“Don’t bloody believe it,” Bones said, still chuckling. “That’s how I knew the worthless sod’s scent!”

  “Guess you recognize the survivor,” Rodney noted.

  He did, indeed. Before, snatching him up was a simple means to an end. Now, Bones was going to enjoy this.

  Rust-covered pipes vibrated every time one of the city’s trains rushed by overhead, shedding tiny orange specks onto the dirty tile floor. The walls were gray except where paint curled away to reveal its former yellow color. With their proximity to dozens of screeching machines in the nearby maintenance area, Danny Milton could scream, and no one would hear him, but sadly, Bones couldn’t do anything to make him scream.

  He had a promise to abide by, after all.

  “Good job on selecting this place, Rodney,” Bones said.

  The bearded ghoul grunted. “Private and close to the hospital, just like you wanted.”

  Danny sat in the folding chair Rodney had provided. Bones knelt in front of him, holding Danny’s frightened stare. He’d commanded Danny to be silent ever since he snatched him from his hospital room, but now, he needed him to talk.

  “Tell me how you ended up in a cave with Catherine Crawfield, and don’t lie about a word of it.”

  Danny hunched as if expecting a blow. “I remember I was somewhere I didn’t like, but I don’t know where or why.”

  “You don’t know?” Bones repeated. Had the sod been unconscious the entire time?

  Danny nodded. “Whenever I focus on it, my head hurts, and I keep hearing a voice saying ‘it never happened’ over and over.”

  Ah. Cat’s boss must have set human brainwashers to work on Danny. Clever of him, but it wouldn’t be enough.

  Bones turned up the power in his gaze. “You don’t hear those voices any longer. Your head no longer hurts, either. In fact, nothing does. You feel completely relaxed, and you remember everything.”

  Danny slouched in the chair as all the tension suddenly left him. He even smirked like the smug, entitled shite he was.

  “Hey, I remember now! My friend Laz brought me to the cave. His eyes turn green like yours do, but I didn’t know that then, and I thought we were going out for a beer, but Laz chained me to the cave’s wall until Catherine showed up.”

  Laz must be short for Lazarus, the vampire bounty hunter. “Tell me in detail how you met Laz, what he said, and what Catherine said, too.”

  “Catherine.” Danny spat her name out. “That girl was the biggest mistake of my life. She wasn’t even a good fuck, either. She cried through most of it-”

  “Because you forced her,” Bones said while clenching his fists until his fingers broke.

  Danny gave him an aggravated look. “’Forced,’ my ass. She knew what she went up to my room for. All that ‘wait, not yet, it’s my first time’ crap was just for show-”

  Rodney lunged at Danny.

  Bones yanked him back. “Don’t.”

  “Why?” Rodney said in disbelief. “If this pisses me off, you must be enraged!”

  “I am,” Bones said through gritted teeth. “But after I crippled his hand, Cat forced a vow from me that I would never harm, maim, blind, bleed, torture, or kill this wanker, or stand by and watch as someone else did.”

  Rodney’s eyes widened. “That’s not fair!”

  Dry laughter barked out of Bones. “My reaction exactly.”

  “She did?” Danny’s tone brightened. “Well, that’s cool, but it still doesn’t make up for the bitch shooting me.”

  Bones raised a brow. “Start with when you first saw her, and repeat every single word she and everyone else said.”

  “’Quit stalling, I don’t need to see one of your chew toys to believe you’re all badasses,’” Danny said in a high falsetto meant to represent Cat. “’Really, I’m quaking. Where’s Bones?’”

  Bones closed his eyes. She’d thought that he was at the cave? And that she needed to rescue him? Bloody hell.

  “Then Laz said, ‘Bones? Where?’” Danny went on. “And then Catherine saw me and was all, ‘Danny Milton? You’re the reason I had to drag my ass all the way from Virginia?’”

  Bones’s eyes snapped open. Virginia.

