And last but not least was option three. Staying human.

For my whole damned life I had straddled an uneasy line between two worlds without feeling like I’d belonged to either of them. I was a vampire and a werewolf, but I didn’t fit with either culture. I’d dreamed often of excommunicating myself from the supernatural drama and having a normal life. Now I was within spitting distance of living my dream, only to realize I had no way to make it possible.

But giving up now was like being in the middle of a marathon and someone telling you to stop because there was a chance you might be tripped before the finish line. Except in my case, instead of getting tripped I’d probably have my throat ripped out either by a social-climbing vampire or my own mother.

“I can’t just sit here. There’s something I have to do.”

“What could possibly be so important you need to do it right now?” Desmond asked.

“Lucas asked—”

“Secret.” His tone had gone flat, and a cold, almost dead quality filled his eyes. “No.”

“It’s not for him, it’s Kellen.”

“I don’t care if he asked you to go save African orphans. You’re not doing a favor for Lucas right now. There’s no fucking way.”

“I need to check on Kellen.”

Desmond rifled through his pocket, then handed me a cellphone. “Call her.”

“I need to see her,” I insisted. “Lucas says she’s not leaving her apartment and she’s been weird since we got back. I need to know she’s okay. I’m worried something happened to her while she was away.”

“Something like?”

“Like getting raped and impregnated by a fairy,” I said harshly.

My words got the point across because Desmond was quiet and looked abashed for fighting with me over it.

“Okay, we’ll go.” He waited and watched me. If I knew Desmond—and myself—he was waiting for me to insist I wanted to go alone. I might have, in the past, but I was stubborn, not stupid. I had no intention of risking my life to see Kellen.

“Can we take your car?” I asked. “Mine might be under observation. People might not know what happened, but Mercy is obviously gunning for me. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”

“Yeah, that’s…well, that’s actually what I was going to suggest.” He gave a small smile. “Great minds, I guess.”

“We both want me to live. That’s a start.”

“Do you have a wig?” Brigit asked, interrupting my moment with Desmond.

“A wig?”

“Yeah, we can make a disguise for you. Some sunglasses, a wig.”

Desmond and I both stared at her. “I don’t think I need a disguise, Bri.”

She blew a raspberry at me, her bangs tufting out with her forced breath. “You’re no fun.”

Chapter Forty-Three

Kellen had barricaded herself into her apartment.

“Kel…hon, can you open the door?” I didn’t want to make Desmond break it down unless we had no other choice, but at the moment it didn’t seem like she was leaving us one.

Brigit said she could hear crying on the other side, so we knew Kellen was in there, but why she wasn’t opening up was another story. I worried barging in would upset her more, especially if she’d been hurt, but I didn’t want to wait too long in case she was upset enough to do something drastic to herself.

Kellen had never struck me as the type to commit suicide or hurt herself, but sometimes people did unexpected things when they were pushed to the breaking point.

“Kellen, please. We’re here to help.”

“Go away,” came the reply.

Well, at least she was talking to us.

“We aren’t leaving until you open the door,” Desmond said. “Come on.” After a silence that didn’t sound promising, his voice dropped into a more serious—almost mean—register. “Kellen, open the door or I will break it down.”

I didn’t want to admit it, but hearing the tone of command in his voice made me think dirty, nasty things. Things that didn’t mesh well with what we were trying to accomplish here. I forced the ideas out of my mind and refocused my attention on the door.

After some dramatic foot stomping, the locks rattled and the door popped open. My first reaction was to ask the human-raccoon hybrid standing in the frame what it had done with my friend. Then I slowly processed that the mascara-smeared creature clutching a bottle of Moët was, unfortunately, Kellen Rain.

She didn’t look like someone who had walked out of a living hell, though. She looked like…well, exactly like I had when I’d been dumped. Like a crushed teenage girl who caught her football-star boyfriend making out with a cheerleader under the bleachers.

“What’s going on with you?” I asked, momentarily forgetting I was here to be supportive of her.

“What’s going on with me?” she parroted, swinging the bottle outwards at us and losing her balance. Desmond grabbed her by the armpits and kept her on both feet while she tried to get upright again. “What’s going on with you?” Her words were slurred, which told me it probably wasn’t her first bottle for the night.

