Page 20 of Twice Bitten
“Then you still have a mate. And I’ll go out on a limb and assume you wish you didn’t.”
Damn it, she was too smart. If she’d sounded sympathetic (as if, this was Esther), I’d probably have lost my courage. But her matter-of-fact tone allowed me to go on.
“More than anything,” I admitted. “And even though these people aren’t our problem, I don’t think I can walk away and leave Jack in the same position. He didn’t seem to have a plan for breaking his own mate bond. I just…” I didn’t know, and I couldn’t find a way to finish that sentence that wouldn’t sound pathetic, maudlin, and weak.
Esther sighed. “You’re off the clock, then,” she said, with a hint of kindness in her tone. I blinked. Would wonders never cease? “If you think the situation’s resolved to an extent that it won’t cause any problems for Fenwick, then what you do from here on out is up to you, and I won’t ask. I’m going to text you a phone number for Nate Hawthorne. You know, the warlock who mated Ian Armitage.” I did know, and I raised my eyebrows a bit at that. I knew Ian from several bar fights and a few more-or-less amusing insult-slinging sessions, and I knew his brother Matthew as the Armitage pack leader. They might not like me much, but they did have a reputation for keeping their word. “He takes commissions, and Matthew Armitage’s mate is a shaman. They work together, but Nate’s the face of their freelance business. What you do with that information is none of my affair.”
I opened my mouth to thank her, but she’d already hung up on me.
Well, so much for Esther’s brief, shining moment of human-like emotion.
A second later, my phone beeped with the message. I sent her a thumb’s-up and tucked my phone back in my pocket. Jack would have to be the one to decide what happened next, after all.
He pulled into the driveway a minute later, parking my car next to Hendler’s, and I stepped out onto the porch as he jogged up to the cabin.
Jack looked a lot more together than he had when he’d taken my keys and run off through the woods like all his past bad decisions were nipping at his heels. No claws, no alpha glow to his eyes, no fangs. And his composed features gave nothing away. He could’ve been coming back from a trip to the grocery store for all the emotion he had on display.
“Find the safe?” I suggested.
“Find the safe,” he agreed, and we headed inside.
The front room yielded nothing, and we went into the bedroom. I wrinkled my nose at the smell. A couple of used condoms lay pallid and slimy on the floor by the rumpled bed, and the nightstand held a half-full bottle of cheap tequila and an overflowing ashtray.
I took a step and turned to block Jack’s view, but I wasn’t fast enough, and I winced as his forced composure visibly fractured. But he didn’t say a damn word, simply turning away to search the room, and about thirty seconds later we found the safe at the bottom of Hendler’s bedroom closet, half-hidden by an old coat hanging on the bar above.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Jack said, voicing my own feelings perfectly. “This guy is useless. Brent couldn’t have done a little better than this?” His voice shook a tiny bit. Anger, grief, who knew? Columns A and B, probably.
“He obviously has shitty taste,” I agreed—and then stopped, biting my lip, my cheeks heating. Christ. I hadn’t meant it that way. The one time I hadn’t meant to insult him, andthatpopped out. “Sorry,” I muttered. “Present company excepted, of course.”
I glanced over at him and found him looking back at me, an odd expression on his face. We were only a few inches apart in the stuffy confines of the closet. His eyes were so bright, even in the gloomy glare of the closet’s overhead bulb.
“Yeah?” he asked me softly, one corner of his mouth curling up a little in a funny half-smile. I’d expected either hurt, or that he’d shrug it off with sarcasm like he had before. But not this…gentleness. “You don’t think I’m that bad, huh?”
The heat of his body reached out to me across the little bit of space between us, and I wanted to lean into it so badly, even here in that repulsive creature Hendler’s closet, with the smell of dust and mice, and the even worse smells seeping in from the bedroom.
I couldn’t say what I wanted to say, the words that sprang into my mind completely impossible.
“I think compared to Hendler, you’re Prince Charming and Rudolph Valentino rolled into one,” I said instead.
His half-smile grew into something approximating a grin, and I found myself smiling back helplessly. “Rudolph Valentino,” he said, shaking his head. “You really are old.”
“Shut up,” I grumbled without any heat.
Our eyes held, and the air between us seemed to shimmer like a mirage, the tension growing.
Jack cleared his throat. “We should open the safe.”
Right. All in my head.
I turned away quickly and hoisted the stupid safe up into my arms. “Lead the way.”
We ended up cracking it open on the kitchen floor, each taking one side and ripping the fucking thing apart at the seams with a rending, grinding noise that hurt my sensitive ears. Had Hendler, let alone Brent, really thought a garden-variety document safe would stand up to pissed-off supernatural strength? To be fair, Brent maybe hadn’t expected Jack to turn up with a vampire in tow, not to mention they’d planned to ambush and likely murder him…yeah, they were both assholesandidiots.
Jack pulled the door off what was left of the safe and let out a cry of satisfaction. He stood up, a small silver thing cradled in his palm.
I leaned in to get a better look. Even though I didn’t have any magic beyond the necromancy infused into my blood and bones, and couldn’t have cast a spell to save my life, the artifact radiated power, in a subtle, raising-the-hair-on-your-arms kind of way. The silver filigree comprised most of a half-sphere, with some kind of black stone peeking out from underneath. Jack reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and extracted the matching half. A moment later he’d joined the two together, so quickly that I missed how, and a perfectly round silver-and-black artifact rested in his hand.
“One life or one death,” I murmured. “So much power. Where the hell did your family even get this?”
