CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Zephyr
I remembered this feeling from sometime long ago. Breathlessly gasping, dangling, waiting… It felt like dying.
That was how the hellhound found me: far from death but close to the source of another devastating loss.
She pounded her fist on the hotel room door. Maybe that was what I should have done, but I was too bewildered to argue a point I didn’t understand. Things like poison, and Maslow, and making Beck my thrall twisted together in a hopeless tangle. He seemed to think it had something to do with the bite, but that happened weeks ago. Why was it a problem now?
More than a problem. A detonation.
Everything was ruined. Over. We were done before we began, and the happier future I’d barely glimpsed was closed off to me.
If this was grief, I had yet to process it.
I hunkered in the passenger seat of the limousine, stillwearing Beck’s pajamas. My clothes and new shoes had been left behind.
Colette drove, but not in silence. She’d been rambling since Beck refused to answer the door, spouting off words in the language that rang like bells in my ears. I tried to tune her out. My brain was already cluttered with noise and nonsense. But as her volume increased and her grip on the steering wheel made her knuckles pop up in an angry ridge, I registered her words at last.
“Et voilà, Beck a pris une autre décision merveilleuse: il a trop peur d’aimer, alors il fait souffrir a quelqu’un d’autre.”
It was gibberish at first. But then understanding filtered in, and I realized I understood every word.
“And there you have it, Beck made a wonderful decision: he’s too afraid to love, so he makes someone else suffer.” She scoffed, then continue. “He could’ve opened his heart to you, but no. Mister Big Shot would rather run like a child.”
“It’s not his fault,” I said amidst her tirade.
Her lips bent in a deep frown. I was used to seeing makeup on her, but at this early hour she was barefaced, and also in her sleep clothes. Before she could argue with me, her sour expression changed into one of mild delight.
“Tu parles français?” She cocked her head toward me.
Did I speak French?
“Uh…” I paused. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
Colette snuffled a breath. For the first time that day, she looked something other than perturbed. In fact, she grinned.
“I knew I liked you.” She smiled wider, then reached over to smooth my sleep-tousled hair. “Mon petit français.”
I was too shaken to return her cheer, feeling chilled through and so unsteady I was glad to be sitting down. Theevents of the morning rolled over me like waves, dragging me farther from shore.
“It’s generous of you to defend him, but Lucas is a bastard,” she carried on in French that I slowly pieced together. “He’s done nothing but talk about you for weeks. Horribly smitten. I’ve not seen the likes of it since, well… it’s been a long time.”
“He said I poisoned him,” I replied in English. Despite the foreign language sounding right to my ears, my tongue didn’t seem to know it.
Colette tossed her head. “Ridiculous.”
I’d thought so—in what little time I’d had to think at all. Since being drawn up from Hell, I’d been told next to nothing about myself. Outside of Maslow’s opinions about my needs and wants, it had been a rocky road of self-discovery. I had so much yet to learn, and it was possible I could do things—had done things—I didn’t understand.
The Strip passed by, nearly vacant so close to dawn, but I didn’t stare at it today. Instead, I looked at the floor and my bare feet before asking Colette, “What if I did?”
She shot me a skeptical side-eye. “You don’t know?”
I drew a deep breath as pain throbbed in my heart. “I bit him,” I said, starting with the obvious. “And he asked me, the night we met, if I had bewitched him.”
In hindsight, it had been closer to an accusation. Beck had seemed severe in the moody lights of the executive suite, questioning my ability to enthrall him or his client. I told him I hadn’t; I wasn’t sure I could.
