“That was Carl and Meg’s house.” I’d had no idea it was on the market. I didn’t even know what happened to it after they died. After I killed them, rather. It should have been funny, seeing it for sale. It should have been really funny that it had made Ben’s list. Carl and Meg, former alpha pair of the Denver pack. The two werewolves I vowed I’d never be anything like. What was the saying, that you always turned into your parents whether you wanted to or not. Did that include wolf parents?
“Really?” Ben said, sounding equally unhappy. He took the lump of paper from me, smoothed it out, and studied it. “I didn’t even notice. I was only there the one time. And I guess I was a little distracted.”
Tortured, he meant. Beaten and bloody. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t remember the house. He couldn’t have known. The pictures on the listing made the place look so pretty. Those back windows had a great view.
“It’s the place. I spent a lot more time there than you did,” I said.
“Right. Not this one.” He tore the page in half, then into quarters, then into eighths. I wished we were a smoking restaurant, so I could burn the bits in an ashtray. I took Ben’s hand, he squeezed it back, and kissed my hair, lingering there, letting his warm breath play on my scalp. And all was well, for that moment in time.
He threw the torn-up pieces away behind the bar. If only the memories were so easy to discard.
That tiny bit of exorcism performed, we spent the next twenty minutes narrowing down the choices until we had a dozen or so we actually wanted to look at. The idea of moving started to feel like it was really going to happen.
The restaurant had cleared out, and about ten minutes before closing, Shaun was wiping down the bar when he called, “Hey, Kitty?”
I looked, and he nodded to the front door, where a man in a black wool overcoat was knocking on the glass. He was short, round, with silver hair so close-shaven he almost appeared bald. He seemed hunched, urgent inside the coat, as if he was hiding.
The man caught my gaze through the glass of the door, and my vision swam for a moment. I couldn’t have said what color his eyes were; I couldn’t have said much of anything. I felt like I had walked into a room and forgotten what I came there for.
I shook my head and looked at Shaun. The moment of vertigo passed. “You haven’t locked up yet, have you?”
“No,” he said.
“Then why doesn’t he just come in?” I said, moving to the door.
“Kitty. Careful,” Ben said, tapping his nose.
I paused and took a breath, scenting around the beer and fried food, the eddies of people coming and going all night, the signature of the pack that permeated the corners and made this our territory.
The door had enough of a draft that I
caught the chill from the outside, a thread far too cold for the weather outside. Which explained why he couldn’t just walk in—he was a vampire, and he hadn’t been invited.
I sauntered up to the door, arms crossed, donning an amused smirk. I didn’t meet his gaze this time.
“Hi there,” I said, full of false cheer. “What can I do for you?”
“I cannot enter here. Why not?” he said, the door muffling his voice. He had a rolling, cadenced European accent. Italian maybe, which made me wonder if he was part of some kind of vampire Mafia. That would have been too much.
“It’s our home,” I said.
“It’s a place of business,” he declared. “A public thoroughfare.”
“Yeah, about that. Turns out it’s enough of my pack’s territory to make a difference. It’s our home. I have to invite you in.”
“Then invite me in.”
Here was a guy used to giving orders and having them obeyed. “No, I don’t think so.”
The last time this had happened—a vampire showing up on the doorstep of New Moon, cranky and frustrated because he couldn’t enter—it had been Roman. Dux Bellorum. Lesson: strange vampires showing up demanding to be let in could only mean trouble. All I had to do was not let him in.
He spread his arms. “I mean you no harm, believe me.”
“I’m still not letting you in,” I said. Ben had sidled up to the bar and leaned there, casual but wary. Shaun watched, worried.
“We would both be more comfortable if we spoke inside, where it’s warmer.”
Cold didn’t bother vampires. Or me, much. “You’re used to werewolves doing what you tell them to, aren’t you?”