Bride

She makes him laugh. It’s no small gift.

The problem of using a gift as an excuse to visit Governor Davenport is that we cannot show up empty-handed. It takes one hour in Human territory, three different antiques stores, and a whole lot of bickering before Lowe and I find a present we both consider appropriate. He nixes my choice of a vintage bicycle pump (“That’s a hookah, Misery.”). I veto his ceramic vase (“Someone’s grandpa’s in there, Lowe.”). We insult each other’s taste, first covertly, then passive-aggressively, then with unabashed contempt. When I’m about to suggest that we fight it out in the parking lot and see how well his claws hold up against my fangs, he has a momentous realization and asks, “Do you even like the governor?”

“Nope.”

“Is it possible that we’re putting too much thought into this?”

My eyes widen. “Yes.”

We slip back inside the last store and buy a mysterious ashtray shaped like a polar bear. It’s simultaneously the ugliest thing we can find and well over three hundred dollars.

“Where does the money come from, anyway?” I ask.

“What money?”

“Your money. Your seconds’ money. Your pack’s money.” I glare at him on our way back to the car, making sure no one is around. I’m wearing brown contacts, but haven’t shaved my canines in a while. Opening my mouth in public would probably get animal control called on me. “Do you work in insurance while I’m passed out during the day?”

“We rob banks.”

“You—” I stop him with a hand on his arm. “You rob banks.”

“Not blood banks, don’t get too excited.”

I pinch his left side, miffed.

“Ouch. My . . .” An elderly Human couple walks past, giving us an indulgent Young love look. “Liver?”

“Wrong side,” I whisper.

“Appendix.”

“Still wrong.”

“Gallbladder?”

“Nope.”

“Fucking Human anatomy,” he mutters. He laces his fingers with mine, pulling me in his direction.

“You’re not serious, right? About robbing?”

“No.” He opens the door for me. “A lot of Weres have jobs. Most Weres. I had a job, before . . . Before.”

Before his life became something his pack owned. “Right.”

“Most Were packs have highly organized investment portfolios. That’s where the expenses for infrastructure and the leadership roles who don’t have the time to hold other jobs come from.” He watches me slip into the passenger seat and then leans forward, one hand on the door and the other on the roof of the car. “It’s different from the financial framework of Vampyres.”

“Because our leadership positions are hereditary.”

“I’m sure that families like yours rely on estates passed on over generations, but generally, Vampyres are not as centralized. There’s fewer of you, less community culture.”

I purse my lips. “Kind of annoying, that you know more about my people than me and that you’re such a show-off about it.”

“Is it?” he drawls. He leans forward and presses a kiss against my nose. “I’ll have to do it more often.”

It’s the most fun I’ve had with someone who’s not Serena. Even more, at times. Although that might be due to the way I find him glancing at me between bouts of perusing stained glass lamps, and the fact that he silently hands me his sweater when I shiver in the AC of the store, and how when we’re alone in the car he steals a kiss that has me forgetting how to breathe, his tongue soft across my fangs until I taste a drop of blood, and then he is the one groaning, pressing his hand around my waist, telling me that he cannot wait to be home.

Home.

I try not to think about it—that the territory of his pack is most definitely not my home—but it’s difficult. I’m relieved when Governor Davenport welcomes us at his door, making a show of explicitly inviting me in. I wonder if in all their years of political dealings, my father never dispelled that specific myth for him. It’s the kind of mindfuck he’d indulge in.

“It’s so refreshing to see a Were-Vampyre union that has not yet ended in bloodshed.” Going by the smell of his blood, he’s not fully drunk, but on his way there. His house is a mix of pretty and ostentatious, and his wife is definitely not his first. Probably not his second, either. When he tells me, half paternal and half salacious, “You must have been behaving, young lady,” Lowe’s glance at me clearly asks, Would you like me to hold him down while you tear his jugular to shreds?

I sigh and mouth a Nah.

Still, Lowe’s “Thank you for having us” is accompanied by a more-than-firm handshake. The governor holds his fingers to his chest as he escorts us to a sitting room, and I tip my head down to hide my smile.

He appears to have a prurient interest in the workings of our marriage, and he’s not shy about asking. “It must be challenging. Full of arguments, I bet.”

“Not really,” I say. Lowe takes a sip of his beer.

“Disagreements, at least.”

I glance around the room. Lowe sighs.

“I cannot imagine that when topics such as the Aster come up you see eye to eye.”

“The what?” Lowe looks at me blankly. It occurs to me that the Were might remember the event by another name. One less centered on Vampyres’ blood.

