Chapter 15 #5
I needed to know if she was okay. I turned to look down on the restaurant floor again, and watched Jessica for a minute, stiffly pushing food around her plate. I’m sure it wouldn’t do any harm to Audrina’s emancipation process if I happened to bump into her mother and ask how she was.
I inwardly groaned. Talking to Jessica was like facing your worst high-school bully. This was going to suck. But I had to do it. Worry for Audrina was starting to consume me.
My gaze shifted automatically, taking in the sight of Donovan as he stalked back through the restaurant towards us. My belly gave a little flip.
“Quick.” Dan turned back from watching the crowd below and faced me directly.
“Tell me more about your handsome Prince before he gets here. I want to hear all about him.” He chuckled lightly.
“Juliette was convinced he was a mafia boss for a while, but her meeting with him the other day seems to have changed her mind.”
I was only listening with half an ear; but as soon as he said that, my attention shot back. “What meeting?”
“Ooh, you didn’t know?” Dan’s eyes widened. “They had some sort of secret rendezvous.”
I waited for a tense moment. My skin didn’t buzz; he wasn’t lying. My mouth fell open.
He laughed when he saw the expression on my face. “Oh, don’t look so horrified. Juliette swore nothing untoward went on. She can’t do anything, anyway; she’s got that cheating clause in her prenup. If Tony catches her, she’s out on her ear and gets nothing.”
“Dan.” I faced him directly, feeling my heart about to thump out of my chest. “What did she tell you about her meeting with Donovan?”
“Not much.” He shrugged. “She was pretty secretive about it. But she said that he cleared the air and answered some of her questions, and she doesn't think he’s a mafia boss anymore.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, she’s been acting weird ever since. All smug. Smugger than usual,” he clarified.
My eyes flicked back to Donovan weaving through the tables; my head spun as I watched him. He hadn’t met with Juliette, not without me. Why would she lie to Dan about meeting with Donovan?
Unless she wasn’t lying. Unless… she thought she did meet with Donovan.
Oh, fuck.
Donovan paused in the middle of the restaurant; something had caught his attention, too. I followed his line of sight and realized he was looking under the stairs.
He was watching the Andresanos.
After a second, he turned away, his brow furrowed. He looked like he was deep in thought. He strode back into the VIP section. “You.” He glared at Dan. “Out.”
Dan fluttered his hand to his chest. “Moi?”
“You have fulfilled your only purpose here in keeping the Chosen mildly entertained during my absence. Now go, before I throw you out.”
“Okay, okay.” Dan slipped out of the booth. “I suppose I lasted longer than Cynthia; she’ll be suitably pissed about that. Goodnight, Sue. I’m so glad you’re back. Things were so boring while you were locked up.”
A chime rang in my ears. Locked up. Locked up.
Dan blew a kiss towards Donovan and loped away, calling out greetings and high-fiving people as he returned to his table.
Locked up. Locked up.
The edges of my vision went fuzzy. No… Not now.
“Chosen.” Donovan slipped back into the booth, putting his lips close to my ear. The heat of his body felt like a baptism. The ringing in my ears faded away. “I have had a realization,” he murmured. “Your ex-in laws… the ones that call themselves Andresano.”
I inhaled through my nose and out my mouth, trying to calm my racing pulse. I’d felt it just then, the surge of a nightmare rearing up.
A nightmare? Or reality, rearing its ugly head?
Goddamnit, get your shit together, Susan!
“Yes?” I swallowed, clearing the enormous lump in my throat, and turned to look at Donovan’s face, instantly feeling much better. The jagged edges of my nightmare faded completely. “What… what about them?”
“They look familiar.”
“Familiar how? You did meet them the other day, remember? When they came to serve me with that lawsuit?”
“That is not it.” He rubbed his lip with his thumb, looking back at their table thoughtfully.
“I am not sure… It is strange. They are human—no trace of magic surrounds them at all—but they appear to my eyes to be more similar to my own race than that of the human species. It is their general appearance that is familiar to me.”
“Do you mean that they look like high fae?” I frowned and glanced over at Delilah and Gordon, trying to keep my focus on one crisis at a time. “I suppose they do. They’re both tall with wide eyes and high cheekbones. Lots of humans look like that, though.”
