"No-show?"
"Yup. As in, he didn't show."
Catya shook her head. "Damn it."
"No, it's fine. Really. I mean, it's not like I had much invested." Yeah, only a whole fantasy about the future that included things like a hellren, a family of her own, a life worth living. Nothing much at all. "It's fine."
"You know, I was thinking last night. I have a cousin who is-"
"Thanks, but no. With my dad the way he is, I shouldn't be dating anyone." Ehlena frowned, recalling how quickly Rehv had agreed with her on that. Even though you could argue that it made him some kind of gentleman, it was hard not be a little annoyed.
"Caring for your father doesn't mean-"
"Hey, why don't I go man the front desk during the shift change?"
Catya stopped, but the female's light eyes were sending plenty of messages, most of which could be filed under, When Is This Girl Going to Wake Up?
"I'll head out there now," Ehlena said, turning away.
"It doesn't last forever."
"Of course not. Most of our shift is already here."
Catya shook her head. "That wasn't what I meant, and you know it. Life doesn't last forever. Your father has a serious psychological condition, and you're very good with him, but he could stay like this for a century."
"In which case I will still have about seven hundred years left. I'll be at the front. 'Scuse me."
Out in the reception, Ehlena took up res behind the computer and logged in. There was no one in the waiting room because the sun had only just gone down, but the patients would start coming in soon enough, and she couldn't wait for the distraction.
Reviewing Havers's schedule, she saw nothing unusual. Checkups. Patient procedures. Surgical follow-ups...
The exterior doorbell chimed, and she glanced at a security monitor. There was a walk-in outside, a male who was huddled into his coat against the cold wind.
She hit the intercom button and said, "Good evening. How may I help you?"
The face that looked up into the camera was one she had seen before. Three nights ago. Stephan's cousin.
"Alix?" she said. "It's Ehlena. How are-"
"I'm here to see if he's been brought in."
"He?"
"Stephan."
"I don't think so, but let me check while you come down." Ehlena hit the lock release and went to the in-house patient list on the computer. One by one she reviewed the names as she released the series of doors for Alix.
No mention of Stephan as an inpatient.
As Alix walked into the waiting room, her blood ran cold the instant she saw the male's face. The vicious dark circles under his gray eyes were about so much more than lack of sleep.
"Stephan didn't come home last night," he said.
Rehv lamented December, and not just because the cold in upstate New York was enough to make him want to go stuntman with the pyrotechnics just to get warm.
Night came early in December. The sun, that f**king work-shy, bone-idle pansy, gave up its efforts as early as four thirty in the afternoon, and that meant Rehv's first-Tuesday-of-the-month date-mares started early.
It was just ten o'clock as he entered Black Snake State Park after a two-hour drive north from Caldwell. Trez, who always dematerialized up, was no doubt already in position around the cabin, making himself scarce and preparing to act as a guard.
As well as a witness.
The fact that the guy who was arguably his best friend had to watch the whole thing was just part of the cluster-fuck carousel, an added ball crusher. The trouble was, after it was all over, Rehv needed help getting back home, and Trez was good at that kind of shit.
Xhex wanted the job, of course, but you couldn't trust her. Not around the princess. If he turned his back for one second the cabin would end up with a fresh new paint job on its walls-of the gruesome variety.
As always, Rehv parked in the dirt lot that was around the dark side of the mountain. There were no other cars, and he expected the trails fanning out from the lot's ass to be empty also.
Staring out of the windshield, everything was red and flat to his eyes and though he despised his half sister and hated looking at her and wished that this dirty f**king business of theirs would just stop, his body was not numb and cold, but alive and humming: In his slacks, his hard c**k was primed and ready for what was going to happen.
Now if only he could make himself get out of the car.
He put his hand on the door release, but couldn't pull the lever back.
So quiet. Only the gentle, ticking sounds of the Bentley's cooling engine disturbed the silence.
For no good reason, he thought of Ehlena's lovely laughter, and that was what got him to open the door. With a quick lunge, he shoved his head out of the car just as his stomach clenched up tight as a fist and he nearly threw up. As the cold settled his nausea, he tried to get Ehlena out of his mind. She was so clean and honorable and kind that he couldn't bear even having her in his thoughts when he was about to do this.
Which was a surprise.
Protecting someone from the cruel world, from the deadly and dangerous, from the tainted, the obscene, and the revolting wasn't part of his hardwiring. But he'd taught himself to do just that when it came to the only three normal females in life. For the one who had borne him and the one he had raised as his own and the young his sister had recently birthed, he would level all manner of threats, kill with bare hands anything that would hurt them, seek out and destroy even the slightest menace.
And somehow the cozy conversation he'd had with Ehlena in the early hours had put her on that very, very short list.
Which meant he had to shut her out. Along with those other three.
He'd been fine living as a whore, because he exacted an expensive price out of the one he f**ked, and besides, prostitution was nothing better than he deserved, considering the way his true father had forced his conception on his mother. But the buck stopped with him. He alone went into the cabin and made his body do what it did.
Those few normals in his life had to stay far, far away from this whole thing, and that meant wiping them out of his thoughts and his heart when he came up here. Later, after he'd recovered and showered and slept, then he could go back to remembering Ehlena's toffee-colored eyes and the way she smelled of cinnamon and how she had laughed in spite of herself when they talked. For now, he shut her and his mother and his sister and his beloved niece out of his front lobe, packing up every memory he had into a separate section of his brain and locking them down.
The princess always tried to get into his skull, and he didn't want her to know anything about those he cared for or about.
When a bitter gust nearly slammed the door on his head, Rehv drew his sable loosely around himself, got out, and locked the Bentley. As he walked to the trailhead, the ground beneath his Cole Haans was frozen, the dirt crunching under his soles, hard and resistant.
Technically the park was now closed for the season, a chain hanging across the widemouthed path that took you past the map of the mountain and the cabins that were for rent. The weather, rather than the Adirondack Park Service, was more likely to keep people away, though. After stepping over the links, he bypassed the sign-in sheet that hung on a clipboard even though no one was supposed to be using the trails. He never left his name.
Yeah, 'cuz human rangers really needed to know what was doing between two symphaths in one of those cabins. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
One good thing about December was that the forest was less claustrophobic in the winter months, its oaks and maples nothing but skinny trunks and branches that let in plenty of the starry night. All around them, the evergreens were having a ball, their fluffy boughs an arboreal f**k you to their now-naked brethren, payback for all the showy fall foliage the other trees had just sported.
Penetrating the tree line, he followed the main trail as it gradually narrowed. Smaller trails broke off on the left and the right, marked with rough wooden signs with names like Hobnob's Walk, Lightning Strike, Summit Long, and Summit Short. He kept on going straight, his breath leaving his lips in puffs, the sound of his loafers on the frozen ground seeming very loud. Overhead, the moon was brilliant, a knife-edged crescent that, with his symphath urges firmly not in check, was the color of his blackmailer's ruby eyes.
Trez made an appearance in the form of an icy breeze rolling down the trail.
"Hey, my man," Rehv said quietly.
Trez's voice floated into his head as the guy's Shadow form condensed into a shimmering wave. MAKE IT QUICK WITH HER. SOONER WE GET YOU WHAT YOU NEED AFTERWARD THE BETTER.