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He only cared that Lucas was alive again.
I wished Mercy’s return could have been that for me and Secret instead of the deadly burden it had become.
“
We’ve had wolves patrolling the city since Secret called to tell me, but so far no one has spotted her. Knowing Mercy I doubt she’ll make an appearance until she’s good and ready,” Desmond said.
“And in the meantime we’re going to go back to the apartment,” Secret said. “Where it’s safe.”
Desmond scoffed. “Do you honestly think your mother is going to let us sit tight and wait out the storm? She is the storm. No. If we go into hiding she’s going to do something to drag us out, and personally I’d rather just make myself easy to find as opposed to putting anyone else at risk.”
Secret stared at Desmond like she didn’t even know who he was, and I for one was stunned by the level of thought he’d been able to put into this when he had only found out about Mercy’s return mere hours earlier.
“I liked this better when I was the one who made the plans,” she said.
“If your plan had been any good I’d have let you roll with it.” Desmond grinned.
She narrowed her eyes at him but it was obvious even from across the tarmac that she wasn’t really mad.
“Okay so we put ourselves in harm’s way. Does anyone have a good suggestion of where the center of the target might be?” I asked. “We can’t just wander the streets of Manhattan all night hoping trouble finds us.”
“Actually, I’ve found that method to be very effective in the past,” Secret said.
I rolled my eyes. “I think we might want to find something obvious, somewhere she’d be bound to seek us out. Your place now doesn’t work, you didn’t live there when Mercy was alive. We need to go to where she’d know to look for you.”
There was a moment’s silence as we all thought of this. Secret had plenty of places she’d spent time in the city when Mercy had been alive, and it was hard to say which of them our mother would gravitate to first.
Secret swore under her breath.
“What?” I asked.
“I know where she’ll go.” She sounded angry, as if furious with herself for not coming to the conclusion hours ago. “My old apartment.”
“But that means…”
Secret nodded grimly.
“She’ll find my dad.”
Chapter Thirty-two
When Secret had moved out of her old Hell’s Kitchen apartment and into a new place with Desmond, her old digs hadn’t gone to waste. Since it had already been outfitted with a vampire in mind, she’d used it as a new home for her vampire father Sutherland Halliston.
Sutherland, who Secret had rescued during a particularly dark period in her life, wasn’t… well, he wasn’t altogether there. He was a nice enough guy, who looked permanently seventeen – the age he’d been when he impregnated Mercy, and then subsequently been turned into a vampire. Apparently, when you’re turned into a vamp and try to murder your pregnant girlfriend, you get a little unhinged in the process.
Sutherland’s sire had been a rogue, who had abandoned the boy to his own devices. Needless to say, it had gone very poorly. He hadn’t been the same since, and was a bit messed up in the head even now.
He wasn’t dangerous, and he’d been permitted by the vampire Tribunal to live on his own among humans, but he was a bit touched.
I wasn’t altogether sure how a meeting between him and Mercy would play out. Or, in fact, what Mercy would do when she saw him. Would she try to kill him for his part in creating Secret? Would she be happy to reconnect?
I wasn’t sure my mother knew what happiness was anymore. Her only joy came from feeding her spite.
We all hopped into the town car and headed towards Secret’s old place. The city had changed significantly since I’d last been here. We passed new bars and restaurants, some with vampire and werewolf themes, others that had stickers on their doors beneath the rainbow flags that indicated they were LGBTQ friendly. The new ones showed a full moon with a drop of blood inside, the symbol that told patrons the establishment was open to supernaturals.
More often than not places were open to us these days, mostly because it was impossible to tell at a glance when someone was or wasn’t a supe, but it was nice to see places making an effort to openly embrace us.
There were days I wished we were still a well-kept secret, but now that the coffin lid was open, so to speak, we couldn’t just climb back inside and pretend to be storybook creatures anymore.
