Bradley cast me a skeptical glance, which I deserved, but then turned to everyone in the kitchen. “Hey, everybody, look who’s here.”
I looked around the room, but my ex, Sephira, wasn’t there. I frowned. I needed to talk to her so I could mark her off my list of suspects.
“There he is, the vampire who decides he can flout the rules and risk exposing all of us for his own pleasure.” Mason's voice held a light French accent. With dark hair and piercing eyes, he wore a long apron that looked as if it had seen better centuries and vigorously stirred a bowl of dough.
“Good to see you too, Mason.” I leaned against the counter.
“Shhh, you guys are messing up my video.” Alice held her phone in the corner with her usual gothic setup. She’d brought the death by chocolate coffin cake she loved to make as her centerpiece. Everyone fell silent while Alice took her shots. Then she lowered her phone. The universal sign meant we were now free to speak.
“Ugh, when is the food going to get here? I’m starving,” Nathan moaned. He adjusted his jacket, which he hadn’t taken off, and gazed longingly toward the front door. He was the newest of us and the member who was still getting used to controlling his thirst. As vampires, we could eat human food, but it didn’t satisfy us in the same way.
“The food is here, my dear,” Alice responded, brushing the bangs of her purple-dyed hair from her face, motioning to her gothic setup. “It’s kinda funny though, don’t you think?” She turned her attention on me. “Everyone is always saying I’m theone who will give us away, and then Wickham goes and breaks the rules.”
“It’s not right,” Mason said in his gruff voice as he spread the flour out onto the counter. “There’s a right way to do things. Like a recipe, there are proper steps you must follow. If you don’t adhere to the prescribed method, things end up messy and wrong.”
I raised my hands. “I’m sorry I broke the rules. I’m aware that puts all of us at risk—”
Mason dumped his dough onto the counter and let out a loudhumph.
“I only did it because I thought it might protect you,” I continued. “Protect all of us, including Lydia and me. I fully plan to end the marriage.”
The room fell silent. I even had Nathan’s attention. “You’re divorcing her?” he asked.
“It’s called an annulment when it’s early and both parties agree it was a mistake—”
“Yeah, but doessheagree it was a mistake?” Alice asked.
“Does that really matter if it’s what is best for her?” I said a bit defensively. “For everyone?”
Mason scowled and returned to his dough to fold it. “That’s not how things are done.”
“I don’t know, that does seem kinda harsh, man,” Bradley added. “Marrying someone and then tossing them aside.”
I stared at them in disbelief. “You all just told me I can’t be above the rules. That I was putting everyone in danger.”
“For sure, but the damage is done,” Alice said.
I grit my teeth. “I’m protecting her.” Protecting her from me, my crazy life, and the death and danger that inevitably followed me.
“Protecting her or yourself?” Alice shot back.
I needed the heat off of me, so it was an immense relief when Nathan shouted, “Food!” and rushed for the cooler that a woman named Lexa had just brought into the room. Young-looking and petite, she worked at the local blood bank and could sneak dated bags of blood out to us fellow vampires.
Lexa opened the cooler, revealing the bags. Each had a small cross and heart on them. Nathan grabbed a nearby straw off the counter and stuck it into the blood bag, feasting on it. I watched his enjoyment a little warily. Blood was delicious to vampires, including me. However, I used to be vegan before I became a vampire, and now I mostly took my blood in rare steaks because I had no other choice.
“You should see some of the new technology they have for extracting blood,” Lexa said. She was always into recenttechnical innovations. “We just got these devices that make it super fast—”
I turned away from the discussion. Now that everyone was distracted, I moved across the kitchen toward Mason, who was bent over his dough, carefully using a cutter to shape his biscuits.
Bradley saw my approach and laid a hand on his husband’s arm. “Hey hon. Wickham came to hash things out. Perhaps we should give him a moment so we can, you know, hash?”
Mason cut into his dough a bit too forcefully. “We welcomed you here when you first came. And now you risk making us all vulnerable. And at the worst time.”
“Somebody left a dead body drained of blood behind the police station recently,” Bradley added quietly.
“Yeah. It was pretty inconvenient when I found that dead body first on my doorstep,” I said.
I watched Mason’s reaction, ignoring how Bradley’s jaw dropped in shock. Mason’s eyes narrowed. “Someone is trying to expose you.”
