Page 42 of Into Darkness (Night Prowler 6)
“You did something.” Her soft accusation didn’t faze him. Strangely, though, he’d begun to turn a little . . . green. Realization hit her like a thunderbolt, and Lu gasped. “Magnus!”
He winced, closed his eyes. “Not so loud, please.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, making a grumble of distress in his throat.
“You . . . you take away pain? That’s your Gift?”
His full lips twisted. He cracked open an eye and looked at her. He said, “One of them. This particular one has a few unfortunate side effects,” then his face crumpled. “Jesus, woman, exactly how much did you drink last night?”
Lu swung her legs over the side of the bed, wanting to touch him but knowing he wouldn’t want her to, wanting to comfort him but not knowing how. “Magnus, you didn’t have to do that! It’s my fault, you shouldn’t have to—”
“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”
The young man standing in her bedchamber door was about her age, broad, blond, and ridiculously good-looking, with a soft glow around his head that seemed to be coming from behind him. He looked between her and Magnus, a little unsure, but Magnus shoved himself to his feet and growled, “No, Beckett. I was just leaving.”
Lu begged, “Magnus, please, wait—”
“I brought these for you,” he said gruffly, and dropped two pairs of gloves on the small table beside her bed. He turned and strode stiffly from the room without looking back before she could ask him again to stay.
As Magnus brushed past him in the doorway, Beckett grinned at him, flashing a dimple in his cheek.
In response, Magnus growled.
Beckett didn’t seem to mind. He turned his attention to Lu and held out the bundle he carried in his arms. “My aunt asked me to bring you these. She said badass chicks deserve badass threads.” His rakish grin deepened. “I couldn’t agree more.”
“Your aunt?” She craned her neck to see around him, but Magnus was gone. How could she thank him for what he’d done for her? Especially if he kept running away?
“Morgan. Well, she’s not technically my aunt, but we’re tight. I’ve called her that since I was a kid.” He noted the confused expression on her face. “Oh, shit, sorry, where are my manners?” He bowed from the waist, then straightened and said formally, “Beckett McLoughlin, at your service, My Lady. It’s my sincere pleasure to make your acquaintance. Welcome.”
McLoughlin. That was one of the names Magnus had called her: Hope Catherine Moore McLoughlin. She looked at Beckett, intrigued by a new possibility.
“So we’re related? Are you my . . . brother?”
For a moment Beckett looked appalled. “No! I mean . . .” he cleared his throat, rearranging his expression to one slightly more composed. “My father and your father are brothers. You met my parents at the Assembly meeting. Ember and Christian? He’s my dad.”
“Oh. So we’re cousins, then!”
Beckett seemed to have some kind of a problem with her being related to him, because his look soured. He said grudgingly, “Well, technically. Yes.”
She didn’t understand the subtext here, but without the hangover clouding her mind and wreaking havoc with her body, Lu suddenly remembered the event that had caused her to want to get so blindly drunk.
She’d died, and been resurrected.
Correction: She’d been killed, and been resurrected.
Payback’s gonna be a bitch, Honor, she thought angrily. Then with a flash of horror: Am I a zombie now?
Looking at her expression, Beckett’s face fell. “I’ll just leave these for you—”
“I’m sorry, it’s not you. It’s not you at all. I just . . .” She stared at his expectant expression, feeling competing urges to laugh, cry, and dive deep into bed, pull the covers over her head, and never reemerge. She blurted, “I died yesterday, Beckett. Twice.”
He considered her, his expression serious. “I know.” He paused a beat, then broke into another of his seemingly endless supply of grins. “Is that awesome, or what?”
Lu ran her hands over her hair, realizing there wasn’t a mirror in this room, and she had no idea what she looked like. Was her skin zombie gray? No, her hands and arms were the normal color. She had to assume her face looked normal, too. She put her hand over her heart; still beating.
“May I?” Beckett gestured to the clothing in his arms, and glanced at the end of her bed. Why someone hadn’t thought to put a chair or a dresser in the room, she had no idea.
She nodded, and he came forward and laid the clothes at the foot of the bed. He retreated to the door, keeping his eyes to the ground, not turning but instead walking backward, until he was again at the arched entrance.
Finally he looked up at her, smiling as if he’d just won a million water credits. His teeth were spectacularly white.
