Archie and I walk side by side to the car, our footsteps crunching over gravel and damp leaves. The sky above is ink-black now, stars scattered like salt across velvet.
We get in.
The engine turns over, and I pull away from the mausoleum, letting the tires eat the distance back toward the main road. Neither of us speaks for a while. The silence is different now—not formal, but heavy. Tired.
Finally, Archie exhales and leans his head back against the seat.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.”
I keep my eyes on the road. “I do.”
He gives a dry laugh. “You always say that right before everything goes to hell.”
“This won’t.”
“You sure about that? You just told a room full of assassins and psychopaths that your new wife is sitting on a nuclear secret, and you refuse to share it. Plus, she doesn’t even know the secret!”
“She’s safe.”
“I don’t care if only she’s safe,” Archie says. “I care if we’re all safe.”
“You’ll be fine.”
He grins faintly. “I’m flattered.”
I turn onto the final stretch toward his townhouse, a row of limestone buildings cloaked in ivy and old money.
As we pull to a stop, he opens the door, pauses, then looks back at me with that same crooked smile.
“See you Saturday. At your stupid party.”
I glance at him. “Don’t be late.”
He salutes with two fingers. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Can’t wait to see what fresh chaos you serve with the hors d’oeuvres.”
Then he’s gone, coat flaring behind him as he disappears up the stairs.
I watch the door close behind him, then shift into drive.
The Brotherhood thinks I made a mistake, but what they don’t know is how much information I truly have. How much about the Huntington-Russells I really do know. How very undead some of them truly are, and the information I can leverage because of it.
But Saturday will prove otherwise.
One way or another.
Chapter twenty-two
Martine Herron
The perfume of sweat, champagne, and garden roses engulfs me.
There’s already a girl crying in one of our bathrooms, someone is doing coke off a compact mirror on the terrace chaise, and one of the zebras from the exotic animal handler has run loose and is galloping across the lawn.
Waitstaff glide like ghosts in black waistcoats through the crowd, offering flutes of vintage Cristal and trays of oysters. In the corner of the grand entryway, a string quartet plays a version of “Like a Virgin” by Madonna.
I stand in the center of it all, glass in hand, dressed in a floor-length black silk slip with a plunging back and emerald earrings so large they tug slightly with every turn of my head. My head is heavy and full, and without my anchor, my husband, I feel lost inthe haze of movement. A sea of people I’m drowning in without his heavy hand of control, of instruction.
The dress once belonged to Hayden’s mother. The earrings were also a wedding gift to her. The confidence is mine, though I had to search for it in the mirror before stepping into the storm. I pieced it together without the steady presence of my controller at my heels. He is occupied tonight, distracted by something I cannot name, and the unease settles heavily in my chest. The sharp pain in my gut from his absence startles me, a quiet ache that cuts through the jovial scene unfolding around me.