“We’re here because we’re worried about you.”

“Fuck off.” She jerked free of Desmond’s grip and teetered back into the apartment. “I don’t want your…worry, or pity, or fucking whatever.”

She nearly tripped over a glass end table but managed to sidestep it at the last moment, and wove her way towards the living room. Brigit and I exchanged wary glances, but Desmond followed right behind Kellen, shadowing her steps while she charged through her apartment.

“Kel, can you talk to us?” he asked.

“So you can ruin something else for me?”

Ruin something? I was so shocked by her words I stopped hanging around the door and tracked the pair of them into the kitchen. Even though Kellen’s current bottle of champagne still had liquid in it, she was rifling through the fridge for another. I couldn’t fault her on that since I’d double fisted whiskey last time I tried to drink my problems away.

I also knew if she was drinking this much fermented alcohol, she was in for a doozy of a headache tomorrow.

“Maybe you should take a break from the—”

Kellen didn’t let me finish my sentence. “Did I tell you to lay off the booze when Lucas shafted you? No. Did I tell you to stop being a mopey, whiney bitch when you were dumped? No. Because I’m your friend.” She was waving the bottle at me again, and I was genuinely worried she might clobber me in the face with it.

“What is she talking about?” Brigit asked, tapping me on the shoulder. “I thought you rescued her.”

“We did rescue her.”

“Rescue me?” She started laughing and buried her head back inside the fridge, finally finding the bottle she was after and hauling it out. “Yeah, thanks. You rescued me from being happy.”

Desmond gave me a worried look, wearing his uncertainty on his face. He wouldn’t remember anything that had happened, including seeing how loopy and out of it Kellen had been when we’d seen her with Brokk.

“You were under some sort of spell.”

“Yeah, the spell of being in love.” She worked the cork out of the new champagne bottle. It popped free and flew up into the ceiling, smashing a light bulb.

“That wasn’t love. The fae can be very convincing, but he was misleading you into thinking you loved him so he could—”

“Secret, with all due respect, what the fuck do you know about love?”

I took a step back, feeling like I’d been punched in the gut. “What?”

“Kellen, why don’t we go into the other room?” Desmond took her by the elbow and relieved her of one of the bottles in her hands.

“Don’t protect her,” Kellen insisted. “She doesn’t deserve your protection. She ruined my happiness, she’ll ruin yours too.” Then she met my eyes and gave me a cold smile. “Oh wait. She already has.”

I must not hit my friend, I told myself. Although if I did it now, I could do it without causing any permanent damage. My palm itched with the desire to smack her, but I reminded myself she was drunk and probably didn’t mean what she was saying.

Blessedly, my phone chose that moment to ring and distract me from whatever scathing retort was bound to come out of my mouth. I imagined the words slut and train wreck would have been mentioned though, so it was for the best I didn’t say anything.

Keaty’s number popped up on my screen, and I felt a pang of guilt. I hadn’t told him about my predicament yet, when he should have been my first call. My hand was shaking as I hit the call answer button. Maybe it was paranoia, but I suspected Keaty would know something was up the moment he heard my voice.

“Hello?”

“I hope you had a lovely vacation.” For someone who didn’t tend to express a lot of emotion in his words, Keaty had definitely nailed sarcasm.

“It wasn’t a vacation, I was—”

“I know perfectly well where you were. After a furious werewolf king showed up at my office a week ago demanding to know where I was hiding you, I did my job…you know, the investigative work we do here.”

Lucas, it seemed, was hell-bent on ruining every aspect of my life.

“If you know where I was, you should know time isn’t the same there. I didn’t plan to be gone so long.”

“No, but did you also plan to ignore your phone when you did come home?”

“I didn’t plan to.”

“I hope you have a phenomenal excuse for not returning the half-dozen messages I’ve left you.” For Keaty, any number higher than one should be considered a crazy amount of calls. I hadn’t checked my messages, but if he’d actually left six, he’d either been worried or pissed off. Probably both, but he’d only admit to the latter.