Chapters (50)
- Cover
- Roc Books by Jacqueline Carey
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
He gave me one of his courtly bows, his pupils dilated and glittering. The pull I felt from him now wasn’t his inner core of stillness, but the vast hunger that lay beneath it. “You are welcome.”
Without thinking, I raised my mental shield between us. “Um . . . it’s probably best you were going now, right?”
“Yes.” Stefan paused, and I had the impression he was struggling unsuccessfully to regain his usual self-control. “If there is another such incident within the next few hours, it would not be wise to call upon us.”
“Duly noted,” I said. “Sorry—I wasn’t expecting an entire wedding party on the first outing.”
Although his pupils were still huge, Stefan smiled, his unexpected dimples appearing. “You did well.”
“Thanks.”
All in all, I felt pretty good about the incident. I hadn’t screwed up. I hadn’t lost my cool. When an unexpected problem arose, I’d found a solution. Hell, I could already hear the bridegroom in the background, bragging about his role in the whole affair. Even the presence of Stacey Brooks—
I looked around. “Hey, Cody! Where did Stacey go?”
“Huh?” Cody glanced up from a table containing an abandoned serving tray filled with skewers of chicken satay, his mouth full. He chewed, then swallowed. “Sorry, couldn’t resist. She took off a while ago. Why?”
“Just wondering.” Wondering what she meant to do with that footage she shot was more like it.
“She’s fine.” Cody wiped his hands on a napkin, tossing it on the table. “When you get right down to it, she’s pretty ballsy.”
I scowled at him.
He grinned. “Lighten up, Pixy Stix. We did a good job here, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, but you know this is probably just the beginning, right?” I said. “And I’m really not loving the nickname. Especially now.”
Cody’s grin widened. “Consider it an endearment.”
And consider me still confused, I thought. The thick-braided caterer bustled past us to reclaim the tray of chicken satay, shooting me a sympathetic look in passing. I wasn’t always down with the whole solidarity-in-sisterhood thing, because it can get bitter and acrimonious—and yes, acrimonious is one of the vocabulary words Mr. Leary drilled into me in high school—but sometimes, it’s exactly what you need.
Men. Gah!
Forty-one
Stacey Brooks uploaded footage of the haunted wedding reception to YouTube at five forty-three p.m. on Saturday afternoon.
By Sunday, it had gone viral. It turns out that Stacey had a knack for this whole social networking thing. I found out about it because Lee Hastings turned up on my doorstep to tell me.
“There’s something you should see,” he said without preamble, whipping out his computer tablet to show me.
“Holy crap.” I watched the footage with dismay. “Can she do that? Post it without our permission?”