Wanderlust (18 page)

She tossed a pillow at my head. I ducked to avoid it, and it landed smack on Chip’s face. She immediately jolted upright, fists up and ready for a fight.

“Bring it,” she shouted.

I plucked the pillow from where it had fallen between us on the bed and introduced her to her assailant. Eli, Addie, and I burst into side-splitting laughter at the look on her face when she realized she had openly challenged a down-filled cushion. Instantly, I began to feel better.

We spent the day riding around the city on top of one of those big, red, open-top buses--the kind with little headphones you can plug into the side of your seat to hear about the history of the city, set to a backdrop of cheesy elevator music and French anecdotes that seem to lose a little something in translation.

We were in the midst of pointing down and laughing at all of the obvious American tourists--you know, the ones who wear tube socks with sandals, a colorful Hawaiian shirt with cargo shorts, and have a camera larger than their head strapped around their neck--when the ringing of Chip’s phone jerked us back to reality.

“Hello,” she said with that English accent that made me wish I had been raised on her side of the ocean. A sudden smile made her cheeks puff up, and I knew instantly who was on the other end of the receiver. “Oh, hi Balty.”

Eli and I looked at each other, and he winked. Without so much as a word of confirmation from me, he had figured out that there was more to Balthazar and Chip’s relationship than friendship. After exchanging a few pleasantries that my innocent ears would rather not have heard, we watched Chip walk to the near-empty back of the bus to take the call in private. I could tell from her nervous pace and slouched shoulders that the conversation had taken an unpleasant turn away from the lovey dovey cooing we had overheard moments earlier.

The long pause left me suspicious of his true motives, and I wondered why he hadn’t mentioned he would be heading in our direction when we had met him in London just a day earlier.

“He’s actually pretty nearby, so I think I’ll just get off at the next stop and go meet him.”

“Don’t worry about us,” Eli said. “You guys should go have some fun. The alone kind, if you know what I mean.”

Of course, we knew what he meant. It seemed Eli’s mind could only focus on one of two things: food and sex. He was such a boy sometimes.

“Oh, we won’t be alone,” Chip said. “Lia, he wants you to join us.”

Eli tossed me a nervous look, and I knew what he was thinking. After our encounter with the man on the bridge the day before, he had promised to keep me in his sight at all times.

“Un uh,” he said firmly. “Not without me.”

To be honest, knowing Balthazar was here on “official business,” so to speak, made me more nervous about what had happened the day before. We hadn’t told Chip or Addie, so I was fairly certain there must be another reason for Balthazar’s visit, but the thought did little to comfort me.

“I’d love to join you,” I said, brushing off Eli’s comment. “I want to take any chance I can to learn more about Chaseyn’s London friends.”

Eli looked furious, but I knew I would be in safe hands with Balthazar--though I still couldn’t help but wonder what had brought him to France. I assumed he was in need of a little affection from Chip, but for a man who had been on earth for hundreds of years, his patience seemed a little thin. From what I knew about the undead, they had all the time in the world to wait. In fact, that’s all they had time to do. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t in the least bit concerned that it might have something to do with the Soldiers of Solace--or worse…Alexei.

Despite my concerns, when the bus rolled to a halt at the next stop, I bid Eli and Addie farewell and followed Chip down the stairs to the exit.

***

From the sidewalk, we waved at Addie and Eli as the bus pulled away from the curb. The minute it was out of view, Chip pulled my arm roughly and dragged me toward a nearby alley.

“Ouch, you’re hurting me,” I said.

“I don’t care,” she replied, all spunk now gone from her voice. This was the first time I had been completely alone with her, and it seemed she no longer felt the need to put on any kind of show. We ducked behind a dumpster, and she shoved me up against the brick wall of an adjacent building.

“Hey,” I shouted at her. I didn’t care that she was a vampire. It didn’t give her the right to treat me like a rag doll.

