Page 46 of The Curse of Eternity
“It is the most safe home I know of, apart from the house I own in Albuquerque.”
“How so?”
“There are wards in place, courtesy of a generous sorceress practicing witchcraft. They will hide whoever steps foot on the property from being easily found.”
Sounded clever in theory, but it meant that the second Drake left, they’d be onto him. Without that freedom, the safe house became a different kind of prison. Still, having a best friend who’d been a practicing witch since well before I’d met her, I tried to picture Everly sprinkling some mumbo jumbo over the church for added protection.
I should ask her if she can—suddenly, my stomach soured. When would I get the chance? More importantly, how was I going to tell my family about any of this—
The door swung inward the moment we stopped in front of it, and I flinched back. My fists clenched, ready for a fight. Except the man standing in the doorway, wearing a navy blue long-sleeve shirt and faded jeans, was anything but threatening. Towering over me, but not quite as tall as Caleb, the man’s full lips widened into a welcoming smile.
An attractive array of dark stubble was sparse across his chin, the same texture as his shortly cropped hair. Soft brown eyes gazed down at me first before shifting to my vampire.
“This is the girl, huh?” His deep, resonant voice was soothing, but the first words out of his mouth made me frown. I was forced to swallow my rebuttal at being called ‘the girl’ when Drake encouraged me to enter by pressing against the small of my back.
Flustered, I crossed the threshold a step ahead of Drake while the homeowner deftly moved out of our path.
“What have you told him about me?” I demanded, staring up into Drake’s dark eyes. He had the nerve to look sheepish, which somehow only made it harder to be mad at him.
“Winston is a trustworthy fellow,” he replied, avoidant, and my eyes narrowed.
“All good things, I assure you,” Winston piped up, and I froze when I turned to him. A chord of familiarity clicked into place, because I’d heard his voice before.
“You were on the phone—with Drake, when I was shackled to his living room sconce.”
A burst of laughter filled the small entry space, between the stairs on my right leading up, and the short hallway ahead, but Winston’s mirth was totally at odds with Drake’s pained expression. My vampire’s lips pressed together, his brows drawn. I frowned, glancing through the open archway to the left of the front door. Where a fire crackled in the living room’s hearth.
“I told you I’d like her,” Winston said between wiping a tear from his eye and struggling to cut his chuckling short. Then his gaze traveled innocently from my cold legs to the torn dress, and finally up to my knotted, tangled hair. If I hadn’t just been through hell, I might have felt self-conscious. “Damn, Drake really knows how to show a gal a good time.”
I opened my mouth, but the urge to defend Drake’s reputation vanished when I registered the concerned edge to Winston’s tone.
“Things did not go according to plan,” Drake muttered, glancing down at me with remorse etched across his resigned expression.
“Seems like it. Well, I’ll scrounge up some clothes for you both to change into. There’s coffee brewing in the pot whenever youfeel like it.” Winston headed up the hall, taking a right at the end, and the promise of coffee after so many days in withdrawal helped to wake up my exhausted brain.
Silence descended, cut through only by the sound of a clock ticking in another room. Given the moment of peace, my attention drifted over the soft-beige walls. Several framed photos had stained edges, like they were a couple of decades old or more. Winston didn’t look older than mid-thirties, but every picture seemed to feature him surrounded by others in his age range at the time of the photograph.
A peek through the open archway into the living room revealed a pair of suede couches with afghan blankets thrown over them. The furniture was angled toward the fireplace against the far wall, opposite a low coffee table and lamp in the corner whose shade widened into a bell shape. Tassels fringed the rim like something out of a Victorian period piece.
My brow pinched, trying and failing to piece together what felt off about the place, when suddenly Drake cleared his throat. In the entryway beside me, he stood with an odd juxtaposition of comfortable ease in his posture, but a look of uncertainty across his features.
“I wanted to apologize—for having chained you in my residence back in Albuquerque on the night we met.”
“Oh.” Weirdly, hearing him talk about our first encounter as ‘the night we met’ set butterflies to flutter in my stomach.
“Admittedly, I had forgotten the discomfort they bring to the living. For one such as myself, it merely drains our strength due to the engraved sigils. Wearing them must have been incredibly painful. Had I thought better of it, and I should have, I would not have restrained you in such a way. I am sorry.”
I blinked in the wake of his unexpected, drawn-out apology. Concern was clear behind his dark eyes, like he really cared whether or not I forgave him. If he’d said as much rightafter it happened, I would have told him to shove it. Now, after everything we’d been through, an apology didn’t seem necessary.
Hell, he’d saved my life how many times since then? A grin tugged up the corners of my mouth before I realized it, and the tension seemed to dissipate between us.
“I forgive you.”
At my response, Drake smiled—like,reallysmiled—and I stilled into stunned silence at the way his honest grin lit up his face. Even with the light filtering in through the windows, no amount of magick stripping away his illusion could change how the sight made warmth spread through my fast-beating heart—
“Getting along, I see.” Winston’s voice came from right behind me, and I spun. His black eyebrows rose. “Jumpy little thing.”
I frowned up at Winston’s impressive height, because I was neither littlenora thing. Was that how Caleb viewed me, too?Maybe that’s why he teased me so much growing up.
