“Vlad. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Bullshit. You wouldn’t call me if all was well.”
“Is the Huntsman with you?”
He scoffs. “You know he isn’t. He went back to the Otherworld yesterday.”
I grimace. “When will he be back?”
“Did you really call me to check up on him? I’m insulted.”
He says the last two words with a laughing lilt to his voice, but I know that does not mean that he is amused. He wants to understand the point of this entire conversation, and I cannot blame him.
I sigh. “No. I did not call about him.”
“What’s going on, Vlad?”
I glance at the bathroom door. I can hear the shower running within. Grant may well still be able to hear me, if he is trying, and considering the humiliation I saw pass over his face before he ran in there, I think that he is not.
“It’s about Grant,” I say.
“All right.”
“He kissed me.”
I do not know how to explain further than that. I still do not wish to spill the entire truth of this new development regarding Grant’s powers, not when Moreau might see the Huntsman before I do and might tell him all the same.
“Well,” Moreau says. “That has been a long time coming.”
“I—What?”
“I thought he might try a few years ago. I knew you wouldn’t make the first move. You’re too in your head about him.”
“I do not understand.”
Moreau huffs. “Why did you turn him, Vlad?”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t just answer me. Think!Why?”
I swallow hard and lower myself down to sit on the edge of the bed. I was coming back from a job that night. I had decided to walk to the nearest town because I still had adrenaline running through me. The fight had been more exhilarating than I had expected.
And then… Then I felt some kind of tug. Something I needed to see. I began walking the wrong way, away from the job and where I was staying, and I came across the car, Grant all broken, breaths shallow, pulse fluttering—
How could Inotturn him? Yet, I have turned no one since and never felt the urge before.
“I couldn’t do anything else,” I say helplessly. “He—I-I wanted to save him.”
“Yes. Why?”
“I felt—” I saw his eyes for the first time. Hazy from pain and confusion and panic, and he didn’t see me, not at first, but when he did… “We had a connection.”
“A bond.”
“Yes.” The Huntsman told me that when I returned with him. When I begged to be allowed to remain in the Hunt despite the rule I had so clearly broken, dragging the proof of it back with me. “That is why I turned him.”
