Blaire
BLAIRE
“It’s been three weeks! If they could, they would’ve tried to contact me by now!”
felt like a stuck record. She paced what had become a well-worn path around the threadbare old lounges in what she’d started referring to as the ‘den’ in the Vault under Stranger Than Fiction.
Roman watched her, his eyes tight with worry. And she knew why. Two nights ago, she’d done something pretty damn stupid.
She’d figured, if Roman could zip to Raoul because they were related, she could zip to her mother.
She hadn’t really thought through the consequences regarding what would happen if Daphne wasn’t actually at home, in the palatial Rodgers’ Estate in Forest Lake, but was … somewhere else entirely.
Fortunately (according to Roman) … infuriatingly (according to ), the zip had been a colossal failure. All it had done was make disappear for what had been for Roman a terrifying five minutes before reappearing with a monster headache, colliding with Jude, who had been standing across the room from her when she’d attempted the zip.
Roman had rushed to her while Jude folded his arms and watched her with that creepy expression he seemed to wear every time he looked at her. Like there was something he wanted to say but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it.
“Don’t you ever, ever do that again!” Roman berated. “You little fool! Your mother is a Cand—is human, the zip won’t work to humans!” His words had been angry, but the way he’d hugged her to him, had pressed his wrist to her lips to feed her, had been gentle. And it had solved her headache immediately.
“But I need to know, Roman. I need to know if they made it home. I mean, what else am I supposed to do? We have no leads. No clue where they could be.”
He’d pulled her sated body into his arms, tucking her close.
“I know, Sweetest. But we need to have a proper plan. We all need answers. We’ll find your parents, and Jack, and we’ll get those answers, I promise.”
Well, it was past time to make that plan. Because couldn’t sit by, not knowing what had happened to her mother … and Jack.
She paced once more.
“We need to go to Forest Lake.” She glared at Roman, who was already shaking his head. To make matters worse, Jude was shaking his head, too.
“You guys need to grow a pair!” she snarled. “You’re immortal for crying out loud. What could possibly happen to you there?”
Roman opened his mouth, but it was Jude who spoke.
“The Operation will be watching your home, . And there is very little chance that your parents returned there. The Operation has … a facility, and I believe they would have taken your family, and Jack, back to it.”
snarled in the male’s direction. “Well, if you know so much about this bloody ‘Operation’, why don’t you just take us to this facility, and we can break them out?”
“You can’t just waltz into the place and demand they give you back your parents,” Jude argued. “These are trained special ops teams who know our strengths … and our weaknesses. And they have access to weaponry that could easily kill you while your transition to immortality is still incomplete.”
The older immortal sighed. “Besides, I don’t know the exact location of the facility. They have ways of keeping it a secret to visitors.”
“Okay,” conceded. “So we just go back to plan A—we go to Forest Lake, and I do some rummaging around in Dad’s study. Maybe we can find something that—”
“Oooh, what did I miss?” Ellis asked, scampering into the room. “Did do her disappearing act again?”
turned to Ellis with a roll of her eyes. “Can you please tell them that there’s no harm in us doing a little trip to my place, just to see if we can find something that might help us work out where the hell they’ve taken Mom and Jack?”
She very deliberately left Harvey off that list. As far as was concerned, he was dead to her.
Ellis scowled over at Roman and Jude. “You two are overprotective to the max! This is insane! Are you legit trying to keep from visiting her own house? Roman Forbes, get with the times! It’s the twenty-first century now! Men don’t get to boss their ladies around these days.”
She stormed over and poked Roman in the chest. Despite the seriousness of the argument they were having, had to stifle a laugh at Ellis and her feisty finger.
“And you!” Ellis turned on Jude. “You can’t just prance into her life after nineteen years and start playing daddy, laying the rules down like a father figure, just because her mom turkey-basted herself with your immortal swimmers for some hybrid breeding program!”
’s brain shuddered to a halt.
“What … what did you just say?” she asked. Her voice came out in a squeak. It was like everything went into slow motion as the three others in the room turned towards her. Ellis’s face was almost comically surprised. Roman’s jaw was so tense she could see it pulsing.
Jude … well, he looked guilty … and relieved.
“Are you … did you … am I yours?” stammered, taking a step backward, staring in shock at Jude.
“Did you not know?” Ellis asked shrilly. Or maybe that was just the ringing in ’s ears.
“She didn’t know,” Roman confirmed, taking a step toward her. backed away again.
“Don’t …” she gasped. Her chest was too tight. Her lungs felt like they were filling with something thicker than water.
How was this the thing that would send her into a panic spiral? After everything she’d been through on Greenrock, how was this news the straw that broke the camel’s back?
