Page 74 of Mortdale

Logan looked like he was going to be sick. “Over my dead body. I’ve told you, you’re not allowed to get close to boys. I will have to arrest them, Bunny. Pin them to the fucking pavement. Boys are bad. Dirty and bad. You can never trust one.”

“But, Bear!”

I threw my head back and laughed, feeling my stomach burn from amusement.

His hand came to gently cup my face and his thumb softly brushed across my lashes before he stood and left.

Chapter 14

Logan

My wife was back on the move. She’d not even spared herself another extra day of rest after I’d left. Which meant I had barely managed to keep my focus on the job at hand. The urge to drop everything and follow her around town had been too severe. But the Madness had killed thirty more vampires in the short span of thirty-six hours. And until we’d raked through every corner of the southern town in Decimere, only an hour's ride from Darkheim, we couldn’t take one step out of it.

Liam was waiting at the door of my study when I stepped inside the mansion, as he’d been ordered to report to me every single detail. “I don’t like doing this anymore,” he said, following me inside and shutting the doors.

“Doing what?”

“Telling you about her every step.”

I folded my jacket on the armchair and loosened my tie. “If I find out you’ve missed telling me something and she’s gotten hurt because of it, so help you God, Liam.”

“I’m just saying, if you’re working together, why still doubt her. That’s just my two cents.”

“Your two cents will be the reason they get rid of pennies.”

“Asshole,” Liam muttered under his breath.

“And I don’t doubt her, Liam. I doubt the people around her.” It was through sheer luck that Sybil had not made her husband aware of whatever Willow had told her about. Whatever camaraderie the old witch had with her coven was the only thing that was keeping my wife safe for now. One moment I’d let her slip through my fingers, and she could have gotten herself killed. Right under my nose. Keeping her alive had proved to be more difficult than keeping one of Piper’s goldfish alive. Except, I just couldn’t swap my wife with a similar, yet slightly off-looking wife. And I was attached to the entire damn aquarium now. Not a single grass strand in it could be altered.

Liam cleared his throat, turning red as he itched the back of his neck. “She really gave you that?” he asked, pointing at the ridiculous book Willow had given me. Vampires in Furs.

I glanced up at him. “You’ve seen it before?”

He winced. “We haven’t stopped hearing about it.”

My mouth tipped up as I raked through the latest records that had been sent from the parliament regarding the infection numbers. Another futile hour spent with no result, for certain. This thing had no pattern and followed no same rule. It just sprouted out of nowhere without any warning. “Where did you take her today?”

“The library.”

“And?”

He groaned. “If you’re going to keep following her around yourself, why put me up to it?”

“And?”

“A daylight studio. She had some photographs taken with her and Piper.”

I set the pen down and narrowed my eyes on him.

“Saints! Fine. Me, too.” He took a tintype from his pocket and handed it to me. The three of them were standing up straight, grinning ear to ear at the camera.

“I guess I was paying for all of this.”

“You’ve been paying for a lot of things lately,” he mumbled to himself, picking up the photo from my hand and dashing out.

A knock sounded on the door only moments later.

I looked up, meeting dark, endless eyes instead of Christof’s usually nagging ones.