A Warm Heart in Winter(80)

Z extended the forefinger of his dagger hand to Blay’s chest. “Your heart was, and is, always true. And the people around you have faith in your goodness. So if you can’t believe in yourself? How about you take our opinion as fact, son—and let the burden you don’t actually carry go.”

Blay’s head dropped.

Just as he thought he was going to lose his balance, Zsadist, the Brother who never touched anyone, stepped in and held him close. As Blay grabbed on to the male, he looked over that massive shoulder to what he could see of the mansion. It was only the gabled roof with its lightning rods, the silhouette like a crown on top of the rolling estate’s royal head.

He pictured his mate inside that house, going upstairs to find the thing Luchas had stashed right before he was killed.

For what turned out to be only the first time.

Abruptly, Blay frowned and pulled back. “You switched partners tonight, didn’t you. So you could be with me. I was supposed to be paired with Payne.”

The Brother shrugged. “I had a feeling you and your boy might need a helping hand. Or at the very least, a sidebar with someone who’s had some personal experience with these things.”

Blay glanced at the roof again. “Thank you,” he said in a small voice.

“I’m just paying back that one airplane ride Qhuinn gave me.”

“Which one—oh, right. Jesus.”

“Yup. You bet your ass there was some praying going on that night.”

“You know,” Blay said as they started walking toward the gate, “I didn’t realize Qhuinn could fly an airplane.”

After they dematerialized through the slats of the iron work, Zsadist said dryly, “I think it came as a surprise to him, too.”





Up on the second floor of his parents’ transformed house, Qhuinn stared down at the little girl standing in front of him. Then he looked back into the dim bedroom.

“Yeah, I’m allowed to be here,” he said in answer to her question. “’Cuz this is the house I grew up in. Like you’re doing now.”

“Oh, okay. So you’re going to hurt us? You look a little scary. You’re really tall.”

“No, honey. I’m not going to hurt you or your family.”

“That’s good.”

He’d fix her memories in a second. Right now, he was too freaked at the idea he might be fucked on his mission because of these humans’ need to change every single frickin’ thing about the house they’d bought.

Leaving her be, he walked into the room, the echo of his boots loud on the hard marble floor. Currently, there was a bed over there, a desk opposite it, and then something weird across in the corner—a sofa, maybe? In his mind, he tried to remember things as they had been when Luchas had lived in the suite. The bureau had been centered between the two windows that overlooked the garden. Yes, that was where it had been.

Going over, he knelt down and passed his hand over the smooth stone tile. He wasn’t well versed in construction, but it didn’t take a Bob Vila to know that if you wanted to put in marble flooring, you had to have a clean slate to work with. So those floorboards, and whatever had been tucked under them, were long gone.

Oh, Luchas, he thought. Why didn’t you tell me what you needed me to do after I got the damn stuff? Why didn’t you put it in the letter so I had something else to go on—

“What are you looking for, mister?”

Ignoring the kid, he tried to figure out his options. He supposed he could go get a hammer and bust up this section of the tile . . . at which point he’d have Ron, the second wife, and at least two kids as a peanut gallery—

“What’re you doing, Mouse?”

Qhuinn closed his eyes. Great. Ronnie was back.

“There’s this man in the house, Daddy.”

“Oh, hi,” Ron said as he came into the doorway. “How you doing?”

Like the pair of them were old friends.

As Qhuinn shot a glare over his shoulder, he was ready to fuck them both off—and yet, as he saw the pair standing together, both dark-haired, the little girl leaning onto her sire’s leg, the father with his hand on her shoulder, he knew he couldn’t curse at them.

He pictured him and Lyric doing the same thing, like, five years from now.

Well, okay, fine. If somebody broke into the mansion, they’d be vaporized before there was any conversation with anybody. But still.

“Hi, Ron.” Qhuinn let himself fall on his ass. “How are we doing?”

He asked this on a reflex because he knew exactly how everyone was: He’d lost his shot at helping Luchas, Ron had a vampire in his house, and little Cindy-Lou Who, or whatever her name was, was recording this whole thing like her brain was the Rosetta Stone.

“Are you looking for those old letters?” Ron asked.

Qhuinn frowned. “What?”

“The stuff in the floor? When we did this room over, we found this bundle of, like, envelopes.”

Before Qhuinn had a conscious thought, he was up on his feet. “You kept it? Them, I mean.”

“Yeah, I thought maybe someone would ask about whatever they are. But the guy I bought this place from—well, you, actually—see, I didn’t ever meet you, and when I tried to get in touch through the real estate agent, they couldn’t find your representative.”