoccupying.
Adam wanted to take me on a date.
He touched my face—he liked to do that and had been doing it more and more lately. I could feel the warmth of his fingers all the way to my toes. Suddenly, my approaching demise wasn’t so engrossing.
“All right. That would be good.” I put my hand on my stomach to settle the butterflies, unsure as to whether it was the notion of going on another date with Adam or the knowledge that I was going to have to break it off with him before I brought death to him and his pack. Maybe I’d have to go on the run tonight-would it hurt him more that I’d agreed to a date? Should I find a reason that tomorrow wouldn’t work?
A sudden thought came to me. If I hurt him enough, drove him from me in anger… would he care when Marsilia killed me, or would he let it go? A newly familiar breathlessness started to shiver up from my stomach—that panic attack that had been hovering.
“I need to take a shower,” I told him, my voice very steady. “But then I’d like to talk to Stefan.”
“No problem,” he said agreeably, going up my front steps ahead of me. He opened the door and held it for me. “I’ll wait while you shower—Samuel’s not home.”
There was no reason to feel like Adam’s prey, I told myself firmly as I walked past him into my own house. No reason to feel Adam’s intent eyes on my back. He couldn’t read my mind to know that I was planning on running. But I didn’t turn back as I said, “Make yourself at home. I’ll be right out.” And I closed my bedroom door on him and leaned against it.
I scrubbed my hands first, using a stiff-bristled brush and Fast Orange to get the last of the day’s grime off. It never managed to get it all, but if it bothered Adam to run around with someone who had dirt ingrained in the skin of her hands, he’d never said anything. When they were as good as they were going to get, I stepped into the shower.
Could I change my mind about being Adam’s mate?
I’m not as sensitive to pack magic as the werewolves are. They don’t talk much about it. Secretive bunch, those werewolves. I’ve been finding out that there’s a lot more to it than I’d believed. I knew it was possible for a mated pair to dissolve their union, though I’d never met any who had.