She raised her gaze. But the blush, for some reason, was getting deeper. He could have sworn even her breasts were blushing. Which was a sight he would have been very interested to see in more detail.
“St. Clare’s, if you must know,” she said. “Father Bernard was kind enough to take Jon and me in after my apartment was unfortunately—”
“You didn’t go look at it, did you?” he interrupted, quickly dropping his hands. He didn’t want her to see her apartment. Especially the bed and what the graffiti over it said.
“No,” she said. “But Jon did. And he said—”
“Don’t,” he said. This was very important. “Promise me you won’t ever go there again. Just have someone take everything out of there and throw it away. Then sell the place. Don’t ever go back.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “I promise. But I’m not holding out for more money, Alaric. The truth is…I’m not taking the job.”
He felt as if someone had sliced open another vein. Maybe in his heart.
“What?” he said stupidly.
“It was very kind of Dr. Holtzman to offer,” she said all in a rush.
“I’m really very flattered. But I…I just don’t think I can do that. Go to work for…the people you work for. Right now.”
Alaric stared at her. “But I thought you said Lucien asked you to go away with him,” he said. “And you said no.”
“I did say no,” Meena said. She had shrunk in on herself, as if she were cold. “But that was…before.”
“Before when?” Comprehension slowly dawned. “Wait…before he turned into a dragon and tried to kill us all?”
She nodded wordlessly.
“So you haven’t actually
seen
him again since that night?”
She nodded again.
“So you’re not actually
living
at St. Clare’s,” he said. Everything was becoming clear. Maybe too clear. “You’re
hiding
there. You’re hiding from him. Because you’re scared to death of him.”
“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”
“How else would you put it, then?” he demanded. “If you’re not scared of him, what
are
you scared of? Yourself? Scared you might say
yes
if he asks you again?” Alaric could hardly believe it. But it was right there, written all over her face.
“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meena said primly. “I just came in here to say hello to you, not to get one of your lectures.”
Lectures!
“But if you’re going to be like this,” she said, in the same tone of voice, “I’m leaving. I think they have you on too many pain meds.”
She got up to leave…but not soon enough. Because, even bedridden, he was too fast for her. He managed to reach out and snatch up her uninjured hand in his.
He wasn’t letting her go anywhere.
“I’m not on anything,” he said in his kindest voice, the one he reserved for Simone and…well, no one else, actually. “And it’s all right to be afraid, Meena.”
She stood there for a second or two, looking down at his fingers holding on to hers. Then, abruptly, she sank back down into the pink vinyl chair.
“Okay,” she said, raising her gaze to meet his again. Her brown eyes
were wide and troubled. “You’re right. I’m terrified. As soon as the sun goes down every night, I take Jack Bauer and go into one of those windowless rooms in the convent they stuck Yalena in. And I stay there. I don’t come out until morning. Because I know he can’t get to me in there. I mean, if he’s even looking for me, which I don’t know.
He turned into a dragon,
Alaric. He tried to kill us all.”
“Not you,” Alaric said. He couldn’t believe he was actually
defending
Lucien Dracula. But amazingly, his desire to see her smiling again was stronger than his hatred for the prince. “He did his best to try to keep you from getting killed.”
She gave him a sarcastic look. “He turned into a
dragon,
” she reminded him.
Alaric looked down at her hand, so small in his. She was holding on to his rather tightly.
She was afraid. She was
very
afraid.
Alaric had seen this before. People—grown men and women, other guards just like him—who’d come back from missions exactly the way Meena was right now, slinking around in abject terror, afraid of their own shadows because of the demonic horrors they’d seen in the field.
He didn’t want her going off with the prince.
But he couldn’t let her go on this way, either.
Even if it meant losing her.
He took a deep breath and said, “If I’ve learned anything in this life, Meena, it’s that there are a lot of scary things out there. Sometimes
I
just want to go into a windowless room until the sun comes back up, and the scary things have gone away. But the truth is…those scary things aren’t going to just go away on their own.”
Meena, as if she sensed where he was headed with this, started to pull her hand away, shaking her head. Her eyes had filled with tears.
But he wouldn’t release her fingers from his. Because she had to hear it.
No matter how much she didn’t want to. “Because it turns out I have a gift,” he went on. “And that gift is that I’m good at killing scary things. So I use my gift to help others who aren’t as strong as I am, in order to make the world a safer place
for them. I
can’t
lock myself into a windowless room until the sun comes back up, Meena. No matter how much I might want to sometimes.”
