Cold Hard Secret (Secret McQueen) (14 page)

“I suppose I can’t ask for miracles.” He placed his hands in Desmond’s fur, stroking it and scratching the wolf behind the ears. It was sweet, seeing him comfort his brother.

“I think we should keep our miracles where we need them.”

The ride up to Lucas’s suite filled me with a mounting sense of dread. I’d come here so positive he’d be able to help, but what if he couldn’t? What if Desmond was stuck like this? I couldn’t imagine my life without him as part of it, but I hadn’t considered him being trapped in wolf form forever.

It would certainly simplify my love life.

I banished the thought, feeling infinitely guilty for letting it cross my mind in the first place.

The door slid open in the foyer, and Lucas stood waiting. He wore a soft gray V-neck sweater and a pair of well-worn jeans. About a week’s worth of stubble gave him the impression of a beard without the actual bulk of what he’d once grown. Had his eyes always been such a bright blue, or did his disapproving glare make them pop?

One thing that often bothered me was how beautiful he was. It didn’t matter how much I hated him or how bad I wanted to slap him, he was still gorgeous.

His cinnamon flavor filled my mouth like a Red Hot, reminding me that although my heart had checked out a long time ago, our metaphysical love match was still intact. So much for that being a one-time fluke.

I had to get away from him as quickly as I could. I hated putting myself in a position where I could get suckered in by his allure again. What was worse, I hated knowing he maintained any appeal for me, even if it was entirely primal.

If happiness were a pair of skinny jeans, Lucas was the pint of ice cream standing in my way.

“I thought after what happened in San Francisco I wouldn’t be—” He stopped short when Desmond followed me out of the elevator.

What I appreciated most about the wolves was their ability to recognize who Des truly was while trapped in his furry form.

“What’s going on?” Lucas looked from me to Dominick then back.

“Peyton.”

“That son of a—”

This time I cut him off. “He’s dead.”

“Oh.”

“But he managed to give Desmond a shot of something. He got it from The Doctor.”

“
Oh.
” Though Lucas hadn’t been around for the whole Doctor debacle, he’d heard enough about it from others to understand the gravitas of what had gone down.

At least as much as anyone who wasn’t present could understand it.

I was there for the whole thing, and I didn’t fully grasp it yet.

“There isn’t an antidote. I talked to Callum, and he seemed to think you might be able to reverse it with your big, bad wolf magic.”

“You spoke to Callum McQueen about a problem in
my
pack?” He sounded furious. Leave it to Lucas to miss the point altogether.

“Can you focus on one issue at a time?” I pointed to the wolf sitting next to me. “Desmond is stuck like this, and we need your help.”

For the first time since I’d arrived it crossed my mind Lucas might say no just to spite me and to stick it to Desmond. He’d made it abundantly clear he wasn’t impressed with our ongoing relationship, and it had caused a monumental rift in their friendship. I knew Lucas was capable of being petty, and he’d used Desmond as a bargaining chip against me more than once. But would he honestly let Des stay in wolf form just to prove a point to me?

I hated that I couldn’t dismiss such a fear as me being silly.

“Do you know what was in the shot?”

I shook my head, relief slowly trickling in. “I wasn’t around when they got him. It had to be fast acting though. We weren’t separated all that long. He’s still in there, though, he responded to my…” I glanced up at Lucas, afraid to tell him too much about my wolf. “He responded to me. It’s the only reason I’m not dead.”

Lucas grunted and gave me a look that told me he wasn’t buying my weak cover, but he didn’t ask any other questions. “Bring him into my room.” He jammed his hands in his pockets and strode with purpose towards the staircase leading to the upper levels. He took the stairs two at a time and was soon out of sight.

“Isn’t he a ray of sunshine?” I grumbled.

“You two do bring out the best in each other,” Dominick reminded me.

“We do fine when we don’t have to talk.” It was filthy, but accurate. In bed, Lucas and I were a kinetic force to be reckoned with. But once we had to function like a normal couple, everything fell apart. We were a mess. “Besides, he doesn’t need to like me right now as long as he helps Desmond.”

I led Desmond up the stairs, and after the wolf hesitated a moment at the metal steps, we met Lucas in his palatial bedroom. The first time I’d been in his master suite I’d been stunned to silence by the size of it. Now neither it, nor its owner, did much to impress me.

Wolf-Desmond chose to stick by my side, lying on the Persian rug when I took a seat in the leather chair facing Lucas’s desk.

“What were you thinking, going after Peyton alone?”

“I wasn’t alone. I had Desmond.”

“You could have both been killed.”

“We weren’t.”

“Maybe not, but now one of my wolves is trapped in his lupine form.”

“Look, Lucas, if I wanted a parental lecture, I would have gone to Keaty. But I don’t think you would have liked his solution for this situation very much.” It didn’t take a wild stretch of the imagination to know Keaty would have proposed putting Desmond down. Permanently.

That was Keaty. Practical to the point of inhumanity.

“Nice to see near-death has done nothing to dampen your sunny disposition,” he said.

If I didn’t need his help so badly right now, I would have smacked the smug look right off his face.

“I don’t need this bullshit from you, Lucas. You have no idea what I’ve been through. Just help Desmond.”

“Fine.” I’d half-expected him to ask what he was going to get out of it and was momentarily stunned by his agreement. “But you can’t stay.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he slammed both palms down on his desk, making the old wood creak in protest. “
Stop.
”

“I-I didn’t even say anything.”

“You’re always saying something, Secret. You can’t get through ten minutes with me without disapproving somehow. Just
stop
. I know you’re mad. I know you’re finding it difficult to forgive me, but you need to let this go.”

