Bride

There is very little he wouldn’t do, very few people he wouldn’t kill, just to ensure her well-being.

When we were young, eleven or maybe even twelve, before Serena managed to grasp the difference in our physiologies, she would sometimes get bored of spending her afternoons all alone doing homework or watching TV, and slink into my room to shake me awake when the sun was still too high in the sky. She’d be surprisingly ruthless, more forceful than her little body looked capable of. She’d grasp my shoulder and waggle it hard, with the force of a pack of rottweilers chewing their favorite toy into a slimy chunk of plastic.

That’s how I know that she’s here, with me. Even before I open my eyes. Vampyres do not dream. Therefore, this commotion must be happening for real. And there is simply no other being in The City, on this Earth, who could be this fucking—

“Annoying,” I say.

Or slur. My tongue is still asleep, far too cumbersome for my mouth and made of papier-mâché. I should open my eyes, at the very least one of them, but I suspect that someone embroidered my eyelids to my cheeks and then soaked them in superglue. Upon consideration, the best choice would be to ignore all of this and go back to my nap.

“Misery. Misery? Misery.”

I groan. “Don’t—yelling.”

“Then don’t—going back to sleep, Bleetch.”

The word tears my eyes open. I’m once again on a damn bed, where I once again don’t remember lying down. My internal clock is shot, and I have no clue whether it’s day or night. I instinctively move my neck—ouch—checking for sunlight pouring in, and find . . .

No windows. I’m in a wooden attic, large and climate-controlled, with ceiling-high shelves full of books on every wall. There is a plate on the coffee table nearby with leftover pasta smeared all over it, and a small pile of soda cans and plastic water bottles.

I take an achy breath, feeling the drugs fade at a snail’s pace. It’s not day, not yet. Not even close to sunrise. I must have been out an hour, two tops, which means that Mick didn’t carry me that far. Mick—Mick, what the fuck, Mick?—must have decided to stash me with—

Serena.

I’m with Serena.

“Holy shit,” I mumble, trying to sit up straighter. It takes two attempts and substantive help from her to manage a still mostly prone position. “Holy shit.”

“Why, hello. How lovely of my oldest and most treasured friend to join me in my humble abode.”

“I’m your only friend,” I cough out, wondering whether my brain is making shit up. Vampyres do not dream, but they do hallucinate.

“Correct. And rude.”

“I . . .” I smack my lips. This dry-mouth situation needs to be addressed. Is this why Humans and Weres drink water all the time? “What the fuck?”

“Did they knock you out? I couldn’t find a bump on your head.”

“Drugged me. Mick did.”

“Mick being the older Were who deposited your lifeless body here like a sack of potatoes and brought me SpaghettiOs?”

“Not lifeless.”

“The thing about Vampyres is, you tend to look pretty lifeless.”

“Shit—Serena, you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

Her smile is commiserating. “No. But if I may hazard a guess, I would say . . .” She taps her chin several times. “Three months, two weeks, and four days?”

“How—?”

She points behind her. She’s been carving lines on the side of the bookshelf, tallying time in groups of five days.

“Shit,” I whisper. There are so many. The physical manifestation of how long Serena has been gone and—

Without thinking, I half roll, half push off the bed to hug her close. I can barely hold my arms up, and it cannot be a good experience for her, but she valiantly squeezes me back. “Did you just initiate physical touch? What is happening? Did you start therapy while I was gone?”

“I missed you,” I say into her hair. “I didn’t know where you were. I looked for you everywhere, and—”

“I was here.” She pats my back. Squeezes me harder.

“Where the fuck is here?” I pull back to study her. She’s wearing a pair of too-large jeans and a long-sleeved shirt I’ve never seen on her. She’s soft and curvy as always, but the last time I saw her she had bangs and a bob that made it just past her chin, and her hair has now grown into a completely different cut. “You look good.”

Her eyebrow lifts. “That’s a weird thing to say in the let’s-exchange-vital-info stage of a joint abduction.”

“It was a damn compliment!”

“Fine. Thanks. I was always very self-conscious of my forehead, as you know, but maybe unnecessarily? Maybe I’ll spare myself the whole monthly trim—”

“Okay, now shut up. Where are we?”