  “And I said, ‘You ruined my life, bitch!’” Danny went on. “’First your freak boyfriend crippled my hand, then you’re not dead, and now these creatures kidnapped me. I hate the day I met you!’ which is so true, but she said, ‘Right back at you, asshole!’ like any of this was my fault. And Laz was all, ‘He said you used to be in love with him. You’re pretending not to care now so I won’t kill him,’ and Catherine yelled, ‘Want to kill him? Go ahead. Here, I’ll help!’ and then she shot me.”

  “Then what?” Bones prodded.

  Danny shrugged. “She jumped on Laz and the other dudes. I couldn’t see much ‘cause it was dark, and they were all so fast. After a while, she grabbed me and ran. Next thing I know, she’s screaming, ‘Don’t shoot!’ and some guy’s yelling, ‘Don’t fire, it’s Cat.’ And she was all, ‘Hostile coming fast, aim high’ as I finally saw light again. But then Laz grabbed some dude and she screamed, dropped me, and ran to the guy. His neck was gushing blood, and she yelled, ‘Man down, man down!’ but like, I was bleeding, too? And no one cared. They all ran to him instead.”

  “Imagine that,” Rodney mocked.

  The sarcasm flew over Danny’s head. “Right? No one even checked on me until after Catherine and some of the other guys ran off. I ended up needing surgery, but they still kept moving me from place to place anyway. Assholes.”

  Danny’s description matched the blood evidence, and now, he knew the most important detail: Cat lived in Virginia.

  “That’s everything concerning Catherine?” Bones asked him.

  Danny nodded. “Yeah. Some bullshit, right?”

  Rodney let out a short laugh. “God, I’m hungry.”

  “I’m hungry, too,” Danny said, oblivious to the subtext.

  Rodney usually ate what he called a ghoul’s version of vegetarian, which meant foods that came from a farm or a garden instead of from a human. But every so often, ghouls required other sustenance, and from the way Rodney was looking at Danny, the sod was about to become Rodney’s cheat meal.

  Bones met Rodney’s eyes. “Fast and painless, and I can’t stay to watch. After all, I promised.”

  Rodney gave him a single nod. “I understand.”

  Bones squeezed Rodney’s shoulder and walked away.

  “Hey!” he heard Danny say as Bones closed the door behind him. “Isn’t he going to take me back to the hospital?”

  “No.” Rodney’s voice, much harsher than his normal tones. “And I understood what he told me, but I didn’t agree to it.”

  Bones paused, a smile tugging his mouth. He hadn’t, had he?

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Danny asked. “Hey, what’s with your jaw? It’s getting really huge and…arrgggh!”

  Danny’s scream faded as Bones kept walking. He hadn’t harmed Danny himself, and he hadn’t stood by and watched.

  Promise kept.

  5

  Bones hadn’t just snatched Danny from the hospital room. He’d also left something important behind for Cat-the same watch she’d set beside her goodbye letter to him over four years ago. It looked like a regular, old-timey watch, but it had a special alert feature that was connected to the mobile Bones still had. With it, she finally had an untraceable way to reach him.

  Bones expected the first week of waiting. It might take Cat a few days to get to the hospital after she heard of Danny’s abduction. Her boss did send her all over the nation, and she might have been in the middle of a hunt when she got the word.

  The second week was more difficult. Cat definitely should have responded by now. She would know who the watch was from and what it meant as soon as she saw it. Granted, Bones hadn’t seen Cat enter the hospital despite monitoring its entrances, but she could have snuck in another way. He certainly had.

  The third week, doubt tore at him like a scavenger feeding from a kill. No chance that she hadn’t seen the watch by now, and yet she still hadn’t pressed that button. Why not? Fear that her boss would discover any attempt to contact him must be why she hadn’t reached out all these years, but now, she finally had a secure way to do so! Why hadn’t she used it yet? Didn’t…didn’t she want to see him again?

  By the fourth week, Bones refused to speak to Rodney, who was now echoing Charles’s admonitions that he was taking things too far and needed to move on with his life. Neither of them understood. Cat would reach out. With that watch, she wouldn’t choose to stay lost any longer. She wouldn’t.

  The fifth week, a knock sounded on his hotel room door.

