A short time later, Dom entered the loft and burst through the doors of the bedroom. Mackenzie looked up from her laptop, eyes wide. She’d pulled his overstuffed chair to the window where she sat with her feet tucked beneath her.
He barely paused to hit the controls closing the automatic blinds and with three giant strides he was at her side, pulling her into his arms. With his nose buried in her hair, he held her tight, almost too tight, but he couldn’t help himself. He had to feel her close, to reassure himself she was all right. She was their intended target. It could’ve been her that he found, not Martin.
“Dom, what is it? Where’s Martin? I’ve been trying to call him but?—”
He struggled to speak, his throat tight with the magnitude of what he had to tell her.
“What happened? Where is he?”
“He’s dead, Kenz. Attacked by Darkbloods at the art school.”
She staggered, and he held her close. “How do you know? Are you sure?”
“Kenz, I was the one who found him.”
Her legs went limp and he sank to the floor with her, wishing he could wash away her pain.
“What are you going to do? Meet Corey at the restaurant and say, ‘oh, by the way, your sister couldn’t make it, but it’s really nice to meet you?’” With her hands on her hips, Mackenzie stood in the foyer of the loft. Despite the fact that her whole body ached from all the crying, she was pissed at his stupid idea.
“Things are way too dangerous for you to be out,” Dom said, as he snapped the strap of his knife holster, securing a big-ass weapon to his torso, and shrugged into his wool peacoat. With two handguns strapped to his back that she did see—one of them she was pretty sure wasn’t even legal—how many other weapons did he have on him that she didn’t see? The man was a walking arsenal. “I’ll go to his house and check him out. I should be able to detect from outside if he’s got the sweetblood or not.”
She wiped the heel of her hand across her swollen eyes. “What if he is a sweetblood? What then? Are you going to knock on the door and make him come with you when the two of you haven’t even met? That so not going to fly.”
And like hell was she going to sit back in the loft and wait again. She was tired of all the waiting, of letting things happen around her—she’d been doing it all her life, waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for a hammer fall.
“I don’t care if you can massage his memory. I don’t want that done to my brother. I need to be there, whether you like it or not.”
Dom pulled his pant leg down over his boot holster, which held yet another knife, and when he straightened, he leveled her with a hard stare.
There was no way she was letting him leave without her. She grabbed his arms and wrapped them around her, pinning his wrists against the small of her back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“It’s not as if I’m going out there alone,” she said. “You’ll be with me. I’m safe with you.”
His nostrils flared slightly, that tiny muscle in his jaw flexing. “Fine. Get your things. We’re late.”
The restaurant parking lot was half full when Mackenzie and Dom arrived an hour later. Through the large picture windows, the sun was still setting over the Olympics, but she felt so numb she hardly noticed.
“How are you holding up?” Dom asked, his arm cast protectively around her shoulders as they made their way to an empty table in the bar.
“Barely.” Martin’s terrified voice kept replaying over and over in her mind. “But I can’t possibly wait to find out about Corey.”
“You look as though you’ve been crying. What will you say to him?”
She rolled her eyes. “Trust me. He won’t notice. Besides, it’s dark enough in here that even if he wasn’t perpetually stoned, he still wouldn’t notice.”
“He smokes that much weed?”
“Family curses aside, you would too, if you lived with someone like Vanessa. There he is now.” She waved him over.
Please don’t let him be like me, she murmured to herself. Perched on the edge of her chair, hardly daring to breathe, she chewed on the inside of her lip as she watched her brother zigzag through the tables.
In true skater-boy fashion, his longish sandy-blond hair curled into his eyes and resembled a wild mop on the top of his head. He wore a gray T-shirt that was actually vintage—Mackenzie recognized it from his high school years and knew it probably still had that small hole under one of the arms—jeans that hung from his lanky hips, and turquoise skater shoes that were unlaced. She managed to smile. He’d been dressed exactly the same the last time she’d seen him, down to the black shark’s tooth and small macrame cross worn on leather cords around his neck.
She stood to hug him and noticed a raspberry scrape alongside his face, as well as an acrid smell like burning leaves on his clothes. He’d probably smoked out in the parking lot. Either that or he hadn’t washed this shirt since the last time he’d gotten high.
“Kenzie!” Corey gave her a brotherly hug, almost yanking her off her feet, and when he clapped her on the back, her molars rattled. He held a hand out to Dom across the table. “Hey, I’m Corey.”
