Page 67 of Redeemed
I have several text messages and at least three voicemails. All from Jacques. I read one of the texts.
What have you done?
I take a moment to reach out with all my senses. Weres, several of them, are in our hotel room, along with Sheena. Beyond that, darkness. Nothing from Jacques.
Nothing.
I check one of the voicemails. It’s a wordier version of “What have you done” but with more expletives. I shrug and consider deleting the rest. His anger vibrates through the phone, but I no longer feel it vibrating through me.
Relief is tempered by an unexpected sense of loss. Jacques had been a part of me for so many years that I wondered what I’d do without him. Still, he should never have demanded that I kill Connor.
Connor, my lover, the only one who protested when I told him what I meant to do.To bring someone else into the life you lead…The memory of those words undercuts what’s left of my relief. He’d apologized and of course I’d accepted his apology. I’d accomplished the “forgive,” but I’m having trouble with the “forget” part of the equation.
In that unsettled state, I leave the vampire room. Connor and David are on one of the queen beds—Connor sitting upright with his back against the headboard and David sprawled across the foot. Sheena’s claimed the only chair, and on the other bed, Cliffe, David’s sister Abby, and a young man I don’t recognize are jumbled together.
Well, Cliffe and Abby are curled up side-by-side, while the young man imitates Connor’s posture, leaning against the headboard.
David gives me a lazy grin. “Hey, Guido, you need to comb your hair.”
I palm the hair out of my face, taking stock of the situation. David’s relaxed but wary, Connor’s closed off, and the rest are doing a decent job of faking good humor. “What’s going on?”
“David survived the Were Authority hearing,” Connor says carefully. It’s like he heard my forgive/forget monologue and is reluctant to call attention to himself.
“Yeah, but only because Marcus and Abby showed up.”
Marcus?I must look puzzled, because David introduces his cousin to me. The young were is handsome enough, dark to David’s dazzling gold. He’s wearing an eye patch, and he barely flashes me a glance when David shares his name. I might recognize him from somewhere, but with so much going on, I’ll deal with my half-memories later.
“So this is a celebration then?” Because, aside from a few In-N-Out burger wrappers and some bottles of water, the vibe didn’t fit a party.
Sheena laughs. “It’s a pack meeting.”
“Of a sort,” David says, rolling onto his back. He gives his belly a lazy scratch, his head tipped back so he can see the three weres on the other bed. “Now that we’re officially official, we’re discussing our membership requirements.”
“Although we should probably table it for now,” Connor says. “Melinda Barwell wants to meet with me in an hour. She’s the Securitas Sensitive who agreed to help us find the Princess.”
“She wants to meet with you in person?” David asks.
He shrugs. “We should probably split up, anyway. I can go to Headquarters to meet with her and you—”
“I’ll come with you.” Sheena’s got one eyebrow raised in challenge. “Then the wolves can keep going with their pack meeting.”
I glance from Connor to Sheena and back. “Should I come with you, too?”
“With any luck, Melinda will share the Princess’s location. I can have Brodie meet me—”
“Us,” Sheena interjects.
“Usat Headquarters, and from there we can go to Jacques’ Malibu Hills house, see if we can get more of a head count.”
“And the rest of us will stay here and, what?”
Connor’s expression is still hard to read. “I figure you can go wherever it is Jacques is hiding the Princess’s body and move it to someplace safe.”
That makes a certain amount of sense. I gesture to the weres on the bed. “Are all of you in?”
“Of course.” Abby speaks up first, but Cliffe and Marcus echo her agreement.
“It’s what pack would do,” Marcus adds.