“The last attempt at an arranged marriage before ours,” I explain. “Where the Weres betrayed and massacred the Vampyres.”

“Ah. The Sixth Wedding. It was an act of revenge. At least, that’s what we are taught.”

“Revenge?”

“For the Vampyre groom’s violent treatment of his Were bride during the previous marriage.”

“They don’t tell us that,” I snort. “Wonder why.”

“Are you going to argue about it?” the governor asks, like we’re his personal source of entertainment.

“No,” we say at once, giving him harsh looks.

He clears his throat bashfully. “It’s time for dinner, don’t you think?”

Lowe doesn’t have the Machiavellian, manipulative skills of Father, but he’s nonetheless crafty at guiding the conversation where it needs to go without giving too much away. The governor’s wife is mostly silent. So am I: I stare at my risotto with mushrooms, which according to Serena are different from the fungus she once got under her foot, though I can’t really recall in what way. I lazily wonder why Humans and Weres keep throwing food at me, and listen as the governor informs us that he and my father are “great friends” who’ve been meeting in Human territory about once a month to discuss business for the past decade—despite the fact that Father visited me once per year when I was the Collateral; I’d love to be shocked, but I’d rather save the energy. The governor has never been in Were territory, but has heard beautiful things and would love an invitation (which Lowe doesn’t extend). He’s also going to transition to a lobbying position once Maddie Garcia fully takes over.

Then Lowe moves the conversation to his mother. “She used to be one of Roscoe’s seconds,” he says, switching our plates once he is done with his dinner and starting the meal over. “Worked closely with the Human-Were Bureau, as a matter of fact.”

“Ah, yes. I met her once or twice.”

“Did you?”

The governor reaches for a piece of bread. “A lovely woman. Jenna, right?”

“Maria.” I hear the displeasure in Lowe’s tone, but I doubt anyone else can. “I was under the impression that most of her dealings were with someone in charge of border affairs? Thomas . . . ?”

“Thomas Jalakas?”

“That sounds right.” Lowe chews my risotto in silence. “I wonder if he remembers her.”

I tense. Until the governor says, “Sadly, he passed a while ago.”

“He did?” Lowe doesn’t act surprised. Paradoxically, it makes his reaction more believable. “How old was he?”

“Young, still.” The governor sips on his wine. Next to him, his wife plays with her napkin. “It was a terrible accident.”

“An accident? I hope my people were not involved.”

“Oh, no. No, it was a car accident, I believe.” The governor shrugs. “Unfortunately, these things happen.”

Lowe’s stare is so intense, I suspect he’s going to confront him. But after a moment, it relaxes, and the entire room breathes out in relief. “Too bad. My mother talked of him fondly.”

“Ha.” The governor downs the rest of his wine. “I just bet she did. I heard he got around.” Of all the things he could have said, this one is the most wrong.

Lowe calmly dabs his mouth with his napkin and rises to his feet. He unhurriedly walks around the table, toward the governor, who must realize the error of his ways. His chair screeches against the floor as he stands and begins retreating.

“I meant no offense— Ow.”

Lowe slams him against the wall. The governor’s wife screams, but stays put in her chair. I run to Lowe.

“Arthur, my friend,” he murmurs in the governor’s face. “You stink like you’re made of lies.”

“I’m not— I don’t— Help! Help!”

“Why did you have Thomas Jalakas killed?”

“I didn’t, I swear I didn’t!”

Four Human agents storm inside the room, weapons already drawn. They instantly point them at Lowe, shouting at him to let the governor go and step back. Lowe gives no sign of noticing them.

“Tell me why you killed Thomas, and I’ll let you live.”

“I didn’t, I swear I didn’t—”

He leans in. “You know I can kill you faster than they can kill me, right?”

The governor whimpers. A drop of sweat trickles down his red face. “He— I didn’t want to, but he was talking to journalists about some embezzling my administration was involved in. We had to! We had to.”

Lowe straightens. He dusts himself off, takes a step back, and turns to me as though we are the only two people in the room and four firearms are not still trained on him. His hand leisurely finds my elbow, and he smiles—first at me, then to the guards.

“Thank you, governor,” he says, leading me away. “We will see ourselves out.”

“I have several people tailing him,” Lowe informs me once we’re in the car. “And Alex is working on monitoring his communications. He knows we’re onto him, and we’ll be alerted as soon as he makes the next move.”

“I hope ten wolves are currently shitting in his backyard,” I mutter, and Lowe half smiles and puts his hand on my thigh in an easy, absentminded way that would only make sense if we’d been driving places together for years.

