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I didn’t even look at her. I just kept staring at Jean-Claude. Magda threw the bedclothes over both of us. I pulled them down to see the shutter closing. Someone had hit the button to close them, but they didn’t have to. Jean-Claude could be in daylight just like Damian could, like the Earthmover and Warrick had. I guess like Deimos’s dragon form could stand in full sunlight and not burn. That was it, the list of vampires I’d seen in sunlight who didn’t burn instantly, irrevocably to death from the slightest touch of sunlight.
When the room was dark again, I found Jean-Claude’s hand and held it tight. “Call the police,” I said.
“Anita, you wouldn’t,” Dad said.
I looked at him across the room where he stood in the doorway. “I want her charged with attempted homicide.”
“She’s not well,” he said.
“Dad, she tried to kill Jean-Claude,” Andria said.
He turned on her. “No, she wouldn’t do that.”
“She just did,” I said.
Grandma Blake had gone quiet. Pierette got her to her feet. “He’s already dead, it’s not murder to burn a corpse,” she said.
“Get her away from us, before I do something to her,” I said.
Pierette led her out and when my dad tried to take his mother’s arm, my girlfriend said, “Don’t touch the prisoner.”
“You’re a lawyer, Andria, do something,” Dad said.
“Dad, I saw her trying to kill him. I’m a witness, I can’t be her lawyer.”
“She’s your grandmother,” he said.
“If she poured gasoline over Judith and tried to light a match, would you feel the same way?” I asked.
“Anita, I am so sorry,” Judith said.
Someone was crying and it wasn’t me. Magda said, “The police have been called. We informed them that the victim was the fiancé of a U.S. Marshal, and a vampire.”
“Thank you, Magda,” I said; my voice sounded odd in my head, like it wasn’t me at all.
“Is he hurt?” Dad finally asked.
“Not that I can find.” I pulled back the sheets and moved his hair aside so I could see his face. It was still as beautiful as ever. I ran my hand over every part of him I could see; the only wounds on his back were the old whip scars from where he’d literally been a whipping boy for the noble son and heir he’d been raised with over six hundred years ago. I got my hands under his upper body and rolled him over. He still moved like the dead, boneless in a way that sleep never does.I stared down at the pale perfection of him. I traced my fingers over the cross-shaped burn scar on his chest. He was unbelievably, magically unharmed.
There were sirens in the distance coming this way. I pulled the covers up over Jean-Claude’s lower body and put his hand in my lap and held on. If it had been help it would have been too late, but sometimes prayers get answered, and sometimes the answer is yes.
58
I pressed charges againstmy grandmother. She’ll probably get off on diminished capacity, but it turns out that she was part of the hate group behind the Sunshine Murders and the group setting fire to our city. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. What did surprise us was someone who knew this house and where Jean-Claude slept had told her exactly what room he would be in, and they’d told my grandmother to open the window and let him burn. Outside of court I never want to see her again. Judith, Josh, and Andria are coming to the wedding, and Dad probably will still walk me down the aisle. Honestly, I’m not sure I care anymore. He kept sayingshe’s your grandmother, she’s my mother, as if that excused what she did and what she tried to do. It doesn’t. Real family doesn’t do shit like that to each other, and if they do they’re just people you’re related to, but they aren’t your family. Jean-Claude used theardeurto chase out the last dark taint of Deimos’s power. I was able to heal the Wicked Truth until it was as if the injuries had never happened. It was miraculous even to me.
They say no matter how terrible, good things can still come out of it. Jean-Claude can go outside in daylight. He has seen his first blue sky in centuries; we went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens so he could see all the colors of the flowers in sunlight, smell the herbgarden at noon when the sun has warmed everything until just brushing against it as you walk fills the air with scent. We’re planning a group trip to the Florida Keys, because we can finally show Jean-Claude that those Caribbean waters have a shade of blue in them that matches his eyes.
Author’s Note and Bonus Deleted Scene
There are always scenes that have to be cut from a book. They can be great scenes like the one you’re about to read, but they just don’t fit into the present novel. Most of the time I put the scene into an outtakes folder and wait for another novel where it will fit, but for the first time I’m going to give you the cut scene here as an extra. Turn the page to see a very spicy scene between Anita and Nicky. (This scene originally took place while Anita was at the hospital trying to heal Wicked and Truth.)
Nicky wrapped hisarms around me and lifted me so that I could wrap my legs around him. I’d forgotten we were wearing scrubs with nothing under them. He was already growing hard; it drew a small sound from me and made me grind myself against him. His fingers dug into my ass, pressing me tighter against him, which meant I couldn’t move as well. He turned us so that I was toward the wall, switching his fingers from my ass to my thighs, so he spread my legs wider and could control the angle as he pinned me to the wall, rubbing the hard length of him back and forth between my legs. He changed the angle, drawing back so that if we’d been nude he couldn’t have entered me, but he wasn’t aiming for that, he was rubbing and rolling himself over that spot just there ahead of that place that so many men see as the only goal, but nobody in my life. That sweet pressure began to build between my legs, but it stayed just on that edge and didn’t spill me over, even when he ground all that hardness against me in just the right spot.
“Just on the edge,” I managed to gasp.
“Right where I want you,” he said, his voice low with an edge of growl that made me shiver. He pinned me against the wall, holding me still. My lioness blinked amber eyes in the dark center of me. “No.” Nicky growled the word, burying his face against the side ofmy neck. He set his teeth against my skin, biting me so fast and sudden that it froze my breath in my throat. I had a split second for my eyes to roll back in my head from the pain and the promise of disaster, and then the lioness was roaring for us to fight back. Nicky eased back enough to growl against my skin, one word, “No.” I felt his lionlike heat pushing at my lioness. It was the soft version of him swatting me with claws. I didn’t want to fight, I wanted to give in, I wanted Nicky to win.
My lioness faded back into the darkness. Nicky drew back, his voice so thick with growling it was hard to understand as he told me, “I am your Rex, never forget that.”