  “Go away,” Bones said without looking up from his feed of the hospital’s entrances. “I don’t need my room serviced.”

  “I’m not housekeeping, and I’ve come too far to leave now,” a feminine and very unexpected British voice said.

  Bones snapped his shields into place. Annette was the first vampire he’d made, so she’d feel his emotions through his sire bond to her unless he shut her out. He rose, his joints briefly burning before the surprising pain vanished. How long had he been sitting in that exact same spot? He couldn’t remember.

  He opened the door, revealing a lovely, curvaceous woman wearing a dark blue Chanel suit. Annette’s strawberry blond hair was perfectly coiffed, and diamond earrings winked from her earlobes. She’d been smiling, revealing the fine line around her eyes and mouth, but that smile fell as she looked at him.

  “Oh, Crispin,” Annette said, dropping her suitcase to wrap her arms around him. Her familiar scent of rosewater enveloped him, too, bringing over two hundred years of memories with it.

  Annette’s face the first time he saw her, apples still in her cheeks from her youth, and her expression unsure as her friend said, “I have a special gift for you. This is Crispin. I’ve purchased him for the night to do whatever we desire…”

  Or Annette at court, looking regal in her ballgown even though the heavily-applied white paint on her face and shoulders couldn’t hide the bruises her violent husband had given her.

  Or Annette weeping and clutching her abdomen after nearly dying from a stillbirth. “I lost the baby! Oh, Crispin, I could bear it if I knew that it was Abbott’s child, but when I think that it might have been yours, I wish I would have died, too…”

  And Annette’s determined face pressed against the filthy bars of his prison cell. “I’ll find a way to save you, Crispin. I promise that you won’t hang. I won’t allow it.”

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Bones chided her.

  She caressed his back. “You’ve never abandoned me in my hour of need.”

  Bones pulled away. “I’m not in any need-”

  Her fingers pressed to his lips. “Lie to me after I’ve had a drink, hmm?”

  With that, she went into his hotel room.

  Bones shut the door behind her. She’d come all the way from London. He couldn’t throw her out without at least having a drink with her. Then, he’d assure her that all was well despite whatever she’d heard, and he’d send her on her way.

  Annette’s brows rose as she saw his hotel room, which was…rather untidy, he supposed. At some point, he’d stopped doing his wash and simply thrown his dirty clothes into the corner. He’d done the same with his used bath towels, and now a mildew scent hung in the air, or was that smell coming from the dinner tray he’d ordered as a pretext for drinking from the room service attendant? Had that been last week? Or the week before?

  Annette said nothing about the disarray. She just opened her suitcase, revealing two bottles tucked among her clothes.

  “You’ll enjoy this,” she said, opening the first bottle. “I bought it for your birthday two Novembers ago. Shame that this is the first chance I’ve had to give it to you.”

  “Yes, well, I’ve been busy,” Bones said noncommittally.

  She glanced at the computer screens showing different angles of the hospital’s entrances. “I’ve heard.”

  He grunted. “Rodney shouldn’t have rung you.”

  “Rodney didn’t,” Annette said while looking for a clean glass in the mini bar area. When she couldn’t find one, she handed him the bottle. “He rang Charles, and Charles rang me.”

  “Charles,” Bones muttered before taking a drink. The whisky was exceptional, with a welcome heat that instantly mellowed into smoky smoothness. “He’s become a busybody in recent years.”

  “He hasn’t,” Annette said, her tone softening. “He’s just concerned about you. So is Rodney, and if I wasn’t before, I am now. Look at the state of you. You’re pale as death from not feeding, your hair’s greasy, your clothes smell like a rubbish bin, and this room smells worse. You took better care of yourself when you were a whore living at that bordello.”

  Bones let out a harsh laugh. “Then I bid you to enjoy the more pleasant sights and scents outside of my hotel room.”

  She sighed. “You can push me away, Crispin, just as you’ve pushed Charles and Rodney away, but eventually, you’ll have to reckon with the fact that if the three closest people in your life are all saying the same thing, you might want to listen.”

