Stefan’s house was in Kennewick proper, about a twenty-minute drive from our home. I called Zee—he was used to me calling in the middle of the night.
“Still working,” I said, trying not to think about skull cups. “Can you open tomorrow?”
“Yes,” he said, and hung up.
Adam called his security company and told them he’d be gone for a week, though available in an emergency. I thought about that for a minute and called Zee back.
“Can you handle the shop this week?” I asked, expecting the same yes and click of a disconnect.
“It is bad, then,” said Zee instead.
“Probably,” I told him. “Signs point to all hell is about to break loose.”
Zee snorted. “Situation normal, you mean,” he said, echoing his son’s earlier observation. “Ah, well. At least I can count upon not being bored in the near future.” He disconnected.
I was pretty sure that meant he was good to run the shop for the week.
“Zee is right. This is becoming a habit.” Adam frowned. “Maybe we should make arrangements for the new normal. Would you object to moving Sherwood into your old house? Without Joel and Aiden, it isn’t safe to leave Jesse home alone, and it’s not fair to expect Tad to play bodyguard more than he already does.”
My house, a single-wide manufactured home that had replaced the one that burned to the ground, shared a back fence (now partially a wall, thanks to Tilly) with Adam’s house, even though they were more than a football field apart because they both were on acreage. My house had sat empty since Gabriel, my previous assistant, had left for college.
The house next to it was empty, too, having been the scene of a pair of brutal murders, though as of last Friday, there was a hopeful For Sale sign on it. I wondered if it was still haunted.
My house was. Which was one of the reasons it was empty. The other one was that though the door to Underhill on our back fence allowed Tilly access to our house, it was also on the back fence of my house. I wasn’t willing to rent the place to someone who couldn’t protect themselves from Tilly, and that somewhat restricted the pool of renters.
“If Sherwood is willing,” I said. Sherwood could probably protect himself better than we could protect ourselves. “He’s just renting the place he’s living in, right?”
“Your house would be an upgrade,” Adam said. “But living that close might push us to the fight that we just narrowly avoided. I’ll ask and trust his judgment.”
“It’s a little like finding out King Arthur has been a member of the pack in disguise,” I said.
“He’s not King Arthur,” Adam said with a growl in his voice.
“Probably not,” I agreed in a hushed voice. Maybe a better person would have stopped when faced with that growl instead of being inspired to push their luck a little further. “But it’s exciting. Maybe he knew King Arthur. Or Robin Hood.” I sighed happily. “All of the history he has packed in his head.”
“I am not jealous,” Adam informed me. “I know when I’m being teased.”
I laughed and turned to rest my forehead against his shoulder. “Do you suppose he will give me an autograph?”
“I’ll autograph you,” Adam murmured.
“Only if I get to autograph you, too,” I purred happily. Flirting didn’t have to make much sense. “Werewolves are hard to tattoo, so I’ll use Jesse’s glitter pens. Do you want hot pink or baby blue?”
He laughed because he thought I was joking. He was probably right, though I might have done it if Jesse’s mom, Adam’s ex-wife, hadn’t finally moved back to Eugene. Though I doubted that she’d have paid attention even if I’d scrawled Mine in glow-in-the-dark lettering across Adam’s forehead, there had been days it would have made me feel better.
“What’s wrong?” Adam asked.
I lifted my head. “Nothing, why?”
“You quit laughing.”
“I love you,” I told him.
“I love you, too,” he answered. “Why did that make you quit laughing?”
“We were talking about jealousy,” I said. “And marking territory. You’re probably lucky Christy finally moved when she did, or you might have ended up with my name written across your face in Sharpie.”
He grabbed my hand. “Your name is written across my heart,” he said, because he could say things like that and have them sound serious. When I tried, I sounded like someone trying out for a Hallmark movie.
I kissed his shoulder. “You just don’t want to wake up with Sharpie on your face.”
“It would look unprofessional,” he agreed.
5
Stefan’s house was nearly as big as Adam’s and mine, and for much the same reason—it might need to shelter a lot of people at any given time. Unlike ours, it sprawled out instead of up, and was set in a neighborhood of upscale houses built around half a century ago.
The outside lights were on, and several of the windows were dimly lit, as if reflecting lights deeper in the house. Only the basement windows were absolutely dark, but I knew they were painted black. Stefan told his neighbors that he had a movie theater downstairs.
Adam pulled his brand-spanking-new SUV into Stefan’s driveway. It looked exactly like the last two SUVs, which had suffered tragic deaths this year. Adam told me that in his worst year, suffered before he and I got together, he’d lost six vehicles—but they had been a lot cheaper. I asked him if they’d all been black, and he’d laughed. But he hadn’t denied it.
Adam parked next to Stefan’s Mystery Machine, not that anyone else would know what it was. The old VW bus’s paint job was shrouded in a protective cover.
“I thought you had gotten it ready for him to drive again,” Adam said.
“I did.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice. “After the smoke dragon took him for a ride, he told me that he didn’t suit the bus just now.” But I took the cover as a good sign. Not now but someday, it said.
“The cover’s a good sign,” said Adam. “Stefan is planning on driving it again someday.”
Our mating bond did things like that sometimes, when Adam wasn’t keeping a close eye on it. I’d gotten used to having my thoughts come out of his mouth—or possibly his thoughts run through my head before he spoke. I didn’t like it. But when our bond had been suspended a few months ago, I’d learned that I preferred chafing under its inconveniences to silence.
I’d gotten used to sharing part of my inner self with Adam. It didn’t leave me in a blind panic anymore. Mostly.
“I was just thinking that,” I said.
He grimaced. “Sorry.”
He understood. I took a breath, leaned against him, and kissed the side of his jaw.
“It was a good thought,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to really talk to him since the smoke dragon.”
Stefan had bowed out of the last few bad-movie nights. We held them at Warren’s and kept them down to eight or ten people—up from the days of our four-person maximum, but still more manageable than if the whole pack showed up. I should have approached Stefan after the first one he missed, but the vampire and I had a complicated relationship.
He was one of my oldest friends; I’d met him very soon after I’d moved here. He’d protected me from Marsilia for years before I’d known I needed protecting. He’d bound me to him at my request, to save me from another vampire. It had worked—and that was not the only time that bond had saved me.
But a vampire’s bond is not like the bonds of the pack or the mating bond I shared with Adam. A vampire’s bond is one between master and slave. Stefan had never used it that way, but he could. It scared me.