Page 77 of The Tracker's Secret
Chapter 27
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MY MIND HEAVY WITHremorse after having lied to Rosalina about tracking Blake, I keyed the lock to her condo and walked in. My heart jumped in my throat as she stormed in my direction and wrapped me in her arms.
“Oh, thank the witchlights you’re okay!” Her hold on me lasted for only a second, though, and in the same breath, she pulled away and demanded, “Where the hell have you been?!”
“Uh, at Eric’s.”
She scowled. “Before that. The rest of the night, I mean.”
I winced. Lying never paid off. Sooner or later you got caught.
“I was at the office, um...”
“Don’t you dare try to come up with a lie.” She pointed a finger straight at my nose. “Never mind, I know what you were doing.” She whirled and headed into the kitchen.
I scrubbed at my face, feeling terrible. I followed after her and stood by the kitchen table, watching her set the coffee maker.
“I didn’t want you to worry,” I said.
She huffed, her expression telling me she had worried anyway.
“I had to do it. I had to find out.” I waited for her curiosity to get the best of her and ask me if I’d found Blake, if he was still alive, but she walked toward the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of eggs and a container of Greek yogurt without as much as a peek in my direction.
“Ulfen was telling the truth,” I blurted out, hoping the shock would undo her anger.
It didn’t.
She had never been mad at me. Never. I didn’t know what to do. I pulled a chair out and sat, burying my face in my hands and feeling exhausted. The last twelve hours had been an all-around nightmare, and now the only person I trusted one hundred percent was mad at me.
“Um, Jake came over after the trance,” I said, trying a different angle. “He caught me in the worst of it and learned about the side effects.”
I peered at her face expectantly. Still nothing.
She came to the table and sat across from me. The coffee pot gurgled and that unique aroma filled the air. I uncovered my face and met her green eyes, which were filled with disappointment. My heart twitched. I could handle her anger much better than this.
I had never lied to her, and I would never do it again.
“I can tell you’re disappointed as you should be,” I said. “I fucked up. Lying to the only person who always has my back was stupid, but I didn’t do it out of malice. I just didn’t want to ruin your date night.”
She said nothing to that. Instead, she set her hand on the table, palm down, and pushed something in my direction. When she removed her hand, a small baggie filled with glittery powder was left behind. An image representing a bleeding heart was imprinted in one corner of the bag.
“That’s rhabo,” she said.
“What? How? I’m confused. That powder is rhabo?” I babbled, eyes wide in surprise.
“I got it at Damien’s.” Her face crumpled, more disappointment washing over her. “We went to his house after our date. Things had... progressed, and he invited me over to spend the night.”
Holy crap!Rosalina went out a lot, but she was extremely picky about who she let into her bed. She must really like Damien if she’d decided to take that step.
She heaved a sigh. “There were hundreds, if not thousands of those bags stacked on top of a table inside a room that looked like a mad scientist’s lair.”
Shit!
“When we got there,” she forced a smile, “he got a phone call and had to step away. That’s when I decided to take a look around. It wasn’t hard to find. It was out there, in the open. The door to the room wasn’t even locked. I didn’t know what it was at first, so I just grabbed one and slipped it into my pocket. I had a bad feeling, though, so when he came back, I asked him to bring me home, told him I wasn’t feeling well. He looked disappointed but behaved like a gentleman about it. I got here around one to find that you were gone. I tried to call you but your phone went straight to voicemail.”
“My first guess was that you’d gone to the office and fell asleep. But since you said you would never sleep there again after you got attacked, I thought maybe you went to your mom’s or your sister’s, so I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. Then I tried to call you again around 3:45 ‘cause I knew you would be up, driving to Eric’s, but I got your voicemail again.”