  “Why should I when none of you understand!”

  The words ripped out of him, taking down his shields with them. Annette’s face crumpled as his emotions spilled out.

  Bones snapped his walls back up, cursing himself for the slip. “Don’t bother about that. It’s nothing-”

  “It’s not.” She grabbed him, tears sliding down her cheeks. “Oh, Crispin, I knew you were in pain, but I had no idea. I’m so sorry, my darling. So very, very sorry…”

  She embraced him again. He knew he should pull away. He didn’t need her pity or her exhortations or her logic, but…it had been years since someone had put their arms around him this way. He must have missed it more than he’d realized.

  “You should go,” he said into her hair.

  “No,” she whispered. “You’ve been alone far too long.”

  “She didn’t want to leave me.” His voice was hoarse as he fought to keep Annette from feeling the anguish that his ice couldn’t entirely smother. “She did it to save me.”

  Don’t come after me because I’m already gone, Cat’s goodbye letter had started off with. Those agents knew about vampires, and they were going to kill you. I’m dressing Switch in your jacket and telling them his body is yours, so they’ll think you’re dead now. You’ll be safe this way…

  There had been more, but remembering it strained his ice to the breaking point. Annette gripped him tighter as some of his emotions forced their way through the cracks.

  “What a wonderful girl she must have been, and how noble. She meant the best for you, Crispin, which is why she’d hate to see you like this, too.”

  “Don’t presume to know her,” Bones said harshly.

  Annette pulled away, tears still in her golden eyes. “I don’t, but I know you, and the man I see before me is not my Crispin. It’s a poor shell of him. You don’t wallow in squalor because you can’t be bothered to care of yourself, and you don’t endlessly wait for someone who clearly doesn’t want you-”

  “I said she was forced to leave me!”

  Annette didn’t flinch at his whiplike tone. “Whatever she was forced to do then, she has chosen to do since. At first, I’m certain they did monitor her every movement. But it’s been years, Crispin. Even before you left her that watch, if she truly wanted to contact you, she could have found a way. But she hasn’t, and her silence is her message. It states her preferences quite clearly. You just haven’t wanted to hear it.”

  Annette said aloud what every fruitless day of searching had whispered, and what every lonely night had screamed. Hearing it, his walls shattered, and pain gushed out. He didn’t want Annette to feel it, but he couldn’t make it stop, just like he’d been unable to stop his blood from gushing into Ian centuries ago.

  A ragged sound ripped from him as Annette’s mouth was suddenly on his. Bones didn’t want her kiss, but he needed to feel something other than the agony breaking him apart.

  …and everything I said about how much I loved you was the truth. You are my life, Bones, and now consider me dead because with the job I’m taking, I will be soon…

  Dammit, he didn’t want to think about Cat or that bloody letter! She’d thrown him away, and he’d be a fool to waste another moment on someone who continually made it clear that she didn’t want him. Annette did, and holding her might only fill him with ashes, but ashes were a relief compared to the agony still simmering within him.

  He forced his ice to cover him, freezing out Cat.

  “Come to me, Crispin,” Annette said, reaching for him.

  He did, and he focused on Annette with single-minded determination.

  It failed. Her moans only hammered home how this wasn’t the voice he longed to hear, nor were her hands the ones he wanted gripping him. Soon, all his senses screamed in protest, until pain burned through his ice as if Cat’s memory were living fire.

  …but I will love you forever, right down to my final breath, where your name will be my last word, I promise…

  Bones tore himself away and leapt out of bed.

  “What are you doing?” Annette asked with a gasp.

  He hadn’t completed the act, and still, he felt more shame than he had when he was a whore back in the seventeen hundreds.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled on his trousers and collected his effects.

  “You’re leaving?” Annette said in disbelief.

  He was. Annette had been right about one thing: sitting here wallowing wasn’t him. No more giving into the pity, pain, or despair. Yes, Cat might have moved on with her life, but he couldn’t until he heard from her lips that she didn’t want him anymore, and knew it was the truth instead of someone else making that decision for her.