Meg Cabot - Insatiable

She stared at him. “What does that have to do with anything? I told you, I was just visiting my friend Leisha and I thought I’d stop by-”

He shrugged. “I just find it interesting, that’s all.”

He had her. And she knew it. What’s more, she knew he knew. He could see a pink blush suffusing her long neck, rising up out of the rather low-cut neckline of the tight black dress and traveling up her cheeks.

“We all know he’s not dead, Meena,” Alaric said. “He must have asked you to go away with him.”

The blush turned crimson.

“Well,” she said, her gaze dropping to the floor. “That’s right. He did. But I said no.”

Alaric’s heart swelled with delight. This was his best day in the hospital yet. Everything was going great. He definitely hadn’t done anything stupid under the choir loft. What had he even been worrying about?

“It’s because you’re going to come work with us after all, right?” He folded his hands behind his head, enormously pleased with himself. “I knew you were just leading Holtzman on. That’s the spirit. The old man needs to be kept on his toes. You’re going for more money, aren’t you? And why not? You’re a valuable asset to the team. Or are you trying to score a position for that brother of yours, too? He showed some surprising initiative out there in the field.” Although apart from that first lucky shot, he had the worst aim of anyone Alaric had ever seen. “We could probably find something for him in the tech department. Look, if I were you, I’d try to get them to pay you a housing allowance. Where are you staying right now?”

She raised her gaze. But the blush, for some reason, was getting deeper. He could have sworn even her breasts were blushing. Which was a sight he would have been very interested to see in more detail.

“St. Clare’s, if you must know,” she said. “Father Bernard was kind enough to take Jon and me in after my apartment was unfortunately-”

“You didn’t go look at it, did you?” he interrupted, quickly dropping his hands. He didn’t want her to see her apartment. Especially the bed and what the graffiti over it said.

“No,” she said. “But Jon did. And he said-”

“Don’t,” he said. This was very important. “Promise me you won’t ever go there again. Just have someone take everything out of there and throw it away. Then sell the place. Don’t ever go back.”

“I’ll do that,” she said. “I promise. But I’m not holding out for more money, Alaric. The truth is…I’m not taking the job.”

He felt as if someone had sliced open another vein. Maybe in his heart.

“What?” he said stupidly.

“It was very kind of Dr. Holtzman to offer,” she said all in a rush. “I’m really very flattered. But I…I just don’t think I can do that. Go to work for…the people you work for. Right now.”

Alaric stared at her. “But I thought you said Lucien asked you to go away with him,” he said. “And you said no.”

“I did say no,” Meena said. She had shrunk in on herself, as if she were cold. “But that was…before.”

“Before when?” Comprehension slowly dawned. “Wait…before he turned into a dragon and tried to kill us all?”

She nodded wordlessly.

“So you haven’t actually seen him again since that night?”

She nodded again.

“So you’re not actually living at St. Clare’s,” he said. Everything was becoming clear. Maybe too clear. “You’re hiding there. You’re hiding from him. Because you’re scared to death of him.”

“Well,” she said, “I wouldn’t put it quite like that.”

“How else would you put it, then?” he demanded. “If you’re not scared of him, what are you scared of? Yourself? Scared you might say yes if he asks you again?” Alaric could hardly believe it. But it was right there, written all over her face.

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Meena said primly. “I just came in here to say hello to you, not to get one of your lectures.”

Lectures!

“But if you’re going to be like this,” she said, in the same tone of voice, “I’m leaving. I think they have you on too many pain meds.”

She got up to leave…but not soon enough. Because, even bedridden, he was too fast for her. He managed to reach out and snatch up her uninjured hand in his.

He wasn’t letting her go anywhere.

“I’m not on anything,” he said in his kindest voice, the one he reserved for Simone and…well, no one else, actually. “And it’s all right to be afraid, Meena.”

She stood there for a second or two, looking down at his fingers holding on to hers. Then, abruptly, she sank back down into the pink vinyl chair.

“Okay,” she said, raising her gaze to meet his again. Her brown eyes were wide and troubled. “You’re right. I’m terrified. As soon as the sun goes down every night, I take Jack Bauer and go into one of those windowless rooms in the convent they stuck Yalena in. And I stay there. I don’t come out until morning. Because I know he can’t get to me in there. I mean, if he’s even looking for me, which I don’t know. He turned into a dragon, Alaric. He tried to kill us all.”

“Not you,” Alaric said. He couldn’t believe he was actually defending Lucien Dracula. But amazingly, his desire to see her smiling again was stronger than his hatred for the prince. “He did his best to try to keep you from getting killed.”

She gave him a sarcastic look. “He turned into a dragon,” she reminded him.

Alaric looked down at her hand, so small in his. She was holding on to his rather tightly.

She was afraid. She was very afraid.

Alaric had seen this before. People-grown men and women, other guards just like him-who’d come back from missions exactly the way Meena was right now, slinking around in abject terror, afraid of their own shadows because of the demonic horrors they’d seen in the field.

He didn’t want her going off with the prince.

But he couldn’t let her go on this way, either.

Even if it meant losing her.

He took a deep breath and said, “If I’ve learned anything in this life, Meena, it’s that there are a lot of scary things out there. Sometimes I just want to go into a windowless room until the sun comes back up, and the scary things have gone away. But the truth is…those scary things aren’t going to just go away on their own.”

Meena, as if she sensed where he was headed with this, started to pull her hand away, shaking her head. Her eyes had filled with tears.

But he wouldn’t release her fingers from his. Because she had to hear it.

No matter how much she didn’t want to. “Because it turns out I have a gift,” he went on. “And that gift is that I’m good at killing scary things. So I use my gift to help others who aren’t as strong as I am, in order to make the world a safer place for them. I can’t lock myself into a windowless room until the sun comes back up, Meena. No matter how much I might want to sometimes.”

She whipped her head toward him, starting to protest.

But he just held her hand and went on.

“Because my job is to face the scary things. And I think deep down, Meena, you know that’s your job, too. That maybe the reason people like you and me were put here on this earth was so that everyone else-people who don’t have our gifts-can sleep in their windowless rooms while we make the world a little bit safer for them.”

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he saw why.

She was crying.

Well…he hadn’t meant to make her cry.

Maybe he couldn’t do anything right. Maybe there was no Alaric Wulf magic. Maybe Holtzman was right, and he really did need that counseling.

After a little while she looked up and said, “I’ve been a fool.”