Page 16 of Inked & Bloodbound
“I want to take you to see a friend of mine.”
She considers it for a while and I watch the exact moment she decides to surrender. “This is crazy…” she says, narrowing her eyes. “Why are you doing all this? What’s it going to cost me?”
“Nothing. I’m not looking for anything,” I lie.
She’s quiet again, chewing on her lip and considering her options. Finally, she nods. “Eight o’clock. But if your friend turns out to be some kind of quack with crystals and sage, I’m out.”
I smile despite myself. “Sage, yes, but no crystals, I promise.”
She shoots me daggers. “Fine, but don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
On the wayback to the car, my phone is buzzing frantically in my jean pocket. Seven missed calls from Beau. I need to get out of here before dawn, but I need to deal with this first.
I have maybe an hour before the sun becomes a problem. So I call Beau back as I drive around the block, searching for a place to hide my car from view.
“Where the hell have you been?” he answers on the first ring.
“Dealing with a situation. What’s wrong?”
“You’re burned, that’s what’s wrong.” His voice is tight with anger. “Word’s already out that you got into it with one of the Sixth Clan tonight. Over some girl, no less. Do you have any idea how this looks?”
I grip the steering wheel tighter. “How did you?—”
“I have other sources,Valbruna. Sources that are telling me vampires are asking questions about a tattoo artist who’s been getting too friendly with humans. Questions that lead back to our arrangement.”
My neck prickles when he uses my real surname. He’s reminding me of the power he holds over me. This isn’t good. I knew Cyrus would run his mouth, but I didn’t think the news would travel this fast.
“I’m handling it,” I say.
“Handling it? You call blowing your cover ‘handled’? If anything happens to Megan?—”
“I said it’s handled,” I interrupt. “I have something else in the works. Something better than what we had before.”
There’s a pause. I know I’ve got his attention. “What kind of something?”
“The kind that gets us what we need without anyone getting suspicious. Trust me.”
“Trust you?” Beau’s laugh is bitter. “You just put both our asses on the line for some piece of tail. Why should I trust you with anything?”
“Because I’m the only chance you have of finding Megan,” I say quietly. “This is our best shot, Beau.”
Another pause, longer this time. “You better know what you’re doing, you blood-sucking motherfucker.”
“I do.” And for the first time in months, that’s true.
I hang up and check the time. A few minutes until sunrise. I walk back through Lily’s neighborhood, staying in the shadows. When I reach her house, I stare up to what I sense is her window. The lights are off now. I can still hear her heart, and if I listen carefully, the steady rise and fall of her breathing. She sounds like she’s fast asleep.
I find a spot in the small park across the street, hidden by trees and early dawn shadows. The ground is soft here, rich with decades of fallen leaves. I dig down into the earth with my bare hands, creating a shallow depression just deep enough to shield me from the coming sun.
As I settle into the cool soil, I allow the ground to swallow mewhole, filling the crevices of my body, enveloping me in a sweet, silent embrace. It’s the most natural thing in the world for us—to sleep in the ground where we belong—and the familiarity of it calms me. I haven’t done it in months. Instead, I’ve been playing pretend, sleeping in a bed in a borrowed underground apartment that comes with strings attached, resting amongst my enemies in the sanitized vampire city that hums below Sixth Street.
It’ll all be over soon. I just need to keep her safe long enough for the plan that’s already forming to work.
After that, she’s on her own.
I do not form attachments to humans, not anymore. Not even pretty ones that smell like sunlight. But lying here in the earth, listening to the sound of her heartbeat from across the street, I know I’m lying to myself.
And that’s a complication I can’t afford.