She rolls her eyes. “I have no clue. And believe me, I’ve tried to figure it out, but there are no openings and the place is really well acoustically insulated. There must be at least four or five stories underneath us, just based on listening to the pipes in the bathroom. The guards who feed me are very careful not to show themselves or come near enough for me to guess their species, but now that your friend Mick is in the picture, I’d guess we’re in Were territory. That doesn’t narrow it down by much, though.”

Emery. She has to be part of this. And Mick must have been helping her all along. He was one of Roscoe’s seconds, after all.

I pinch my forehead. “Why did you get yourself involved with the Weres?”

“Excellent question! Would you like the long or the short answer? I’ve had plenty of time to workshop both versions in the last months.”

“Did they hurt you? Are they torturing you, or interrogating you, or—”

She shakes her head. “They treat me well, if you discount the perpetual infringement of my Human rights. But they’ve never brought me out of this room, and I’ve tried. I’ve pretended to be sick, I’ve gotten aggressive—no dice. The guards are assholes of unspeakable proportions and refuse to talk to me.”

“How did they take you?”

“The last thing I remember was walking down the sidewalk on my way to your apartment from work—then bam, I was here.”

I glance around the attic. “What do you even do all the time?”

“I’ve been catching up on sleep. Reviewing my life choices. Stewing in regret. Mostly, I read.” She gestures at the shelves. “But the selection here is limited to the classics. I’ve read, like, three Dickens novels.”

“Appalling.”

“The Catcher in the Rye, too.”

“God.”

“And an entire mystery series I don’t even like.” She shrugs. “Now, would you like to hear my theory on why someone even bothered to kidnap little old me, so you can say I told you so, or something?”

Irritation fuels me enough to finally sit up straight. “No, because I didn’t tell you so.”

“Oh.” She nods, bemused. “Well, this is a pleasant surpr—”

“I couldn’t tell you so, because you hid the story you were working on and the shit you were doing from me.”

She frowns. “Okay. Well, at least let me explain—”

“I already know.”

“Whatever you’re thinking, that’s not it. I was actually—”

“You were looking into the Weres, or Thomas Jalakas, or financial crimes or something. You found out that Liliana Moreland is a Human-Were hybrid, possibly one of a kind, and then got kidnapped for your efforts.”

Serena recoils. “How do you . . . ?”

“Your cat was . . . There was that butterfly alphabet thing on your planner, and . . .” I massage my temple. “Just trust me when I say that I know, frankly, way more than I ever wanted about anything. Lowe said that—”

“Who’s Lowe?”

My heart pangs. I swat the memory and the pain away in one big swipe. “The Were Alpha. My husband.”

“You know what, it doesn’t matter. Tell me how they—” She stops abruptly. Does a double take. Blinks at me multiple times. “Did you just say . . . ?”

I sigh. “Yeah.”

“Misery.”

“I know.”

“Seriously.”

“I know.”

“I’m gone for three months, and after a lifetime of having literally no news, now you are married to a Were Alpha?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my God.”

“Technically, it’s your fault.”

“Excuse me?”

“You think I got married because I found sweet Were love on a dating app? I was looking for you. The entire time you were gone. In whatever way I could. That’s how I ended up married to the brother of the very young, very innocent half-Were girl you were willing to exploit, and now we’re here, and I’d bet my entire collection of hacking tools that it’s Emery who took us, and that Mick has been working with her behind Lowe’s back the whole time—I bet . . . You know what? I bet Emery knows that Ana is a hybrid, and wants to make sure that Ana can never serve as a symbol of unity between the Weres and the Humans, and the way you were snooping around put you on Emery’s radar, and Serena, it was so fucking hard for me to find you.” It all comes out so quickly, I barely have time to keep my tone in check. But I regret it instantly when Serena’s hand comes up to press against her chapped lips. Her nails are bitten to the quick—a habit she grew out of years ago.

“It’s just . . .” She swallows. “I wasn’t sure.”

“Sure of what?”

“That you’d be looking. We had that fight, and . . .” Her voice breaks a little. “I kind of said things I didn’t mean, and I figured that maybe you were done with me.”

I stare at her, momentarily speechless. Maybe the larder beetles have eaten her brain? “Dude. I didn’t know that was an option.”

