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“You need to call Lucas. He needs to ask Jackson who the man was who helped him kidnap me. Then you need to find that man and tell him if he doesn’t pay reparation to me, I will find a goddess to make sure the rule of three comes to bite his witch ass with a vengeance. ”
“What. The. Hell?”
“Just trust me. ”
He opened the car door and looked over at me. “Do you actually know a goddess?”
“Half-goddess. ”
He got out and walked around the car to my side, leaning against the window and fixing me with a hard look. “Look. I appreciate that this time you aren’t sneaking out and leaving me passed out on your living room floor, I really do. But, if I ask you where you’re going, will you tell me?”
“Yes. ”
“Where are you going?”
“To save three sad-sack vampire slayers from the scariest-sounding vampire I’ve ever had the displeasure of speaking to. At an amusement park. In Rhinebeck. ” There was more to it, but I didn’t have time to explain my gut feeling about the vampire on the phone being linked to the dead elders. I wasn’t sure why, but something inside me told me the two things were connected.
Desmond straightened. “My life would be so much simpler if I thought you’d made that up. ”
“Your life would have been a lot simpler if you’d decided to date Kellen Rain instead of me. ”
He frowned, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he was surprised I knew about Kellen’s former love for him, or if he’d been oblivious to it. I regretted saying it, like so many things I’d said recently, and grabbed his hand before he could leave. “Desmond?”
“Yes?” He looked down at me again, his face barely concealing the concern.
“I’ll be fine. ”
His tight smile didn’t reach all the way to his eyes. “I know you think so. ”
“But if I’m not…” Oh hell, let’s just throw all caution to the wind. Honesty was a contagious disease. Once you started telling people the truth, it was hard to stop. “If not, I want you to know—”
“Say it when you come back, Secret. ”
“But…”
He squeezed my hand, brought it to his lips and dusted my knuckle with a kiss. “I need to call a wolf about a witch. And you have a heck of a drive ahead. ”
“Clearly you’ve never driven on the highway with a vampire. ” I revved the engine for good measure, which brought a smile to his lips, but it was a smile I’d seen before. Without taking more time than necessary to dwell on Desmond’s sad smiles, I pulled away from the curb and into the dark.
It felt like I was going back to Lucas’s estate. The drive north from the city with its tree-lined highways and alien appearance reminded me of the trip to his mansion. Instinct told me I should take the detour, go out of my way and get the pack. What was so great about being pack protector if I couldn’t get the pack to help me when I needed it?
But the moon was dangerously close to full, and judging by what had happened with Desmond the previous night, the wolves weren’t at their most stable. The last thing I needed was a bunch of moon-drunk werewolves going nuts, exploding out of their skin and ruining all my chances of saving Nolan.
As I drove, I thought more about the connections between my investigation into Holden’s innocence and the arrival of the vampire slayers into my life.
It couldn’t be coincidence that Noriko had found Nolan and me outside of Havana the same night I discovered the truth about Holden, and now everything coming together with a nest of rogue vampires out in the middle of nowhere. There was no way it was a fluke. I didn’t know how Jameson and Noriko were involved, whether their intent was pure or not, or if they were being played to get to me. Noriko had attacked me at Havana because she believed I was a vampire and endangering Nolan. But there was more to it than that.
Like, how had she known to find me there?
Something wasn’t adding up. Once all the dots were connected in some messy Rorschach disaster and all the t’s dotted and i’s crossed, things might not look much clearer but someone would be found guilty and someone would be dead. I was hoping both would apply to the same someone, and dead wouldn’t apply to me. But my job didn’t come with a long-term health insurance plan.
Eventually I’d come up on the losing end of a fight. My close encounter with Peyton in the spring had proven that.
So I was without the pack, without Holden, and hanging on to a wing and a prayer, so to speak. If Desmond couldn’t get Jackson to help him contact the witch, I was screwed. If the witch didn’t understand what I needed, I was screwed. Not since the Clinton administration had anyone been as hypothetically screwed as I was.
I pulled onto an old road in bad need of repair. Why anyone had built an amusement park near Rhinebeck was beyond my comprehension. Rhinebeck felt like Connecticut: the Sequel, with its rambling farm-style houses that were well overpriced for the average farmer, quaint antique shops and old country charm. It was where middle-aged city-goers came to stay at a bed-and-breakfast and watch the leaves change color in the fall. No one wanted to come to Rhinebeck to ride a Ferris wheel and eat corn dogs and stale popcorn, at least not all the time. The Dutchess County Fairgrounds were a popular August attraction, but someone had thought having an amusement park three seasons out of the year was a brilliant plan.
When New Yorkers crave a taste of their youth, they go to Coney Island, not Rhinebeck.
