Blood Vow (Black Dagger Legacy #2)(69)

“Are we really competing over my cousin’s death here? Really?”

“Elise …” There was a long muttering. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Good, because I feel safe around Axe. He’s been nothing but a gentlemale to me. And I don’t appreciate you disrespecting him by trying to bribe him over something that is none of your business.”

“You are my business.”

“No, I’m not. I’m your third cousin. That’s it.” As silence stretched out, she was beyond frustrated. “Maybe I shouldn’t have called.”

“Maybe.” He cursed. “I gotta go. I have to get ready for class—you want me to tell your boy you said hello?”

“Why are you being like this? And he’s not my boy.”

“Good luck with him. You’re going to need it—”

“No, you don’t get to do this. You either tell me what you’re really worried about or you cop to being an ass because you’re being overprotective. Those are your two options, Peyton. What you do not get to do is play this smoke-and-mirrors game, and then huff off like you’re being offended by my behavior.”

There was a pause. And then the laughter was rueful. “And this is why I could never date you. Cousin thing aside.”

“Well, I’m not asking you to, so there’s also that.”

“Fine, I’m being overprotective and I have no right to be. There.”

Elise exhaled and smiled a little. “You’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“So I am told.” Peyton exhaled. “Look, I know people like us don’t talk about these things, but that shit with Allishon is still with me. I can’t … I can’t get it out of my mind. And yes, I realize it’s making me a little psychotic. I just … I’m not sleeping, I’m—my head’s all fucked. It’s been rough.”

Elise dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. God, not at all.”

“What happened to her? No one will tell me. Nobody will say anything other than she died out in the human world. They haven’t even done a Fade ceremony for her. It’s like she was here—and then she was gone, as if she never existed. And meanwhile, my aunt never leaves her room, and my uncle wanders around aimlessly.… I would love to help or understand or … just finally know what happened.”

There was a long pause. “Peyton? You still there? Hello?”

“I saw what was done to her. I saw … the violence that killed her.”

“Oh, my God, Peyton …”

“I wasn’t the one who found her. But I was the one who found out … what was done to her.”

“No wonder you’re struggling.” Elise covered her mouth with her palm. “I had no idea.”

“She wasn’t killed by a human. It was one of us.”

“Who?” she breathed.

Peyton cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m not being a dick right now, and I don’t want to end this all abruptly, but I really do have to get ready. Can we meet up and talk in person sometime?”

She thought of her date with Axe. “Tomorrow night?”

“I have it off. I’ll come to you.”

“Better that I go to your place. Especially if we’re going to be talking about her. I don’t want anybody to overhear anything.”

“Fine. And Elise, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow. Come when you can, I’ll just be hanging in my room.”

“See you then.”

Just as she hung up, a strange tremor went through her body—and at first, she assumed it was from what she and Peyton had been discussing. But then … no, that wasn’t it.

Putting the phone down, she looked around, but come on. It wasn’t like someone was lurking in a darkened corner—in her all-white marble bathroom that had all its overhead lights on.

Leaving her phone behind, she went out into her bedroom. Glanced in all the corners, of which none were dark because she had all the lights on in there as well.

Except she wasn’t exactly scared.

More like pricklingly aware—

“Axe?” she said out loud.

Even though Elise was in her pink bathrobe, she padded out into the hall. Followed the instinct down to the main staircase. Proceeded to the first floor— Fresh air. Someone had just come into the house.

And … Axe’s scent. It had been he who had been let in. Moreover, thanks to the blood she’d taken from him the night before, she knew precisely where he was.

Snapping her head to the left, she saw that her father’s study was closed up.

Making no sound at all, she whispered over the marble floor to the parlor that was located behind his private work space. Inside, the peach-and-silver loveliness of the wallpaper and the drapes was lost on her as she went to a built-in shelving expanse that had a scalloped top and Herend figurines of roosters and waterfowl and other birds of all kinds on its levels.

The release was hidden on the right at shoulder height, the kind of thing you couldn’t see and wouldn’t guess at—and when she toggled it, the entire unit, built some hundred and fifty years before, unhinged from the wall and slid soundlessly to the side.