Ben pulled away to look at me. He was frowning, worry creasing his brow, making his laugh lines deeper, making him look older. Hazel eyes studied me. And it was weird, because I’d have expected him to get angry, defiant, to say something cutting and sarcastic. But he just looked tired.
“No, you can’t,” he said without passion. Just clear statement of fact. “I won’t let you.”
“I can. You’d do it, too, if it meant making all this stop.”
“It’s not like you to just give up.”
“How do you know? I used to give up all the time.”
He smirked. “I’m glad I didn’t know you back then. I like you stubborn.”
Stubborn. Right. I had to keep being pigheaded. But being pigheaded was so much work.
“I’m going to remind you that you said that the next time we have an epic argument.”
He looked heavenward and sighed like a martyr.
I said, “Maybe I could call the Band of Tiamat, offer to surrender, get them to call off the attack—then escape their clutches at the last minute and destroy them from the inside.”
“That’s more like it,” Ben said. “But I’d still like to come up with a plan that doesn’t involve the word ‘surrender’ at all.”
Still working on that . . .
Rick and I had arranged to meet early at Psalm 23 so we could decide what to tell Roman. After what had happened today, I wasn’t in the mood for talking to either one of them, but I had to. If Roman could stop this thing, stop anyone else from dying, I’d pay nearly any price. Rick could be damned. More damned than he already was, anyway.
I must have looked awful when I arrived at the club and made my way to the corner table where Rick was sitting, hands folded before him, waiting. His eyes widened when he saw me. Not a good sign, if I could startle Rick.
“What’s wrong?”
The headache behind my eyes came in waves. The aspirin I’d taken an hour before hadn’t helped.
“This thing raised the stakes,” I said. “It killed one of my pack.”
“Oh, no. When? How?”
“Last night. Burned to death, from the inside.”
“I’m very sorry,” he said, softly, sincerely. “Sit down. Can I get you something? A drink?”
The vast catalog of possibilities gleamed behind the bar, but I couldn’t face that kind of escapism at the moment. “Just coffee. Thanks.”
Rick called the order to the bartender, and a steaming mug arrived a moment later. I clung to the warmth and breathed in the fumes. The sensations anchored me.
“We can’t tell Roman no,” I said. I’d been practicing this speech. I couldn’t let Rick turn Roman away. “I need his help. I don’t have time anymore to figure this out on my own. I can’t let it kill anyone else. It’s my job to protect the pack—I took on that responsibility, and I’ll do whatever I have to to keep them safe.”
Rick turned away, and my stomach sank, because it meant he didn’t agree with me. He was going to argue with me. He wasn’t going to let Roman stay and help.
“Rick, please—”
“Anything. Even if it means giving up your freedom? The pack’s freedom? My freedom?”
I glared. “What are you afraid of? Why does this guy scare you so much?”
“I’m not scared,” he said, too quickly, too defensively. “Maybe paranoid, as you like to say. But Kitty, look at what’s happening. It’s too convenient. He knows too much. You said it yourself: What if this is a con game? What if he’s working with the Band of Tiamat? What if all this is his doing, for the express purpose of coming here and gaining a foothold? Getting control over us? I won’t let him take this city from me.”
“This isn’t about you. Why do you vampires always think it’s about you?”
He arced a brow and glared back at me. “I’m going to tell Roman no. I’m going to tell him to leave town. We’ll stop this thing on our own, Kitty.”