“I have a cat,” Took said. Although it might behad, since Snack seemed to have relocated her affections. “Quick has an iguana. Even the Anakim get lonely.”
Annabelle shrugged. “It doesn’t seem right,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be like… people.”
“Are you?” Took asked.
She glanced at him and then down at her hands. The translucency had faded back to ivory, and she’d even gained a few freckles.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Nobody ever thought I was, not really, until Dom. And being my friend nearly destroyed him.”
“Maybe you should trust him then,” Took said. The advice he wished he’d taken earlier. “He seems a better judge of character than anyone else in your life before now.”
The children’s families, the only families they’d ever known, at least, had all been arrested. Before they took her away, Annabelle’s adoptive mother had spat in her face and said it was her fault that her brother—or the boy she always thought was her brother—died. That was the first wave of arrests. They would go on for a while. So far they’d found a few of the other children the cult had taken—both the ones kidnapped from Europe and those that Waring would have died for—but not enough.
“Maybe,” Annabelle admitted as they turned away from the window. “Will you want to talk to me about it again? What we did, the alchemy?”
“People will,” Took said. “Not today.”
She nodded and stuck her hand out. “Thank you,” she said. “I was taught to think vamp…. Anakim… were monsters, but you treated us all fair.”
He solemnly shook her hand, delivered her back to Lawrence, and then took a car back to VINE. Now that the dhampir children were settled, there was some business he needed to take care of.
It was full dark by the time he got there, but SSA Crane’s receptionist waved him through without question. He’d been a frequent visitor over the last few years. West was still at work at his desk, bent over files, with only a small desk lamp for light. After so many years working with Anakim, he acted like a need for light was a weakness.
“Did you tell Anderson we were on the way?” he asked as he closed the door behind him.
West looked up, his half smile of greeting wilted as his brain caught up with Took’s question. He spluttered out an indignant denial.
“That’s… how can you even ask me that question?” West demanded. “I’ve stuck by you through thick and thin, supported you, listened to your paranoid suspicions about Agent Madoc.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No,” West snapped. He made an impatient gesture with one hand and sat back in his chair to compose himself. “No. I see what this is. Now that you’re back on good terms with Madoc, you need someone else to blame for everything. Is that it?”
Took reached into his jacket and pulled out a DVD. He put it down gently on the table and tapped the plastic case with his finger.
“You visited me in the hospital after Madoc rescued me.”
West licked his lips. “I…. We were lovers, Took, remember. That meant something to me, even if it was just a distraction from Madoc for you.”
That might have worked a month ago, not now that Took had taken the time to think things through. He was always better when he could hide behind a theory instead of having to fumble with emotions.
“It was the first time that I was alone,” Took said. “The first time Madoc or one of the Biters wasn’t with me. I remember, because I woke up afraid, as though someone had come in the night and whispered suspicion in my ear. It probably worked better than you thought it would, I was suggestible and there was already so much about my mind I couldn’t trust.”
West stared at him. “Ridiculous.”
Took shook his head. “I was wrong about you. I never rated you as a profiler, but you played me like a fiddle for years. Asked just the right questions to make me convince myself, sowed just the right seeds and lied to me about what my psych report said.”
That took a second. “I didn’t think you were ready,” he said. “The psychiatrists didn’t know about your paranoia, your irrational fears—”
“They do now.” Took tapped his finger against the DVD case again. “I’m going to tell Madoc about this. If I was you, I’d think of something useful to tell him when he finds you.”
He turned to leave, but West stopped him on the way out the door.
“There’s no proof,” he said. “Not of anything.”
Took studied West’s face in the glass. “I don’t think that matters,” he said. “Madoc loves me. He’ll believe me.”
“I LOVEyou,” Took said as he handed Madoc an envelope and dropped down into the chair on the other side of the desk. “I should have trusted you. No matter what. I want to make that up to you.”
