Rachel sat up in bed and ran her fingers through her hair. Lying there reveling in Knox’s scent was a guilty pleasure she didn’t have time for. She needed to figure out what the hell was going on with her. Getting up, she pulled on jeans and a T-shirt over the bra and panties she wore, then shoved her phone in a pocket and stuck her feet in a pair of mule sneakers before heading into the living room.
Knox and Diego were sitting on the couch, staring intently at a laptop. They glanced up as she entered the room. Soda cans, junk food wrappers, and pieces of notebook paper covered in writing littered the coffee table. As she got nearer, she looked at the papers curiously but realized she couldn’t read the scribble no matter what. Both of them had atrocious handwriting.
“How are you feeling?” Knox asked, concern evident on his handsome face. “You slept for a long time.”
Rachel didn’t say anything as she opened the fridge to take out a Diet Coke, thankful Knox had bought her some so she wouldn’t have to overdose on sugar by drinking the Mountain Dew he preferred. Back in the living room, she stopped by the open bag of Hostess powdered mini-donuts and grabbed a handful. She could eat donuts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then mix in a few for snacks in between.
She flopped on the couch beside Knox, wolfing down one of the powdered donuts before answering. “I feel good. That fight this morning in Hadley’s office must have worn me out. Or maybe I finally had a chance to catch up on all the sleep I’ve been missing out on over the past few weeks. Either way, I feel as good as new.”
Knox and Diego exchanged looks but didn’t comment, so Rachel wasn’t so sure they believed her. She wasn’t sure she believed it herself.
“What have you two been up to while I was napping?” she asked, biting into another donut.
“Research,” Diego said. “We’ve been trying to find anything that might help us understand what the hell happened this morning.”
Rachel raised a brow at that, not sure how a person would go about researching a complete mental breakdown involving four different people. Were there chat groups for something like that?
“Have you learned anything?”
“Well, to start with, Horace Watkins is dead,” Knox said.
Rachel stopped chewing, the previously delicious donut suddenly dry and tasteless in her mouth. “Why would you even check on something like that? It’s not like Horace Watkins slipped into Hadley Delacroix’s office and changed into her clothes when I wasn’t looking. Or into my apartment. Or the basement of the courthouse.”
Knox exchanged another quick glance with Diego before turning his attention back to her. “We know that, but what happened this morning wasn’t some kind of mental breakdown. That thing was real. It attacked all of us and damn near killed us. The fact that Horace was made up as a clown when he attacked you, and now you’re being terrorized by a clown that looks exactly like him isn’t something we could ignore. Unfortunately, it was a dead end. The prison said he hung himself while in solitary confinement ten weeks ago.”
The idea of Horace Watkins somehow being personally involved in these episodes seemed insane. But then again, seeing her nightmare come to life and throw one of her pack mates through a wall was also more than a little insane. So, maybe it was time to suspend her disbelief for a while and try to accept the craziness of this situation.
“Are they sure it was ten weeks ago?” she murmured, trying to understand why that time frame seemed so important. “Why was he in solitary anyway?”
“They couldn’t give us a specific time of death,” Diego answered. “I got the feeling the guards hadn’t been checking on him as often as they were supposed to. Apparently, Horace had gone completely ranting, raving, foaming-at-the-mouth crazy and attacked the guards dozens of times.”
“Why are you so interested that it was ten weeks ago?” Knox asked. “Is that significant?”
She thought about it, then shrugged. “Maybe it’s a coincidence, but ten weeks ago is about when my nightmares started up again really bad. Before that, they’d almost disappeared.”
Knox frowned and grabbed a piece of notebook paper already covered with scribbles and wrote down something that looked like the wordsten weeksandnightmares.
“What else have you two been doing?” she asked. “There are a lot of notes here.”
Knox picked up a stack of papers and handed them to her. “We surfed the web, looking for other accounts that sounded anything like what happened this morning. Some of them are probably bullshit, but a few seem legit. It’s kind of scary, but there’s a lot of weird crap going on out there in the world—even weirder than vampires.”
Diego continued, “We dug some more, and when we realized there might be a legitimate explanation, we got in contact with Davina DeMirci to see if she might know something. She said she’d do some digging and get back to us. We figured we’d keep looking while we waited.”
Rachel nodded, not bothering to do more than glance at the pieces of paper, since she couldn’t read them anyway. Davina was a rather odd woman they’d met out in LA. She owned a nightclub that served an extremely unusual clientele of the supernatural variety. The woman definitely knew a lot about things that go bump in the night. It probably wasn’t a bad idea to talk to her.
She opened her mouth to ask how they’d described the clown attack to Davina but was interrupted by a buzzing coming from her butt. Reaching back, she pulled out her phone and found a text waiting for her.
“What’s up?” Knox asked, looking up from his laptop and a chat loop dedicated to the creatures frequently appearing on the TV showSupernatural. She had no idea why he’d be looking there.
“It’s Addy. Her parents got in a huge fight earlier, and now there are a bunch of lawyer types at the house. She thinks they’re talking about getting divorced and wants to know if I can come over and hang out with her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Diego said quickly even as Knox nodded in agreement. “After this morning, I think you should stay here, where we can keep an eye on you. Besides, doesn’t she know you’ve been taken off her security detail?”
Rachel felt her gums and fingertips tingle at the idea of Knox and Diego thinking they were going to keep her there for her own protection. She appreciated their concern, but she was a big girl who could take care of herself. Okay, maybe she couldn’t exactly take care of herself—at least not when the clown showed up—but she’d made Addy a promise that she’d be there whenever the girl needed her. Rachel wasn’t going to go back on that promise now. She just needed to stay away from any dangerous, adrenaline-filled situations—or ones that involved her thinking about the clown. Neither of those scenarios should come up during a girl-to-girl chat in the safety of the Lloyd mansion.
“Addy doesn’t need a security guard. She’s scared her parents are getting divorced and she needs a friend.” Rachel stood and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “I’ll be fine going over there.”
Knox immediately got to his feet. “I’m with Diego on this. What if that…thing…comes back? Why can’t Zane or Trey sit and talk with her?”
