Authors: Sierra Dean
While Keaty stood around looking grim, I slid the gurney with Carly’s body back into its storage cubby. I was getting uncomfortably cold in the room, but since I had yet to tell Keaty what had happened to me, I didn’t want to give anything away by complaining about the chill.
“If you’re right and the fairy doesn’t live in our world, it might be an idea to monitor the gate. And we can check the delivery schedules to see where Petey and Carly had been sent in the area of that Bath & Body Works.” It was in everyone’s best interests I steer our attention back to the topic at hand. We should be focused on who or what had killed these teenagers rather than who was the biggest, baddest killer in the room.
“I can keep an eye on the gate,” Keaty offered. “Fae can move in the daytime, so we need to be able to watch it at all hours.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem for—”
I shushed Brigit mid-sentence. “Sounds like a great idea.” My phone started vibrating in my pocket, and I wished I’d thought to abandon it in a garbage can somewhere along the way. So far I’d been scolded by Lucas and Keaty. I was willing to bet whoever was calling me now wasn’t going to improve my mood for the evening.
I looked at my caller ID.
Sig.
“Can this day get any worse?” I said aloud before I could stop myself.
“I find if the question needs to be asked, the answer is almost always yes,” Desmond answered, speaking for the first time since we’d come into the room. I think seeing a naked, dead teenager made him uneasy. Now that I’d put Carly’s body away, he had relaxed slightly. As much as someone could relax in a morgue.
I smiled grimly. “Sorry, guys. Duty calls.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“Do you know how much trouble you’re in?”
Sig was usually calm, taking his time with problems and presenting himself as the cool, collected Tribunal leader who never let anything get to him. The Sig yelling at me on the phone—yes, another yelling phone call—was not the man I thought I knew. He’d waited a whopping thirteen seconds from when I answered my cell to when he started laying into me. Just long enough for me to think I’d get through the conversation without being scolded.
No such luck. Today was International Scream at Secret Day and my cell company was loving how many minutes I was using to get browbeaten. Couldn’t people text me their dissatisfaction? It would be much easier to ignore.
Standing in the hall outside the body storage room, I leaned against the nearest wall and tried to fend off my now-constant headache by rubbing my temple. “Am I in trouble?” I asked, a cheeky coyness slipping into my tone. If I was going to be yelled at, I might as well have fun with it.
“Secret, this isn’t a joke.”
“I know.”
“Then stop making it one.”
“Do you think I find it funny I’ve lost three weeks of my life and now that I’m home I’m walking around with a target on my back? Oh, yeah. Time of my fucking life. Bring on the party hats and confetti.”
“Are you quite done?”
“I might be.”
“Go home. Stay there. Holden and I will be over shortly.”
“I can’t—”
“
This is not a negotiation
,” he shouted, making the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. “You will go, or you will leave me no choice but to find you—wherever you are—and drag you back by your hair. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.” I was liking this being-human thing less and less with each passing second. What use was my humanity if I was going to be treated like a feeble, useless child because of it? “But I…”
The dial tone told me there was no sense in arguing. Not that he’d have heard anything I said if he’d stayed on the line. I might as well have listened to a voicemail message for as much participation as I’d been granted in the conversation.
I opened the door and looked into the small room. I hadn’t realized how packed it had been with all of us in there, but now that I was on the outside I wondered how we’d managed to be comfortable.
“We have to go,” I told my entourage.
“You have to go…investigate a murder?” Keaty suggested.
“Yeah. Right after a pissed-off vampire Tribunal leader gives me a piece of his mind.”
“You are
not
going to the council,” Desmond insisted, his voice telling me there was no room for argument. “No way in hell.”
For the first time Keaty seemed to clue in that he wasn’t getting the entire scope of what was happening. “Why wouldn’t she go to the council?” When Desmond didn’t answer, he turned his attention to me, and I didn’t like how fierce his expression was. “Why wouldn’t you go to the council?”
“Well, see…” I struggled to find the words, and Keaty must have interpreted my hesitation as an unwillingness to confess.
“Tell me what’s going on.”
Brigit, who had been displaying signs of cracking from the minute we arrived, beat me to the confessional punch. “Secret is human,” she blurted.
There went my big reveal.
“You’re
what
?”
“Human.”
“As in…you have human qualities, or—”
“She has a pulse,” Brigit offered.
“She’s always had a pulse,” Desmond corrected. “It’s the whole, no-supernatural-strength, not-needing-blood-to-survive, and able-to-spend-extended-hours-in-sunlight-with-no-negative-side-effects thing that’s new.”
“You’re
what
?” Keaty asked again.
“Human. I’ll repeat it as many times as you want, but can I do it while we walk, please? I think if Sig gets to my apartment and I’m not there, he’s going to find a way to long-distance murder me.”
“Oh, he can’t do that,” Brigit said matter-of-factly. “It’s illegal for a Tribunal leader to kill another Tribunal leader.”
Frowning at her, I held the door open to usher them out. “Thanks for the lesson from the Vampire Handbook, Bri.”
She gave me a Boy Scout salute, with a little wink. Sometimes Brigit confounded me. I wasn’t sure if she was as dopey as she seemed, or if it was all an artful ruse to make people underestimate her. If it was the latter, she was a genius and would eventually unseat me within the Tribunal.
“Is there really a Vampire Handbook?” she asked.
And then there were moments where I wondered if she only wore ballet flats because shoelaces proved to be too tricky for her. Brigit Stewart—vampire, wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a brown paper bag. She was something else, all right.
Keaty, the last one through the door, stopped when the others had gone ahead down the hall. “Are you really…?” He had trouble making the words come out, but there was a sheen of emotion in his eyes that clawed at my heart. “Is it true?”