She whipped her head toward him, starting to protest.
But he just held her hand and went on.
“Because my job is to face the scary things. And I think deep down, Meena, you know that’s your job, too. That maybe the reason people like you and me were put here on this earth was so that everyone else—people who don’t have our gifts—can sleep in their windowless rooms while we make the world a little bit safer for them.”
She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he saw why.
She was crying.
Well…he hadn’t meant to make her cry.
Maybe he couldn’t do anything right. Maybe there was no Alaric Wulf magic. Maybe Holtzman was right, and he really did need that counseling.
After a little while she looked up and said, “I’ve been a fool.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool,” he said.
He wanted to say a lot of other things. But he wasn’t suffering from blood loss anymore. So he kept silent.
She yanked on her hand again. This time, he let go.
She took that hand and pressed it, along with her casted hand, to her eyes, which were red with unshed tears.
“You really are annoying sometimes,” she said.
Martin often told him the same thing. “I know,” he said, agreeing.
“Why do you
do
this to me?” she asked, drying her eyes with the edge of his bedsheet. He doubted she’d find it very absorbent. The thread count couldn’t have been very high at all.
He longed to put his arms around her, to hold her.
But he was afraid she’d slap him.
Or that Holtzman would walk in. Either would have been equally embarrassing.
And besides, he couldn’t lean forward far enough to get his arms around her because of his stupid leg, which was hanging in traction.
Then, her eyes dry, she stood up.
She’d be leaving now, he supposed, his depression complete. And he had no idea if he’d ever even see her again.
Except, to his surprise, instead of leaving, she laid her uninjured hand on his chest.
“I don’t suppose,” she said, “we’re even now, are we?”
He shook his head, not understanding what she meant.
His confusion increased when she bent down and kissed him gently on the cheek, the way she had in the rectory that night.
“Probably not,” she said when she straightened. “I think I still owe you. Plus, you saved Jack, too.”
Oh. She meant all the times he’d saved her life. But she didn’t owe him for that. That was his job.
“You need a shave,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “Tomorrow do you want me to bring you some stuff to shave with?”
“Yes,” he said, his mood suddenly brightening.
She’d been the only one to offer. The
only one
.
This was why he loved her.
Plus, she’d said she was coming to visit again tomorrow.
No, it wasn’t the same as saying she was going to take the job.
And maybe it was only because she was going to be visiting her friend in the maternity ward, anyway, and so it was easy for her to swing by to see him, too.
But by tomorrow, he’d have another speech ready for her, about how she belonged with the Palatine.
And when she came the next day—and she would; he knew she would—he’d have another.
And eventually, he’d wear her down. That’s how the old Alaric Wulf magic worked.
And even if the Alaric Wulf magic didn’t exist—Martin often said it didn’t—one of these days, they were going to have to let him out of traction, and he was going to stumble into some more danger.
And then she wasn’t going to be able to resist warning him to stay out of it.
And that’s when he’d point out, with the kind of brilliant and in-arguable logic for which he was so widely known, that she might just as well get paid to do this for a living.
She would be powerless in the face of such superior intellectual reasoning.
“Okay,” Meena said. She smiled and reached out to run her finger over some of the razor stubble on his cheek. He was careful to keep very still while she did this, so she wouldn’t stop. This was another example of how the Alaric Wulf magic worked. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Unfortunately, that was when she turned around and left.
But his hospital room didn’t seem nearly as unbearable to Alaric after that as it had before she’d come to pay her visit.
In fact, suddenly it felt downright cheerful.
Alaric didn’t think this was the result of powerful neurotransmitters, such as dopamine, being released in his brain.
He decided it was because of the daisies.
Alaric probably would have felt completely differently if he’d had the slightest idea about
where
Meena Harper was going…that his speech about not sleeping in windowless rooms had convinced her, not that she had to join the Palatine Guard to help him battle the forces of evil, but that she had to go, as soon as she left the hospital, to the single place that most terrified her and to which he’d made her promise not to go at all.
8:00
P.M
., Friday, April 23
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B
New York, New York
M
eena wasn’t sure what made her go back to her apartment.
Everyone told her not to. Alaric, who’d been there and seen the horrific destruction for himself. Abraham Holtzman, referring to his handbook about post-traumatic stress disorder and how it would only make hers worse. Sister Gertrude, who was practical and kind about these things.
