He slipped an arm around me. “Is there a ‘but’ coming?”
“Nope. No buts,” I said. “I’m too exhausted to deal with buts.” I frowned. “That sounds weird.”
“Yes, it does,” he said, laughing. “All you need to do right now is rest.”
My eyes closed. Now that I’d stopped moving and knew my dad was all right, the fatigue swept in with crushing force. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “Rest would be cool.”
I heard Marcus ask me something, but I was already well on my way to sleep, and apparently he didn’t need the answer badly enough to wake me up.
* * *
Sometime later, I woke in a bed that wasn’t my own and wasn’t Marcus’s either. A clock nearby told me it was 1:14 in the morning, and a few more seconds of semi-coherent thinking informed me that I was on a futon in Marcus’s office.
I smiled into the darkness. He wasn’t pressuring me. I got up, headed down the hallway to Marcus’s room and crawled under the covers to snuggle with him.
He woke, blinked at me. “Angel?” he asked in a voice thick with sleep. “You okay?”
“More than okay,” I told him. “Now shut up and hold me.”
And he did.
Chapter 26
I half expected some awkwardness in the morning, but Marcus was already cooking eggs when I woke up and shambled into the kitchen. He had on shorts, his cast, and nothing else, and he looked seriously hot.
He gave me a smile. “I’m making zombelets. Want one?”
“Uh, zombelets?” Then my brain kicked into gear. “Oh, zombie-omelet? Eggs and brains?”
“That’s right!” he replied, chuckling. At my approving nod he pulled another plate out of the cabinet, then slid a portion of the contents of the pan onto it, and pushed the plate and a fork my way.
“And don’t worry,” he said as he served himself. “I’ll wash the pan before your dad gets up.”
Laughing, I dug into the “zombelet” with gusto. As I ate, Marcus pushed the newspaper toward me.
“Y’all hit the front page,” he told me.
I peered at the headline over my plate. Riot Halts Filming on Movie Set. Tucking into my brains and eggs, I skimmed the article. No known reason for the fight that broke out between several of the zombie extras. Numerous injuries reported, several arrests. Filming to resume today.
I read to the end. No mention of a death, so apparently Saberton had taken care of the body of the guy Philip killed. I wondered if they would take care of any footage that was shot as well.
“Sucks for the extras who were arrested,” I said with a slight grimace. “None of it was their fault.”
Marcus gave a nod of agreement. “Uncle Pietro will probably take care of that. It’s in everyone’s best interest for this to die down as quickly as possible.”
I finished my breakfast, then jumped into the shower to clean up for my meeting with Pietro. When I got out, Marcus produced jeans, underwear and a couple of shirts that I’d left at his place ages ago, which saved me from meeting Pietro while wearing the same donated clothing I’d worn the day before.
I made sure there was non-brain food available for my dad and, at ten a.m., a black Mercedes pulled into the driveway. The driver wasn’t Brian, so I obediently sat in the back when he held that door open for me and, apart from a few polite pleasantries, rode in silence to Pietro’s house.
To my surprise it wasn’t the same house Marcus and I had gone to months ago for the barbecue but instead a very nice lakefront house only about ten minutes from Tucker Point. Even though it wasn’t secluded in the sense of being far from other properties, it was surrounded on the non-lake sides by a couple of acres of woods, which added a strong feeling of privacy. Pietro was rolling in it, no doubt about that. No telling what he had for resources if he really was hundreds of years old.
We pulled up in front of the house, and I managed to remember to wait for the driver to come around and open the door for me instead of barreling out on my own. I even followed politely as he went up to the house and rang the doorbell for me, though to my relief he stood back once he did so. Apparently I was allowed to speak and act for myself now that the hard part had been done.
I listened to the frogs’ chorus from the lake as I tried to go over what I had to say to Pietro. Dread twisted my gut. I knew damn well Pietro held all the cards, but I needed to make sure I didn’t sell myself out completely.
A tall brunette answered the door, slim and stylish, wearing dark maroon slacks and a conservative white silk blouse, with her hair in a soft updo. She gave me a warm smile. “Ms. Crawford, I’m Alicia Dane, Mr. Ivanov’s personal assistant. It’s so nice to meet you.”
Personal assistant? Yeesh, definitely out of my depth here. I took a deep breath and plastered a smile on for Ms. Dane, reminding myself that I’d survived kidnapping, firefight, and zombie mayhem, so there was no need to be intimidated by the insistent reminders of Pietro’s wealth and power.