Cold Hard Secret (Secret McQueen) (13 page)

“What do you want?” A lean girl with short black hair stared at me from heavily lined eyes. She looked angry and terrified all at once.

I was pleased I could teach them so quickly about the limitations of immortality. It was a lesson some vampires spent decades learning.

Immortality was sort of like mild cigarettes. It gave the illusion of one thing, but in the end you could still be killed.

“As you can see I have a wolf with me instead of a very handsome man. And while the wolf is nice looking and all, I’d like the man back.
What did you do to him?
”

“I don’t know.” She wasn’t convincing me with her shifty eyes and the sheen of sweat on her brow. I could practically smell her lie. So could Desmond, who snarled at her. “Damn, lady, keep it on a leash.”

“You’re
really
missing the point.” I made a show of arming my weapon.

“Fuck, okay, I don’t know what it was, but we got these syringes from this kid. Rat or something.”

I felt my face contort into an ugly frown. “Mouse?”

“Yeah. He brought us these meds a few days ago. Alexandre said we’d need them soon, and sure enough, you show up with the werewolf in tow. Gave him the shot and
bam
, wolfman was a wolf.
God
, is that…is that tooth his?”

I smiled coldly. “It’s a shame I didn’t keep the other one I took. They’d make great earrings.”

“What did you do to him?” another vampire asked.

“What I’ll do to all of you if you don’t tell me everything you know. Who told Peyton we were coming?”

“We don’t know anything, I swear,” the young woman said. “He didn’t tell us much. It was very need-to-know.”

“And let me guess, you didn’t need to know?”

“Find that Mouse kid. He has to know where the shot came from.”

The idea of chasing Mouse through the Paris streets for two nights in a row didn’t have any appeal, but if the sneaky little turncoat knew who or what could change Desmond back, I had to give it a try. I’d have sent one of the lackeys to fetch him for me, but if I let them out of my sight again, they’d be in the wind permanently.

Which was probably where Mouse was now, if he’d heard what happened to Peyton.

But there was still a chance he didn’t know yet.

Fucking hell, looked like my hunting wasn’t over for the night.

“Got one more in you?” I asked Desmond.

He didn’t appear any more thrilled with the idea than I was, but what choice did we have? We’d already tracked Mouse down once. It shouldn’t be too hard to do it a second time. After all, we’d told him we could do it the night before. Now I had to prove we were as menacing as we threatened.

“If I find out you’re setting me up, I will add twelve more teeth to this necklace, do you understand?”

They nodded.

“Fucking rogues.”

Trailing Mouse turned out to be easier than expected. The little shit was only human, and humanity had its limitations. Plus, he hadn’t wandered far from where we’d found him the previous night.

He was sitting at an outside table at a twenty-four-hour café, sipping an espresso, when I sat down across from him. His eyes went wide, and he looked around for an escape route. Desmond rested next to him, cutting off the easiest path.

“We meet again,” I greeted with faux cheer.

“Miss McQueen.”

“Oh, we’re going to play it formal? Isn’t that nice? Want to tell me why you lied to me about who Peyton’s runner was? That this
friend
of yours was actually you? Hmm? Cat got your tongue, Mouse?”

“No, but I fear the wolf might if you don’t like what I tell you.” He smiled weakly and sipped his drink, settling back in the chair like we were old friends chatting.

“Where did you get the shot?”

“I don’t know precisely who it came from because there was no return name on the parcel, and I don’t make a habit of asking too many questions when a vampire asks me to do something, understand?”

“Tell me what you
do
know.”

“Peyton had his important mail shipped to my apartment, and I would drop it in the sewers for him. He told me several weeks ago he was expecting a parcel from a
dear friend
, those were his words. He knew you were coming too. Told me if you found me, I ought to send you his way. Anyway, the postmark on the package was from California, and the note on the box was just signed with the letter A.”

I wasn’t surprised anymore that us finding Peyton had been a setup. It didn’t matter now, since things had gone my way in the end. “What did the note say?”

“A gift from your favorite doctor.”

I wanted to kill him then and there. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t possibly know what the implications of his words meant. Didn’t matter that he wasn’t directly responsible for what had happened to Desmond. I wanted to kill him because he’d said
doctor
.

He wasn’t referring to any old doctor. He was referring to
The
Doctor. And though I knew perfectly well Friedrich Kesteral was dead, for this one moment he was as alive to me as Mouse was. Because he was still fucking up my life.

The Doctor had specialized in researching paranormal creatures. Not just vampires, but werewolves and—what was it Tyler said the FBI called them?—CUOs. Creatures of Unknown Origin.

Apparently his research hadn’t been entirely theoretical.

He’d developed something to forcibly turn a werewolf from human to wolf form. “Goddammit. I’m guessing they didn’t ship an antidote with it?”

Mouse snorted. “You think Peyton or whoever sent him that shit was concerned with
reversing
the process?”

No. I didn’t.

But this meant I wasn’t getting the cure from Mouse because there was no cure to be had. At least not in France. Callum had implied we might be able to reverse things if I could get Desmond in immediate contact with a wolf king. I might not be Lucas’s biggest fan, but he was the best shot we had of putting Desmond back in a nice Desmond-shaped package.

Like I had time to deal with this.

“I have one more question.”

He eyeballed me warily but lifted his chin as an invitation to continue.

“Do you know where I can get a wolf-sized kennel?”

Chapter Eighteen

Since Fate seemed hell-bent on making me interact with my wolf-husband, I figured it was high time to bite the bullet and head home to New York. If I’d had things my way, I would fly from Paris to Winnipeg and haul ass to the country to make sure
Grandmere
was okay. But I couldn’t let Desmond cool his heels as a wolf, and Callum had promised me he’d keep his mother safe. I had to believe he would be true to his word, at least until I could get there myself.

