The Coveted (The Unearthly #2)

  “Yes, it’s still in place, though Chief Constable Morgan made it clear after you left the crime scene that one more death would dissolve it.”

  “Yikes. What would happen then?” I asked, leaning back in Andre’s office chair. I’d officially taken the seat over. “You know, once it dissolved.”

  “Probably nothing right away,” Andre said, leaning against his bookshelf. “They don’t want to be hasty with whatever decision follows, or else it will look too much like a witch hunt—and the supernatural community is very critical of witch hunts.”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “They could very well decide to redraft another truce, or vote to hold off on an official decision until some event has come to pass.”

  “Oh, that’s not so bad, right?”

  Andre shook his head. “Trust me when I say that they want to eradicate vampires completely. This is their way of scheming while appearing benevolent to the public.”

  He pushed away from the bookcase and sat down across from me. “Why do you even work for the Politia?” Andre asked.

  “Trust me, I don’t exactly enjoy myself,” I said. That wasn’t entirely true. I did enjoy learning about the supernatural community. I just didn’t like the other people who worked there. “Honestly, I decided to work there because I was so disliked.”

  A line formed between Andre’s brow. “I don’t understand—why would you force yourself to do something you don’t enjoy?”

  “I want to change their minds,” I said, picking up a quill—no joke, a quill—from where it rested on his desk.

  “You won’t.” His words had a hard edge to them.

  “People do change Andre—even you.” He said nothing to that, so I continued, absentmindedly playing with the feathery pen. “I also wanted to learn more about the supernatural world, and to keep an eye on them.”

  Andre eyed the pen in my hands. “When I heard that you’d joined the Politia . . . I worried about you.” He said the last part hesitantly, probably still testing out what statements would get my panties in a bunch and which wouldn’t.

  “Why?”

  He sighed. “They don’t like vampires. Period. So I had a hard time believing that they’d just suddenly take a liking to you.”

  “Maybe they’re trying to change me just as I am trying to change them.” I had to bite back my own skeptical laughter once the words were out of my mouth. The Politia had already shown their true colors by thrusting me back into the coven—a potentially dangerous situation—and then rifling through my memories to collect information on us.

  I wasn’t the best at self-examination, especially when it came to topics that made me nervous, but I asked myself now why I hadn’t left when I should’ve.

  The answer fell right into place. Safety. Working with the Politia protected me more than it hurt me. They were educating me, giving me work experience, and legitimizing me in the eyes of the community.

  I’d stay with them until it became too dangerous for me to do so.

  ***

  A while later we went back to the murders. As much as I didn’t want to refocus on the poor individuals who had died gruesome deaths, too much was riding on these murders to put it off.

  I shimmied open Andre’s desk drawers until I found a stack of blank paper. I pulled out a sheet to brainstorm on.

  I still held the quill in my hand. “Do you use this thing?” I asked him.

  Andre responded by pushing towards me a glass bottle that rested on his desk. Black ink darkened the inside of it.

  Clumsily I opened the bottle and dipped the quill in, pretending I knew what I was doing. I shouldn’t have bothered; I saw the corner of Andre’s mouth curve up.

  “So, we have three victims, two who were students, and one who was an adult.”

  I went to write the information down on the paper when a huge globe of ink rolled off, obscuring the first letters I’d written. “Okay, this quill thingy is more difficult than I originally thought.” After a couple more tries I managed to write the information down.

  “All victims were bitten on the neck and drained of blood. They were then positioned into religious symbols,” I said as I wrote the information down. “Hey, wait—” I pressed the quill too hard to the paper and the metal bent. In half.

  “Err . . . whoops.”

  “You’re like a bull in a china shop.” Andre sighed. “Here, I’ll take it,” he said, reaching out for the pen. I handed it over.

  He fingered the metal of the quill, turning it over to see the extent of the damage. “It’s a goner,” he eventually said, tossing it into the nearby trash. “That was originally Benjamin Franklin’s too.”

  My eyes bugged out. “What? Why would you ever let me use it? Why would you use it? And why did you toss it into the trash?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t give it another second of your time. Now, what were you saying?”

  I blinked a few times. It’s not that often that someone so thoroughly surprises me. “What?”

  “What were you saying?” Andre repeated. “It sounded like you were in the middle of making a point.”

  “Uh, oh, I was thinking that the swastika was not a religious symbol, so this guy might not be a religious fanatic after all.” My eyes kept returning to the trashcan.

  Andre rubbed his jaw, looking so sexy that I was having trouble focusing. “The swastika is a religious symbol.”

  Well damn it all. “So I just broke Benjamin Franklin’s quill for no reason?”

  Andre’s mouth twitched. “I think Paris broke his quill before you did.”

  I put my head in my hand. “That was a dirty joke, wasn’t it?” Sheesh, men. You’d think by the time they’re 700 years old they’d be over dirty jokes.

