Chapter 13

Thirteen

brAN

Damien has always hated my driving.

“You know,” he says from the passenger seat of my Audi, “these days, car accidents account for nearly 2% of all vampire deaths. When a head gets lopped off, it’s hard to come back from that.”

“If a vampire were to piss off his brother, he might get his head lopped off anyway.”

He barely looks away from his phone in his hand. “I’m just saying—if you’re dead, who will protect your little mouse from Julian?”

The leather steering wheel creaks beneath my grip.

“That’s what I thought,” Damien says because he’s a fucking know-it-all.

As the road cuts right, I let off the gas and the speedometer sinks. “Better?”

“Yes,” Damien says, his eyes still on his screen.

“I need to tell you something.”

He finally looks up.

“It’s about Jessie.”

“You have my attention.”

Red and blue lights flash in my rear-view. “Christ.” We’re out in the countryside, so it’s likely a deputy.

“See,” Damien says. “If you’d been obeying traffic laws?—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

He laughs. “I’ll just eat him. I could use a drink.” He taps out of whatever he was reading on his phone, darkens the screen, and slides the phone into the inside pocket of his bomber jacket.

“Let’s make it a game instead.” I slow the car down and pull to the shoulder. The car is fast and nimble and stops with ease.

Turning in the leather bucket seat, Damien’s eyes flare with interest. “Which game?”

“How about we play Worth It or Not?”

He considers it, then, “All right. We placing bets?”

“Of course.”

The lights get closer as the Sheriff’s car catches up to us.

“I call Not,” he says.

“Fine. Worth it.”

“If I win, I’m sending this ridiculous car to the junkyard.”

“I’ll just buy another one.”

“Yes, but I’ll get a great amount of satisfaction watching it get pulverized.”

“All right. If I win, I’m kicking Sky out of the House.”

He frowns at me. “She’s my assistant.”

“And she’s my pain in the ass.”

The way she spoke to Jessie tonight was the last fucking straw. I know my little mouse thinks I was flirting with Sky right after our House announcement. I did laugh at her, but only because she was being fucking ridiculous.

“How long before you dump that mortal and come back to my bed?” Sky had said.

I’d laughed and replied, “When the sun stops rising and the air no longer fills my lungs.”

The Sheriff’s car pulls up behind us, the lights still flashing. We’re on a desolate back road, not a house in sight.

Damien sighs. “I suspect Kelly won’t want Sky around anyway. So you have a deal.”

“Bowing at her feet already, are you?”

“Fuck off.”

In my side mirror, I see the deputy climb out of his car. He’s late twenties by the looks of it, stocky, likely works out. I hear the crackle of his radio from inside the car.

“I’ll get the deputy,” I tell my brother. “You get the dash cam and the radio.”

“Count of three,” Damien says.

“One.”

“Two.”

We’re out of the car on three.

The deputy sees the blur that is my brother and me, but it takes his stupid mortal brain an extra two seconds to comprehend what that means.

His hand is on his duty belt, unclipping his gun by the time I reach him. I tear off his body cam, drop it and smash it beneath my boot.

Damien rips off the passenger side door of the car, wings it into the field, and tears out all of the comms.

I use compulsion to bring the deputy to a standstill and his hands go limp at his sides.

Damien shuts off the flashing lights and then comes around the front of the car, a cigarette clipped between his lips. He lights the end, curling his finger around the filter as he takes a long hit.

“Evening, Deputy”—I look for his gold nameplate—“Kent. What’s your first name?”

He blinks at me. “Mike.”

Damien takes another hit from the cigarette, the smoke curling in the light of the deputy’s headlights.

“Mike, tell us your biggest secret.”

His pupils pulse beneath the compulsion. His face is blank, but his hands are trembling.

Sometimes the big dumb ones can fight against being compelled, but never hard enough to get out of it. Geniuses are the easiest to control. It’s the hubris and the na?ve belief no one can outwit them.

Mike starts sweating.

“He probably thinks murder is the worst sin,” Damien says and hands me the cigarette.

Clipped between two fingers, I take a drag and fill my lungs with burning smoke. “Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to give it up.”

Mike’s lips are trying to form the words and his face is turning red from the effort not to spill them.

“Spit it out, Mike,” I say. “Deepest, darkest secret.”

“I cheated on my wife!” He immediately dissolves into giant, heaving sobs.

Damien and I share a look. Mike buries his face in his hands.

“Pathetic,” I say and hand the cigarette back.

Damien comes around and snaps his fingers. “Mike. Look at me.”

The big idiot straightens, fat tears wetting his face.

“You love this wife of yours?”

“Yes. I love her with all my heart.”

