“Don’t open that door,” I hissed at him.
Putting his hand on the wood, he shot me a glance out of the corner of his eye, before his lips curled slowly up into a smile. Before I could threaten him with…I didn’t even know what, he yanked open the door.
“Lysandro?” a questioning voice asked from outside, sounding confused. And it wasn’t just any voice. It was the soundof the man I’d fantasized about before all of this happened. The guy who I’d desperately tried to pretend that it didn’t matter to me that he didn’t like me. The one person outside of Sky that I was most terrified of finding out what had happened to me. He’d probably think I had it coming.
“Scotty, my boy. It’s such a pleasure to see you!” the old vampire exclaimed happily.
“Uh. What are you doing here? Where’s Ego?”
Where’s Ego?Why on Earth would he expect me to be here? Surely the others had told him I was gone. Or maybe he didn’t know because he’d never bothered to ask. He hated me, after all. But then, why was he here? Anxiety coursed through me, and I wanted to run and hide under my bed.
“Oh, he’s hiding behind the pillar,” Lysandro said.
Holy shit. Damn. Damn. Damn.Why’d he tell him that? He should’ve said I wasn’t here. Not that it would explain why he was here, but that was a him problem. No, he shouldn’t have answered the door in the first place.
“It figures he’d be hiding.” The disdain in Scotty’s voice was clear, and he didn’t even know I’d managed to become part of the undead yet.
“Would you like to come in?” Lysandro asked politely.
Outraged, I stepped out and glared at my supposed mentor. “Traitor.”
He looked back at me blankly. “I don’t know what you mean. Scotty’s my friend. You don’t expect me to be rude when he’s come all this way.”
“It’s not that far. And how are you even friends?” I asked, hurt. It appeared that Scotty was willing to be friends with everyone but me.
Dwelling on that fact wasn’t even an option. The younger man in question stormed over to me with fire blazing in his eyes.“Where the fuck have you been?” he asked, poking me in the chest.
I gazed down at his finger, noticing how small and cute his hands were—a feature that had always appealed to me—and then back up at his face, which was twisted in fury. His diamond nose piercing twinkled under the light in the hall like it was winking at me, and I noticed that he’d changed the color of the dyed stripe in his shaggy brown hair to purple. Man, he looked good.
His luminous brown eyes flashed with irritation as I just stood there, taking him in. “Ego!” he barked.
Coming out of my Scotty-induced stupor, I took a step back. “You can’t be here.”
“Why the hell not?” His eyes narrowed as Lysandro stepped up beside me, and I didn’t know how it was possible, but he suddenly appeared even more pissed off. “This is why you haven’t told anyone you’re home?”
Confused, I glanced at Lysandro, who merely shrugged back. “What? What are you talking about?”
He waved a finger back and forth between me and the old vampire. “Are you two, like…hooking up or something?”
Lysandro barked out a laugh. “Certainly not,” he said, sounding like it was the most propitious thing he’d ever heard.
Listen, I wasn’t even slightly attracted to the old guy, but damn. Offensive much? “Why’d you say it like that?”
Lysandro opened his mouth to answer, but Scotty beat him to the punch. “Why do you care?”
Uh, well, wasn’t that interesting. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you sound jealous.”
He scowled. “You wish, diva. Contrary to what you may think, not everyone’s under the illusion that you’re the hottest thing walking.”
Mhm. Did he protest too much? Maybe he didn’t hate me as much as he pretended to. That line between love and hate was awfully narrow, after all.
Lysandro smiled. “But from my research on the worldwide web, you do seem to have quite a few who’d let you eat them alive.” He quirked a brow. “It should serve you well going forward.”
And just like that, my hope that Scotty might actually be interested in me popped like a balloon struck by lightning. The image of eating anyone alive—which I hoped he just meant sucking some poor human fan’s blood—nauseated me to the point where the blood Lysandro had given me to drink tonight rose up in my throat, and I had to gag it back down.
Scotty planted his hands on his hips and turned his ire toward Lysandro. “What does that mean? What should serve him well?” He shook his head in frustration. “I don’t even care.” He stormed past me into my great room. “You’re going to tell me why you’re avoiding everyone, Ego, and I’m not leaving here until you do.”
I turned to Lysandro, completely dumbfounded by Scotty’s impertinence, but the old vampire merely smirked at me. How did I end up alone with the two most confounding men I knew? Well, I guessed Lysandro wasn’t a man, but was he half-man or no…wait.Ugh. I hated all of this so much.
