mine.” He tossed his keys on the counter and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I have to make some more calls. You can take the first bedroom down the hall. There’s a bathroom the next door past it, with a shower.”
I set my stuff down in the spare room, then went into the bathroom and calculated the risks of showering in a strange house with a strange man in it versus being sticky with strange blood for the rest of the night. Disgust won over sanity, and I stripped out of everything, except for my silver bracelet, and hopped into the shower stall.
The hot water made it easier to think, but it didn’t solve any of my problems. Everything I owned was torn, broken, covered in blood, or absorbed into a creepy cyborg. I still owed a vampire a new hand. Weres were attacking me, and I had a date with a vampire on New Year’s Eve night. My thoughts spiraled like the water down the drain. I lost track of time.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. “Did you drown?”
“No.”
The door opened up, and I prepared to be scared, tried to scrape together some adrenaline left over somewhere, deep down inside, but Lucas just set down extra towels on the counter and closed the door again. I turned off the shower and dried myself off—remembering that Gideon had worn my bathrobe out the door, one more thing I’d never see again—and carefully picked up all of my bloodstained clothes. I walked down the hall to the room where I’d relocated Minnie. The door to her cat carrier was open, but she still sat inside, like Lucas’s carpeting was lava.
“I know. Boy, do I know.” I dried out my hair as best I could, and thoroughly dried off my body. Then I hunted through the clean things I’d brought—sweatpants and baggy shirt. Asher’s cuff didn’t go with these, and I didn’t want to be unkind. If Lucas was going to kill me, he would have done it in the shower to keep the carpet clean. I snorted at my morbid self and put the cuff inside Minnie’s cat carrier. Then I lassoed my silver belt around my waist one more time and untucked my shirt, so I could be a little protected but not openly rude. As armored as I was going to get, I went back outside.
“Hey.”
“Hey.” Lucas stood in his kitchen, not much bigger than my own. “I made coffee. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Thanks.” I took the mug from him. Might as well drink coffee and stay up. It was at least one thing I was good at.
“How’s Minnie?”
“Unhappy.”
“I believe that’s tonight’s theme. Cream? Sugar?”
“Both,” I said, and he handed them over one at a time. Once I’d doctored my coffee to within an inch of its life, I walked out into his living room and sat down in a chair covered in cat fur. Of course.
“How are you feeling?” he asked. He sat across from me on a couch with his own coffee mug. He was wearing a white tank top now, which made it easy to see his tattoos. The one sleeve was blurry, covered in old work, but the newer sleeve was still fresh, ornate, gorgeous. “Are you shell-shocked?”
“I’ve seen people die before. Not in my living room, but—” I shrugged, attempting to be cavalier.
“Sure you don’t want to tell me what was he looking for?” Lucas said, with his head tilted forward. His tone was casual, kind. Downright friendly.
“What does it matter, when he was a were?” I asked back.
Lucas’s eyebrows rose at this. “You make a good point.”
“How is it that there are weres you don’t know about? My vampire friend can’t make new vampires without permission from her people.” I didn’t tell him that Veronica had technically been illegal. “How does that work for weres?”
“Viktor’s family still has connections. He could have brought them in from out of town—Helen told me that he’d be a problem, even before I moved out.” He gave his coffee a rueful smile. “I wished I’d listened to her.”
“And what, killed him?”
“Maybe. If that’s what it would have taken to avoid all this. Winter would have done it. Winter would have killed him the first day. He didn’t appreciate other contenders.” Lucas leaned back. “That’s why I worry I don’t have it in me.”
“Viktor called me yesterday. He said you all were setting him up.” I watched him carefully for any reaction, but Lucas was only surprised.
“He called you?”
“Have you ever heard of House Grey?” I decided to press whatever small advantage I’d gained.
Lucas looked baffled. “No. That’s a vampire naming convention, isn’t it? I can ask around.” His phone beeped, and he glanced at it. “Just as I thought. Jorgen is pissed.”
“He can’t fight in your stead?”
“Hardly. He’s only bitten.”
Like the guy on my living room floor. “Can bitten people bite other people and change them?”
“No. It doesn’t work like that. Only major weres can make more weres. There’s not many loopholes. Unless you want to skin me and wear my pelt, that is.” Lucas gave me a look. “What they were looking for at your place —did they find it?”
“I’m sorry, Lucas.” I shrugged without answering him. Anna, I trusted, even if she was currently bathing in blood. Lucas, not so much.
“What can I do to change your mind?” he went on.
For all I knew his cleaner was right now tearing through my house again. I suddenly felt trapped in his small living room, wearing nothing but one silver-buckled belt for protection. Drinking a drink he’d made for me that could have been roofied or poisoned or—
“No—don’t.” He put his hand out. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. You’re safe here. I swear.”
I squinted at him. “Are were-promises like vampire-promises?”
He gave me a roguish smile. “Depends on the were.” His phone rang this time. He looked at who was calling, and hung up. “Sorry. Jorgen again. I have to leave it on for when the cleaner calls. But I don’t want to hear it from Jorgen.”
I imagined Jorgen back at that were-bar, discovering Lucas’s absence and frothing at the mouth. “I don’t get why you have to fight so much.”
“To prove my ability to lead. Miss me on one night? Catch me on the next. It’s not a match, really, it’s a performance. Like I’m a magician and my wolf’s the rabbit. How many times can I pull it out of the hat?” Lucas turned his phone’s screen off. “It’s a miracle Winter lived to see his amazingly old age, with them doing this to him.”
I leaned forward, fascinated. “What’s it cost you to change?”
“Pride? No, not really. I’m sure one of those vets you work with told you.” He looked at me, and I waited quietly for his answer. “Each time you change it eats minutes off your life. It’s like tapping into the bottom of the hourglass God gave you, draining out the grains of sand.”
I hadn’t thought of it like that, when Gina first explained it. It made everything seem more horrific. “Is it worth it?”
“On the nights when it’s not for show, when you’re outside as you were meant to be, yes. I can’t imagine how frightening it was for little Fenris at the hospital, without a pack, being out of place. But in the land where you belong, it’s perfect. You can feel it’s what you were meant to do, to be. Through the pads on all your paws.” He jerked his chin at me. “What’d it cost you to be a nurse?”
“My sanity. Three years of school. A lot of student loans.”
“Not literally. The parts when you’re in it, when you’re there.”
“Heh.” I stared down at the end of my coffee. “Most nights there’s a lot of people being unhappy with you. They’ve heard news they don’t want to hear, and you can’t change that for them. You spend a lot of nights pushing dying people like boulders up very steep hills.”
“What’s it like when it works, when you feel it?”
I thought about it. “Those parts don’t happen as often as I might like.” The most recent one involved his uncle, on the pavement, but I didn’t think I would tell him that. Because sometimes you could do everything right, and it still didn’t turn out well. “When you see something that needs doing, and you know you’re the right one to do
