He sat back down beside her and patted her thigh in his best attempt at being reassuring. “This is great news.”
She looked up at him aghast, and he quickly clarified. “Not that you’re sick, but that it might just be a matter of my compulsion skills being too weak for your… unique situation.”
“How is that a good thing?” she asked, edging away from him again.
“Because all I need to do is take you to someone more skilled than I. Marquin has the strongest compulsion I’ve ever encountered. He can take care of this.”
Cora sighed. “And there’s no way I can convince you to just let me go? Let me keep my script?”
Saiden knew it was a bad idea before the words came out, but he couldn’t help himself. A compliant passenger would be much easier to handle than someone who was constantly trying to escape.
“You can always ask Marquin,” he suggested. “He is the leader of my cadre, so he ultimately makes the decisions. You are welcome to plead your case to him.”
The light that sparked in her eyes made him feel like tiny needles were stabbing at his insides. Even though nothing he said was a lie, he was still a bastard for giving her hope. In the nearly three hundred years he’d known Marquin, the vampire had never once budged on protocol when it came to secrecy from humans. Saiden didn’t relish the idea of sleeping with one eye open, though, so he’d let her hold onto the dream for a little longer.
“That’s great,” Cora gushed, jumping up. “Let’s go see Marquin. I know he’ll see reason. Does he live nearby?”
Saiden puffed out an annoyed breath, cursing Derrick once again for his unreliability.
“Not exactly.”
Chapter ten
Cora
Cora crossed her arms and glared at Saiden. “It’s non-negotiable.”
They’d been arguing for nearly ten minutes, but she wasn’t about to give in. Sure, Saiden could just throw her in the trunk of his car, but something about the way he looked at her said he wouldn’t. He’d been hurt when she called him a monster, and for some reason he didn’t want people to see him that way. Which made little to no sense given that he was a vampire who apparently murdered other vampires on the regular. Whatever the reason, her opinion of him mattered to some degree, and she wasn’t going to budge. If he wanted this road trip to be even remotely pleasant, he would grant her this one thing.
“And what do you think you’re going to say, hmm?” Saiden asked, holding the passenger door to the McLaren open for her.
Now that was something she’d agreed to in a heartbeat. Ten hours in her Mazda with the broken heater that gave off a moldy smell was no competition for his swanky sports car with a leather interior.
“I’ll tell her that you’re an investor interested in my movie, and I’m going to meet with some of your friends to discuss funding.”
Saiden snorted. “Now tell me, Cora, if the roles were reversed andthis Jinx fed you that same line of horseshit, would you let her go gallivanting off with a random stranger she just met?”
“Well no, of course not. I’d tell her she was about to be sex trafficked, and I’d chain her to the radiator so she couldn’t leave.”
He wrinkled his forehead. “You actually live in a place with a radiator?”
“Well excuse me, Richie Rich, but we don’t all have treasury bonds that have been maturing for a thousand years.”
Saiden dug his fingers into his temples. “There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to begin. But we are getting off track. Again. If you wouldn’t believe your own story, then why would your friend? I’m sorry, but you can’t go home, and you can’t talk to anyone. You’ll be back tomorrow, so there’s no point in arguing and that’s that.”
Cora stamped her foot in the dirt, hoping the action came off as more unyielding and less temper tantrum. “I’m going home first andthat’sthat.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“No, you’re not,” Saiden gritted out and stomped over to her.
He reached out to grab her around the waist, but before his hands made contact she screeched, “I don’t have my medication, okay?”
Saiden went still for a second then slowly backed off.
She swallowed roughly and forced the excuse out. “I don’t keep my meds with me, and I can’t function without them.”
