This Side of the Grave (Night Huntress, #5)(82)

Then I glanced at Bones’s profile, noting his curly hair, richly defined cheekbones, dark brows, and lips that were firm enough to be masculine and full enough to be sinful. Nothing about my life had ever been the same once I plunged into the vampire world, too, but looking at him, I wouldn’t want it any other way. I hoped Nadia found half as much happiness in her undead relationship as I’d found in mine.

“I’ll call Timmie, give him the news,” I said, rising.

“Poor bloke can’t catch a break when it comes to women,” Bones noted.

I met his dark brown gaze with my first real smile in the past several days. “He just hasn’t met the right one yet, but once he does, he’ll forget everyone else.”

His smile became full of promise even as his power seemed to encompass me like a slow, sensual fog. “Indeed,” he agreed, his tone now deep and silky. “The right woman is well worth waiting for.”

Now it was Kira who cleared her throat at the decided shift in the atmosphere. I went upstairs to my room, still smiling in a lingering way, to call Timmie and give him the news that was both good and bad.





Chapter Thirty--three

I hung up half an hour later, blowing out a sigh. Timmie had taken the information about Nadia well enough, albeit needing to be talked out of seeing her in person so he’d know she was all right. I negotiated it down to a phone call. Timmie had no idea how strong vampire territorialism was. If he showed up reeking of lust and unrequited love for Nadia around the admittedly “old school” Debra, he’d be lucky to walk away without a permanent limp, if he walked away at all.

“ . . . saw them myself several years ago, though Marie only used them to threaten me instead of having them attack me,” Bones was saying.

That perked my ears up. I’d gone in my room and shut the door so my conversation wasn’t distracting to everyone below. Talking Timmie out of doing something dangerously dumb had tuned me out to what they were saying, too. Had the conversation turned to Remnants? Bones never told me he’d seen them before, let alone that Marie had threatened him with them.

I hurried downstairs just as he finished with, “Who’s to say she doesn’t use them often, and most people don’t live long enough to tell the tale?”

“I imagine it takes quite a lot out of her to raise and control them, which would preclude Marie from making Remnants her most common weapon,” Mencheres stated before raising an inquiring brow at me. “You were very tired afterward, as I recall.”

I sat next to Bones with an affirmative grunt. “At least Marie was right and their effect wasn’t as overwhelming as it was the first time.”

I’d still felt tired and cold everywhere for a few hours after raising them with Vlad, but I was able to keep control of myself the whole time. Nothing like when I first drank Marie’s blood and then went nuts for two days.

Bones turned to stare at me. “The first time? You raised them again?”

Oh crap. With everything that happened, I hadn’t had a chance to tell Bones what I’d done in the graveyard that night with Vlad. Now he thought I’d been hiding it from him.

“I did a trial run of raising Remnants a little over a week ago,” I said, raising my hand at the whiplash of disbelief I felt across my subconscious. “Before you get pissed, I didn’t deliberately go behind your back. It just happened. And no, I didn’t have a case of the sluts again.”

“And you neglected to mention this to me why?” he asked, a hint of anger brushing my senses.

“Because the next time I saw you was when Don died,” I replied steadily. “And it hadn’t been the sort of thing I’d wanted to casually mention to you over the phone before that.”

Bones let out a breath in a slow hiss, that anger ebbing to something milder, like disapproval.

“You knew about this?” he asked Mencheres.

An oblique shrug. “Afterward.”

I concealed my snort with the utmost difficulty. Sure, he’d had it confirmed afterward, but Mencheres knew damn well beforehand what Vlad and I would do, as he’d admitted once we got back. Still, Bones wouldn’t be able to pick up the slightest hint of subterfuge in Mencheres’s bland charcoal gaze. Note to self: He tap-dances around giving a straight answer with impressive skill.

“All right,” Bones said at last, sounding resigned but no longer mad or disapproving. “Well, what was it like this time, Kitten?”

“Still very freaky,” I admitted with a shudder. “It took some trial and error, but we found out they’re summoned and controlled by blood. After I sent them back, I felt tired, freezing, and hungry—for food,” I added with a pointed glance at Mencheres, who merely blinked in an innocent way. “Still, nothing as bad as the first time.”

Even though I didn’t want the memory to come, it did anyway. Cold all through me. Such incredible hunger. The smash of voices in my mind, intertwining into a roar of white noise . . .

Except for one voice, oddly enough. It tugged at the edge of my memory, honey-coated and Southern Creole, dancing amidst the chaos that night when I’d first been exposed to the true depths of Marie’s hold over the dead. That’s right, Marie had asked me a question I hadn’t registered at the time because I’d felt like I was suffocating underneath the power I’d absorbed from her. Now, however, her question was as clear as though she were whispering in my ear this very moment.