“Die for you? I practically killed you,” Dom said.
“Why do you not see yourself as I do?” She gave a sigh of exasperation. Her voice had a sudden, cool edge. She was distancing herself from him, and that imaginary knife continued its sawing motion. “I have nothing here. No credit cards, no transportation, and my damn phone battery is almost dead. I’m fine, really. Maybe I’ll just walk home.”
“I said I’d be back and I meant it. What happened last night?—”
“What happened last night was a nightmare. I just want to get the hell out of here and go home.”
He heard a click in his ear as she ended the call. He flew to his feet and pounded a fist against the wall, so hard that cement dust covered his boots.
She was mad at him now, but what had frightened her a moment ago?
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Mackenzie heard a light tapping on the cabin door.
“Good morning. Or should I say, good afternoon.” Shirl stood on the top stair, dressed in army green hip-wader boots. She held two empty buckets in one hand, two rakes pinched under her arm, and a to-go mug in the other, which she held out to Mackenzie. “It’s a two percent mocha with extra whip. We don’t do skinny around here.” She laughed. “Thought maybe you could use some company, since I heard Dom freaked out and split.”
“Thanks. He called you?” Mackenzie pulled the lid off to dip her finger into the whipped cream. Dom must’ve told Shirl how she liked her espresso drinks. She would’ve been touched by his thoughtfulness if she hadn’t been so pissed off.
“Yeah, I can’t believe he left. He knows he could’ve come up to the main house, and we’d have gotten him another room if he was so worried about hurting you. Hey, open the hall closet there and grab a pair of boots, will ya? I’m taking you clamming. It’s a minus tide and the water will be out at its farthest point soon.”
“I’m not really?—”
“Nonsense,” Shirl said. “Let’s get going. The tide’s only out for another half hour or so. It’s not often we get such a low tideduring the daylight hours, so we gotta take advantage of it. It’s usually in the middle of the night, so I send Chuck.”
One mocha and ten minutes later, they were raking the rocky beach for butter clams.
“I was so mad at Chuck when he came to bed this morning. He and Dom had a long talk before Dom left for Seattle. For Pete’s sake, if I had known he was leaving, I’d have gone out there and talked him out of it.”
“Chuck is a...” Mackenzie still couldn’t say the word.
“Vampire, dear? Yes, he is. That’s why he didn’t come down to the car to greet you last night, being that you’re of the sweetblood. He’s actually very charming. He and Dom are very close, almost like father and son, and he wanted to meet the girl who swept Dom off his feet. I sort of think that’s why Dom brought you all the way over here.” Even in the chill of the sea air, Mackenzie’s cheeks flared hot as she plucked several pale gray clams from the overturned sand and placed them in her bucket. “You’re obviously not a... a vampire. How...”
“How did that happen? How do we make it work?”
Mackenzie nodded. She told herself she was curious just for the sake of being curious. Like a detached reporter interviewing a witness, gathering information for a story.
“We met and fell in love. Just like two regular humans do. We talked about having me go through the change. You know, convert me into a vampire? We got married and even obtained Council permission. But when it came to the commitment ceremony a year later, I still couldn’t do it. I’ve got this huge blood phobia. As in psychiatrist-and-support-group phobia. The conversion process involves...”
Shirl stopped and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Well, let’s just say I couldn’t bear to go through it. But boy, did I consider it. A vamp and a human can’t conceive children, but a vamp and a changeling can. I’d always seenmyself with a whole brood...but I guess it wasn’t in the cards for me. God sure does have a sense of humor. Me with my blood phobia, falling in love with a vampire? Go figure.”
Mackenzie stooped down to turn over a rock and watched as a few tiny crabs skittered away to find another hiding place. A sense of humor? Like her being a sweetblood and Dom being a vampire?
The older woman meandered across the beach, which was sandier at the low tide mark than up at the top, her eyes glued to her shuffling feet. Mackenzie followed. They walked toward a large gathering of seagulls that flew off in unison, cawing their irritation into the wind. Evidently finding what she had been searching for, Shirl began raking the sand again.
“Is it hard for you and Chuck to think about? I mean, that you’ll...I mean...he’ll live so much longer...”
“That I’ll kick the bucket before he does? That I’ll age while he stays young?” Shirl held her hand up to her mouth as if she were going to tell a secret. “Thank God, I fell in love with an older man. Much older. Way older.” She snorted and slapped her thigh. “Can’t imagine what we’d have done if he were younger when we met.”
“If you were to do it all over again, would you still choose not to convert?”
“I don’t know, honey, but all I can say is that if I wasn’t so averse to blood, Chuck and I could possibly be grandparents now.”
“What have you found?” Dom watched as Cordell’s dark, slender fingers flew across the dual keyboards and his head cranked leftand right, scanning the huge monitors. He was vaguely aware that Lily had just entered the room behind him.
“I haven’t been able to hack into their main site. Their security is pretty tight. But from what I can tell, they’re stepping up their capture efforts. Look here. They’ve got several laboratories here in the States. Atlanta, Dallas, Orlando.”
Jackson elbowed Dom in the ribs. “Your buddies in the Orlando field office will be thrilled to hear this from you. Are you still not speaking?”