  “The symbols could mean that the killer is a religious fanatic,” Andre said. “And if that’s so, then the killer is probably associating his murders around the upcoming holiday. Samhain.”

  At the mention of Samhain, I thought back to the Hall of Perception. “Could it be the devil?” I asked, remembering his parting words that night. Immediately I discounted the idea; I mean, as far as I knew, the devil didn’t feast on blood the same way vampires did.

  Andre gave me a funny look. “The devil is incorporeal for the most part. He often simply doesn’t have the power to physically murder people. But more importantly, to him the body is nothing more a vessel; it can live or die. What he wants is the soul.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why would you even think this is the work of the devil?”

  I chewed on a nail, trying to make myself look as innocent as possible. “No reason. The thought just entered my mind is all.”

  He studied me. “I don’t think so.”

  “Excuse me?”

  He looked so put upon that I almost felt bad for him. Almost. “I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself, but I can hear and smell a lie from a mile away.”

  “Wait, you can smell a lie?” I asked. “You never told me that.”

  “Stop deflecting the conversation Gabrielle. What aren’t you telling me?”

  I tried Leanne’s tactic. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Andre stood up, looking menacing. “That’s not a good enough answer.”

  Well, so much for that tactic. At least, that’s what I thought to myself. To him I said, “If I don’t want to tell you, then you should respect my wishes.”

  “Not when it has to do with the devil.”

  Using my index finger, I drew doodles onto the armrest of the office chair I sat in. “When I saw him last night before you met up with me, he told me that he was coming for me on Samhain.”

  ***

  The tick of the grandfather clock was the only thing that broke the silence.

  “He’s
coming for you on Samhain,” Andre repeated.

  I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “Yes.”

  Andre let loose a string of profanity that would make a sailor blush.

  Once he pulled himself together he said, “As soon as the sun sets on the evening of October thirty-first, I’m going to be by your side for the entire evening. You’re going to sleep here, you’re—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” I put up my hands. Bossy much?

  Before I could say anything more, Andre took in my expression and backtracked. “Let me rephrase that. What I meant to say was that it is my deepest wish that you’ll stay here at Bishopcourt, where I can beat the shit out of the devil should he so much as try to pull the stunt he did last time he came. That better?”

  “Uh, yeah, actually that is,” I said, starting to smile in spite of myself.

  “Good.” Andre came around the desk and extended his hand to me. “Now that we’re done for the evening, I want to show you something.”

  I glanced at his hand. “What do you want to show me?” I asked, not bothering to take it.

  “It’s a secret.”

  I stayed in my seat. “I don’t like secrets.”

  His eyes thinned and he scrutinized me. “For a girl who says she doesn’t like secrets, you keep an awful lot of them,” he said.

  I hate it when I walk myself into statements like that. “Fine, you have a point. Can you just give me a hint?”

  Andre’s expression turned mischievous. “It’s a secret room.”

  “A secret room?” My eyes lit up. And then they narrowed. “Wait a second, this isn’t anything creepy right? It’s not like a sex room where you keep the women who you feed off of, right?”

  “No, that’s a different room.” He took my hand—since I wasn’t giving it to him—and acted as though he hadn’t just admitted to keeping sex slaves.

  I tried to pull my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go. “You really have a sex room where you keep your blood donors?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Of course not. I don’t know where you get these ideas of yours.”

  I gave him an incredulous look. “Then why did you just admit that you did?”

  He managed to look offended. “It was a joke.” First the quill, now this. Andre really needed to upgrade his jokes.

  I let him pull me to my feet, and together we left his study, walked down the hall, . . . and stopped at his bedroom.

  “Uh Andre, why did you take me to your room? FYI—been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.”

  His eyes glinted. “You have not ‘done that and gotten the T-shirt.’ Trust me, you’ll know once that’s the case.” Randy vampire.

  My pulse spiked at his words, and a slow grin spread across his face at the sound.

  “You know,” I said, “sometimes it sucks having a boyfriend who can tell exactly what I’m feeling when.”

  He raised an eyebrow, his smile spreading further. “You consider me your boyfriend?”

  I wanted to die, and if mortification could kill a person, I just might’ve right at that moment.

  I put a hand to my face. “I didn’t mean it.”

  “I think you did.” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  I shook my head. “Oh God, forget I said anything.”

  Only, he wouldn’t. “Boyfriend . . .” he said to himself. “I like that. It’s not as good as soulmate, but definitely a step up. I’m your boyfriend.”

  He removed my hand from my face. “You can stop being embarrassed. I happen to like the term. But this doesn’t change anything about all those dates we have ahead of us—and the skanky cocktail dresses.”

  I groaned. “You seriously know how to take advantage of a situation.” He looked quite proud of that particular fact. “What if I told you that I wasn’t serious about the whole boyfriend thing?” I said.

