“As I said before, Elliot, you’re smart. Smarter than Nell was by far. I can’t see you letting him manipulate things for long,” he says. “You can step out of the cycle. Stop letting him manage every aspect of your life. Use your immortality to do more. I can help you there. Sanguine would welcome you.”
I pause.Have I just been another Nell to Lucian?
“Maybe you should ask yourself, Elliot…” He steps closer to me. “This…Kayla. Are you sure she’s dead?”
I don’t take my case or my pack when I leave my apartment after my run-in with Santiago. His words won’t leave me alone.
He’s far from innocent in the manipulation department. I’m sure he was embellishing some things to get me on his side, but flat-out lying? I’m not sure.
The things he said about Nell and me and Kayla—it rings true.
I should ask Lucian outright, but would it even matter? I can’t trust him.
When Andrew and I get back to VMR, it’s like a ghost town.
I don’t know where everyone is.
Everyone I want to talk to, that is.
Lucian.
The elevator to his VMR floor is locked.
Instead, I go looking for Vittoria, and then I abandon that idea too. We’re not friends, and she’s the most like meandthe least. She’s loyal to one person, not counting herself, and that one person is Lucian.
Lucian, who told me Kayla was dead.
“This…Kayla. Are you sure she’s dead?”
Now I need to see for myself.
Heart thumping, I follow the path I took when I smelled Kayla’s scent in the air on Vittoria’s floor. There’s a trace memory of the scent around a door, accompanied by the sharp tang of blood.
My stomach clenches painfully with hunger. I shouldn’t be here.
But I reach out and put my hand on the cool metal handle.
There’s a keypad below so I don’t think it’s going to open, but when I turn it, the door opens.
The room bursts with the scent of Kayla.
It’s a bedroom, and despite the darkness, I can see that on the bed, on rumpled sheets, is a woman in a red corset, high-cutunderwear, and fishnet stockings. She stretches her arms above her head as if I’d just woken her from a long nap.
“Vittoria,” she says dreamily. “I thought you weren’t coming back tonight?—”
My legs almost give way and I have to hold on to the doorframe to stop from hitting the ground.
No…
It looks like Lucian was right about one thing. Kayla is dead.
HumanKayla’s dead.
Because a vampire is looking back at me.
“Kayla?”
Vittoria’s voice cuts through the silence like a blade. “What are you doing here?”
