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His call to Ollie was brief, but exactly the balm he craved right now. His sense of peace deepened at the sound of her voice. They made plans for a celebratory dinner when he returned, an event he thought might work well to share certain things with her. Assuming he could figure out how to talk to her about vampires without sounding like a lunatic.

“I will join you, if you like,” Dominique said when Jackson was done with his call.

“What?”

“Your birthday dinner. You will need proof for what you plan to say to her,non?”

Jackson couldn’t hide his astonishment. “You would do that? You would be okay with this?”

“You love this girl, so I am okay with you doing the right thing,oui. Very much okay.”

“And let me guess. You’ll compel her to be okay with it, too?”

“If you think I would need to do that, why do you want to tell her?”

“I don’t think that at all.”

“Then I will not.” He waited a beat before adding, “But if she is not okay with the truth, it will be as if you never told her.”

Jackson hadn’t even thought beyond proving the supernatural to Ollie, but Dominique was right. The only thing worse than her not knowing would be her falling into an existential crisis over it.

“Fair enough,” he agreed, and finished the breakfast sandwich. When he was done, he wiped his fingers on the paper napkin and reached for the coffee again.

“We will need help today,” Dominique said.

“Yeah, I was wondering when you were going to figure that out.”

“I knew this before we left, but my options were limited.” He paused a beat before adding, “I believe we have lost the element of surprise. They know we are coming.”

“How?”

He rubbed his chin and stared at the road disappearing beneath the hood of the SUV. “It doesn’t matter. But we need to take more precautions. I don’t know what going underground will mean in terms of how much the sun affects me, so we should go when it is strongest, straight overhead.”

What aren’t you telling me?Jackson thought. He remained quiet, giving the vampire every chance to answer that question, but Dominique ignored it, instead turning his head and raising an inquiring brow. “Agreed?”

Jackson toyed with the idea of asking out loud, realized that he probably still wouldn’t get an answer, and looked away. “Agreed.”

“Even so, we will be only one and a half men walking into the lair of hundreds, some of them exceedingly powerful.”

“We have torches,” he suggested.

Dominique shot him a cynical look. “Useless against human guards. Also, these humans will be compelled to protect their masters at all costs.”

No arguing with that. “Okay. So what’s your plan?”

Dominique flipped on the emergency flashers and moved the car into the outside lane. A devious smile played on his mouth. Jackson could have sworn he saw the tips of fangs in it.

“You should call 911,” Dominique said as the car rolled to a stop on the shoulder.

“Why?”

“Obviously you are having an emergency,non?”

“Oh?” The vampire looked at him expectantly. “Oh. Right.” They were out-manned and out-gunned and the targets knew they were coming. If that didn’t qualify as an emergency, nothing did. He swiped open the phone, only half wondering if he really wanted to know what came next.

29

A Bit of Help