“Shhh,” she said, slapping a hand against my mouth. I thought about biting down, but then I realized if I drew blood there might be more severe consequences than I was willing to face. I still didn’t know all the rules surrounding the “turning” process, and I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

I was deep in thoughts of fight or flight when Chip finally released her grip. She tiptoed forward a step and peered carefully from behind the dumpster.

“What are you looking for?”

“Would you just such your trap for half-a-minute,” she whispered loudly, angrily. “Do you have any sense of self-preservation at all?”

I was furious now, and I seriously considered storming off. Then, it dawned on me. She wasn’t trying to hurt me. She was trying to keep me safe. But, from what? I waited there in silence, statue still, until she signaled for me to come out of the shadows.

“Come on,” she said, waving her hands in a way that suggested I should hurry up. “The coast is clear for now, but I don’t know how long we have.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, knowing full well that she wasn’t going to tell me anything.

“It’s best if you hear it from Balty,” she said. She was back to her sweet self now that we were once again walking the very crowded streets. I suspected that, given the opportunity, she would turn on me again, in a heartbeat--if she had one. It was becoming more and more obvious to me that I was more of a burden to her than anything else. While I guessed she enjoyed Addie’s company, at least somewhat, we really had nothing in common. I was nothing more to her than deadweight that her even more dead lover had ordered her to guard for a few weeks.

We only had to walk a few steps before we arrived at the designated meeting spot, but Chip was on high alert the entire time. She was looking for something or someone, and I wished--for the first time--that I possessed some of the supernatural gifts afforded only to the undead. Chip paused outside the door and turned to face me. The grave look on her face made me want to vomit with worry.

With that, she pulled open the heavy oak door and burst into the room--an entrance fit for royalty. She was dressed totally inappropriately for the upscale bistro, but that was nothing new. She never seemed to have on enough clothes. She didn’t seem to mind, though, and I doubted most of the men didn’t either. She darted past the maitre d’, clearly sensing where she needed to go to find her one and only. I wasn’t sure about the mechanics of it all, but I had the general sense that once two vampires had engaged in certain acts--blood exchange, for one--they were bound in ways the average couple could never be. Being able to pinpoint Balthazar’s exact location in a crowded restaurant appeared to be one of the advantages to such an exchange.

I tried to keep pace, but I was several steps behind, at best. But, as we drew neared to Balthazar’s booth at the back of the room, she slowed her steps. And, that’s when I realized why. I came to a screeching halt at the sight of Balthazar, or rather, at the sight of Balthazar’s companion. Seated next to him was none other than my worst nightmare come true. Sylvie.

Chip, in anticipation of my reaction, had gripped my hand firmly in her own. Now, I understood why she made me promise to keep an open mind before stepping foot inside the bistro.

“Deep breaths,” she said, and I almost felt like she cared. In my heart, I knew her loyalty was not to me but to her boyfriend. I felt fairly certain that she would be punished harshly if she let anything happen to me. “You need to hear what she has to say.”

We stood beside the booth where Sylvie and Balthazar sat, and I felt like the ugly duckling amidst the likes of their unnatural beauty. Sylvie was nothing if not regal. She was adorned head to toe in haute couture, and though Balthazar wore extremely casual attire, it was impossible to think it legal that a man his age could look so good in nothing more than jeans and a t-shirt. Chip utterly beamed in his presence, highlighting her youthful features.

“Were you followed?” Balthazar asked Chip.

Chip simply shook her head in response. Not so much as a smile creeping across his face at seeing her for the first time in days. I could tell she was disappointed by his cold reception, and I knew then that their relationship meant much more to her than it did to him. I guessed that after so many centuries, he had a knack for wrapping women around his finger--even undead women. Chip was much younger than him…centuries younger, and he had certainly perfected his masculine charms in that time. Even Sylvie seemed smitten.

“Are you sure you weren’t followed?” Sylvie asked, her eyes scanning the room.

“I’m sure,” Chip affirmed, her eyes were closed and she nodded her head once for emphasis. “We had a close call, but we lost them.”