The one perk of flying in a private plane—aside from being able to protect myself from the sun—was that I didn’t have to keep Desmond stowed in the storage hold. The pilot had drawn the line at letting the wolf wander freely though, which meant he was stuck in the metal crate Mouse had helped me track down on short notice.

Desmond was
not
impressed with his in-flight digs.

I couldn’t blame him, but I also couldn’t let him out, as per pilot orders.

“I’m sorry,” I said for the seven hundredth time on the flight. “I don’t like it any more than you do.”

He growled in reply. I had a feeling I’d get a not-so-friendly nip when I finally released him. I’d allow one free pass on biting. I had it coming.

“We’re less than an hour out. I’m going to take you straight to Lucas as soon as we land. I swear to you we’ll have this sorted out before the night is through.” We’d had to time our flight so we left Paris while it was still dark but would arrive in New York when the sun was down. It was a tricky plot that should get us into LaGuardia right around sunset.

I was exhausted.

Moving from one night to another didn’t exclude me from the day, and I’d napped
hard
on the plane, unable to resist the pull of daylight. It had been a hell of a twenty-four-hour stretch, and I didn’t foresee a time when I’d be able rest easy in my near future.

The timing of the flight worked beautifully, and I was able to hire a shuttle van that didn’t make too much of a stink about the “dog” I had with me. Funny how the promise of a hundred-dollar tip could change people’s minds on things.

When we pulled up in front of Rain Hotel, I paid the driver and released Desmond from his cage. The wolf, as predicted, gave my hand a firm chomp, and I laughed it off as a love bite when the shuttle driver gaped with open horror. An extra hundred seemed to allay his concerns over my well-being.

In the lobby I was greeted by the stern, disapproving face of Melvin, the night-shift concierge. Melvin, a were-ferret and no great fan of mine, always seemed to be working on the nights I got my hands the dirtiest. Yet I don’t think I’d ever been so happy to see him. He was something familiar, and to see him frowning at me meant some things hadn’t changed.

“Ms. McQueen.”

“Hello, Melvin.”

“To what do we owe the pleasure this evening?” A few other guests had taken note of Desmond and were moving away from our end of the desk. Leave it to the hoity-toity upper-crust to be too proper to scream when they see a wolf.

“I’ve come to see Lucas.”

He looked at me, then down at Desmond. Being a shifter himself, Melvin was well aware of who Lucas was, and by extension what that made me. In spite of the whole mess of my wedding day, technically I still had all the wife rights given to a queen. I didn’t particularly want them, but sometimes they did come in handy.

“You know where he lives.”

“I’m afraid I’ve come straight from the airport and don’t have my card.” The elevator up to Lucas’s three-story penthouse worked on a keycard system, with each person choosing a code unique to their card.

My card was buried in the bottom of a drawer somewhere, having lost its regular place in my wallet. I’d considered cutting it up, but like a shopping addict with an emergency AMEX, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. There might come a time—like now—when I’d need it.

Too bad I hadn’t had that foresight when packing for France.

Melvin gave an exaggerated sigh, emphasizing how this would be the worst part of his whole evening. He picked up the phone and—honest to God—hit a big red button at the top. I imagined a red phone in Lucas’s office lighting up beneath a Plexiglas dome.

“Sorry to bother you, sir.” He paused and nodded. “Yes, I understand. Yes, sir, but I think this is perhaps worth interrupting you for.” He glared at me, evidently unable to understand what it was Lucas found worthwhile in me. “No, I don’t presume to know the value of your time.”

Good to know Lucas was a douche to everyone and not just me.

I crooked my fingers towards him, suggesting he pass me the phone. Melvin hesitated, but only briefly. I don’t think he wanted to spend any more of his evening being berated by a werewolf king. He placed the handset in my palm.

“Lucas.” I cut off the stern lecture he was in the process of giving.

“Secret?”

“I’m downstairs, and I don’t have my card.”

“You’re downstairs?” I might as well have told him
the call is coming from inside your house
by the stunned way he was behaving.

“I need your help.”

He must have really needed to collect his thoughts because the silence lasted longer than was polite on a phone call.

“You need
my
help.”

“Yes, and not with having my words repeated back to me, though you’re doing a bang-up job.”

“I’ll send Dominick down, hold on.”

I didn’t warrant a visit from His Royal Assholeness himself, how lovely. But when had I ever? The first night I’d come to Lucas’s hotel, he’d sent Desmond to collect me. He never did the dirty work himself.

Handing the phone back to Melvin, I thanked him and moved to wait by the elevator. A minute later it chimed, and a short, muscular man with his blond hair shaved on the sides and slicked back on the top stepped out.

“Nice haircut, Dom.”

“Thanks, lady. I took a picture of Justin Timberlake to the stylist. He got a bit carried away on the sides, but hey, Cas thinks it’s sexy.”

“That’s all that matters, right?”

Desmond, who had been sitting next to the desk, plodded over and stood between his brother and me.

“Jesus,” Dominick exclaimed.

“Careful, he’s grumpy.” I showed him my hand, the bite marks now mostly healed. “He’s mad at me for keeping him caged up the whole way home.”

“What
happened
?”

“Long story, and I only want to tell it once. Can we go see King Dipshit, please?”

Dominick, Lucas’s personal bodyguard, leveled me with a warning glare. “Play nice.”

“I promise I won’t kick him.”

“Secret…”

“Look, I take spousal abuse as seriously as the next girl. But that shithead has a beating coming to him, and someday I’m going to see he gets it. You can’t stop me. Tonight I’ll play nice, though.”