She lets out a small laugh, a little shakier than her usual. “I just had a lot of time in here to think about what I said.”

I nod. Poke my tongue around my very dry, very sour mouth. “I had lots of time out there, too.”

We regard each other. If we were better people, less screwed up, we’d probably be able to say something like I love you, or So glad to be together again, or a slightly more macabre Thank fuck you’re not dead. But we both stay silent, because that’s what we do.

We both know the unsaid, because that’s who we are.

Serena clears her throat first. “Shall we consider the matter archived for the moment?” she asks. “We can clip each other’s nails when we’re out of here, or something.”

“Excellent suggestion. Let’s focus on what to do.”

She takes a fortifying breath. “I’ve actually been working on a plan.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“It involves staying here. Building a life. Growing old. Developing cataracts.”

I smile. “You always had the worst fucking plans.”

She laughs. And I laugh. And then we laugh some more, until the whole thing sounds less like laughter and more like slight hysteria, and God, I missed this.

“Another plan,” she says, wiping her eyes and lowering her voice, “that I’ve hatched in the past three minutes, is to lure the guard at the door, and use your Vampy magic to thrall them into letting us go.”

I scowl. “You know I can’t do that without touching people.”

“Misery. Babe.”

“What?”

“I doubt there’s another way.”

“We could fight. There’s two of us, and we know self-defense—”

“They won’t come inside. Everything is handed to me through that opening.” She points at the square panel in the door. “But now that you’re here, we might be able to trick them. I could distract the guard long enough for you to get a hook in him.”

I shake my head. Fully aware that I’m not saying no. “This could go so badly.”

“They wouldn’t take it out on you,” she points out. “You’re the daughter of a Vampyre councilman and I guess the wife of a Were Alpha?” She pinches her nose. “Unlike me, you’re a valuable hostage to use in negotiations, and this Emery person must know that. If anything, they’d take it out on me, which is—”

“Also unacceptable.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “I really would love to get out of here. Spend more time with Sylvester.”

“Sylvester?”

“My cat.”

“Ah.” I glance away guiltily. “About that.”

“I swear to God, if you tell me that you let my cat starve or choke to death on my yarn or get eaten by a raccoon—”

“I did not, even though he’d deserve it. However, his name is now Sparkles. And he’s grown very attached to Liliana Moreland, or vice versa.” I ignore her withering look. “There’s nothing but cats in the world, and Sparkles is mediocre among them, so I’ll get you another one if we ever—”

A knock at the door, and we both startle.

“Yeah?” Serena calls. She pushes me out of sight, even when the door and the food slot stay closed.

“I have a . . . bag of blood. For the Vampyre.”

“Who’s that?” I whisper.

“Bob.”

I tilt my head. “Who the hell is Bob?”

“It’s a name I made up for the guards. They’re all Bob.” And then, louder. “Misery’s not feeling well,” she yells. Which is true—I feel like total shit. “I think the drugs might be about to kill her or something!”

What the hell? I mouth. I cannot deal with a Serena plan right now.

“Well, that’s above my pay grade. I can’t do anything for a leech, anyway—”

“She is Vampyre royalty. Whoever your boss is, do you think they’ll be pleased with you if she dies under your watch?”

There are a couple of muttered curses I can barely make out. Then the slot opens. “What’s going on?”

I look at Serena, stumped. All she does is gesture vaguely at me, probably trying to telepathically transmit her plan. I scrunch my face into a raisin, hoping to cringe myself out of this world. When that doesn’t work, I reluctantly make my way to the door.

The opening is at head height, but because of the way the attic is built, Bob’s view of the inside is limited. “There is something wrong. With my . . . eye,” I tell him once we’re face-to-face. He’s a Were, and looks younger than I expected. Too young to be doing this shit, just like Max.

Fuck you, Emery, and fuck you, Mick.

He mutters something about leeches whining and asks, “What’s wrong?”

“This.” I sniffle and make an assortment of dramatic noises. On my right, hidden from Bob’s eyes, Serena gives me the thumbs-up. The most useless enabler in the world. “You see?”

“I can’t see anything.” He leans forward a little, but he’s smart enough not to tilt his head into the door. Pity, as I’d have loved to punch him. Then again, that would leave me satisfied, but still locked in here. “It’s just a regular purple eye. What am I supposed to notice?”

