Kendra skipped into the kitchen at my place. I’d spent the last couple nights at home, and it was going swimmingly, except I missed the softness of Jax’s bed. I missed the smell of his cologne on his pillows. I missed his body pressed to mine while I slept. Oh for goodness sake, I missed the man. Why was that so hard for me to admit?
Because I’d been hurt, badly, before. Because I’d had my heart ripped from my chest, and it had happened not all that long ago. This was going too fast for my heart to be able to wholeheartedly accept it.
“What’s up?” I asked.
She waved a fax in my face. “From Jordan. We’ve got a skip to trace.” I took the paper and looked at the picture of the skip. These days, the skips looked like dang fashion models. Hell, there was even a convict I’d seen who’d come out of prison to a modeling contract and several offers of marriage.
This guy probably had a whole line of women waiting to bail him out of jail. “You have anything of his?”
Paige took the fax from me and stared for a second. “Wow. He’s…” She fanned herself with her free hand while she looked. “Hell, I might put up a few bucks myself.”
Kendra took the page back. “Down girl.”
“How are we going to find him?” I supposed we’d engage in some of the tried and true old-fashioned nose to the pavement work, but I wasn’t especially optimistic since we had a last known that had already been checked, according to Jordan’s note on the bottom of the fax. It simply said, “Already checked his last known, no dice. It’s a warehouse in the industrial district. Need my gals. XOXO The Big J.”
“I saw a thing in a chat room online.” Kendra pulled out her Philly city map.
“Witches have chat rooms?” How did I not know this? Maybe because I wasn’t a witch and wouldn’t be welcome in their chatroom, but my best friend, witch extraordinaire, hadn't mentioned it either. Of course there were things I hadn’t mentioned to her either about being a vampire. I thought so, anyway… Maybe. I pretty much told her everything.
“Of course we have chat rooms. Don’t vampires?”
Now that was something to think about, maybe check into. “I don’t know.” I glanced at Paige. She shrugged. These weren’t vampires who were big into computer usage. It was probably a good thing they’d adapted to using touch screen cell phones and microwaves for heating up blood.
“Give me a minute.” She took the fax page and began using it to scry the locale of our target. She stopped when she got to the end of the map. “I need another map. Outside of this one.”
I went to my laptop and printed another with a radius ten miles wider.
After a few minutes, she looked at me again, shook her head. “Maybe go out a little further.”
I printed another and finally we had a location. An hour east of Philly. Near Chadds Ford.
Paige glanced at me, and I looked at Kendra. “It’s going to be dawn soon.”
Kendra nodded. “Call your boyfriend.”
I pursed my lips and made a clicking sound with my tongue. “We can do this without him.” Having him around so much wasn’t helping me figure out—logically—what I wanted to do about the mating bond. His nearness tipped the scales his way.
We walked out to the car Ransom was already leaning against. “Jax sent me.”
I rolled my eyes and shot a glare towards Jax’s place. “Of course he did.”
It was getting harder to assume that he had faith in my abilities, the same abilities he’d taught me to use. It was starting to become an issue. But I let it go and climbed into the car.
I sighed and Paige chuckled. “He has to keep you safe. It’s part of the mating bond.”
That damned thing. It was not only responsible for all my confusion, but every single one of my sleepless nights of late, a wide range of hormonal eruptions, and now the constant shadowing of his cronies. I wondered if vampires could suffocate. Probably something I could find out in a chat room should vampires have one.
“What do you know about this mating bond?” I looked over my shoulder at Ransom and Paige, who had climbed into the backseat of the SUV. “Truth please.”
“I know that without it, Jax is going to die.” Paige’s pointed look—her wide-eyed, scrunched brow, don’t-screw-over-my-friend-look—spoke volumes to how she felt about my hesitancy. And now I felt like the world’s biggest asshole. Of course I’d do it to prevent Jax’s death. But I still had a few weeks to learn all about it, come to terms with it, and hopefully decide for myself that it was a good idea, and not just to save Jax’s or my life. Forever was a very long time.
“But that isn’t her problem. She has to do what’s best for her, too.” Ransom chiming in on my side was a surprise, since my not complying would also mean his death and hers, probably. They’d go down with the captain. “Why’s it all have to be laid on them? There has to be a loophole.”
Right? That’s what I needed. A loophole.
With a scoff, Paige shook her head. “It isn’t like Jax isn’t hot or that he’s an asshole. He’s a great guy who can get any woman he wants. What’s wrong with attaching her wagon to his car?” I had no idea Paige felt so strongly about this. People, vampires or not, were seldom who we thought they were. It was a hard lesson, but I’d learned it a long time ago and now it didn’t seem like that big a deal and they seldom surprised me. This did. Jax did, too, but this was more.
Back to my defense, Ransom said, “Maybe she’s after more than a pretty face. Maybe she wants a life partner.”
Paige scoffed. “Don’t we all?” She shook her head. “Don’t get me wrong. If she isn’t into him, fine. Move on. But stop doing the hibbity-dibbity with him. Stop sending him the signals.”
The signals? “What?” I asked.
She scoffed again, added in a head shake, popping out one hip and pointing her finger at me. “You know what I’m talking about. He thinks you’re going to choose him.”
But…Of course I was. Eventually.
