“I don’t know what you mean.”
Takashi knew that tone of voice. He’d heard it many times over the last hundred years. She was lying. “How long have you been planning to kill Zack for interfering with your schemes?”
Nell said nothing, which spoke volumes.
Being right should have felt pleasant, but Takashi only had a coldness growing in his gut. “He completely ruined your timetable by waking Roger early, didn’t he?”
“What do they know?” Nell asked icily.
“Nothing. I only just figured it out myself,” Takashi replied. He heard footsteps in the hallway, so he lowered his voice. “I thought you cared for humans, at the very least for our kind.”
“Ido,” Nell snapped. “That is the reason the GLC must be destroyed. There is no purging the rot when everything has been infected. Zack will be an unfortunate casualty, but the lives saved in the end will be in the thousands. Hundreds of the thousands.
“Stake him. Grab your sireling. Come home. I can hide you until Seamus is finally ashes. We can work together to establish control over the GLC’s territory the right way.”
Which would put Takashi right back where he started, under her thumb, never to hold true power. Never to be the one who made the decisions that mattered.
Never again to hold the two men he loved.
The outer door to the suite was opening.
“I have to go.”
“Takashi—”
He ended the call and placed the cell phone into Zack’s unused coffin, gently opening and closing the lid. Then he strode out into the bedroom and headed for the living room.
Zack interrupted him by walking through the bedroom door. He was making a beeline for his desk, and he was practically glowing with a chipper energy. In his hands was a stack of eight books that he balanced effortlessly. He danced around Takashi and continued on. New vampires had a habit of moving tooquickly when they were excited. Zack had never shown that habit, but he was doing so now.
“I thought you’d be stuck in party planner mode until dawn.” Zack sat the stack on his desk and dug in the drawers to pull out a pen and a fresh notebook.
“We’ve settled on everything important,” Takashi remarked as he casually walked over to Zack. “Anton is talking of having another party here at the mansion in a few weeks.”
“Let me guess, he wants to throw a ‘bloody Valentine’s Day’ party with like actual hearts in jars.”
“I reminded him that dismembered body parts were gauche these days. Where did you find these?” Takashi laid his hand on the top book.
“The massive library that younger me would have sold his soul to find.” Zack paused. “Okay, maybe that’s not that funny since I let a demon in my dreams. I’m still not sure who’s curating it. Maybe Grimsby.”
“The infamous fey butler I have yet to meet?”
Zack scowled at him. “You’ve seen him.”
Takashi raised an eyebrow.
“He’s eight feet tall, sort of looks like a skeleton with skin, extremely thin. I’ve seen you and him in the same room,” Zack replied petulantly.
Kill him, Nell had ordered.
Perhaps because she’d issued the command, or perhaps because he had already tumbled off the tightrope of keeping a level head, Takashi was certain that he had never loved Zack harder than he did in that moment. His excitement, his energy, his everything called to Takashi in a way that was deeper than his soul. Zack was a missing piece of him.
“He must be using an illusion on himself,” Takashi said softly.
“Then why do I get to see him but you don’t?”
Takashi shrugged with one shoulder. “You’re the son of the master of the house, and I’m, at best, a guest?”
Zack scrunched his nose in such a perfect, utterly him way that Takashi hoped he would see him continue to do so for the next five hundred years or more. The movement was brief, reflexive, and gone by the time Zack turned his gaze toward Takashi. Zack narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “What’s up?”