“It just doesn’t add up,” I vent. “Say Serena really did just interview him for a financial crime story. Maybe she was the journalist he was talking to. Where does Ana’s name on her planner come from?” I guess it could be unrelated. But. “There is no way she coincidentally met with Ana’s father and found out about Ana through other channels. No fucking way. Did someone plant the name? But it was in our alphabet. No one else knew about it.” We’re silent while I churn on it, staring at the streetlights. Then Lowe speaks.

“Misery.”

“Yeah.”

“There is another possibility. Regarding Serena.”

I look at him. “Yeah?”

He appears to painstakingly line up the words. When he speaks, his tone is measured. “Maybe it wasn’t Thomas who told Serena about Ana, but the opposite.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe Serena found out about Ana from another source, and then used the information to blackmail Thomas over his relationship with a Were and force him to tell her about financial crimes he might know about. Maybe she wanted to break the story, but changed her mind when she realized that she was in danger of being targeted by Governor Davenport. Unlike Thomas, she wasn’t a public individual, and she had the option to disappear.”

I shake my head, even as I realize that some of this is a distinct possibility. “She wouldn’t have left without telling me, Lowe. She’s my sister. And there are no digital traces. She wouldn’t know how to avoid them. She’s not me.”

“She’s not. But she did learn from you for years.” He looks deeply sorry to have to say this.

I let out a laugh. “Not you, too, trying to convince me that Serena didn’t care about me as much as I cared about her. She wouldn’t leave me here to picture the worst. She always told me everything—”

“Not everything.” His jaw tenses. Like this conversation is painful for him, because it’s painful for me. “You mentioned that you had a fight before she left. That sometimes she’d leave for days on her own.”

“Never without saying.”

“Maybe there was no time. Or she didn’t want to put you in danger.”

I wave it away. “This is ridiculous. What about Sparkles? She abandoned her cat.”

“Tell me something,” he asks. I hate how measured and rational he sounds. “Did she know you well enough to predict that you’d go looking for her and find the cat?”

I want to say no so bad, my lips almost hurt. But I can’t, and instead I remember her last words to me:

I need to know that you care about something, Misery.

And she did leave something behind. Something that needed caring for. The damn fucking cat. God, what a wacky plan this would be.

A Serena plan.

“Maybe you’re right, and she doesn’t want to be found. But she wouldn’t put the life of a child at risk, not even in exchange for the biggest, juiciest story of her career. I know Serena, Lowe.”

And that’s the problem with Lowe’s theory: it would mean that Serena is safely tucked somewhere, but also that she wasn’t the person I believed her to be, and I can’t accept it. Not for a minute.

Lowe knows this, because he opens his mouth to say something else, something that undoubtedly will make impeccable sense and feel like a punch in the solar plexus. So I stop him by asking the first thing that comes to mind:

“Where are we going?” We’re headed south, toward downtown. Toward Vampyre territory.

“To meet your brother. We’re nearly there.”

“Owen?”

“You have others?”

I frown. “I thought he’d come to us.”

“Were territory is more tightly patrolled and harder to infiltrate. Since we don’t want to attract attention and turn this into a formal summit, it’s safer to meet with him at the Vampyre-Human border.”

I’m well familiar with this road. I took it for the first time at eight years old, on my way to the Collateral residence, and I still remember that drowning, sticky feeling low in my throat, the fear that I’d never get to go home again. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to redirect my thoughts to the last time. Shortly before the wedding, I imagine. Maybe when I was asked to choose between flowers that all looked the same, white and pretty and ready to wither. A handful of days and a million lifetimes ago.

“Are you okay?” Lowe asks softly.

“Yeah. Just . . .” I’m not usually sentimental, but something about being with him softens me. My guard is down.

“Feels weird, huh?”

I nod.

“We can always turn around,” he offers quietly. “I’ll figure out a way to have Owen come south.”

“No. I’m fine.”

“Okay.” He turns into a small side street. When I glance at the GPS it’s not on the map, but we come to a stop at the edge of a cultivated field.

Lowe’s expression is bemused. “I’m actually curious about this.”

I glance around. All I can see is darkness. “About the wholesome experience of picking your own tomatoes?”

“About meeting your brother.”

He gets out of the car, and I immediately follow him. I thought we were alone, but I hear another car door clicking, and—there he is.

Owen, sneering at the soil sticking to his loafers, swatting away bugs. It’s shocking how happy I am to see him. That jerk, climbing up my good graces uninvited. I’m tempted to yell some insults at him, just to make up for it, until I hear another click.

Owen didn’t come alone. There’s a woman with him. A woman I’ve never met. A woman whose blood smells a lot like a Were’s.

Lowe’s mate.