“Sweetest, I …” Roman’s face crumpled. I’m so sorry , he said silently into her mind. I only found out just before everything went to shit on Greenrock, and I didn’t think it was the right—
“I don’t want excuses!” she shrieked. “I can’t … I just need a …”
She turned on her heel and ran. Through the maze of bookshelves, past Farida, who had been lurking in dank corners of the stacks, apparently searching for some obscure text ever since they’d left Greenrock.
She burst out the door and into the still scorching August heat of Downtown Chicago.
Stranger Than Fiction no longer existed. Well, it still existed, but it wasn’t a little, bustling island bookstore. The swinging sign was weathered, hanging from one flimsy, rusted hinge. The previously pristine green and white paint job was faded and peeling. Leaves and bits of trash were wedged into the cracks between the haphazardly boarded-up windows.
Just a business that had failed. As so many did in big cities.
Farida had said it was the safest way to go unnoticed in a city. And she had experience. She’d been moving the Vault all over the continental United States for decades. Keeping it safe.
still hadn’t quite figured out if ‘it’ was the Vault itself or some treasure hidden within. She’d guessed Farida was hiding it from Fortis, though. But she also knew she’d only scratched the surface of that story.
Shaking her head, she strode off, keeping to the shade. The sun felt brutal on her sensitive, almost immortal eyes.
She knew she wouldn’t be able to go very far. She and Roman were still newly Joined. And that meant it would start to niggle, then itch, then straight out hurt the further she got from him.
But she just needed a moment. Needed to breathe.
Needed to process this new explosion in her life.
She weaved through crowds of workers leaving their office blocks, getting into buses and Ubers, or making their way to the L. She crossed the river and turned along East Illinois Street, her feet taking her in the direction of something … anything … that felt familiar.
“You riding alone?” the ticket booth operator asked.
“Yep, it’s just little old me!” replied, handing over some cash.
“Step to the side. You can join another small group.”
cleared her throat, then bit her lip. The man blinked up at her. Blinked again. smiled coyly.
“Oh, I think it would be so lovely if I could have a gondola all to myself,” she purred, batting her eyelashes.
“Of-of course!” the operator stammered, his eyes glassy, his pupils dilated. “What was I thinking? Head straight on through.”
“Thanks!” she murmured, breaking eye contact and racing off before the thrall wore off and he came to his senses. was developing quite a talent for the thrall. In fact, she’d taken to everything Drinker-related with ease.
She didn’t even feel a twinge of guilt about using the ability like that. Although maybe she should have. Maybe, as she grew into her immortal body, she was slowly shedding her humanity, one skin cell at a time.
Looking back at the city from the Centennial Wheel had always taken her breath away. She loved Chicago. It felt like home to her. Despite having lived an hour north of the city proper her entire life, she’d always loved being in amongst it. Loved feeling lost in a crowd of people. Loved the smells and the sounds and the almost claustrophobic atmosphere down on the ground, surrounded by enormous buildings.
But the view from the top of the giant Ferris wheel just wasn’t boosting her mood the way it normally did. How could it, when every time she turned there seemed to be some new secret being cracked open? All of them somehow involving her.
Unable to distract her mind, she gave in to the maelstrom of thoughts.
What do I know so far?
I’m a hybrid Drinker. I’m a product of a government experiment to make half-breed immortals. Jack and I are the only ones who were raised in the human world. There are others … lab-grown ones … somewhere in a hidden facility.
But why was there a program to breed hybrids?
They could only really guess. Jude’s belief was that the Operation wanted to depose Fortis, to rid the Coalition of corruption, and to install a new immortal government that would better respect the treaty that had been brokered over a century ago. A treaty that Raoul—Roman’s father—had penned.
So, they were making an army of hybrids to start a war. But Jude didn’t know the extent of it. Only that he had agreed to help them because he had a vested interest in seeing Fortis go down.
Why? He wouldn’t say. But he’d supplied them with his … genetic material … to assist in their army building. The genetic material that had been artificially inseminated into ’s mother.
“Holy shit!” hissed as her gondola inched towards the apex of the wheel. What if she had half brothers and sisters in this facility where all the lab-grown hybrids were being kept? Other halfling Drinkers with Jude’s genes pulsing in their veins.
Nausea tingled in her throat, in her diaphragm. Pain throbbed at the base of her skull, dull but insistent. It could have been the sudden thought of siblings. But it was more likely that up here, she was reaching the very edge of the distance she and Roman could cope being separated by.
Why had she run from him? None of this was his fault. Everything she’d learned about her mother, about this fucked up government Operation, had been as much a surprise to him as it had been to her.