“And every day you don’t, something in him changes.”
Oh my. This was a spiral I didn’t want to go sliding down. “Paige…”
She wasn’t having it. “No, I know this is your decision, but every day you put it off hurts him. And he’s doing everything in his power—”
Ransom interrupted, “To suffocate her. To force her away from him, to show her how it would be if they did this ritual. He would own her. He would force her to live the way he thinks is safe.” I had no idea Ransom felt so strongly, either. Wow. It was like I had Luke here defending me.
“She would be safe,” Paige pointed out.
Definite pro.
Ransom fired his own shot. “She would be his prisoner.”
Con. I filed that one in the con side.
Paige spoke softly, and if I wasn’t mistaken, with stars in her eyes. “He would be devoted to her.”
Pro.
She wasn’t done. “What woman doesn’t want a guy like Jax devoted?” Oh yeah. She had the whole milky way in her big baby blues. She wanted a mating bond, too. I’d never gotten the slightest into-Jax vibe off of Paige. It wasn’t that. More likely she wanted to be presented with this opportunity. For her, it was a dream. For me, a nightmare.
But Ransom wasn’t buying it. “And expect her undying devotion to him. And that’s for eternity. Because that’s their life expectancy.” Con. Con. Con! “What if he stops loving her?”
“Stops?” I whispered. Did that mean he already loved me? That gave me some major warm fuzzies.
“He isn’t the kind of guy who would stop loving her. But if he did, he would set her free.” I glanced over my shoulder at Paige and her hard gaze found mine. Locked on. “You would be so lucky to be loved by him.”
“I know that already!” What I didn’t know was how he felt, straight from the horse’s mouth, and maybe that would make it easier. I knew he lusted after me. He definitely wanted the bond.
But did he love me? I had no idea.
I also didn’t know that Paige was so painfully aware of all of this. But her tone said what her words didn’t. “Paige…” I tried to warn her to stop and let me process this.
“No. He isn’t my mate and that’s fine. I have one out there somewhere. I’ll find him, and when I do, I won’t hesitate. There won’t be anything more important to me than he is.” She sounded so sure.
“Jax is important to me.” And that was all I wanted to say about it. I was going to do the right thing for all of us. Eventually, but I had to give some talk time to the independent part of me, the part that said I could conquer anything, and also some to the part of me that said I’d been hurt a lot. Often. In ways it was hard to look past. That part of me deserved her say, too.
The fact my decision was hurting him shouted in my mind. It stood loud and proud in my head. Spoke in harsh, angry tones. I wasn’t a person who hurt other people. I also wasn’t a person who could decide where and when or if this was going to happen while I was kneecap deep in finding a skip. A shift in focus here could be dangerous. Get us all killed.
Kendra pulled the car off the road near a farmhouse. “We’re here.”
Ransom got out and sniffed the air. “He’s in the barn.”
Of course he was. Probably waiting for us with sharp farm instruments. Paige, Ransom, and I walked to the barn in a horizontal line while Kendra followed close behind us, protected. We stopped at the entrance and Ransom opened the door then rushed inside. As he took a sharp left, Paige took the right, and I went straight. Ransom found our skip, overpowered him, and hauled him to the wide open where I was waiting.
“Look at me, fool.” He did, apparently taking no exception to my cute pet name for him. I compelled him for the truth and asked the standard what do you know about the bad bananas in Philly.
He was quick to talk. “I know the masquerade ball is a trap.”
Oh. Well. Finally. We’d struck gold. “How so?”
“I don’t know more than the word on the street.” He didn’t blink which was true of those bound by compulsion.
“Which is?” The down side to compulsion, I had to drag every detail out.
“A kingpin will be in attendance and that kingpin is going to finish this. Whatever it is.”
Word on the street wasn’t what it used to be. Back in the day, everyone knew the kingpin and just kept it hush-hush. How could a person even be a kingpin if no one knew who they were? Anonymity kind of undermined the entire idea of king anything.
I shook my head. Somehow, I knew I’d gotten everything out of this guy. “He doesn’t know anymore than that.” Ransom smacked the cuffs on our skip and we walked back to the car.
The ride back was silent. The skip sat in the center between Paige and Ransom while Kendra drove, and I sulked in the front seat.
We brought him to the police station without incident. The incident was just a flirtation waiting to happen and Jordan stepped up to the plate. He looked at Ransom. Batted his eyelashes. Said, “Hey big boy.” And Ransom was a big boy. He stood at a muscular six-five at least. Probably weighed in at about two-eighty. “You ever let a little guy on for a ride?”
Not that Ransom sparkled his gayness, and he sure as hell didn’t flame, but Jordan must’ve picked up on something. I’d never seen him flirt with another man, ever. Jax included. He did seem like he was head over heels in love with Cleo. Okay, well, whatever floated his boat. It was none of my business, despite the fact that I was insanely curious.
Ransom chuckled but didn’t answer.
Jordan looked at Kendra then. “Hey witchy woman, you know any growth spells?” He wiggled his eyebrows and shook his hips. This was Jordan at his flirty best, and he was good. And for just one minute, I smiled. Maybe I should’ve asked her for a love spell or something that would wash away any doubt left inside of me so I could open-heartedly be with Jax and complete the mating bond ritual.
If it came down to it, at least I had a plan.