“Then why the fuck did you cheat on her?” I ask him.

“Temptation.”

“Is that all?” Damien asks.

“We’ve been having problems.”

“I didn’t know this was going to turn into a marital therapy session,” I say. “Should have brought booze.”

In the field to my left, an animal rustles the dry grass. We’re still alone way out here in the middle of nowhere.

“Problems can be fixed,” Damien says. “So why haven’t you?”

“I’m scared,” Mike admits.

“Of what?”

“Losing her.”

“You keep dipping your dick in other pussy, you will, Mike,” I say.

He starts sobbing again.

“Hey, Mike. Get your shit together.” Damien gives the bigger guy a shove. “Look at me.” Mike does as commanded. “Call your wife right now and tell her everything. She’ll decide your fate.”

“What do you mean?” He drags his cracked knuckles over his face, wiping away the tears.

"Your wife will decide if you’re worth it or not,” I tell him. “If you’re not, we’re going to kill you. Now go. Call her.”

He returns to his car, retrieves his cell phone, and taps at the screen.

Damien drops the spent cigarette to the pavement and crushes the ember beneath his boot. “What were you going to tell me? About Jessie?”

Mike’s wife answers the phone and he launches into a blubbering confession.

I pull Jessie’s mom’s letter from my pocket. The one that told the story about going to the fae realm with a baby dying in her womb. How she returned with something else. I took the letter when Mouse wasn’t looking.

“Read this.”

Damien frowns at me as he takes the slip of paper and unfurls it. He starts reading.

“I love you so much, baby. I’ve just been so overwhelmed at work,” Mike says. “I’ve been trying to distract myself. I don’t love her. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”

His wife is sobbing on the other end of the phone. I can hear a baby crying in the background.

“Go get the baby,” Mike says. “We can talk about all of this when I get home. If you’ll let me come back.”

There’s a long pause on the other end. The wife sniffs and says, “Yes. Please come home.”

The wind shifts and the animal in the field catches my scent. It’s gone in a flash.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” Damien says behind me.

“Because I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

Mike says his goodbyes in a long, drawn-out pathetic mewl.

“I wish I could say she’s just a changeling,” Damien says.

I turn to him. He’s leaning against my car, his legs crossed at the ankle, the left side of him bright against the glare of the headlights. The letter is hanging from his hand.

“But changelings don’t have terrifying abilities,” I say.

“Precisely.” He thinks for a second. “There are only a few brownies in Midnight. We could track them all down, see what they know.”

“Worth a shot.”

He folds the letter back up and returns it to me. “If she’s more powerful than you or me?—”

“Don’t.”

“What?”

“Don’t go there.”

“Bran—”

“If she’s more powerful than you or me, then we’ll be glad she’s on our side.”

He narrows his eyes.

“We’re having Rita undo the binding,” I tell him. “And you’ll not stop us.”

He watches me with that cool indifference. I know my brother unsettles most people, but I will always know him as the brother who held our little sister in his arms, sobbing over her dead body.

Death reveals who we really are, deep down, and my brother has always been the type who loves harder than anyone. And I know he loves me.

We are all we have left of our blood. He’ll do what I ask.

“The fae gate closed right around her arrival,” he points out.

“I know.”

“There are very few reasons someone would close a fae gate.”

“I know that too.”

“And if the gate were to be opened again, and we find out she’s?—

“I know, all right? I’ve thought about all of that.”

“Here, we’re kings. But standing against one of the princes from the Unseelie Court? We would not measure up.”

“I know that. For fuck’s sake.”

Mike slips his phone in his pocket and stands in the middle of the road, a little shellshocked.

“You could just let it go,” Damien says. “I could talk to Rita, tell her to pretend to perform the unbinding. Jessie won’t know any different. We could go on with our lives. You would have Jessie and I would have Kelly and everything would be as it should be.”

Mike’s shoulders are drooping, but his eyes are clearer. Will he be better off having risked his entire life just for the truth?

“Your wife is keeping you?” I call out to the deputy.

Mike nods numbly.

“I guess you were worth it.” I dart across the road and stop a foot from him. I zero in on his pupils as I tap open a connection so I can compel him one last time. “You’ll go to your wife and you’ll treat her like she’s a goddess and you’ll be faithful to her for as long as the breath fills your lungs. Say you understand, Mike.”

“I understand.”

“Good. Now get in your car and go.”

He quickly slides in behind the wheel and takes off, gravel crunching beneath the bite of the tires.

When it’s just my brother and me, I turn back to him. “Jessie deserves the truth.”

“You think she’s worth it, do you?” he asks, prolonging the game.

“Yes.”

He gives me a quick nod. “Then let’s hope you’re right.”