This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)(46)

“You know what they say about being careful what you wish for? I used to wish there was something we could do, you know, intimately together that you hadn’t already done before, but I didn’t think it would ever happen.” I gave him a limp smile. “Though I doubt you’ve ever been forced to nonstop bang a woman hyped up on the undead voodoo version of Spanish fly, have you?”

His chuckle was soft. “Can’t say that I have, Kitten.”

“Yeah, well, consider me an original.”

This time, when his lips brushed across my skin, it lasted more than a moment.

“I always have.”

How he could be affectionate with me right after this latest cluster f*ck—literally!—was beyond my comprehension. I should thank my lucky stars that while this scenario was an eleven out of ten on my perversity scale, Bones’s former human life as a gigolo combined with his promiscuous past as a vampire meant this probably only rated a three for him. Thank God he’d been there, too. I would have been horrified to cheat on Bones if I’d been hit with Marie’s blood-induced slut whammy when he wasn’t around.

The idea made me shudder. I was already fuming at Marie over letting those Remnants loose on Bones; if she’d have damaged our marriage as well—and though Bones would understand given the circumstances, it wouldn’t be something he’d ever forget—then I’d truly despise her.

The question that overshadowed even my searing embarrassment over my actions the past two days was why Marie had forced me to drink her blood. If not to use it as fuel for Apollyon’s warmongering, why would she want to see if I could absorb her powers? Marie was too calculating to have forced me into doing that just to satisfy her curiosity over whether ghoul blood would affect me the same way vampire blood did. She could have made me drink from another ghoul aside from herself to get the same proof.

What was she up to? And should that be of greater concern than what Apollyon was doing?

“If you’ve, ah, been occupied dealing with me for most of the past two days, there might have been some developments,” I said, swinging my legs off the bed. “Let’s hope there has been, and that it’s good news.”





Chapter Eighteen

To my dismay, the first two people I saw when I came upstairs later were Mencheres and Kira. They sat next to each other in what I guessed was the living room, my cat sedately curled in Kira’s lap.

Both of them looked up, so it was too late for me to run. For once, I was grateful for Mencheres’s trademark stoicism as I met his impenetrable expression. If he’d waggled his eyebrows knowingly, or crossed his wrists in a mime of bondage, I might have jumped right out the nearest window.

“Let me say right off that if I could avoid you two for the next decade, I would,” I got out in a rush. “But since I can’t indulge in a little modesty-salvaging me time right now, I’ll just offer my sincerest apologies and hope we never mention what happened again. In fact, you know that amnesia spell you put on me when I was sixteen, Mencheres? I’d love another one.”

“You erased her memory when she was a teenager?” Kira asked in surprise.

“That’s a story for another time,” he smoothly answered her before turning that charcoal gaze back to me. “Unfortunately, Cat, my ability to erase your memory was predicated on your half-human status. Vampire memories can’t be altered. At least, not that I’m aware of.”

“Just my luck,” I muttered. “Well, then let’s go with Plan A: Pretend it never happened.”

“Pretend what never happened?” Kira replied with deliberate emphasis even as she gave me a purposefully blank look.

I flashed her a grateful smile. “Exactly.”

Something hazy caught the corner of my eye. I turned to see Fabian floating in the doorway, watching me with a mixture of happiness and wariness.

“Hey,” I said in surprise. “Aren’t you supposed to be with Dave? He’s not here, too, is he?”

“He’s still in Ohio.” Fabian came nearer, almost twitching in either excitement or agitation. “Are you well, Cat? Can I . . . do anything for you?”

There went that tingling in my cheeks again before I reminded myself that Fabian couldn’t mean anything suggestive by his question. He wasn’t solid, which was a definite requirement for what I’d needed before, my smutty lack of preference as to who provided it notwithstanding.

“I’m fine,” I said, trying to cover my lingering embarrassment with a businesslike mentality. “But why’d you leave Dave? Did something happen?” Maybe Dave had to stop trying to infiltrate Apollyon’s ghouls because of something going on with Don or the team?

Fabian seemed to shift uncomfortably even though his feet didn’t touch the floor. “I thought you needed me,” he mumbled. “So I found you. Dave still hadn’t come across the ghouls and it seemed okay to leave him—”

“What do you mean, you found me?” I interrupted, trying to make my voice calm instead of accusing. Fabian already looked like he might burst into tears, if that was even possible for a ghost. Still, if anything had happened to Dave because he hadn’t been able to send Fabian for help . . .

“He means you seem to be a spook magnet now,” Bones supplied, coming into the room. “Dozens of ghosts followed you from New Orleans to Tepesh’s and then even here. I suspect Mencheres has been sending them away lately, or you’d have woken up with some perched next to you in the cell below.”