“Fuck!” she shrieked, lurching back from the door. She stared down at the fingers that had just a second ago been wrapped around the handle. Ready to break the lock, ready to launch herself onto the frame of the wheel and climb down, run as fast as she could back through rush hour city streets, to the little boarded-up bookstore. To the Vault.
To Roman.
Everything ached now that she realized she’d gone too far from him. Fucking stupid Joining pains! What possible evolutionary benefit was there to making a newly Joined pair feel physical pain when they were apart?
She clutched her stomach, tapped her foot frenetically as the gondola inched painstakingly back to the ground.
Finally, the ride creaked to a stop, and her door was unlocked. She burst out, scaring the shit out of the attendant, turning towards the exit.
And running headfirst into Farida.
“How … how did you know where to find me?” asked.
Farida rolled her eyes, tossing her braids over her shoulder. “Three weeks ago, I pulled you back from the brink of death, then immediately razed a field of immortals to dust. A day later, I moved an entire underground book labyrinth interstate, with all of us inside it, in the blink of an eye. But being able to find you, here, that’s the thing that you want to question?”
“Well, I had just almost died; it’s all kind of a blur to me. But now you mention it, how did …” glanced around, suddenly aware that they were surrounded by Ferris wheel attendants and riders disembarking.
But none of them were even glancing in the direction of the pair of them.
“Are you making them look away? Thralling them?” whispered, gesturing to the worker less than three feet from them, who was half-turned away as if they didn’t exist.
Farida shrugged. “You’re emotional. We don’t need them overhearing this conversation.
“I’m not emotional , I’m just—” broke off with a gasp, clutching at her head.
“Joining pains?” Farida asked, raising a perfectly sculpted eyebrow at , who blushed through her pain.
“I don’t see how they make any sense!” hissed as Farida linked an arm with her and ferried her back down Navy Pier. But before they reached the street once more, Farida tugged into a ladies’ restroom.
“Can’t you wait to pee until we get back to the Vault? I’m in agony here!” moaned. Farida shot her a dark look and shoved her into a stall, stepping in behind her.
“What the hell?” asked, but Farida pulled her into a tight embrace. And then there was the weird, floaty feeling of being not quite here and not quite there …
… and they were back in the Vault.
“How …?” asked in a low voice, then sighed when she realized there was no more Joining pain.
“The pains are to encourage Joined couples to stay close,” Farida explained in a low voice. “To copulate frequently. The more sex you have, the faster you’ll get over the … teething phase. We don’t reproduce easily, our kind—we aren’t fertile until we Join, and even then, it’s a lot less successful than Candies … humans. The pains ensure a Joined couple has an added incentive to stay together, to attempt to reproduce.”
looked at her in horror. “It’s a biological incentive to mate? Like … like animals?”
Farida snorted. “We’re all animals, . Humans included. We all have a drive to continue our species. Joining pains are especially effective when a Joined couple aren’t … well, when they don’t relish the Joining.”
“That actually happens?” asked. “I can’t imagine not wanting Roman … not needing him in that way.” She barely blushed. She’d had to get okay fast with their sex life being public knowledge. Nothing in the Vault was ever really a secret. Especially nothing related to how frequently and Roman snuck off and returned, sweaty and flushed, with swollen lips and clothes buttoned up in the wrong holes.
Farida’s eyes turned black as she nodded. “It happens.”
was too afraid to ask for more detail. Farida was fucking frightening.
Warm arms wrapped around her from behind, and all the tension drained from her body. She sank into Roman’s embrace, the relief of being back in his arms making her knees weak.
“Sweetest,” he rumbled against her ear, turning her in his arms and tucking her head under his chin. “You’re safe.”
She nuzzled her nose against his chest. “I’m sorry I ghosted for a bit,” she mumbled into his shirt.
He pressed her back, taking her chin between finger and thumb and tilting her head too look up at his serious, emerald eyes. “No. I’m sorry. I should never have kept his identity from you, even if I thought I was doing it to protect you.”
“No more secrets, okay?” she murmured, pressing up onto her toes to plant a kiss on his mouth.
“No more secrets,” he agreed fervently against her lips. He hugged her tighter to him, deepening the kiss, his mouth devouring, greedy. As if he needed to reassure himself that she was still there, still his.
Always yours , Roman, she silently soothed.
Forever , he vowed.
“Well,” Farida interrupted, her voice businesslike. Roman pulled back from ’s mouth reluctantly, giving her waist a quick squeeze. “Now that you’ve had a chance to … reconnect … let’s make a bloody plan for Forest Lake.”