I snorted. “That sounds about right.”
“As if I would stoop to forcing myself on a lady.” He shook his head as he pushed himself up from his chair. “Now, do you need anything, or can we go?”
Chapter Fourteen
New York, New York.
The Big Apple. Manhattan. The city of a thousand names and a million stories, and the place I called home.
The problem was, every time I returned to the city, it felt less and less like home, and more and more like a piece of my history. Especially after the trip here sixth months ago when my mother had tried to kill my sister and me in the memorial building that bore Lucas’s name, it was very difficult for me to feel warm and tingly whenever I came back.
Everywhere I looked in New York was somewhere I’d nearly died, or a place someone I loved had taken their last breath.
Yes, it was also filled with people I cared about deeply, but the ghosts were all around me, and they were starting to get to me. Maybe that was the real reason I was so cagey about coming back here for good. Los Angeles was my human life—it represented my fresh start. New York was darkness, death, and all the things I had tried to put behind me.
The town car that met us at the airport navigated easily through the crowded streets, and the reflection of neon and skyscraper lights dazzled brighter than any stars could have.
I probably should have asked Holden to take me to see Desmond first, but there wasn’t a hell of a lot of time before sunrise, so it was best we went directly to the Tribunal.
Desmond might pout about it a little, which was his right, and I was sure we’d have a fight about it, but that was something I was willing to deal with. I was home early to do a job, and I wanted to find Sig as quickly as possible so I could turn my attention back to the whole Belphegor mess in L.A.
The car dropped us off in front of the council headquarters, a majestic-looking building that closely resembled Grand Central Terminal from the outside.
There’d been a time when the inside, with its beautiful green stained-glass panels that mimicked the light of the afternoon sun through leaves and the stunning vintage black-and-white-tiled floor, had wowed me.
They were impressive still, absolutely, but after hundreds and hundreds of trips through the lobby towards the imposing wooden doors on the opposite side, the mystique was sort of lost on me now.
Wardens scattered out of the way as Holden came through the doors, everyone doing their best to look busy or simply remain unseen as the pair of us made our way to the entrance to the Tribunal’s chambers.
The wooden doors took us to a curving stone stairwell where the walls and steps were always the slightest bit damp. No longer having the same reflexes, and having melted away the treads on the bottom of my boots, I took each step cautiously, worried I might slide my way down instead of entering with my usual grace and charm.
Holden didn’t bother knocking as we made our way into the chamber at the bottom of the stairs. He was, of course, allowed to come and go as he pleased.
All three throne-like seats were empty, something I wasn’t used to seeing.
The seat in the center was Sig’s, and Holden was standing in front of me, but I guess I was expecting Surly McJerkface to be sitting sullenly in his usual spot, waiting to give me a dirty look the second I came through the door.
“She came,” said a voice behind me.
I turned and came face-to-chin with Juan Carlos, the third member of the Tribunal.
Juan Carlos had once been a Spanish conquistador, and before he became a vampire, someone had sliced part of his face open. The wound had healed but left his lip in a permanent snarl.
There was also the fact he really hated me, so his looks were never particularly soft or pleasant when aimed in my direction.
That I was here to help find Sig would be even more of a sore spot. The last time Juan Carlos and I had let our animosity towards each other boil over, the truth of his hatred had emerged, and hoo boy had it been a giant honesty bomb. I’d figured out that the reason he hated me so much was because he was jealous of all the attention Sig paid me.
Because he loved Sig.
And it wasn’t a warm, fuzzy, feel-good love. It was an I was raised to be a masculine man who loves women, and my love for another man has made me resent him and hate myself over the course of several centuries kind of love.
I was a convenient outlet for him to pour all that hatred into.
Everyone seemed to be getting along decently well since the truth had come out, so maybe it wasn’t as big a deal as I’d thought it would be.
Sig was probably pretty accustomed to people being in love with him.
I didn’t mean that to say he had an enormous ego—though he was almost ethereal in his beauty, so who would blame him—but his particular vampiric gift was making those around him feel peaceful and easy.