Secret Unleashed

from within making the pit of nerves in my gut tighten like a fist. “It’s a six-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles. Do you remember what happened to me in an elevator? Holden, I can’t even take the subway.”

His quiet snickering stopped. Vampires didn’t mind small spaces as a matter of survival. Most of them didn’t spend their daylight hours in a coffin. It was passe now, considering how many options there were to keep the sun out. But as part of the evolutionary process, they didn’t tend to be upset by cramped quarters.

Werewolves, on the other hand, weren’t so awesome with being cooped up. They liked to run and be out in the open. Being crammed into a tight metal box was not the same as being out in the open.

Holden’s grasp on my phobia took root, and he brushed a strand of hair behind my ear, guiding me gently toward the coffin until we were both sitting on it. We still had to hunch down because of the low ceiling, but at least we weren’t crouched on the floor anymore.

“Okay, I know you’re freaked out, but consider this—sunrise is in less than an hour.”

“Yeah.”

“And once the sun comes up, you’re out. Totally out. You won’t have to worry about anything because you won’t be conscious.”

He had a point, but there was something he was missing. “What about the hour before the sun goes down?”

“Secret, I’m going to give you some age-old vampire wisdom to get you through that part.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Suck it up.”

Chapter Nine

A warm breeze roused me, calling for me to open my eyes. I cracked my eyelids and blinked back tears from the searing too-bright light of day.

My bare skin was hot, absorbing the sunshine and making me feel cozier than if I’d been wrapped in a dozen sweaters. I might not get cold often, but I still liked being warm.

I raised the brim of my obnoxiously large sun hat and glanced around, trying not to look directly at the pool. Given the brightness of the day and how still the water was, it would have been like staring into a mirror of the sun.

If my dreams were going to put me poolside in a tropical paradise, couldn’t they at least dim the lighting a little?

“Here,” said a soft, female voice. A pair of oversized sunglasses were thrust into my hand, and I accepted them, blocking out some of the glare.

When I turned to my left to see who my savior was, my heart stopped.

Brigit Stewart smiled back at me, and even in a dream it was painful to see her, especially looking so vital and gorgeous. She wasn’t as pale as I remembered her—though she’d still been stunning with her alabaster vampire skin. Now she was golden, like she had been when we first met, and her hair had sun-kissed highlights running through it.

This was the human version of Brigit, the version she could have been if Peyton hadn’t turned her to make a point to me.

Vampire or human, it didn’t matter. Seeing her thrilled and destroyed me all at the same time.

“Bri…” I couldn’t figure out what to say to her.

My dreams were a strange place to begin with, which made this that much more difficult. In the past, she’d used our connection—me as her patron, she as my ward—to communicate with one another on a subconscious level.

For a moment I wanted to believe this was that kind of interaction. Somehow I had been wrong about her death, and she’d managed a miraculous recovery. Surely that’s what this meant. It couldn’t be my psyche playing cruel tricks on me.

“You look sad. Aren’t you happy to see me?” She practically oozed warmth, her smile drawing me in.

Tears stung the corner of my eyes, threatening to fall, but I blinked them back, worried she might vanish if I turned away for a second.

“Are you real?”

“I don’t know how to answer that. I’m here, aren’t I? So I guess I’m real enough.”

“Are you alive?” I was trying to work around the elusive, often-aggravating dialogue of a dream.

“I haven’t been alive for a long time.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do you know what you mean?”

My dreams were a fucking nightmare sometimes.

I reached out, hoping by touching her I could get a feel for what was happening. If this was a dream and not some communication from beyond the grave, I needed to know.

But if she was really there, I needed to find a way to bring her back with me. Though I understood the impossibility of that, I was still desperate to try.

When I touched her hand, her fingers turned gray and crumbled apart into dust. Her arm followed suit, caught on the breeze, and bits of her drifted onto the surface of the water then sank out of sight.

“Oh. Look what you’ve done,” she said, her voice never losing its cheerful quality.

I jerked back my hand in horror, hoping it would stop, but she continued to dissolve in front of my eyes.

“I’m so sorry.” Now the tears fell, and there was no stopping them. I wasn’t crying for the loss of her in the dream, but rather the restored knowledge she was gone forever from my real life.

“I was supposed to tell you something.” Her arm dropped away, and her chest began to crumble, exposing bits of rib before they too became ashes.

“Tell me.” I wiped away pink tears with the heel of my hand.

“The betrayal is not what you think.”

“The…betrayal? What betrayal?”

“Sometimes you misplace your trust, but then you find it again.”

“Brigit, what are you talking about?”

“You look really pretty in red,” she commented, and her gaze rested on my hands.

Instead of being covered in her debris, my arms were coated with thick blood, all the way up to my elbows, dripping down in a puddle around my feet.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered. “Someone else will clean up your mess.”

When I woke up, I was still in the box.

My heart seized as I stared into the black interior of the coffin, and in defiance of all logic I pushed out, scrambling against the velvet walls. I couldn’t stretch my arms fully in any given direction, and each time I tried to find purchase on something my hands slid off.

So, of course, I attempted to sit up.

My head thumped the roof, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Why had I let Ingrid talk me into traveling this way? How had Holden been so cavalier about the whole thing? As if being inside a coffin was no big deal.

Considering how many people wanted me dead, I’d given them a perfect opportunity to come right to me. And now what? I was stuck in the coffin, unable to tell where I was or who was waiting outside. What if I’d been buried alive?

Just the thought of it made my panic swell, adrenaline coursing through me as I clawed at the velvet and pounded my fists into the metal underneath.

“Let me out,” I screamed, my voice raspy with terror.

Something bumped against the coffin, and I went still, straining to hear what was going on. The lid creaked