Chapter 15
Iran straight to the front driveway, worried that there was a threat, but climbing out of the driver’s seat of the Mercedes was an exhausted and frustrated-looking Sexton.
There were purple circles under his eyes like he hadn’t slept in years, and when he turned to look at me, he didn’t have to roll his eyes for me to know he wanted to.
“Your father woke up,” he informed me, deadpan.
I winced.
“Father?” Doc asked, sounding surprised, standing beside Davin’s car, which had clearly just parked right in front of the Mercedes.
That was when my father sort of . . . slid out of the passenger seat of the Mercedes.
Not in a cool, dexterous way, but in a liquid, not in control of his body way.
He was only stopped from becoming a dragon puddle on the ground next to the car by Davin’s incredible speed, at his side before I even saw him moving, one hand under his arm and another around his back.
“I’ll be damned,” Doc added at the sight of him. “You look like hell, Devlin.”
My father grinned at him, and as strange as the expression was on his too-thin face, it was . . . nice to see him smile. It was nice to see him anything. “Really? Because I feel amazing. Best I’ve felt in thirty years, at least.”
Doc’s answer was a strangled laugh, like he was amused, but he wasn’t quite sure he was allowed to laugh at such a dark fucking joke.
That was when the door flew open with a bang, reverberating off the inside wall, and rebounding back into my mother’s side, though I didn’t think she even noticed.
For a second, it was as though time froze. We all stood there, staring uselessly at him, thin and frail and smiling like the Solstice had come early, and my mother, perfect in every way as usual, but for the tears streaming down her face.
And then she was running.
Again, vampire, so she looked like nothing so much as a black and red blur streaking down the stairs and across the pavement.
Then, they were holding each other. Well, she was holding him up, but his arms were wrapped just as tight around her as he stared into her eyes. “Fi,” he whispered. “Look at you. Just as perfect as the last time I saw you.”
“You look like hell, you fucking ass,” she hissed back, and somehow, it sounded exactly as adoring as he had.
He leaned his head forward till their foreheads touched, and closed his eyes. “Never thought I would see you again.”
“And now you’re never leaving,” she answered, as she hefted him properly up into her arms. “I’m going to have someone out to build a ten-foot security fence, and then I’m hiring an army for security.
I’ll fucking start a civil war if I have to, make California independent and run it myself.
No one is ever getting their hands on you again. ”
He didn’t answer her, just smiled and leaned into her.
Sexton sighed, coming up beside me. “I’m sorry.
He woke up and absolutely would not listen to me when I said you knew you were in danger, and knew how to protect yourself.
He was having a meltdown over it. Insisted he had to see you.
Had to see Fiona. That you needed him, even though I reminded him that we’re both the next best thing to useless right now.
” He glanced in my mother’s direction and then lowered his voice.
“I can barely walk, and he fucking can’t. This was the worst idea ever.”
“If you think that’s the worst idea ever,” my father said, without lifting his head or opening his eyes, “you should stick around and see my encores. I promise I’ll surprise you.”
My mother? She just hissed in frustration and turned to march them both into the house.
“I expect he’s right about that,” Doc added, coming over to where Sexton and I stood. “Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t see it long before that you were Devlin’s son, Flynn. The man is so good at bad ideas, it’s like a gift.”
I frowned at him, but also . . . it was kind of hard to deny.
My whole childhood, I’d been like a bad idea factory.
Parachuting off the roof of the house, tasting the roses to see if they were delicious as well as pretty, testing out the car cigarette lighter on my finger to see if it’d leave that cool circular pattern in my skin.
Hard to imagine a grown ass man being quite so full of nonsense as that, but somehow, I wasn’t too bothered by the idea of finding out.
Sexton, fully on the other side of that equation, groaned. “Lovely. I can’t wait for him to get us all killed.”
Davin shrugged and smiled at him. “At least it won’t be boring.”
That . . . reminded me of the way he’d talked about his life before becoming a vampire.
Dryshite, he’d said, which I had learned was an actually insulting bit of Irish slang about being completely boring.
It was . . . well, boring didn’t describe the Davin I knew, but maybe that was the point.
He’d taken the opportunity of becoming a vampire and moving to California to change everything he hadn’t liked about his life, even if he hadn’t intrinsically changed himself.
And it turned out that Davin kind of liked the chaos I brought to the table.
I stepped up next to him and leaned on his shoulder, wrapping my arms around him. “I kind of don’t want to go inside,” I admitted. “I don’t really want to interrupt their reunion. I know it’s not going to be over the top or anything, but . . . you know?”