  “That’s nonsense.” Andre opened the door to his room and held it open. “After you.”

  I walked through, scraping up my pride with the knowledge that I’d at least made someone’s day.

  From behind me Andre said, “My girlfriend has a really nice backside.”

  I threw him a look over my shoulder that could curdle milk. “Just because I let a little something like the term boyfriend slip does not give you permission say everything that crosses your mind.”

  He came up next to me trying to look innocent. He shouldn’t have bothered. He’d probably looked sinful since the day he was born, and no amount of doe eyes was going to change that. “I thought girls liked positive affirmations?”

  I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or beg for the ground to swallow me whole. “Yeah, they do. But letting on that you were shamelessly checking out my ass is not one of them.”

  “It is one of the better ones I’ve seen in a long while.”

  I folded my arms at that. “You suck at being a boyfriend.”

  A muscle in his cheek jumped. “You’re not doing too well yourself.” He brushed past me, probably to avoid the world’s fastest breakup, and walked across the room towards the wall of books I’d perused a few days ago.

  He pulled a book out and a portion of the wall swung back to reveal a door. Andre opened it and flicked on a light switch just inside the door. The space beyond lit up, casting a warm glow along the stone walls.

  I temporarily forgot about our tiff. Mesmerized by what I saw, I crept close. The passageway seemed to curve downwards. “Where does this lead?”

  Andre took my hand. “Remind me to distract you again the next time I piss you off.” He got a look for that.

  He smiled, the punk. “Why don’t we go find out?” he said, taking my hand. My heart thumped away as we walked through the narrow hallway. A staircase spiraled downwards, into the earth.

  For a moment I was nervous, the memory of the damp, dank subterranean floor of Peel Academy halting my progress. Then I felt the comforting pull of Andre’s hand. He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a heated look that made my knees go weak. That wasn’t helping my progress.

  We wound our way down the staircase. When we neared the bottom Andre turned back to me. “Close your eyes.”

  “Andre, you know how I feel about—” He silenced me with a kiss.

  My lips moved against his, and my traitorous body wanted more. As if he heard my thoughts, Andre parted my lips with his own, and the kiss deepened.

  My eyelids lowered and my knees really did go weak. I wrapped my arms around Andre’s neck as he scooped me up. Distantly I realized we were moving forward, but I didn’t give the thought much attention until Andre set me down and broke off the kiss.

  I raised my eyelids, first looking at Andre’s dark, beautiful eyes, then beyond them, at the room around us. I inhaled sharply. “This is . . . awesome.”

  Next to me, Andre wore a smug smile, and only then did I realize he’d distracted me again.

  I should’ve been more worried about the fact that Andre now knew this about me, but the room pulled at my attention. Oh, I was so easily distracted.

  On all sides of us, shelves and shelves of books lined the walls, some so old that the leather that bound them had started to tear.

  “A library,” I said, turning around to take it all in. The room was two floors tall, and the books stretched all the way up to the ceiling. On one side of the room rows of shelves housed even more books. “This is almost as cool as Peel’s library.” I walked away from him to check out the aisles of books closest to me.

  “Almost?” Andre sounded genuinely offended.

  I threw a backwards glance at him. “I’m kidding,” I said.

  He folded his arms. “Good.” I had to roll my eyes.

  There were only three other pieces of furniture in the room: a large suede couch, a wingback chair, an
d a coffee table currently piled with books.

  “Why is this place a secret?” I asked, turning back to face Andre. If I had a personal library as nice as this, I’d want others to use it.

  Andre shrugged. “I didn’t make the library with the intention of keeping it to myself. Rather, I needed a secret room, and when I decided how I wanted to furnish it, I could think of nothing better than to stock it full of books.”

  Good point. “Was this here before the fire?”

  Andre grabbed one of the books on the coffee table and went to put it away. “Yes. It, like my room, was built to withstand fire.”

  “And its primary purpose is to be a secret?” I was still trying to figure out how I came to be let in on this particular secret.

  Andre walked out from behind the shelves. He stretched out his hand towards the couch. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  Don’t mind if I do. I plopped down on the comfy suede couch, sure I’d never want to get up again.

  “Being a leader of any group is often dangerous, but for vampires in particular, assassination means losing your soul as well as your life. So for me, a secret room—equipped with a persecution tunnel—is one way to avoid death if someone attacks my home.”

  “And no one other than the two of us knows about this room?” I asked, rubbing the suede under my fingers.

  Andre sat down next to me, stretching his arm along the back of the couch. “No one.”

  “Not even Theodore?”

  “He knew I had a secret room, but never what it was or how to get there.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “You mean I am the only person who knows this place exists?” Perhaps I wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but I was trying to understand what he was really saying.

  The corner of Andre’s lip quirked, but his eyes were serious. “You are.”