This was a crossroads, he thought, a place of choosing one or the other way to go.
And he had the crystal clear sense that if he let what Devina was saying sink in, he was lost forever—yet there was a side of him that found what she was saying inescapable: Marie-Terese had been alone with Jim, and she had been with men for money, and if those the pair of them had been together sexually, that was something he wouldn't be able to get over.
Devina's voice dropped low. “You were always afraid of turning into your father. And here you are, getting played by a whore.”
Vin took a halting step toward her and away from Marie-Terese.
Images of his father and mother were amplified by Devina's words and the reality of what Marie-Terese had done for a living.
He focused on Devina, really
“You're so right,” he whispered, the truth revealed to him.
Abruptly, Devina's face and eyes changed, sympathy warming her features and draining out the anger. “I don't want this for you. Any of it. Just come back to me, Vin. Come back.”
He walked forward, getting closer and closer, and she lifted her arms out to him. When he was in front of her, he reached up and brushed one of those dark waves back from her ear. Leaning in, he put his mouth close and tightened his hold on her hair.
“Vin…yes, Vin.” His name was spoken with relief and triumph. “This is the way it needs to be—”
“Fuck. You.” When she started to yank back, he held her in place by the skull. “You're the whore.”
Trez had called it. Back at the Iron Mask, the guy had said that a moment would come when he'd have to believe what he knew of Marie-Terese instead of what he had always feared would be true about a woman he cared about. “You're not welcome here,” he said, releasing Devina with a shove and going back to Marie-Terese. As he grabbed onto his woman's arms and held her behind him, he wished he were in the master bedroom, because his gun was there. “Get. Out.”
All at once, the air around Devina warped, as if her fury were causing a molecular disturbance, and he braced himself for impact. Instead of lashing out, though, she seemed to gather herself.
With an eerie control, she walked over to the windows, and his first thought was sending Marie-Terese from the room. Unfortunately, the distance between the view and the open door was short enough so that Devina could close it easily—and the bitch was staring into the glass, effectively giving herself eyes in the back of her head.
“You can't rescind the pact, Vin. It doesn't work that way.”
“The hell it doesn't.”
Devina turned around and wandered over to the bed. Bending down, she picked up his boxers and looked over the rumpled duvet and the tossed-around pillows.
“Messy, messy. Do you want to tell me exactly what you did to her, Vin? Or should I use my imagination? She's had so much practice, I'm sure she satisfied you.”
Devina deliberately rearranged a pillow, returning it to a spot against the headboard. With her attention briefly distracted, Vin moved fast, pushing Marie-Terese backward into the bathroom and slamming the door shut. When the lock was immediately turned, he took a deep breath even though it was clear that Devina had no problems getting through Schlage's best dead bolts.
Devina's black orbs flicked up. “You do realize if I wanted to get in there I could.”
“You'd have to go through me first. And somehow I don't think you can do that, can you. If you were going to kill me or her right now, you'd have done so the second you walked in here.”
“You just tell yourself that if it makes you feel better.” Leaning down, she took something off of the twisted duvet. “Well, what do you know. I believe I have—”
Devina froze in midspeech and swiveled her head around so that she looked out the windows. Abruptly, her brows screwed down over the black holes of her eyes, and the features of her face morphed briefly, showing a flash of what he'd seen of her real side: For a split second, all that gorgeous beauty was replaced with rotted, gray sheets of flesh, and he could have sworn he caught a whiff of dead meat.
Shit, maybe it should have freaked him out more, but he knew from experience that the unexplained and unexplainable were no less real for their being crazy. More important, Marie-Terese was on the other side of a thin door, and he was going to fight to the death to protect his woman—no matter what the fuck it was coming at her.
Human…demon…combo of the two. Definitions didn't matter.
Devina looked back at him. Slipping something into the pocket of her coat, she said in an oddly echoing voice, “I'll be seeing you both very soon. I have business elsewhere.”
“You're going to get a facial?” he said. “Good call.”
With a hiss, like she wanted to claw his eyes out, she dissolved into a gray mist and ghosted out of the room, boiling across the carpet and down the stairs.
Vin jolted forward, slammed the bedroom door, and locked it, even though he had a feeling that in that form she could just gust right under the thing. Whatever, it was the best he could do.
He went right to the bathroom and knocked. “She's gone, but I don't know for how—”
Marie-Terese threw open the door. She was white faced and scared to death, but her first words were: “Are you okay?”
It was at that moment that he knew he loved her. Plain and simple.
There was no time to go into that shit now, though.
Vin kissed her quickly. “I want you out of this place. In case she comes back here.”
And as soon as Marie-Terese was safe, he was going to call Jim. He needed one hell of a wingman, and he couldn't think of anyone better than a son of a bitch who'd already beaten death once and didn't seem freaked out by shit that would make most guys take a crap in their Calvins.
Abruptly, she wobbled. “I–I think I'm going to pass out—”
“Put your head down—come on, kneel for me…” He laid his hand on her bare shoulder and gently eased her onto the floor. Then he bent her over so that her long hair touched the marble and her hands fell to her ankles. “Breathe nice and slow.”
As she took a couple of inhales and her body shuddered, he wanted to peel his own skin from his bones. Goddamn him, he was worse than her ex-husband. Much more destructive.
Even though his heart was in the right place for the first time in his adult life, what he had exposed her to was more horrifying than anything the mob could pull out of their back pockets.
And it wasn't like that bunch of sleep-with-the-fishes types were nancies.
Marie-Terese glanced over at him. “Her eyes…What the hell did I just see?”
“Vin! Yo, Vin?”
At the sound of the muffled holler, he leaned around the doorjamb and called out, “Jim?”
“Yeah,” came the response. “I'm here with reinforcements, as they say.”
“In that case, come up.” This was perfect. There was a back exit on the second floor they could get Marie- Terese out of—and wouldn't it be great to do that with some cover.
“I'm going to run across and get some clothes on,” he told her. “How about you get dressed, too?”
When she nodded, he kissed her, went and gathered up her clothes for her and then closed the bedroom door on his way out.
As heavy boots hit the stairs, Vin went to his room, pulled on a pair of sweatpants, and got his gun out of the bedside table—all the while hoping like hell that the “backup” was along the lines of Jim.
And what do you know, they were. The two big bastards were the ones who'd been at the hospital after Jim had been electrocuted—and in spite of the fact that the pair were dressed as civilians, they had the stares of fighters.
Jim, on the other hand, had the glassy, hollow eyes of someone who'd been in a bad car accident. Clearly, he'd had some bad news recently, and yet his voice was still strong and level as he nodded to the one on the left first.
“This is Adrian. And Eddie. They're our kind of friends, if you know what I mean.”
Thank fuck, Vin thought.