Desmond growled, and it took all my restraint not to do the same.

“How
dare
you tell me what I need to do. Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m your—”

“If I were you, I’d think twice before dropping that husband bullshit on me again, Lucas.”

“Is this something you learned growing up in Canada? This blatant disregard for authority? I’ve never met anyone as completely pigheaded as you before.”

“That’s only because you’ve never met yourself.” I leaned back in the chair now that the worst of his outburst had passed. “And I take offense to your Canada comment. We’re a Commonwealth country, still. If anything, growing up in Canada taught me to have a passive respect for royalty.”

Lucas, stymied by his inability to make me cower before him, took a seat in his desk chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You can’t stay,” he repeated, more calmly this time.

“Why not?” I wasn’t being snarky, just asking honestly.

“Because I don’t know if it will work, and I don’t know what extremes I’ll have to go to. You aren’t stable when it comes to shifting, and if I have to force his shift, I have no idea what it would do to you if you were in the room.”

So maybe he wasn’t
always
selfish. Only 99.9999% selfish.

In this case his reasoning was sound. I’d been in Lucas’s presence the only time I’d shifted, so he obviously had the ability to bring out my wolf. I wasn’t in a position to mess around with shifting right now. I needed to be a nice, human-shaped monster if I had a hope in hell of getting to Manitoba to sort out the Mercy situation.

A wolf might be more menacing, but I couldn’t exactly tell the jet pilot where the closest small airport was if I was a quadruped.

“Fine.”

Lucas arched a brow. “What, no argument?”

“Do you want me to argue?”

“No, but you fight me on everything. I assumed this would be no different.”

“You of all people must be familiar with what they say about people who assume.” I smiled weakly, glad I could get in one more barb before saying the most dreaded words I could imagine uttering to Lucas Rain, “You’re right.”

“
Whoa.
” He leaned back and rested his hands on his cruelly toned tummy. “Do my ears deceive me?”

“Shut up.”

“Look, leave Desmond with me, and I’ll do everything I can to get him back in human form.”

“Thank you.” I was still waiting for him to name his price, and when none came, I didn’t know how to handle it. Was it possible for Lucas to do something nice for me without demanding a
quid pro quo
? I’d have gladly given whatever pound of flesh he asked for if it meant restoring Desmond, but as he walked me to the door he had yet to make his request.

“I miss you.” He leaned against the doorframe and stared at me as I backed into the hallway.

“
Why?
” I asked, unable to comprehend a single reason he could honestly want me back in his life.

He shrugged and looked at the carpet, appearing more lost and uncertain than I’d ever seen him. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

That made two of us.

Chapter Nineteen

It felt wrong to leave Desmond behind, but I knew it was the right thing to do. If anyone would be able to restore him to his former glory, it would be Lucas. In the meantime, I had the rest of the evening in New York to myself, and plenty of people who must have wanted a piece of it.

I
should
have gone to find Holden, told him how things were progressing. I’d texted him after I landed, so he knew I was back in New York, but he still didn’t know all the details of Peyton’s execution or The Doctor’s role in Desmond’s shift. There were some things I couldn’t explain properly via text message.

Part of me wanted to go see Calliope for a little insight into what was going on. The Oracle might be able to help me determine what was happening with my mother, but I
really
wasn’t in the mood for riddles just then.

I could have visited Keaty or Mercedes. I probably ought to have called Tyler and given him a status update, now that I was technically an asset of the US Government.

Instead of any of those things, however, I found myself wandering to Chelsea to an old rent-controlled apartment owned by the Council. It had once belonged to Brigit, when I couldn’t handle being her mentor
and
her roommate. But after her death it had remained in the possession of the Council, which had come in handy when I brought in another wayward vampire in need of a home.

I let myself into the foyer and was rifling through my purse to find my extra keys, when a loud crash overhead drew my attention.

Since the apartment building was populated primarily by elderly folks and a few lucky families, there could have been any number of explanations for the sound. Yet something about it made my blood run cold. It felt
wrong
. I jogged up the stairs to the fourth floor and down the hall to Brigit’s—I couldn’t stop thinking of it as hers—apartment.

The door was ajar, and someone inside was yelling.

Drawing my gun and disengaging the safety, I pushed the door open with my toe and raised the weapon, prepared to place two rounds in a chest or head if need be.

Nolan Tate, my vampire-slaying protégée, held a slim, seventeen-year-old-looking vampire around the throat and appeared ready to kill at the drop of a hat.

I hadn’t seen Nolan in months, not since Brigit’s death. The two had made an unlikely couple, but he had loved her more intensely than I’d realized. After she was killed, he bolted, and I hadn’t seen him since. Now he seemed hell-bent on trying to choke the life out of Sutherland, and the vampire wasn’t showing any signs of a struggle.

“Nolan, put him down.”

“What’s he
doing
here?”

“He lives here.” I had my gun trained on Nolan, but my finger was nowhere near the trigger, and the muzzle was aimed at his collarbone rather than his heart. If I was forced to shoot him, I didn’t want to kill him.

“He can’t live here. This’s Brigit’s ’partment.”

So I wasn’t the only one letting a dead girl maintain ownership of things in the living world. Good to know.

Nolan, whose skin was normally a beautiful caramel color owing to his half-black, half-Hispanic parentage, looked downright peaked, his complexion turning an ugly, sallow green.

“Nolan, put my father down, please.”

And there, with that magic word, I managed to get through the fog of his grief and give him something he could understand. His attention shifted from Sutherland to me, and he must have done the same double take two or three times, trying to process the connection.