Even Jon, who’d been there, too, to see if he could salvage any of his own things.
“It’s awful,” he’d said with a shudder. “Trust me. You don’t want to know.”
But Meena
did
want to know. Ever since that night…
She tried not to think about that night. She didn’t want to think about it because every time she started to, the tears came, and with them the conviction that Lucien was dead.
He
had
to be dead.
And then came the horrible hollow sensation in the middle of her chest….
And then, just as terrible, the fear that he
wasn’t
dead. What if he wasn’t dead, and still loved her, and wanted them to be together?
Which was worse?
The fact that she didn’t know was what made her decide she couldn’t think about it at all. Just not at all.
Not thinking about it was easier than anyone might have imagined. Every time she started to think about it, she just shoved all thoughts, all memories, anything and everything connected to Lucien Antonescu from her mind and thought firmly about something else.
She kept herself so busy at St. Clare’s that she didn’t really have time to think about Lucien. There were the dishes to do after every meal, the pots and pans and casserole dishes piled high in the in the rectory kitchen sink. Cleaning them was Meena’s penance for the burns everyone had sustained because of her. She scoured them until they gleamed, sometimes late into the night, just her, alone in the kitchen, with the sponge and her rubber gloves and the hot soapy water.
And the darkness beyond the window over the sink.
And the glowing red eyes she was convinced she could see burning through that darkness, watching her every move.
She tried not to think about the eyes, and if they were really there, or if she was just imagining them.
There was the soup kitchen to help run, the donations to the thrift shop to help sort through. (The thrift shop was where she’d found her new black dress, among many other additions to her wardrobe. She understood that the donations were meant to be sold in the store. But helping herself to one or two things as she sorted didn’t seem like the biggest crime. Everything she owned had been either destroyed by the Dracul or soaked in Alaric Wulf’s blood.)
But maybe she’d kept herself a little
too
busy not thinking about Lucien Antonescu (those eyes, burning through the darkness outside the kitchen windows) and what had happened that night.
Because until Alaric’s speech about how wrong it was for people like them to shut themselves off from the scary things in the world instead of fighting them—and he
was
right, she knew: she absolutely believed that the two of them
were
alike, he with his sword, and she with her ability to predict danger and death—Meena had thought she’d been doing the right thing by refusing to let herself think about Lucien.
But after Alaric’s eye-opening speech, she realized this was wrong.
She had a moral obligation not only to think about Lucien but to face him, and what he’d done to her and to her life.
Which was destroy it.
If he was even alive, of course. She still didn’t know whether or not he was (except…those
eyes
). No one seemed to be able to tell her. Abraham would say only that after that last blast of white-hot fire in the church—which had knocked him and everyone else unconscious for a few seconds—he woke to find the prince gone.
“
Gone?
” Meena had asked, finding it hard to believe that a thirty-ton, seventy-foot red-winged dragon could simply disappear into thin air, the way Emil and Mary Lou Antonescu had.
“Gone,” Abraham had replied with a nod.
Lucien hadn’t
flown
off. The cathedral’s roof, it was true, had burned down with the rest of the building, but no one had reported seeing any winged dragons taking flight across Manhattan that night. (The NYPD had put what happened at St. George’s down to teen arsonists, thanks in large part to the vague statements Meena and Alaric had given them. But of course, no teen arsonists had been arrested.)
So where was he?
Maybe, Meena thought as she approached her building that rainy evening after her visit to Alaric Wulf’s hospital room, her keys pressed firmly in her hand, he had simply self-imploded. That last explosion of white-hot fire, from which he had tried so assiduously to protect her, had been Lucien spontaneously combusting.
At least this way, she thought as the automatic doors to her building opened in front of her, she didn’t have to worry anymore about his still loving her. And asking her, as Alaric had suggested back in his hospital room, to go away with him.
And then killing her and making her one of his kind so that they could be together forever.
“Miss Harper!” Pradip cried when he saw her. “You’re back!”
“Yes,” she said. She tried to summon a smile for her favorite doorman, but it wasn’t easy, all things considered. “But I’m just stopping by. I won’t be staying. I’m selling.”
Pradip’s face fell. “You, too? The Antonescus just put their place on
the market.” He looked glum. “You heard? They’re gone already. Mr. Antonescu’s business took them to Asia. Or was it India?”
