wanted.”
I swallowed hard. “Like where?”
“That night you saw my motorcycle outside that bar?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t at the bar. I was at the motel behind it … with Mishka.”
“What?” The wolf snarled terrible things in my head. I pressed my hand against my moonstone, forcing its calming power into my chest. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted her to get inside my head. She has a mind-control power she does with her eyes—steals her victim’s free will.”
“I know,” I said, remembering how she’d almost used it to kill me. And then I remembered what Mishka had said about partying with Daniel. The wolf growled—trying to make me embrace my jealousy. “Why would you want her in your head?”
“She can read thoughts, as well as manipulate them, if she’s got you in a deep enough trance. I wanted her to get inside my head to see if she could find the wolf in there. Tell me why I don’t hear it or feel it inside of me.”
I pictured Daniel lying on a motel bed, Mishka straddling him, staring deep into his eyes. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell me what he’d been doing that night. “What did she find?”
“Nothing. I didn’t go through with it. Her price was too high. I wasn’t willing to give her what she wanted in return.”
“What did she want?”
“Me.”
I gritted my teeth as an angry wave of power passed through me. My eyes stung, and my night vision kicked in for a moment. When I saw Daniel’s mud-pie eyes rimmed with sorrow, a rush of reassuring love pushed the wolf away.
“I left, and she was pissed,” Daniel said. “But then she texted me the next day and said that she’d changed her mind, that she’d take my bike as payment instead. We were supposed to meet up again—I was waiting for another text from her that night at dinner when I ran out. Only when I got to her place, some house on the outskirts of the city, I discovered the person who texted wasn’t Mishka. It was her friend, Veronica. They were in the same coven—like a family—and when Veronica had returned that evening, she’d found that Mishka and the rest of her friends were dead, and that someone had made off with about ten thousand dollars of stolen cash. Veronica wanted me to help her track down whoever killed her friends and get the money back. She said she’d help me if I did—get into my head for me. I tried. I wasn’t even with Katie on Sunday like I told you. I was trying to follow a lead that turned out to be nothing.” He groaned. “And I can’t believe I made up that lie about being with Katie at my place. It was the first plausible thing that popped into my head. But it was also the dumbest thing I could have said.”
I almost laughed. “No, the alone-in-a-motel-room-with-Mishka thing tops it. But I did almost take Katie’s face off the other day. I’m just glad I didn’t act on the urge.”
Daniel’s eyes went wide. He rolled over flat on his back, I guess deciding not to pursue that line of conversation. “The lead I followed was a total dead end. I never did figure out who attacked that coven.”
“Um … Well, I’ve got good news and bad …,” I said, and then I told him the story about what happened at that house that day. How terrified I’d been the first time I saw Talbot cut off someone’s head, and then how he had staked Mishka with a chair leg just before she almost killed me. And then, in an effort to be truly honest, I told Daniel about how Talbot had taught me to heal the burns on my face.
“I can see why you were attracted to him,” Daniel said. “You always go for the dangerous guys.”
“Yes, but I only love you,” I said.
And then we fell silent for a long, long while.
I must have drifted off to sleep at some point, because my eyes popped open when I heard a shout and a scuffle outside the door. The first thought I had was that Jude must have come to his senses and was trying to rescue us. I sat bolt upright, but then I realized there was no noise at all.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asked. His voice cracked a bit. If he was like me, he was probably getting parched. It had been several hours since I’d had anything to eat or drink.
“Yeah, it must have just been a dream.”
“I had one, too,” Daniel said. He was quiet for a minute. “Do you think after Trenton, we could get married and settle down in an apartment in New
York City or somewhere? I could be an industrial designer, and you could fight crime like a part-time ninja assassin.”
I almost laughed, but then I stopped myself, because I knew it would come out as a sob. I was quiet for a while as I composed myself. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, that would be awesome.”
I heard Daniel’s chains rattle as he changed positions. I took a deep breath and concentrated some power into my eyes until my night vision returned. I found Daniel kneeling on the concrete in front of me. I didn’t know if he could see me in the dark, but he had one of his special smiles—
the one that said he was truly happy—on his lips.
“So you’ll do it?” he asked.
“Do what?”
Daniel shifted so he was on only one knee now.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Grace Divine, when all this crap is over, and we’re out of college, and you take some time off from kicking bad-guy butt, will you marry me?”
He might as well have just kicked me in the chest the way all my breath seeped out of me and my heart seemed to stop beating. “You can’t be serious.”
“I’m as serious as I’ve ever been.”
I laid my head against the concrete floor, unable to respond. What did he think he was doing? How could he ask me to make promises for a future we had no chance of having? Didn’t he know how this ripped my heart in two?
“Yes,” I finally whispered, because even though I knew our getting married would never happen now, I wanted him to be happy—if only for a moment.
I rolled over and closed my eyes. I willed myself not to fall asleep again. I didn’t want to dream about rescue again. No more fantasizing about my life beyond the next few hours. Instead, I pictured Daniel going off to Trenton, then moving into that apartment on his own and becoming a designer.
I wasn’t leaving here, but if I could help it, Daniel would. Maybe I could create enough of a diversion to give Daniel a chance to escape. Maybe
Caleb would be thrown off guard enough by my choice to die that Daniel could find a chance to get away. Maybe someone could be bribed to help us—if only we had something to bribe him with.
I reached my hand out toward Daniel, still unable to touch him. “Will you promise me something? A real promise. Not the kind that gets broken.”
“Okay,” Daniel said hesitantly.
“Promise me that if you get a chance to escape, you’ll take it. No matter what.”
“There’s no way in hell I’m going to leave you behind.”
“But what if it’s too late for me—”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“But what if it does? If it’s too late for me, and you get a chance to run, promise me you’ll get away from here as fast as you can? You won’t hesitate, or look back? You’ll run to my family and take them someplace safe?”
“Yes,” Daniel said. “But only—”
A loud clanking noise cut him off, and the door slid open. Eight of Caleb’s boys entered the room.
