He said that now, but what if it was months before I could share a bed with him? Years even? Our road to marriage was paved with cobblestones, and we were in for a hell of a bumpy ride.
Chapter Forty-One
By the time night fell the next day, I knew it was time for us to leave Louisiana. One night was already a night too many, and if I was going to work on solving the rest of the problems in my life, I couldn’t do it while hiding behind my uncle.
I invited Grandmere to come back with me to New York, but she declined the offer. “I’ve missed so much, and I can’t make up for the time I’ve been gone, but I can try to catch up now. It’s the least I can do.”
Eugenia, on the other hand, was bereft. She’d been gone the night we arrived. Callum, knowing I’d be arriving with Mercy’s head, had sent my sister to New Orleans for the night on the pretense he needed something from a shop there. She’d been gone the whole night and only arrived back during the afternoon. When I awoke at sunset, she was furious she had potentially missed my entire stay.
“I’m coming with you,” she announced.
“No. No way. It’s not safe,” I protested. I’d been talking to Callum about organizing a ride to the airport when Genie had shown up. Now I looked to my uncle for backup to shoot down her ridiculous plan.
“I live with a pack of wolves,” Genie reminded me. “New York isn’t nearly that dangerous by comparison.”
The city itself might not be, sure. There was a police officer on every corner, and the worst thing that might happen to her in Times Square would be having her purse stolen. But it wasn’t the city I was worried about. It was all the otherworldly things within the city that might find use for my little sister.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Callum,” I implored. “This is ridiculous.”
“Actually…”
I couldn’t believe my ears. The tone of his voice said very clearly he was considering her suggestion, in spite of my arguments to the contrary. Why didn’t anyone trust I knew what I was talking about?
“No,” I repeated.
“I’m going to be working closely with Ben and Fairfax once you go, undoing the damage of this drug. Because Eugenia still hasn’t completely figured out how to reconcile her magic and her werewolf shifts, I worry the forces I’ll have to use to shift her twin back might impact her. Who’s to say how those kinds of connections can impact someone as sensitive to the supernatural as she is?”
I wanted to keep saying no until someone listened.
Eventually, though, it was Holden who convinced me. He had joined us in our preparation to leave, but he’d hung back, avoiding any interaction with us. I think if we hadn’t been so far away from anything else, he would have found his own way home and not told us he was leaving. As it was, he did everything in his power to blend into the background until he finally spoke up.
“Let the girl come, Secret. She’s tough. She’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think—”
“She’ll be fine,” he insisted.
I let out a shaky breath and looked at my sister. Yes, she was young, but so was I when I’d first come to the city. And there were threats, absolutely, but I had managed until now to keep almost everyone in my life safe from the things threatening me.
I hesitated.
“She’s going to come anyway,” Holden added. “If you let her come with you, at least you’ll know where she is.”
Would Genie honestly sneak off and come after me on her own? I glanced at her, and the defiant lift in her chin told me Holden had read her spot-on. Cheeky little monster would have followed.
I yielded. “Fine.”
Her tough veneer faded, and she looked relieved and delighted. Then she seemed to reconsider for a moment, her gleeful bouncing cut short. “Ben’s going to be okay, right?”
Though the two were twins, Eugenia and Ben had spent a great number of their formative years apart. Genie had gone off to learn magic from our great-grandmother—La Sorcière—one of the most terrifying and powerful people I’d ever met. Ben had stayed behind to learn pack politics from Amelia and Callum.
They were close, but not inseparable. Yet I knew she wouldn’t want to go if there was a chance Ben might not pull through.
Desmond spoke up before Callum could. “I got dosed with the stuff. Turning back hurts like hell, but your brother is going to be fine.”