Bride

Or slur. My tongue is still asleep, far too cumbersome for my mouth and made of papier-mâché. I should open my eyes, at the very least one of them, but I suspect that someone embroidered my eyelids to my cheeks and then soaked them in superglue. Upon consideration, the best choice would be to ignore all of this and go back to my nap.

“Misery. Misery? Misery.”

I groan. “Don’t—yelling.”

“Then don’t—going back to sleep, Bleetch.”

The word tears my eyes open. I’m once again on a damn bed, where I once again don’t remember lying down. My internal clock is shot, and I have no clue whether it’s day or night. I instinctively move my neck—ouch—checking for sunlight pouring in, and find . . .

No windows. I’m in a wooden attic, large and climate-controlled, with ceiling-high shelves full of books on every wall. There is a plate on the coffee table nearby with leftover pasta smeared all over it, and a small pile of soda cans and plastic water bottles.

I take an achy breath, feeling the drugs fade at a snail’s pace. It’s not day, not yet. Not even close to sunrise. I must have been out an hour, two tops, which means that Mick didn’t carry me that far. Mick—Mick, what the fuck, Mick?—must have decided to stash me with—

Serena.

I’m with Serena.

“Holy shit,” I mumble, trying to sit up straighter. It takes two attempts and substantive help from her to manage a still mostly prone position. “Holy shit.”

“Why, hello. How lovely of my oldest and most treasured friend to join me in my humble abode.”

“I’m your only friend,” I cough out, wondering whether my brain is making shit up. Vampyres do not dream, but they do hallucinate.

“Correct. And rude.”

“I . . .” I smack my lips. This dry-mouth situation needs to be addressed. Is this why Humans and Weres drink water all the time? “What the fuck?”

“Did they knock you out? I couldn’t find a bump on your head.”

“Drugged me. Mick did.”

“Mick being the older Were who deposited your lifeless body here like a sack of potatoes and brought me SpaghettiOs?”

“Not lifeless.”

“The thing about Vampyres is, you tend to look pretty lifeless.”

“Shit—Serena, you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

Her smile is commiserating. “No. But if I may hazard a guess, I would say . . .” She taps her chin several times. “Three months, two weeks, and four days?”

“How—?”

She points behind her. She’s been carving lines on the side of the bookshelf, tallying time in groups of five days.

“Shit,” I whisper. There are so many. The physical manifestation of how long Serena has been gone and—

Without thinking, I half roll, half push off the bed to hug her close. I can barely hold my arms up, and it ca

“I missed you,” I say into her hair. “I didn’t know where you were. I looked for you everywhere, and—”

“I was here.” She pats my back. Squeezes me harder.

“Where the fuck is here?” I pull back to study her. She’s wearing a pair of too-large jeans and a long-sleeved shirt I’ve never seen on her. She’s soft and curvy as always, but the last time I saw her she had bangs and a bob that made it just past her chin, and her hair has now grown into a completely different cut. “You look good.”

Her eyebrow lifts. “That’s a weird thing to say in the let’s-exchange-vital-info stage of a joint abduction.”

“It was a damn compliment!”

“Fine. Thanks. I was always very self-conscious of my forehead, as you know, but maybe u

“Okay, now shut up. Where are we?”

She rolls her eyes. “I have no clue. And believe me, I’ve tried to figure it out, but there are no openings and the place is really well acoustically insulated. There must be at least four or five stories underneath us, just based on listening to the pipes in the bathroom. The guards who feed me are very careful not to show themselves or come near enough for me to guess their species, but now that your friend Mick is in the picture, I’d guess we’re in Were territory. That doesn’t narrow it down by much, though.”

Emery. She has to be part of this. And Mick must have been helping her all along. He was one of Roscoe’s seconds, after all.

I pinch my forehead. “Why did you get yourself involved with the Weres?”

“Excellent question! Would you like the long or the short answer? I’ve had plenty of time to workshop both versions in the last months.”

“Did they hurt you? Are they torturing you, or interrogating you, or—”

She shakes her head. “They treat me well, if you discount the perpetual infringement of my Human rights. But they’ve never brought me out of this room, and I’ve tried. I’ve pretended to be sick, I’ve gotten aggressive—no dice. The guards are assholes of unspeakable proportions and refuse to talk to me.”

“How did they take you?”

“The last thing I remember was walking down the sidewalk on my way to your apartment from work—then bam, I was here.”

I glance around the attic. “What do you even do all the time?”

“I’ve been catching up on sleep. Reviewing my life choices. Stewing in regret. Mostly, I read.” She gestures at the shelves. “But the selection here is limited to the classics. I’ve read, like, three Dickens novels.”

“Appalling.”

“The Catcher in the Rye, too.”

“God.”

“And an entire mystery series I don’t even like.” She shrugs. “Now, would you like to hear my theory on why someone even bothered to kidnap little old me, so you can say I told you so, or something?”

Irritation fuels me enough to finally sit up straight. “No, because I didn’t tell you so.”

“Oh.” She nods, bemused. “Well, this is a pleasant surpr—”

“I couldn’t tell you so, because you hid the story you were working on and the shit you were doing from me.”

She frowns. “Okay. Well, at least let me explain—”

“I already know.”

“Whatever you’re thinking, that’s not it. I was actually—”

“You were looking into the Weres, or Thomas Jalakas, or financial crimes or something. You found out that Liliana Moreland is a Human-Were hybrid, possibly one of a kind, and then got kidnapped for your efforts.”

Serena recoils. “How do you . . . ?”

“Your cat was . . . There was that butterfly alphabet thing on your pla

“Who’s Lowe?”

My heart pangs. I swat the memory and the pain away in one big swipe. “The Were Alpha. My husband.”

“You know what, it doesn’t matter. Tell me how they—” She stops abruptly. Does a double take. Blinks at me multiple times. “Did you just say . . . ?”

I sigh. “Yeah.”

“Misery.”

“I know.”

“Seriously.”

“I know.”

“I’m gone for three months, and after a lifetime of having literally no news, now you are married to a Were Alpha?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God.”

“Technically, it’s your fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think I got married because I found sweet Were love on a dating app? I was looking for you. The entire time you were gone. In whatever way I could. That’s how I ended up married to the brother of the very young, very i