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“Good.”
I bit my lip. “Is Wolf Grey too?”
“Not in the least. He’s Raven’s lapdog, hook, line, and sinker.”
“Then why are you?”
“I got into one hell of a bar fight back in the day. Wolf saw me brawl and decided to ‘save’ me.” Jackson said the word as sarcastically as possible. “Never mind the fact that I had a wife and kid. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to get out.” He saw the look of horror on my face and shook his head. “What, you think you’re the first daytimer who wasn’t happy about all this?”
“No,” I lied. I’d actually never, ever considered that before. “When was that?”
“’Seventy-three.” My guess about his age was right. Was I going to be trapped now, too, like he was, always thinking that the best of my life was behind me?
Maybe it was. I pushed that thought away. “What happened then?”
“House Grey said they could free me. Although it turns out their timetable’s a lot longer than mine.” His hands tightened around the steering wheel, and he turned the car back on.
* * *
We drove for five more minutes before I broke our silence. “You know you talk as if you’re already one of them, even though you haven’t changed.”
“I’m close enough,” he said, pulling us onto an expressway. “We have to get back. If I take any longer they’ll notice, and I still have work to do tonight.”
“Getting test subjects,” I said with a frown.
“Right.”
“What happens to them?” As much as I hoped Natasha’s research was fruitless, I didn’t want her to kill anyone to prove it.
“I don’t rightly know. So far they’ve all died—but I’m not sure what goes on before that. It’s why none of our Masters is allowed to kill anyone without permission—and why we don’t have many donors anymore. Raven went through them first. Easier to keep things quiet.”
“But you don’t know what she does with them?”
“I’m not allowed to help in the lab. I don’t know how.” He shrugged. “I could learn, but she’s not willing to teach me—and I was turned into a daytimer before science got so hard. I go in there to empty her trash cans, and deliver boxes of glassware, but that’s it.”
“So why did you rat me out to Raven?” I asked, but as I said it I realized I already knew. “Because you also want me to spy on her for you and House Grey. Great.”
A sly smile lifted his lips, and he glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “Anna’s not the only one who worries them—and up close you’ll have opportunities I won’t.”
“Even if I do, it won’t mean I’m on your side.”
“Fair enough.” There was another long stretch of silence. “Besides, wouldn’t you prefer working in the lab to being a janitor?”
Yes, if I didn’t have a sinking feeling that she was carrying on her demented father’s research. Nathaniel had been trying to create a synthetic blood replacement so that vampires would no longer need humans to survive. “Maybe,” I admitted. I did need to know what she was up to.
“And she probably won’t kill you if Raven tells her not to. Which is more than I can say for Lars.”
The more I thought about Natasha and Raven, the more wrong it became. Her father’d been willing to kill thousands of people to save her—and she’d been playing house. “She’s in love with him, isn’t she?” I didn’t know why it was so hard to believe it, even though I’d seen it with my own eyes. It just seemed so … unsafe. “Does he control her? Did he do that to her?”
“Nope. She came in that way. I was here the night she arrived.”
“And he didn’t command her to love him?”
“Not that I can tell. You can’t really command emotions, besides. Behaviors, yes. He can tell you to act like you love him, but in your heart you’d know.”
“Does he love her back?”
Jackson made a thoughtful noise. “Do vampires love? Does anyone? Who can say. He doesn’t sleep around on the side, though—it’s why Lars only gives him men, so as not to offend her. I’ve been watching them kiss for seven years now. Maybe it’s close enough.”
Asher’s math was right—we were the same age, only she’d been frozen in time by being stolen away and given enough blood to stay looking perpetually young. And I bet seven years of captivity could earn you an epic case of Stockholm syndrome, regardless of your original feelings.
Jackson took the next few turns in silence as we drove down surface streets, pausing to press a button for the garage door. When he drove us underground I watched the sky disappear and wondered when I would get to see it next.
CHAPTER NINE
We walked to the doors together, and Jackson hung the key back in the valet box on its hook. I followed along meekly, my mind a storm.
Baby, what have we gotten ourselves into?
Raven was waiting for us on the other side of the first set of doors. This startled me—and Jackson, who gave me a worried look, as if I’d somehow summoned Raven to betray his confidence. I didn’t realize until that moment just how much he’d pinned on my secrecy.
“Master, I apologize for taking—” Jackson began.
Raven cut him off. “You may go.”
Jackson bowed. “I’m sorry—”
“You may go,” Raven said, sparing him a dark look.
Without raising his head, Jackson looked from Raven to me and pleaded at me with his eyes before leaving the room. When we were alone, Raven gave all of his attention to me.
“I’m afraid we haven’t had a chance to be properly introduced yet. In private.”
“I was led to believe that nowhere in the Catacombs was private,” I said with a tight smile. I didn’t want to follow him anywhere—at least in the hallway there was a chance someone might hear me scream. Not that they’d necessarily be inclined to come help.
“Jackson taught you well. But come, you wouldn’t want to disappoint me, and I didn’t save you to kill you just yet.” He turned and started walking, and it was clear I was supposed to follow. With no other options, I did.
He led us back to the crossroads and then took one of the hallways Jackson said I shouldn’t go down, walking half a block before opening the door to a private chamber then holding it for me, waiting. Feeling like a fly being invited into a spider’s web, I walked past him.
Raven moved around me to sit on a low bed that occupied one half of the room. Everything was decorated much like his war room—in purple and black satin—but there was only one door, and I had no doubt he would be faster to it than I was. He patted the bed beside himself. I continued to stand, and he lifted his lips to show pointed teeth in an ironic grin.
“It’s going to be like this between us?” His disappointment sounded genuine—and worse yet, caused me pain. “You’re not a prisoner of war, you know. You’re one of us. You’re family.”
I knew Raven was lying—Lars trying to kill me proved it—but part of me desperately wanted to believe him. A thick chill was coming on again, settling like sticky tar over the rational part of my mind. It was hard to look at the bittersweet smile on his face and hold firm, knowing that my resolve was in any way causing him pain.
“I want you to feel safe here, Edie,” he said, stroking the empty space beside him on the bed. I wanted to feel safe too, so badly, more than anything else in the world—and how much more safe would I feel if I just took a step?
“Stop that,” I said, not moving.
“Stop what?” he asked, then closed his eyes and shook his head. “Oh, that,” he said, and gestured between the two of us, as if we were connected by a rope. “I can’t. It’s how we are.”
I kept frowning, concentrating on staying still. “Will it always be like this?”
“It fades as the blood does, but to some degree, yes. I’m a part of you now, no matter how much you wish I weren’t.”
No wonder there were so many vampires scared of Anna, if after sharing blood she had this power over
them. “Is there an antidote?”
“My blood is a poison then?” he asked, eyebrows rising. I didn’t respond. “Only the ones I’m sure you’ve already thought of. Your death. Mine. You would find it hard to kill me now, though. Like calls to like, and seeks to keep it safe.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
He tilted his head. “And yet part of you, your very essence now, is me.”
It was as though his attention were a weight, and the longer it was on me, the heavier it became. “Is that what happened with Natasha?” I asked.
He smiled softly. “No. She is mine by her choice. It is different between us.”
How far off the mark had Nathaniel been? My God.
“I don’t think you’ve appreciated the predicament you’re in yet, Edie, so I’ve brought a prop.” He reached into a pocket hidden by his coat and brought out a knife. “Do you know what this is?”