“It must be a reaction to the drugs. You have to tell a physician,” I say. Maybe too flatly, because Serena is miming something that can only mean Up the histrionics. “I could die.”

“Die of what?”

“Of this, you see?” I point under my right eye, and he focuses on it, trying to find some abomination within. When my intraocular muscles start twitching to initiate the thrall, I put everything I can into the movement, hoping to get a quick hook.

For a moment, it does work. I anchor myself just below the surface, Bob’s confusion obvious in his slack mouth and empty eyes. I have him, I think. I have him, I have him, I have him.

Then he frowns and pulls back, and I realize that I failed.

Abysmally.

“Did you . . .” He blinks at me, twice, and the realization dawns on him. “Did you just try to thrall me? You fucking leech!”

He is furious—so furious, he thrusts his hand through the opening and comes for my throat. And that’s when Serena reminds me of something.

How fucking badass she’s always been.

Moving faster than I thought possible for a Human, she snatches Bob’s wrist, bending it at an unnatural angle. Bob yelps and immediately tries to pull back, but my half-assed thrall must have affected him somehow, because despite his Were strength, he seems too weak to escape Serena’s grip.

“Open the door,” Serena orders.

“Fuck no.”

She bends the wrist farther. Bob squeals.

“Open the door or I’ll do this—” She snaps his thumb. I hear it pop out of its socket, and it’s disgusting. “—to all your fingers.”

It takes two more, but Bob unlocks the door. Despite his Were strength, it’s clear that he’s not a trained fighter, and it takes us little effort to switch places with him. We’re both winded and a little bruised, but once he’s bolted inside, I turn to Serena to make sure that she’s okay, and find her slapping her hand to her mouth and jumping in place.

Maybe she’s badass, but she’s also incredibly dorky. My heart skips a beat at how relieved—how fucking relieved and happy I am. She is here. She is fine. She is being unashamedly herself, even after I spent so long without her.

“Told you I couldn’t do it without contact,” I say. Bob screams at us to let him out, and Serena gives the security door a guilty look.

“Seriously?”

“On the one hand, he’s a dick. On the other, he did sneak me extra vanilla pudding once.”

“I cannot wait to hear everything about this retirement home life of yours.”

She winces. “Let’s go. I don’t think he had a phone with him, but I might have missed it.”

We run to the end of the hallway, only to find another locked door. “This one looks pretty light. If we both throw our weight at it, we should be able to break through. At my three, okay?”

Serena gives me a puzzled look. Then takes a step forward, grabs the handle, and turns it.

The door opens.

“How did you know—?”

“I didn’t. I did this thing—it’s called checking. You should try it sometime.”

I clear my throat and brush past her on my way out, my chest squeezing at how much I’ve missed her.

“Not that watching you hammering your way through the whole thing wouldn’t have been peak entertainment, but . . .” She falls silent and stops in her tracks. And so do I. We’re both stunned into immobility, because . . .

I had it right when I said Serena’s cell was in an attic, but the building is much taller than we’d expected. There are at least twenty floors underneath us. This is a high-rise, one that’s very familiar.

Because I grew up in it.

“Is this the Nest?” Serena murmurs. She’s been here only once, but the place is too distinctive to forget.

I nod slowly. When I look behind me, I see that the door we just exited is painted the same color as the wall. Near perfect camouflage. “I don’t get it.”

“Bob was a Were, right? I didn’t get it wrong, did I?”

I shake my head. Bob’s blood pumped much faster than a Human’s, and he definitely wasn’t a Vampyre.

“So we had Were guards, and the Mick guy brought you here, but we’re in Vampyre territory. How?”

“I don’t know.”

Serena shakes herself. “We can figure it out later. We need to get the hell out of here before someone catches us.”

I nod and start down the stairs. About halfway through the first flight, Serena takes my hand. When we reach the end, I lace my fingers with hers. I have no clue what’s going on, but Serena is here, and everything will be all right if—

“Stop,” a voice says from behind us. A very memorable one.

Fear creeps up the back of my neck. I spin on my heels to find Vania smiling at me.

“I’m going to need you to come with me. One last time, Misery.”