A sharp edge entered Dahlia’s voice when she demanded, “What the fuck doesthatmean?”
“It means what I said,” she insisted. “I’m, like,sofine. Never been better.”
“I would assume so, but the fact that you’re being so insistent about it implies that you’re not actually fine.” Dahlia made a soft sound of alarm before she snapped, “Did something happen with Duke?”
“Okay, so, first of all?—”
“Grim’s tits, Cece! I told you to call me if he started asking you questions!”
“Am I or am I not calling you right now?”
Dahlia’s quick inhale came through the speakers. “What happened?”
“Again, I’m gonna just preface this by saying I’mfine,”Cecilia insisted. “But when I got off my shift the other night, Dukefollowed me home. I’ll spare you the details but suffice it to say none of us have to worry about him looking for Devon anymore.”
“Spare me the details?Spare me the details?”Dahlia’s voice moved through an impressive range of flat, incredulous notes and hysterical peaks. “Cecilia Marcella Warren, you donotget to spare me the details!”
“Listen, it’s fine. He’s not a problem anymore. My friend took care of it and I’m safe. It’s all good.”
It sounded like Dahlia was moving when she hollered, “Felix! Who’s on guard duty for Cece?”
“You had someone guarding me?” she muttered, disconcerted by the apparent number of people who’d been watching her. Not that it surprised her, really, but it was never comfy hearing she’d had more than one stalker, well-meaning or not.
From a distance she heard Felix’s response, but she couldn’t make out what he said.
“Duke followed Cece home last night,” Dahlia explained to her husband. “And no one checked in? I didn’t get a single alert!”
“…hard to find good fucking help in San Francisco,” Felix sighed, much closer to the phone. There was a shuffling sound before he said, “Cece, you’re on speaker. Are you all right?”
Even more certain now than she was before that she shouldn’t mention anything about exactly how she’d been rescued, she exclaimed, “I amso fine!”
“What happened?” There was a snapping sound before Felix called out, “Milo, get ahold of Nash. We need Ginny to pick up Cece.”
Standing up abruptly from the couch, she paced toward the wall of windows. The rapidly darkening sky was a velvety plum, and the fog that rolled in over the water between wherever the Battery was located and San Francisco was a pale lavender thatreminded her of Sloane’s skin. It was pretty — and completely lost on her.
Clutching a fistful of her hair, she cried, “Oh my gods, no, you donot.Milo, I’m canceling that order!”
As nice as it sounded on paper to stay with her best friend for an undetermined amount of time in her swanky mansion surrounded by hunky single vampires and being waited on hand and foot, Cecilia just couldn’t do it. Dahlia and Felix were just starting their lives together. The thought of intruding on her best friend’s hard-earned happily ever after made her stomach sink with shame.
“Cece,”Dahlia dragged out, “you’re staying with us. If you don’t want to be in the house, we’ll put you in a hotel. You can even stay with my dads! They’d love to have you. But you aren’t staying there if Duke?—”
“Duke is dead!”
At last, silence reigned.
It was Felix who broke it. In an impressed voice, he asked, “Did you kill him?”
Scoffing, Dahlia answered, “Of course she didn’t kill him.” Half a beat later, she asked Cecilia, “You didn’t, did you?”
The sound of a heavy door opening down the bare gray hall prompted her to turn away from the window. Gaze immediately settling on the towering form of her masked savior, she said, “My friend took care of it.”
Felix hummed. “Your friend, huh?”
“She won’t tell me his name,” Dahlia muttered.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Cece, what’s his name?”