Meena wasn’t exactly surprised to hear this. Emil and Mary Lou might have fought on their side during the vampire war. But she didn’t exactly sense that this was going to take them off the Palatine Guard’s most-wanted list.
“That’s too bad,” she said. Then she brightened. “Maybe some rich rock star will buy my apartment and theirs and knock the wall down between them, and then have the whole eleventh floor.”
Pradip just stared at her. She’d been trying to cheer them both up—having a rich rock star in the building would be a good thing.
And she could use the extra cash from the apartment sale to pay back what she owed David.
But Pradip didn’t seem to find the idea as appealing as she did.
“I don’t think the co-op board would approve a rock star,” he told her.
Why not?
Meena wanted to ask. They’d approved a couple of vampires. Instead, she said, “You’re probably right. Well, okay. I’m going up.”
“Good night, Miss Harper,” Pradip said.
Meena managed a smile for him, then went to the elevator.
For the first time in ages, she took the ride to the eleventh floor alone. Mary Lou didn’t stop the doors just as they closed to snag a ride with her, as she always had in the past. No gushing conversation about some guy from Emil’s office who’d be
just perfect
for her. No suggestions as to how Meena might improve the plotlines of
Insatiable
…which was sad, since, with Fran, Stan, and Shoshona all missing—Paul had left a message on her cell phone that everyone was presuming they, along with Stefan Dominic, had been in an accident on the way to the Metzenbaums’ Hamptons retreat and that it was only a matter of time until their vehicle was recovered, with their bodies inside it—Meena was probably in line for that promotion to head writer she’d been wanting forever.
Why not? With Shoshona gone, there was no record of her “firing.” Who knew what was going to happen to ABN (and CDI) now that the CEO of its new owner was missing as well?
Then again…who cared?
All the tabloids were abuzz about the fact that
Lust
star Gregory Bane was missing, too. Half the women in America were in mourning.
Foul play was going to be suspected some time soon, Meena supposed.
Except that no bodies were ever going to turn up.
When the elevator reached the eleventh floor, Meena stepped out and looked around, beginning to feel the first tiny tingles of fear. Why had she thought this was such a good idea, again?
Sure, the Dracul were all supposed to be dead.
The ones who lived in Manhattan, anyway.
But what if a few of them who lived somewhere else had heard about what had happened at St. George’s and had decided to look her up to get revenge? Or had stopped by for a taste of her blood, which by now vampires all over the world must have heard rumors about.
Stop,
she told herself.
Alaric was right. You can’t spend the rest of your life in a windowless room, Meen.
She glanced around the hallway. Everything
looked
all right…normal, even.
The door to her apartment seemed okay, too. She swallowed, then walked up to it and inserted the key.
Whatever lay behind it, she told herself, she could take it. She’d been thrown across a church by a
dragon,
for God’s sake. She’d staked not one but two vampires, one of whom had actually played a vampire on TV.
She could handle whatever lay in store for her in Apt. 11B. She swung open the door, then reached for the light switch…
…and gasped.
She’d expected it to be bad.
But she hadn’t expected
this
.
Someone had already come through and…
cleaned
her apartment. Not just cleaned it but converted it…into a different place entirely. The walls had been completely scraped of the Dracul graffiti and repainted a crisp eggshell white. The broken furniture and spoiled electronics had been carted away. Her sodden books, her shredded clothes, her broken dishes…all of that was gone, too.
All new stainless steel appliances had been installed in the kitchen. Her parquet floors had been sanded and gleamed with fresh polish. Even the fireplace’s flues finally opened, though they never had before.
Her apartment looked
better
than it had at any time when she had ever lived there. It looked better than the day she and David had moved in.
Who had done all this?
Not Jon. She knew that. He had been at Leisha and Adam’s all week, working on the baby’s room, trying to get it done before Leisha and the baby came home from the hospital.
Not Alaric, obviously. How could he have done this while lying in bed with one leg in traction?
And Abraham Holtzman and Father Bernard and the others were missing the first layer of skin off their faces and hands.
Besides which, where would they have gotten the money?
There was only one other explanation.
And even as Meena was thinking to herself that it was impossible—
impossible,
because he was dead, he
had
to be dead (except for the fact that she could swear she felt someone’s gaze on her every night through the rectory kitchen window as she did the dishes); she had almost convinced herself she
wanted
him to be dead—she turned around, and there he was, coming in from the rain through the balcony door.