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“You ready?” She slung a purse over her shoulder and tapped an impatient toe as though I’d been the one dragging ass this whole time. The great thing about Brigit was no matter how hard she tried to look serious or menacing, she could never fake it. In a moment she was grinning and giggling like a preteen.
“Let’s get this show on the road.”
Central Park West would never not remind me of the shitty prime-time soap opera that once bore the same name. My grandmere had loved the cheeky show so much she used to tape it weekly, which was how I’d stumbled across it years after it aired and before I moved to the city itself. Parked outside the shiny monstrosity of an apartment block where my future sister-in-law lived, I couldn’t help imagining people cheating on their spouses and sleeping off midday hangovers within the bowels of the complex. Rich people didn’t tend to want for material things, so they spent most of their time wanting attention instead. When they didn’t get that, well…shit met fan.
The reputation of one Miss Kellen Rain was a prime example of attention whoring gone wrong. Although I now knew her personally, I still got a sick sort of voyeuristic pleasure from reading about her exploits in the weekly gossip columns. From burning down the bar of an Italian bistro in the West Village, to having sex in the turtle pond in Central Park, there was never a shortage of rumors. The turtle-pond rumor had been made even more humorous, given Kellen’s reaction when I asked her about it.
“Please,” she’d said with a dramatic eye roll. “Do you have any idea what kind of bacteria is in that pond? Not to mention the turtles. Ugh. I have a shapeshifter predisposition. As if I’d risk getting bitten by a turtle and becoming some bizarre Ninja Turtle freak.” At that point I had made a comment on the lady protesting too much. “Well, I did have sex in the park…but in the castle, not the pond.”
That was Kellen Rain in a nutshell. Unapologetic and somehow totally loveable.
She had also missed the memo on bridesmaids not overshadowing the bride at wedding-related events. When she bounded past the building’s doorman, even he did a double take, and I’d never seen the man so much as blink before. In spite of the brisk mid-April weather, Kellen was wearing a slinky gold dress dripping with flouncy fringe. She looked like a Bond girl. Or a stripper from the ’20s.
Once she had clambered over Brigit into the tiny backseat of the BMW, which was barely a backseat at all, Kellen put an elbow next to each headrest and perched her smiling face on both hands. Only when the car door slammed did the doorman shut his mouth and come out of his stupor.
“Subtle ensemble, Kel.” I shook my head, unable to be genuinely irritated. Between Brigit and Kellen, I was in danger of losing my killer edge. They were making me soft, at least when the attacks involved charm.
“You look like a chandelier,” Brigit added, but the awe in her voice was all it took to know she wasn’t being rude.
Kellen, who had heard every possible derisive comment and cruel barb, seemed taken aback by the young vampire’s compliment. She blushed. “Thanks, Brigit. You look pretty too.”
I revved the engine. “All right, all right, enough. Have either of you two ever driven on the highway with a vampire in a sports car?” My two bridesmaids exchanged nervous glances in the rearview mirror and fastened their seat belts in a hurry. I flipped my straight hair over my shoulders and gave a wicked chuckle. “Smart girls.”
And with that, I peeled out of the parking spot with enough burning rubber to make Steve McQueen proud to share a name with me.
Chapter Five
Under normal circumstances, the trip to Lucas’s mansion in Upstate New York should have taken over an hour. Google Maps would tell you so, anyway. The narrow two-lane highway wound like an asphalt snake through a towering hall of pine and bare-branched oak. Every time you passed another car you took your life into your own hands, risking oncoming traffic around the next tight curve in the road.
Whenever I drove from the city to Lucas’s sprawling country estate, the looming darkness of the trees made me nervous. The dark can hide so many evils, I was hesitant to let my eyes linger on the tree line because my overactive imagination could formulate any number of potential attacks from within.
I never expected the road itself would be the thing I should fear.
The first blow was so sudden I thought I’d run something over. But as my gaze darted to the rearview mirror to see what poor fox or badger I might have killed, the previously unseen car behind me turned on its brights. The glare of the lights flashed in my eyes, rendering me momentarily blind. As the fist-sized spots of light swam in my vision, the car struck us again. This time the BMW bucked and I lost control of the wheel, swerving into the oncoming lane, which remained empty by some miracle.
Kellen let out a startled shriek and held on to my headrest. I got myself together, blinking away the blind spots, and swung the car into the proper lane, overshooting by a hair and sending a wave of gravel arcing backwards when I hit the shoulder.
I jerked the wheel back from the edge of the road and jammed my foot down on the brake, forcing the car into a sudden spin and making my tires scream as they burned a trail of hot rubber across the cool spring blacktop. When the car came to a halt, steam was rising off the cement and my BMW was headlight to headlight with a black Corolla. Possibly the least distinctive car imaginable.
Kellen squeezed my shoulder, reminding me I was not alone in this hellish game of bumper cars.
When I looked to my right at Brigit—just a quick shift of my gaze since I didn’t want to take my eyes off the car in front of me—the young vampire was wide-eyed but wore a vaguely excited expression. Kellen, on the other hand, was threatening to break my collarbone with her death grip.
“What do they want?” she asked, her voice high and trembling. “What do they want, Secret?”
I shrugged off her hand, trying not to be cruel about it. My future sister-in-law was terrified, and my being flippant wasn’t going to help anyone.
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly. “Do you want me to get out and ask?”
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Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a nice response, but in perilous situations I have a bad habit of overindulging in sass, so all things considered it was politer than I would have been normally.
Kellen didn’t seem to be fazed—she was too busy being scared out of her mind. “No,” she said. “No, please don’t.”
The Corolla revved its engine. My stupid brain was reminded of the scene in Footloose where the two boys decide to play chicken using tractors. It was all I could picture as the black car edged forward.
“Ladies,” I whispered, shifting the car into reverse and letting up on the brake a fraction of an inch. “Hold the fuck on.”
