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Colin’s wife.
I knew without even asking that it was her. I bit my tongue and kept on walking. If he wanted to talk about her, he would, but I wasn’t about to bring up the fact that the love of his life had been killed. There was no way that had been easy for him. I didn’t even like talking about the fact that my parents had died, and that was totally different from losing someone you were in love with.
Colin had cared so deeply for Elizabeth that everyone in Darkvale knew it. Their relationship was wildly legendary. He had probably known my brother, too. After all, Matt worked closely with Elizabeth. Was Colin the kind of guy who would remember someone like Matt?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I didn’t know if Colin was hands-on when it came to his wife’s safety. I didn’t know whether her employees or her guards were people that Colin associated with during her life. I just knew that when they were a couple, they were both always busy. He was building Darkvale and creating this wonderful haven where everyone could live peacefully, and she’d worked to ensure that both the humans and vampires had felt safe and cared for.
Colin looked over at me as we walked down the hallway. He grabbed my hand and gave it a little squeeze, but it wasn’t exactly comforting. It almost felt more like a warning. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me next, but I did know something. I was in over my head.
Like, so totally, completely, one-hundred-percent in over my head.
4
Colin
SHE WAS LOVELY.
That was going to be a major problem for me. As we walked down the hallway together, I gripped her hand, tugging her along. I tried to focus on the things I didn’t like about her. After all, she had screwed up my order. She’d messed up my plans for the week. She’d caused me trouble, but all I could think about was her scent.
The human shouldn’t have smelled as good as she did. I was lying when I said she stank. Oh, I could smell the sweat on her, and I knew she’d been busy working hard at the hospital, but there was more to it than all of that. She wasn’t smelly. She was perfect, and she was wonderful, and I loved the way that she looked.
When I saw Juliet, it was impossible to focus on anything else in the world. All I could think about was the way she seemed to glide along when she moved. She had an air of dignity about her that not many humans had, but more than that, she was hot as hell. I loved her confidence. I couldn’t quite believe she’d offered her wrist to the driver as a tip. Who the hell did that? It was incredible though, and sexy. My dick had gotten hard when I’d tasted her blood. It was perfection.
She walked alongside me down the hall. She kept looking around at the space around us. Her eyes roamed as she looked at each of the paintings that were hanging on the wall. They’d been carefully arranged, and if you stood and looked at them each in order, you’d see that they told a story about eternal love.
“My late wife painted those,” I told Juliet. I rarely talked about Elizabeth. I wasn’t quite sure why I was sharing this with her now. It just seemed appropriate, somehow. Most of the time, the other vampires in the house avoided talking about Elizabeth. She had been with us for many years, and then she was dust. There wasn’t exactly much to say.
“I know,” she said. Juliet looked over at me and blinked a few times. She knew? How did she know? There was no label indicating that the paintings had been created by my late wife. There was nothing to indicate or to show that Elizabeth was the artist. She’d spent years perfecting the way she painted. She’d labored over perfecting each brush stroke, and it showed.
“You know?”
“Everyone knows she was a talented artist,” Juliet said with a shrug.
Interesting.
I didn’t know what the humans said about me or my wife. I didn’t know how they felt about me in particular. I definitely didn’t have any clue that they’d thought Elizabeth was talented. I certainly had felt that way. The idea that other people had noticed was a bit wonderful, in my opinion. I liked knowing that Elizabeth was somehow admired, even if it was from afar.
“What else do people know?”
“That she died,” Juliet said, looking over at me. “My brother did, too.”
“Your brother?”
She nodded, but she didn’t say anything else. It was a moment where I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Although I usually considered myself to be a total asshole, I didn’t want to be a dick about this. Losing someone sucked. It didn’t matter whether you were a vampire or whether you were human or whether they were a good person or a terrible, horrible creature.
What mattered was that when you lost someone you cared about, your heart cracked just a little, and it was very difficult to recover from that.
“This is my room,” I said, changing the subject. It was a terrible way to transition into letting her see the place, but we had arrived, and there was no point in dilly-dallying.
“Okay,” Juliet said. She walked past me into the bedroom and stood, taking it all in. “Nice place,” she finally said. The room was twice as big as the one my brother was staying in. There was a huge bed in the center of the room that was undoubtedly big enough for five or six people. I knew because Elizabeth and I had shared that bed many times with our friends. Vampires weren’t exactly known for being monogamous.
“Thank you,” I said. “You can set your things on the dresser. The bathroom is through there.”
I pointed toward the en-suite. She looked at me for a moment before kicking her shoes off, setting her backpack on the table, and then heading toward the bathroom. I closed the bedroom door and locked it. Soon I’d have to go meet my brother for dinner. Juliet would accompany me, of course, but I hadn’t decided what I was going to tell my brother about her.