Doc was the one who spoke up. “They’ve been through a lot. No harm in you wanting to give them room to figure things out. But I’m sure she’s taken him to her room, so we won’t interrupt anything.”
That was a weird thought. In every year of my life that I remembered, the only people who’d been allowed in my mother’s bedroom were her, and very occasionally, me. Not even Mirabelle went in there.
On the other hand, it seemed obvious that it was a place my father belonged.
I couldn’t help but smile at the whole thing. I had parents, and they loved each other.
Hell, my mother had certainly just offered to do something incredibly illegal because it might protect him. I’d always known she would burn the world down for me, but there it was in stark relief.
Twist appeared in the empty and still open front doorway. “I have finished eating, Father. When do we go kill the false dragon?”
Davin, without missing a beat, turned to me. “Still hungry, or just bloodlust?”
I couldn’t hold back the laughter at that.
Half a dozen people showed up at the house over the course of the night; my mother’s closest friends and allies, including Blair and her brother, and a few people I didn’t know nearly as well.
They were all reasonably comfortable with each other, though, so they congregated in the sitting room, and didn’t even question it when they were told what was going on and even more, why Mother had called them in but wasn’t available to talk to them.
I hated screwing up my whole schedule, but when morning came, it seemed most sensible to just take Davin and crash in my childhood bedroom.
Frankly, I was annoyed I hadn’t thought of it earlier. The room was soundproofed, after all . . .
Not that Davin would have ever agreed to have sex in my mother’s house. So I sighed to myself, stripped down to my boxers and T-shirt, and curled up next to him to sleep. At least he was nice and warm.
That was kind of odd, come to think of it. I was warmer than the average person. Over ninety-nine degrees. Always had been. So why did Davin’s body feel warm next to mine?
When he turned over and pulled me tight against him, it cut off my train of thought and just left me appreciating the feel of it. Appreciating him. It didn’t take long to drift off that way, focused only on how warm and safe it was, wrapped up in Davin’s arms.
I woke to a knock on the door, and weirdly, Mirabelle brought in a tray with breakfast for both me and Davin.
When she saw the confused look on my face, she gave a deep, annoyed sigh.
“They’re hanging around in the dining room this morning, and I didn’t think you wanted to be a zoo exhibit while eating, since you two and your family are the only people in the house that eat, and both of them are still recuperating in bed right now.
So trays to bedrooms it is.” She bustled over and extended the legs of the tray before setting it across most of the bed.
It was an impressive array of foods, definitely enough for two people, even if one of them was a dragon.
“That cousin of yours has impressive manners,” she observed as she hurried out and came back with a second tray.
I wasn’t sure where she was going to put it, but it turned out it just held drinks, so she handed me a glass of juice, then poured us both tea from a pot that had been brewing on the tray.
Then she stopped and looked at Davin. “Something wrong?”
“Sexton,” was all he said, staring at her.
She cocked her head in confusion, then slowly nodded. “That’s the one, yes. There’s not another cousin I don’t know about is there? Poor dear is terribly sweet. Acts like a kicked dog who’s afraid he’s about to be tossed out on his head. Thanked me a dozen times just for breakfast.”
Davin continued to look confused, so I smiled at her.
“Sexton is in the process of some major life changes. He was raised alone and sort of spoiled in that weird way that sometimes happens to rich people. He only just realized he doesn’t need to act like a jerk to get what he wants in life, so he’s relearning who he wants to be. ”
Mirabelle clucked her tongue and shook her head sadly at that. “Rich people are strange. Miss Fiona made sure you would never have that problem, though. Raised you to be a good boy.”
“I’m very lucky,” I said, nodding.
“And a very good boy,” she half-reiterated and half-agreed with me.
After she left us alone with our eggs, bacon, pastries, and drinks, Davin turned to me. “Weird way that happens to rich people?”
I scrunched up my nose, frowning as I considered how to explain.
“It’s . . . it’s like, Sexton was taught to hold himself apart from other people, told it’s because he’s special and important, but .
. . he’s not. No one is. And being alone didn’t make him feel special and important, it just made him feel alone.
But you can’t complain about it, because having that much money is supposed to be a good thing.
Except . . . in this situation, it sucks. ”
Davin turned back to breakfast, shaking his head. “Every time I start to think something about being rich is nice, like breakfast in bed, someone reminds me that rich people are fecking strange.”
“We are.”
“They are.” The words were stronger than the previous statement, so I looked up at him and found him staring at me. “Like the woman said, you weren’t raised like that. If you’re strange, it’s in a different way.”
I wasn’t sure whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, but since he was dating me and not my cousin, I was going to think of it as a good thing.