“Humans with fae blood look like that.” He scowled. “How amenable are you to the idea of me interrogating them a little?”
“Do you mean torturing? Oh, I’m fine with it, but Donovan… listen… There’s something?—”
“They are leaving.” He glared in their direction again. A waiter held a long fur coat, and Delilah shrugged it on, lifting her pointed chin haughtily.
Donovan was right; they did look more similar to fae than they did normal humans.
Even Vincent did. It’s what initially attracted me to him in the first place, his wide eyes and slightly otherworldly appearance.
Vincent always gave the impression of a slightly haphazard mischievous Nephilim that had found himself living on earth as a mortal, without knowing exactly how he got here.
Delilah and Gordon both turned and began to climb the steps to leave.
“Chosen, something compels me to investigate further.”
I could tell him later. “Go on. Please come back as quickly as you can, though. There’s something else I need to talk to you about.”
He ducked his head and pressed his lips to mine hungrily. “I will only be a moment. And I shall avoid bloodshed as much as I am able.” With astonishing speed and grace, he slipped out of the booth and drifted back onto the restaurant floor, following the Andresanos up the stairs.
I sat back in the booth, feeling overwhelmed. As soon as Donovan disappeared, the darkness of an intrusive thought knocked against my psyche again. Dan Rain’s voice echoed in my head. Locked up. Locked up. I dug my nails into my palms, leaning into the pain to keep me grounded in this reality.
Or, grounded in this fantasy.
Focus. Focus, Susan.
Dan’s little comment about Juliette having a secret rendezvous with Donovan screamed for my attention, so I grabbed hold of it, rolling back what he’d said in my head.
Juliette told him she’d had a meeting with Donovan, he’d answered some of her questions, and now she was sure he wasn’t a mafia boss.
I needed to find out if she was lying. Maybe she’d lied to Dan Raine about meeting with Prince Donovan, trying to pretend she had the inside word on the best gossip.
But if she had been telling the truth, then the implications were catastrophic. There was no doubt in my mind that she hadn't had a secret meeting with Donovan. He hadn’t been here, on this plane of existence, for starters.
Connor, on the other hand…
Juliette and I had lunch together only seven hours ago. Did her secret rendezvous come before that? Or after?
Or… was the secret rendezvous the reason she’d asked me for lunch in the first place?
All I needed to do was ask her, and I’d be able to tell if she was lying. She’d been here earlier. Where did Dan say she’d gone?
I froze. Goosebumps rose on my skin. He said a strange short old man had appeared and handed her a note, and she disappeared just before we arrived.
Goddamn it. Was it a strange, short old man? Or a banwyn with a glamor?
Cold sweat beaded on my forehead, and I took deep, slow breaths. If my suspicions were correct, then Connor had impersonated Donovan and gotten his hooks into Juliette. But for what purpose?
Juliette wasn’t magical. She wasn’t even powerful. She didn’t even have that much influence over her husband, so if Connor targeted her specifically to help him in distributing propaganda once he took over the human realm, he'd have wasted his time.
Fury boiled in my belly at the thought of Connor impersonating Donovan again. A memory flashed in my mind’s eye, blocking out everything else—a nightmare rearing its ugly head again.
Connor, standing at the window in my drawing room, black shirt unbuttoned and hair long and loose. He turned towards me and smiled, and I knew immediately that he wasn’t Donovan.
The memory faded from in front of my eyes quickly. I blinked. Now that was something I was certain of. Donovan had been scared that Connor would trick me and seduce me, just like he’d done to everyone he’d ever loved. But there was no fear for me—no doubt at all, not even for a second.
Connor could never trick me. That was Donovan’s nightmare, not mine.
Movement caught my eye. Down on the restaurant floor, Jessica Morningside got to her feet and air-kissed both Dan Raine and Cynthia Grace, missing their cheeks by miles.
Oh, God, she was also leaving. I needed to speak to her; I needed to find out if Audrina was okay.
As she turned to leave, on impulse, I decided to follow her.
I scooted out of the booth.