Balthazar relaxed into the seat. He clearly trusted her judgment, and I instantly felt a calming relief wash over me. I got the distinct sense that Balthazar was a man of high standards. Chip slid into the booth, grimacing as her bare legs stuck slightly to the vinyl covering the seat. I followed her lead, and took my place directly across from the woman who had broken my heart not twenty-four hours earlier.

“You’re in danger here,” Balthazar opened, cutting to the chase.

Chip put her hand lightly on my thigh, a soothing act for someone who had been so brutally forceful with me only a few moments prior. Clearly, she thought the news would surprise and shock me, but after all that I had been through in Texas--not to mention the warnings signs on our route to our current location--I had been expecting something like this.

“You don’t seem upset,” Sylvie announced.

“Why would I be?”

“Because you are a human girl, and they are always so…what is the word?” Sylvie asked Balthazar, who simply shrugged his shoulders in response.

It seemed to me she was playing dumb to keep him interested, which he clearly wasn’t. He obviously didn’t suffer fools either. She’d been around long enough to know the word she was looking for in eighteen different languages, and he wasn’t going to play her game. I suddenly liked him a lot more, and Chip smiled knowingly. But, apparently, she had no shame and decided to play along.

“Whiny, naïve, gullible, childish…stop me when I hit the right one. I have no problem going on for a while,” Chip offered. I couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, and I hit her arm playfully--mostly.

“Ah, I know. Namby pamby.”

“I’m what?” I asked, having never heard the term before.

“No matter,” she said, waving away my words. “It is of little importance. Besides, I said you are not like other human girls in that way. Other ways, yes. But not that one.”

I was pretty sure she was paying me a compliment--albeit a backhanded one--so I let it slide.

“So why are we here?” I asked. Balthazar and Chip had been having a side conversation, but it was whispered so low that their voices were barely audible to the human ear. Chip had been filled in on the situation, and now, I needed to be.

“As I said before Sylvie took the conversation in a new direction, you’re in danger,” Balthazar said. I liked him even more for putting Sylvie in her place. “It’s the Soldiers. They’re here.”

And, that was it. Every muscle in my body clenched, and my back went ramrod straight.

“That’s not all,” he added. “They’re here for a reason.”

My eyes pleaded with him to speed up the conversation. Sometimes, vampires were a bit slow on the draw. Time had no hold on them, so they didn’t sense urgency in the same way as humans. Chaseyn always seemed to take all the time in the world to get to the punch, and I felt the same way about my current company.

“They’re here for Alexei,” Chip said with a sneer, and I couldn’t tell if it was directed at Alexei or myself. “They know that wherever you are, he will follow, and they’ve been tipped off to your location.”

My jaw dropped, and I was speechless.

“I did everything I could to convince them not to come for you, but they know they can use you as a trap for him,” Balthazar explained.

“But, how? How do they know I’m here?”

“It was one of our own,” he said. “There is a mole among our group, and whoever it is, he, or she, tipped off one of their ‘spies.’ He put out word across the continent, and one of them spotted you here.”

“The man on the bridge,” I mumbled under my breath. It all made sense.

I nervously rolled Chaseyn’s ring between my thumb and forefinger, trying to decide if I should run to the bathroom and crack it open. Even though we had left things in a bad way, I knew he would come if I needed him.

“You don’t need to use
that
to summon him,” Sylvie said, wagging her eyebrows at the ring. “We can handle this without his help. In fact, we can do better.”

So, she knew about the ring. What it meant. I can’t say I wasn’t at least a little surprised by that knowledge, but I was a bit hurt. I thought it was an ingenious creation he had designed specifically for me and that only people I chose to tell would know about its special powers. Now, I was certain it wasn’t the first of its kind. Not even the first one he had designed. Tears stung my eyes, but I fought them back. The last thing I wanted was for that heartless wench to know she had kicked me where it hurt.