Bride

Many rooms in the house would be perfectly adequate for a discreet conversation, but we find ourselves sitting at the kitchen table, a mug of black coffee in front of Lowe, steadily steaming as the sun outside struggles to rise.

My night was sleepless, like most. His, too, going by the dark shadows under his eyes. His face is etched, as carvingly beautiful as usual. He hasn’t shaved in a while, and it’s clear that he could use some rest and a two-week stretch without a coup.

I have the sneaking suspicion he’s not going to get either.

“I couldn’t figure out why you’d accepted,” he tells me between sips, almost conversationally. Every other interaction we’ve had has been fraught with tension, on the heels of him catching me in compromising situations. Now . . . We’re not fast friends, but I wonder if this is Lowe when his energies are not fully focused on trying to protect his pack. A steady, reassuring, bulky presence. His mouth even twitched into an almost smile when he saw me make my way down the stairs, as he gestured for me to take a seat across from him. “Why you’d do it again.”

“You thought I had a martyrdom complex?” I hug my legs to my chest, watching his lips as they close around the rim of his mug. “I have no allegiance to the Vampyres. Or the Humans, with a single exception. And I’m going to find her.”

He sets the mug on the table, and asks, bluntly: “You’re sure she is alive?”

“I hope she is.” My heart twists. “If she isn’t, I still need to know what happened to her.” If I don’t, no one else will think of her again. No one else will even know her name aside from a handful of orphans who bullied her for being cross-eyed, colleagues who never got her sense of humor, people she dated but felt tepid about. It’s not acceptable. “She’d do the same for me.”

Lowe nods without hesitation. Loyalty, I suspect, is a painfully familiar concept to him. “Do you know what article she was writing? What prompted her interest in Ana?”

“No. She usually talked about the stories she was working on, at least in passing. And she covered financial stuff.”

“Crimes?”

“Sometimes. Mostly market analysis. Her degree was in economics.”

Lowe taps his finger on the edge of the table, mulling. “Anything on Were-Human, or Vampyre-Human relationships?”

“She’d grown up as the Collateral’s baby companion. She wasn’t touching that shit with a ten-foot pole.”

“Smart.” He stands, goes to the no-blood fridge. His broad shoulders shrink the kitchen as he gathers a few items that he carries back to the table. A jar of peanut butter that has my most nefarious interests perk up. Sliced bread. Some kind of berry jelly that just stumps me.

Serena loved berries, and I tried memorizing their names, but they’re so counterintuitive. Blueberries? Not blue. Blackberries? Not black. Strawberries? Straw free. Raspberries? Do not rasp, or make any noise at all. I could go on.

“I want to have a look at her communications prior to disappearing. You still have access to them?”

“I do. And have inspected them—no clues.”

He takes out two slices of bread. His forearms are strong, large muscles interrupted by the occasional white scar. “If Were business is involved, you might not know what you’re looking for. I’ll have you talk with Alex and hand them over to—”

“Hey.” I shift and tuck my legs under me. “I’m not turning over anything until you tell me what you would be looking for.”

His eyebrow lifts. “You’re not in a negotiating position, Misery.”

“Neither are you.”

The eyebrow lifts higher.

“Okay, maybe more than I am. But if we’re doing this, I need to know what’s in it for you, because I highly doubt you suddenly care about my random Human friend enough to help me find her.”

He’s good at staring, staring with those arctic eyes without saying anything, and I squirm in my chair, heated. How does this guy make someone with a basal temperature of ninety-four degrees and next to no sweat glands feel clammy?

“It’s about Ana, right? You think Serena was looking for Ana.”

More staring. Mistral, with a hint of assessment.

“Listen, it’s obvious that you want to figure out why a Human knew of your sister’s existence. And I’m not asking you to trust me—”

“I think I will, though,” he finally says, decisive. And then starts spreading peanut butter on the bread, like he’s settled an important matter and now needs a snack.

“You will . . . ?”

“Trust you.”

“I don’t get it.”

“No.” His expression is not tender, but approaching. Kind. Amused, for sure. “I reckon you wouldn’t.”

“I was just proposing we trade information.”

“And you could do many horrible things with the information I’m about to give you. But you’ve been in Ana’s shoes before. And you’re hurt because you ran to help her when the sun hadn’t set yet.” Lowe points at the reddened skin of my right arm and hands me an ice pack.

He must have retrieved it earlier from the freezer. And it feels really, really good.

“Misguided as you were, I doubt you’d throw Ana under the bus.”

“No more misguided than using her as bait. Nice parenting there, by the way,” I add, a bit archly.

“There were eight Weres monitoring the situation,” he says, unoffended. “And a tracker in her suit. Max had no vehicle at his disposal, so we knew he was going to attempt to hand off Ana to someone else. She was never in any real danger.”

“Sure.” I shrug, pretending I don’t care. “And children are soft and adaptable and make for perfect pawns in the power plays of great leaders, right?”

“I can only protect Ana if I know where the threats against her are coming from.” He leans forward across the table. The scent of his blood is like a wave lapping at my skin. “I’m not like your father, Misery.”

My throat is suddenly dry. “Well, you’re wrong. I would throw Ana under the bus, if I had to choose between her and Serena.” I have priorities, very little heart, and find no pleasure in being deceitful when others are being honest with me. Ana might be growing on me, but she wasn’t the one who slept next to me for a whole week when I was fourteen and gave myself seizures by trying to file off my fangs for the first time. With a cheese grater.

“Yeah?” He doesn’t sound like he believes me. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

“I don’t think it will,” I agree. “And it makes sense for us to collaborate. As Ana’s brother and Serena’s sister.”

His eyes meet mine, serious and unsettling. “Not as husband and wife?”

Because we’re that, too, even if it’s disturbingly easy to forget. I glance away, landing on a dollop of peanut butter on the rim of the jar. It’s the variety without the crunchy bits, which . . . yeah.

I set down my ice pack and lean back in my chair, as far away from it as possible.

“She’ll be seven next month, by the way,” he tells me. “She’s just better at lying with words than with her fingers.”

“Are her parents . . . Where are they?”

There is an infinitesimal stutter in his movement, and he sets down the jelly jar. “Mother’s dead. Father’s somewhere in Human territory.”

“There are Weres in Human territory?”

Lowe’s jaw tenses. “This, Misery, is where I’m taking a leap of faith.”

My heart goes wooden. A memory flashes: my first day alone among the Humans, after Father and Vania and the rest of the Vampyre convoy had left. The terrifying smell of their blood, their odd sounds, the weird beings crowding around me. Knowing I was the only member of my species for miles and miles. I don’t want it for her. I don’t want it for anyone. “Is Ana Human? A Collateral?”