Overbite. Meg Cabot
undoubtedly launch an all-out military assault on the place that would include smoke grenades and possibly tear gas.
But she’d already phoned Jon and learned that he was working his normal Friday-night shift at the Beanery, where he’d found employment as a barista. He wasn’t planning to be home until after eleven.
This gave Meena exactly one hour to get Lucien out of the apartment.
The question was, how was she going to do this?
She had no idea what was wrong with Lucien. But his announcing that he was still in love with her certainly hadn’t made things any better. The admission had, in fact, only seemed to cause him to grow weaker. She’d had to half support him as she staggered the rest of the way to her building.
She hadn’t wanted to bring him inside. But he seemed so ill, she didn’t know what else to do. She couldn’t leave him outside, even though this was what he asked of her.
But that was ludicrous. He’d already admitted he was so weak, he couldn’t maintain his glamour, or whatever it was, much longer. She certainly wasn’t going to abandon him in this condition, defenseless. She wasn’t just concerned about whoever—or whatever—had been following them, but about anyone who might happen to stumble across him. Alaric Wulf, for instance. True, Alaric lived in a completely different neighborhood, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
Fortunately, her building had an elevator, even though it was ancient, barely had room for two people and a laundry basket, and was so slow it was usually simpler to take the stairs. She was able to prop Lucien up inside, though, and get him safely to her floor.
From there things got more complicated. She’d grown so used to them, she’d forgotten the radical lengths to which she and the Palatine had gone to vampire-proof the apartment. There was a crucifix hanging over every window and doorway. Strands of garlic hung across her bed. Father Bernard, who led the parish of the Shrine of St. Clare’s, had blessed the place when she’d moved in, sprinkling every corner of it with holy water. Sister Gertrude had lately taken to dropping by with patron-saint devotional candles.
Lucien had groaned upon entering.
“It’s not that bad,” Meena had said defensively.
“That’s your opinion,” he replied.
But then there was her dog. Even before she’d known they existed, Meena had had a secret weapon in the fight against vampires. Because somehow she’d managed to pick the one Pomeranian mix in the entire Manhattan animal-shelter system that was particularly sensitive to—and infuriated by—the scent of the undead. Or perhaps the dog had picked her. One of them, in any case, had picked the other, maybe with some idea of what the future held in store.
Jack Bauer—so named because his anxiety level was exceeded only by his determination to save the world from all evil—leaped from his basket the minute Lucien entered the apartment, curled back his lips, and began to snarl as if the Apocalypse were occurring in the living room right in front of him.
Which was why Meena had had to pick him up and lock him in the bathroom, with a bowl of water and his favorite chew toy. He immediately began to whimper, sad to be missing out on all the fun.
When she returned to her bedroom, where Lucien had retreated to escape the vicious mini-assault, she saw that he had collapsed onto her light blue duvet. He had one arm over his eyes to shield them from the garlic overhead. The rest of her walls—also light blue—were bare, because Meena had been so busy, she still had not gotten around to decorating, beyond what Sister Gertrude had dropped by and the apartment’s owner had chosen, which was the minimum of furnishings.
She took a deep breath and sank down onto the bed beside him. The flouncy red skirt of her dress, now looking a little worse for wear after her battle with David, swirled out around them both.
“Lucien, you’ve got to tell me. What’s wrong?” she asked. “Are you hurt? Is there anything I can bring you?”
It was a stupid question. She didn’t have any spare pints of blood lying around the apartment. And she wasn’t about to offer up her own neck.
But she didn’t have the slightest idea what else to say.
“I don’t believe so,” he said. He lowered his arm. His dark-eyed gaze latched onto hers, and he managed another one of those heart-wrenching smiles. “Being this close to you again is enough. For now. Although I’ll admit in my weaker moments I question the wisdom of being in love with a woman who chooses to work for an organization intent on exterminating my people. Believe me, if I could, I would prefer not to be.”
She felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She’d forgotten what it was like to have a man say that he loved her.
Oh, sure, guys occasionally indicated that they wanted to sleep with her. And sometimes—like with David—it even seemed like the relationship might actually go somewhere.
But it never did. Take her relationship with Alaric Wulf. He had kissed her—quite passionately—once.
But he had been semiconscious from blood loss at the time. Since then, he had not tried to kiss her again. He had, in fact, been seriously standoffish, except for asking her to dinner once, in his apartment.
Which had so obviously been an invitation for casual sex, Meena had been insulted. She’d thought she’d meant a little more to him than that. He could get that from any silly girl he met at any nightclub in Manhattan. If he wasn’t going to do anything to indicate that she meant something more to him than that, she wasn’t going to bother with him.
On the other hand, it was Alaric Wulf who’d more or less raised himself. So it was possible he hadn’t known any better. Instead of telling him to go to hell, she’d just politely refused the invitation.
But with Lucien, everything was different. Because Lucien had always gotten the love thing down perfectly.
True, he had no soul. True, he was the five-hundred-year-old son of one of the most prolific serial killers in history, who had made an unholy pact with Satan in order to achieve immortality, and so needed to consume human blood to survive.
And true, their relationship had gone from amazing to unmitigated disaster in record time because he’d kept biting her. And then the members of his family kept trying to do the same. And now vampires all over the world seemed to think of Meena’s blood as a refreshing pick-me-up, like Dr Pepper.
Still. He’d never stopped loving her.
“I really don’t think,” Meena said, aware that the lighting in the room was far too low—it could almost have been called romantic—because she had no overhead light, just a small bedside lamp, “this is the time or place to be talking about this.” Even though, truthfully, she never wanted to stop talking about it. “There’s obviously something really wrong with you. I think you should tell me what it is so I can try to help you.”
But Lucien just shook his head.
“I told you I would love you until the end of time,” he said, the corners of that irresistible mouth of his turned up. But not like he actually thought the situation was funny. More like he was sad … but in an amused way. “Coming from someone who, in all likelihood, will live until then, those aren’t words to be spoken lightly. I’ve been in love with you ever since that horrible dinner party at my cousin’s apartment, and we went to the Metropolitan Museum afterward, and you showed me the painting you love, the one of Joan of Arc. You look even more like her now, with your hair like that. Although I’m not entirely sure what color that’s supposed to be …”
She reached up instinctively to tug on a lock of her hair. Her best friend, Leisha, the highest-paid stylist at the B.A.O. (By Appointment Only) Salon, had given her permission to grow out her pixie cut, on the condition that Leisha be allowed to experiment with color. Meena now had different-colored hair each month.
But underneath it, she was still the exact same person she’d been the day she’d met Lucien.
She