“Do not kill my stepmother.”
“Great. Now I have to figure out a different birthday present.”
A laugh bubbled up in Ginny’s throat, her gaze straying to the clock. “How did I sleep so late?” She jumped to her feet and lunged for the closet. “I have to get dressed and prepare the visitation room. Put out the flowers and prayer cards…”
“Since you asked nicely, I will help you.”
Ginny raised an eyebrow at the slayer. “You just want to see a body.”
“It’s not fair,” Roksana whined. “When you kill a vampire, there is nothing but dust left over. Very anticlimactic.”
Ginny selected the one black dress in her closet, which she’d bought at Macy’s, then brought home and added a wide, satin belt and a flower on the right side of the collar. “Speaking of vampires, Elias went looking for you.”
“I don’t care,” Roksana snapped, tightening her blonde ponytail. “When? What did he say exactly?”
Sensing she’d stumbled upon an opportunity, Ginny tapped her chin. “I’m not sure I can recall exactly…”
“What is this?” The other woman narrowed her eyes. “Are you keeping information from me to be cagey?”
Ginny stripped off her dress from the night before and pulled on the black one, all too aware that she needed a shower as soon as the wake ended. “I’ll tell you what Elias did and said—” With some modifications. Probably best not to repeat the term reckless brat. “If you explain why you’re really here.”
Roksana inclined her head, visibly impressed. “This technique of yours might have worked if I cared about the bloodsucker looking for me.” She untucked a rectangular, gold object from her pocket and fanned her face with it. “He probably just wanted his credit card back. My new boots exceeded his spending limit.”
Ginny finished tying the bow on the back of her dress and swallowed hard, giving the slayer a meaningful look. “Please, I need to know Jonas is all right. We…there was a mishap last night and I’m worried about him.” Her fingers tremored, longing for the feel of his cool skin. “I’m worried about him never coming back.”
The slayer looked down at the ground, but not before Ginny caught her troubled expression. “Ginny, my calling is to protect humans. And I do not accomplish this by giving you what you want. Not this time.”
“He said mate. I think he called me his mate. What does that mean?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t help you there.” Roksana skirted around the bed and perched herself on the windowsill, throwing her legs over the side and dancing gracefully onto the fire escape. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
She stood and stared at the fading silhouette her friend left behind, the foreboding in her stomach burning hotter. Something was wrong. What took place in her bedroom last night had been significant and she needed to find out what it was. But how? She’d been blindfolded during the trip to Jonas’s apartment. There was a chance she could retrace the turns and figure out how to get there, but intuition told her she’d have to shake Roksana in order to do it.
Her palm cupped around the spot on her neck where Jonas had licked the stream of blood, leaving no wound behind. Was he staying away because he’d liked it too much?
An involuntary rush of pleasure made the fine hairs on her body stand on end, her toes curling into the carpet. It would make sense that he’d enjoyed her taste and was being noble by cutting her off. He’d told her from the beginning her scent, her blood, was different, hadn’t he? If someone put a single scratch on your skin, I would go utterly mad, Ginny, and yet I burn to sink my teeth into your neck every second of the day. I don’t know how to uncomplicate that for you.
Ginny walked in a trancelike state to her dresser, picking up her hairbrush and running it absently through her hair. Until she hit a snarl that prompted a sense of indignation.
Since meeting Jonas, he’d made all the rules. Assigning bodyguards. Blindfolding her. Locking her in rooms. If she continued to let him dictate their relationship—and there was no other descriptor for what they had, for better or worse—she would end up without him. He’d only been gone a matter of hours and she already knew living in his absence was a cold, cold place.
Ginny hadn’t escaped a lifetime of living in a funeral home without learning the value of living like every day was her last. Regrets were a long-lasting poison and if she died tomorrow, she refused to leave any behind.
Relieved to have a sense of purpose, she started to leave the room, already creating a mental list of the tasks ahead—
Pain flared in her side, like a knife being inserted beneath her rib cage. A scream of agony caught in her throat and she stumbled, running into the door, hands clutching the place of impact, searching frantically for a wound and coming up empty. Nothing was there. Nothing was there. Why did it hurt so bad?
As fast as the pain hit, it disappeared, leaving her limp and gasping.
She spun around to find the room empty, the only sound her rasping inhales.
Tingles ran through her body, from the tip of her head to her toes and although the pain was gone, the sense of impending doom remained.
Something was off. The universe had tilted. No more waiting to be shuffled around and allowing herself to be protected without detailed explanations of what she was up against. She intended to get answers.
Tonight.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ginny sat side by side with Roksana in the back row of the viewing room.
Kristof lay in his casket, his face organized in peaceful indifference. There was only one mourner in attendance and she was motionless in the front row, hands folded in her lap with a rosary wound around her knuckles. Ginny had made an attempt to comfort the woman, but like her husband, she’d been somewhat standoffish—and that was her right. Everyone mourned in their own way.
With twenty minutes left to go, Ginny craned her neck, hoping someone would walk through the door, but the lobby remained silent.
“I don’t understand this ritual,” Roksana murmured, speaking to Ginny for the first time since they’d met downstairs, awkward after their exchange in Ginny’s bedroom. “That man is not lying in that box. He’s somewhere else.”
A sad smile curved Ginny’s lips. “This isn’t for him.”
“Meaning?”
“I’ve never had to put it into a words before.” Ginny thought for a few moments. “Everyone has a deck of cards for each person they love. You’ve got your regret cards, your good memory cards, bad memory cards. When one of your people dies, the deck of cards gets thrown up into the air and the cards scatter everywhere. Wakes and funerals are about putting them into a new order. You have to. One half of every memory you had with them is gone. You have to figure out how to live with only your half. It’s a lot harder than it sounds.”
Roksana jostled her leather clad leg. “Sounds complicated, Ginny. Maybe it’s better to have no loved ones.”
Before Ginny could respond, there was a loud bang out in the lobby. Seconds later, a woman came rushing into the room with a rolling suitcase behind her. She dropped it at the door and slammed to a halt, as if she’d run into a glass wall. Her hands came up to over her mouth and she proceeded forward slowly. The woman in the front row turned and her blank expression crumpled into relief, followed by an overflow of grief. The newcomer stirred the air as she passed Ginny and Roksana, stooping over to embrace the woman in the front now and a sense of finality rolled into place.