“In a heartbeat,” he replied.
“And there’s your answer, Sawyer Taylor.”
His gaze clearing, it drifted over to Reaver, which was propped up in the other visitor’s chair in the corner. It hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Did it show up in time to save you?”
I nodded. “It went away in time to have my ass handed to me too, but it showed up again when it mattered.”
My partner’s expression vacillated between anguish, guilt, and anger. “I’m so sorry, Cat.”
“For what?”
The muscle in his jaw feathered. “For not being there. For not noticing you were gone.”
“You were under the influence of a spell.”
“That’s not an excuse. You broke it…” He looked down at where my opal was sitting against my sternum, hidden by the gown. “You broke through the spell while I was chained to a biological imperative.”
“You can’t fight your nature, Sawyer.” Reaching out slowly, I placed my hand on his. “You’re an incubus. Sex is what you need, what you do, what you think, breathe, and eat.” I retracted my hand and settled it on my stomach. “I am but a lowly human,” I said with a wink.
“You’re more than that, Cat, and you know it.”
I raised my brows, inviting him to say more. Hey, I was in a hospital room with an aching shoulder, a busted knee, and bruised to the hilt. I could do with a little ego stroking.
“You have no idea, do you? You should’ve been dead in the principal’s office that first day we met. That Renfield was going to kill you.”
I was going to shrug, to dismiss his words, but then I thought about it. “I am pretty amazing, right?”
He chuckled. “Yeah, I’d say so.”
Silence fell on the room. “Can we link it all to Draco? I mean, does it all fit?”
I thought it did, but Sawyer was better at understand the supernatural stuff than I was. “I think so. The Renfield in the principal’s office was one of his. He was making the baby vampires in order to draw you out, although how he knew you’d be the one…” He paused, then swore.
“What? What is it?”
“Faline.”
“Oh, I love this game. Dead.” He gave me a look. “You’re supposed to say the first word you think of when you hear the word ‘dead.’”
Shaking his head, he said, “Faline was supposed to be my partner, not you. About a week before you came strolling into the office, she said she wanted to work alone. I couldn’t understand it at the time, because we worked so well together. Now it makes sense. She was engineering it so that you would become my partner.”
“None of the other members of PIG have partners,” I pointed out.
“That’s because they don’t play nice,” he replied. “Well, except for Brax, but he never goes out into the field. He’s more of our secretary.”
“I’m going to tell him you said that.”
He shook his head. “Faline played me, played us, the whole time.”
I thought back to her showing up at my kickboxing class, then at my apartment after the crash. She did seem to just know where I was going to be, popping up at the most convenient time.
“I’m glad she’s dead,” I said, holding Sawyer’s gaze. “I’m glad I killed her. You can’t have people you don’t trust guarding your back.”
He smiled. “You’re right about that, Cat.”
When Sawyer went to get something to eat and to sneak me in a hamburger, I picked up my phone from the rolling table beside my bed and unlocked it. I had about a gazillion missed calls and texts from Sasha. I began scrolling through, feeling more and more guilty as the simple wording of ‘Hey, what’s happening?’ turned into ‘OMFG, WHERE ARE YOU???’ toward the end.
I shut down the message app and called her.
“Oh, my fucking god!’ she shouted when the call connected. “Why haven’t you been answering my calls and texts?”
“Hey, Sash,” I said lamely. “I’m really—”
“Don’t you dare say sorry,” she screeched. Yanking the phone away from my ear, I wondered if she was part banshee and didn’t know it. Slowly, like I was bringing a grenade with the pin pulled out back to my head, I listened as she continued her rant.
“…at class, Mike asked about you and you didn’t answer my calls and I thought you were dead andwhythefuckdidn’tyouanswermycallsandtexts?”
I cringed. I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. When my friend stopped long enough to take a breath, I cut in. “I’m sorry, Sasha. Things got…” Murderous? Nah, too dramatic. Busy? Not dramatic enough. “Things were crazy at work. Long hours. Trips to the hospital. Things like that.”
“The hospital? Is that where you are right now?”
I sucked on my teeth for a moment, wondering how much I could tell her without her coming down here. I was getting out soon, and I didn’t want her to come all the way down here if I wasn’t going to be here for much longer. “Yes?”
Stunned silence.
I soaked it up while I could.
“Yes?? What the fuck happened to you?”
Sighing, I ran my fingertips over the textured blanket around my legs. “I may have gone to a sex club and maybe, kind of gotten into a fight with a succubus and then a vampire?”
“You may have?” she retorted.
Yeah, it was a pretty fucking thin excuse. “I did and now he’s dead, so all good.”
Sasha exhaled sharply, and when she spoke again, her voice was modulated. “Okay. I know you’re a cop, Cat, so I knew things like this were going to happen. I’d just hoped that you would’ve told me about them.”
And didn’t that just make me feel like shit? I was a terrible friend. “I’d intended to, Sash, but things just got out of control.”
This was the first time we’d ever had an argument like this, so I wasn’t sure
