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I might have felt guilty asking for the money if it were anyone else, but the vampire council was not anyone else. I sort of felt like they owed it to me now, considering I’d been their bitch for so many years.
The officer monitoring the holding cells let Holden out first, and me next, announcing we’d posted bail. Out in the lobby, Sig was leaning casually on the front desk saying something to Barbie in his smooth accent—one I’d never been able to place because it was so old—and Mercedes stood nearby, pretending she wasn’t enchanted by him.
Everyone who ever met him was enchanted by him, it was part of his gift. Some vampires had extra talents, and Sig’s was putting those around him at ease, human and vampire alike.
That was part of the reason he scared me so much. I felt relaxed when I was next to him, and since I was almost never relaxed, it made me extra nervous about him. Like he might attack me at any moment, but I would be so calm I’d simply roll over and let him maul me.
My blind trust was what made me most wary of him.
“Ah, here they are, my troublemaking friends. ” He straightened to his full height and spread his arms wide like he wanted to hug the whole room. Barbie was gawking at him with a starry expression, and even Cedes was having difficulty suppressing a smile. “I do hope they weren’t too difficult for you. ”
“Of course not,” Barbie said, as if she’d had anything to do with our brief stay in the slammer.
“We might need to get them frequent visitor badges at this rate, but a stay in the cells was new. ” Cedes toyed with her frizzy black curls. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she was flirting with the Finnish master vampire.
“Hey, Cedes?” I interrupted. “How’s Owen?”
Her hand dropped from her hair, and she seemed to shake off the hazy glow of Sig’s presence. “Owen. Right. My boyfriend, Owen. Owen is great. ” She took a few big steps back from Sig, suddenly realizing the impact he’d had on her wasn’t altogether natural.
Cedes didn’t trust vampires on the best day, and it had taken years for me to get her to treat Holden like a person—sort of—but she still didn’t have fuzzy feelings about vampires en masse. Sig wasn’t helping matters now, even if his mojo was involuntary. To people like Mercedes
and Tyler who didn’t get the nuances of vampire power, everything unnatural was an invasion of their psyche.
I wanted her to stay wary, but I didn’t want her to think all vampires were monsters. Some of them might be, but not all, and it wasn’t fair of her to paint every single one of them with the same brush because of the misdeeds of a few.
Maybe it was a side effect of her job too. I was willing to bet Cedes had a hard time seeing the good in humans, considering what she saw in the field on a daily basis. If I could get her to see vampires the same way she did humans, then I might have a chance of showing her there was some good mixed in with the bad.
Problem was some days even I had trouble seeing the good, in vampires and humans both.
“Cedes, this is Sig. He’s my co-chair on the…council. ” I avoided the word Tribunal because there was just no way to make it sound like a normal job. Council could be anything, though.
“We were introduced,” she said, her expression serious and her whole posture becoming more rigid. Since I was feeling the soothing impact of Sig’s presence, I knew she must be fighting it hard.
I leaned in close and whispered so Barbie wouldn’t hear, “He’s not doing it intentionally. It’s just…him. Try not to resist. ”
I might as well have told a wall not to resist a wrecking ball. She’d yield eventually, but now that I’d told her not to, she was more hell-bent on keeping his powers at bay. If Mercedes Castilla had a superpower, it would be stubbornness.
“You guys are good here?” she asked, though it sounded more like a statement than a question, as though we had no choice but to be okay. Without waiting for our reply, she turned heel and jogged up the steps and back into the upper floor of the precinct.
“Are you two done here?” Sig probed. It was a loaded question, and I knew he was going to unleash hell on me the second we were out of human earshot.
“Definitely,” Holden replied, the first word he’d spoken to me since we’d arrived here. In spite of our holding cells being next to each other, he hadn’t said a thing. Either he didn’t want to risk saying something telling in front of non-vampire company, or he was pissed at me for getting him arrested.
Or for ruining his precious suit.
We left the station together when all the necessary paperwork had been completed. With Sig signing everything, it made me feel as if he’d just bought me.
He already owned my life in so many other ways, what was one more?
Once the three of us were outside in the warm summer night, Sig’s pleasant veneer melted away, and he fixed me with a stern, unimpressed glare. “Do you know what it means to lie low, Secret?”
“I—”
“That was a rhetorical question, as the answer is obviously no. I let you stay in the city because you promised me you could stay under the radar. Keep a low profile. All those silly new expressions you people have for keeping out of trouble. And what do you do? You bring down an entire apartment building. ”
“In fairness, that was Grendel…”
“Now is a poor time to make excuses, pet. ” He shortened his long strides, giving me and Holden a chance to catch up. Holden didn’t seem to be in much of a rush, trailing a few feet back.