I nodded weakly. “It seems to be.”
With a quickness that was alarming for a middle-aged human male, Keaty wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me in for a tight hug. He smelled like tobacco—the flowers, not cigarettes—and faintly of a menthol shaving cream. It felt good to be close enough to him to remember what his particular scent was. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed the sensory aspects of those around me until I was confronted with them. Everyone I knew had a specific smell, and without my heightened senses, I was at a loss to pick up on those scents anymore.
I was so shocked by the outward display of affection from Keaty I almost forgot to return his hug. When I did, it was a stiff pat on the back. Since I’d moved in with him at the age of sixteen, he’d never once shown any kind of physical warmth towards me. I believed Keaty loved me in whatever way a sociopath was capable of, and I knew I was as close to a family as he would ever get, but to have him embrace me openly…
It scared me.
It meant my humanity mattered to him. But more, it meant my being a monster was what had kept him at a distance for all these years. I had long considered Keaty to be the closest thing I would have in my life to a father. Now I knew he’d held me at arm’s length because…because what?
I hadn’t been human.
I’d been a monster to him.
My heart broke, and even the awkward kindness of his gesture could do nothing to repair the damage.
Chapter Forty-Six
The ride back to my apartment was awkwardly silent. Normally I might have tried to liven things up by cracking a joke at my expense, but I didn’t feel like there was much to laugh at right then. We’d parted ways with Keaty outside the morgue, but his presence still lingered. Our hug should have meant something good, something to make me view my situation in a positive light. Instead it made me doubt everything I knew about who I’d been.
Had I been nothing more than a monster masquerading as someone decent? Was I only worthwhile to those around me now that I was considered
human
?
I’d spent my whole life fighting against the monsters inside me, struggling to exist as something that shouldn’t exist. And now that I fit the norm, I found I didn’t want to belong. The world I’d yearned to be accepted into wasn’t all I’d dreamed it would be.
Boo-hoo, right? Go figure the grass wasn’t any greener on the other side.
Just a lot brighter.
I was the first out of the car when we got to my place, but Brigit was right on my heels, taking her job as my bodyguard seriously. It didn’t surprise me in the least to find my door unlocked, but for the sake of safety I let her go first. After a moment she popped her head out into the hall.
“It’s relatively safe.”
“Relatively?”
“Like, no one is
actually
going to kill you, but you might want to stay out here all the same.”
“Brigit, let her in,” came Holden’s voice from within the apartment. “She needs to get this over with.”
Yeah, that made me want to rush inside.
“I gather I don’t have much choice.” Besides which, Desmond had joined me in the foyer, and there wasn’t a lot of room to spare with two adults in the closet-sized landing.
Brigit stepped aside, letting me and Desmond through. Holden had taken his familiar place on the loveseat, but Sig remained standing. He was in front of the fireplace, staring intently at my sword collection.
“I’m not a man of faith,” Sig said. “I’m sure you can understand why.”
“You’re older than Jesus?”
He snorted a humorless laugh. “Religion existed long before me, long before him, and it has always been a fool’s narrative. Those who do not know how to think for themselves look to gods for their answers. When the gods do not speak, they look to liars who claim to
know
the answers. Religion is a farce of liars and those with no minds of their own.”
This didn’t seem like a discussion, so I stayed quiet and let him talk.
“I may not be religious, but I find men of religion can often say truly remarkable things in spite of their own inherent stupidity.” He picked up the silver katana, careful not to touch the metal, and turned to face me, the weapon in his hand. “Have you ever heard of Henry Ward Beecher?”
“No.”
“No, of course not. You’re too young. Much, much too young.” He was playing with the weight of the sword, adjusting it so it was perfectly balanced. “Ward once said, ‘You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.’”
“Sounds like Henry was a cheerful guy.”
Sig gave me a look that plainly said now was still not the time for me to talk. “It made me laugh when I first read it, because what is a vampire if not one step from the grave? And is our life easy? No, there is nothing easy in the life of a vampire. It is a hard world whether you are living or undead. So what does that mean for you?”
I didn’t like the implication of his buildup. “I didn’t do this intentionally.”
“As Mr. Chancery explained it to me, the choice was entirely yours.”
“And did
Mr
. Chancery tell you my other option was to leave one of them behind?” I pointed at Holden, then back to Desmond. “I don’t leave people behind.”
“You are not a Marine, Secret.”
“No, I’m just not as cold as you people apparently. I can’t sacrifice someone else’s life for the sake of getting what I want.”
“You can’t sacrifice someone else, so you have sacrificed yourself instead.” Sig spun the blade in his palm, and instinctively I took a step backwards. He might have the ability to make people calm, but I was as far from relaxed as I could possibly be.
“What are you saying?”
“If the only easy place is the grave, you have made certain you’re in for an easy future.”
“But you can’t kill her,” Brigit said meekly. “It’s in the handbook.”
At those words Desmond moved from his place by the front door and stood between me and Sig. If the Tribunal leader wanted me dead, Desmond wasn’t going to be able to stop him. No one in this room could keep Sig from killing me if he wanted to.
But upon hearing Brigit’s words and watching Desmond move, Sig gave us an amused smirk and lowered the sword. “Are you all stupid? I have no intention of killing her.”
Holden hadn’t moved once through the entire conversation, giving me the impression Sig was being honest. Holden was devoted to the council, but he was more devoted to me. I’d been the one to save him when they wanted him dead. If there were allegiances owed anywhere, they were owed to me and not the council. So if he wasn’t moving to protect me, there was nothing I needed protection from.