Meg Cabot - Insatiable

“Alaric.” Her chin was starting to tremble, and she was aware that her brave face was melting. “You may not be all right. And even though I really do love Jack Bauer, in the end, you’re a person, and he’s just a dog.”

His gaze was unreadable. “How?” he asked her curiously.

Now she was the one who didn’t understand. “I beg your pardon?”

“How does it happen?” His fingers were busy again, working his belt. “My death. You’re seeing it, aren’t you? You think if I go, I’m going to die. So how does it happen this time? Not in the pool. Is it still with the darkness? And the fire?”

“No,” she lied. “Not at all. I see you living a really long, happy life and dying of old age in a resort community of some kind. Florida, maybe. Palm Beach?”

It was too late. He’d seen the tears in her eyes. His broad shoulders tensed, and he turned away from her, reaching for his black leather trench coat, which hung on a rack by the door.

“You’re lying to me,” he said. “I would never retire to Florida. Majorca, maybe. Or Antigua. But never Florida. You shouldn’t lie to a guardsman to protect his feelings. The information you are able to provide to us before a mission could save our lives.” His coat on, he looked down at her with those amazing blue eyes. “Never lie to me again, Meena. Swear to me.”

She blinked away the tears that still clung to her eyelashes. “All right,” she said hoarsely. “I swear. I see a death filled with smoke and darkness and fire for you. There. Are you happy?”

“Oh,” he said, brightening. “See? This is good to know. I like this.” He reached out to tap her roughly on the collarbone, then struck his own. “We need to learn to communicate more like this if we’re going to be working together in the future.”

“What?” She shook her head, perplexed. Her throat throbbed, both with emotion and the smoke she’d inhaled back in the kitchen. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Alaric. Why would we be working together in the future? I’m trying to tell you that if you do this, you won’t have a future. But since you won’t listen to me…let me go with you.”

“Oh, no,” he said with a humorless bark of laughter.

“But it’s my dog you’re risking your life to-”

“No.” He wagged one of his massive fingers in her face. “And if I catch you following me, I’ll handcuff you to something to keep you safe. Don’t think I won’t.”

She believed him. “I know you will,” she said. “But at least let me…here.”

Impulsively, she loosened the scarf she’d been wearing around her throat.

Alaric looked down as she began tying the delicate strip of red material around his wrist, the one that she’d been holding.

“What is this?” he asked, his voice sounding…well, strange.

A token, she thought. From milady, for St. George, about to do battle with the dragon for her.

She knew she was losing what frail grip she’d once had on her sanity.

There was no chance she was going to say that milady stuff out loud to Alaric Wulf, however.

“I don’t know,” she said, trying not to let him see the tears that were still in her eyes. “For luck, I guess. If you really are going and really won’t let me come with you.”

“Oh, I’m going,” he said with assurance as Meena pulled his sleeve back down over the scarf. “And alone. The Palatine leave no one behind. This includes dogs.”

“This is for luck then, too,” she said in a tear-clogged voice.

She rose onto her tiptoes and placed a kiss on one of Alaric’s cheeks.

One dark blond eyebrow raised, his small mouth pressed even smaller than usual in…surprise? Disapproval?

She couldn’t tell.

“Meena Harper,” he said, looking down at her very intently.

“Yes?” she asked.

“This is for you,” he said, and slipped something long and hard into her fingers. “Don’t be afraid to use it.”

Then he opened the front door to the rectory, looked around outside, and stepped through it, shutting it firmly behind him.

He was gone.

Meena examined what Alaric Wulf had placed into her hand.

It was a pointed wooden stake.

She couldn’t help smiling to herself.

He was just so…annoying.

So why was she standing there crying?

“There you are.”

Her brother, Jon, had come out into the hallway. He was holding several empty plastic milk jugs.

“They want someone to fill these with holy water,” he explained. “I volunteered you for the job. So can you go scoop some out of the font in the baptistery?”

Meena, reaching up hastily to wipe the tears from her cheeks, slipped the stake into the back pocket of her jeans and said, “Sure.”

She knew what she had to do. What she should have done long ago.

Tremulously, she asked, “Jon?”

He’d already started down the hall. At the sound of his name, he turned back. “Yeah, Meen? What?”

“Nothing. Just…” She shuffled toward him, letting her head hang and dragging her feet. “I’m kind of scared. Can I have a hug from my big brother?”

“Aw, of course,” he said, holding his arms open wide.

Once he’d enveloped her in his embrace, he asked, over the top of her head, “Is this crazy or what? I always thought your psychic thing was weird. But vampires?”

“Gee, thanks, Jon,” Meena said drily, her ear over his heart. “You always know just the right thing to say to make a girl feel better.”

“Well,” Jon said with brotherly awkwardness. “Yeah. Sorry about that. You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Meena said. She pulled away from him and gave him a tearful smile. “I do. And thanks. Sorry about getting our lives destroyed.”

“No big deal.” Jon ruffled her hair. “And don’t worry. I’m sure Alaric will be back with Jack soon, and both of ’em will be just fine. Now go fill these up.” He practically threw the milk jugs at her. “I have to go; Abraham is going to teach me the best way to cut off a vampire’s head.” He hurried back into the kitchen.

Meena watched him go. Then she lifted her hand. In it was her cell phone, which she’d managed to pick from the pocket of his jean jacket while he’d been hugging her.

She checked to make sure the battery was still charged. The cell phone thrummed to life.

Perfect.

She had an important call to make.

8:30 P.M. EST, Saturday, April 17

Concubine Lounge

125 East Eleventh Street

New York, New York

Lucien Antonescu had listened as calmly as possible to the information from his cousin Emil that his wife, Mary Lou, had known all along about Meena Harper’s ability to predict death-had known it well before ever setting up the two of them. That it was, in fact, the reason she’d set them up.

That Mary Lou should have chosen for him a young woman of her acquaintance who was in possession of such an…unusual talent was flattering, to say the least.

But the fact that Mary Lou had told everyone she knew about Meena’s talent, putting Meena in a position of such danger?

That Lucien couldn’t accept calmly.

Lucien had already come to several decisions in the wee hours of the morning as he’d watched Meena sleep, before ever speaking to his cousin Emil.

The first was that he would not, of course, be able to return to his teaching position in Romania or to any of his homes there.

Not now that the Palatine knew who he really was.

Obviously, he was going to have to change his name.

Again.

Surprisingly, he was not as irritated by these things as he might have been had he not met Meena. The fact that she was in his life now made everything that would have once seemed unbearable a mere annoyance.