A moment later, Lucas emerged from my bedroom. He had showered since we’d been gone, and his blond hair was still damp. He’d borrowed some clothes from Wilder, and though the pants were on the short side, he looked much less like a man who had recently woken up in a ditch.
He stopped in the doorway, and Secret froze in place, the cup of coffee lifted halfway to her lips. They stared at each other from across the room, and the mug trembled in her hand.
“Secret,” he said.
She set the cup down, and to see the expression on her face was to know the pain in her heart. There was a visible war going on as she clearly debated what to say, whether to go to him, and if she could even trust what she was seeing.
A tear slid down her cheek, and when she opened her mouth a sound like a trapped wail emerged. She clamped a hand over her mouth and shook her head, as if chastising herself for what she was feeling.
I felt like we shou
ldn’t be watching this, and yet I couldn’t look away.
She crossed the room until she was standing in front of him, and this time it was Lucas’s turn to look completely lost. He froze as she lifted her hand to touch his face, and the anguish in his expression was what finally made me look down.
“Are you real?” she asked him.
“I think so.”
Secret pressed her hand to his cheek, and ran her fingers over his eyebrows, his hair, his jaw, even his ears, as if she were trying to find a magic switch that might cause him to disappear. When she finally seemed convinced he wasn’t a figment of our collected imaginations, she took a step back and let out another breath.
“We’ll need to tell Desmond.”
“You didn’t tell him yet?” I was surprised. Not only was he her husband, but he’d also taken over the pack after Lucas died. With Lucas back things might get messy all of a sudden. I’d thought for sure she would tell him as soon as I’d hung up the phone with her earlier.
“I needed to see it for sure.” She glanced over at me. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you, you know. It’s just… one of those things you need to see for yourself.”
I couldn’t blame her. Hell, he was standing in my living room and I still didn’t believe it.
“Can we have a minute?” She inclined her head towards Lucas, but the question was obviously meant for me.
“Yeah, you guys can use my bedroom. It’s about as private as you’re going to get in here.”
She gave me a nod, then took Lucas into the bedroom where they shut the door. If we wanted to we could have heard them without much difficulty, but the rest of us took a seat at the kitchen table, and while Magnolia served us plates of bacon, eggs, and toast, we talked about what to do next.
“I think first we deal with Deerling,” Wilder said. “He’s a loose canon and he’s out there killing people. I think we need to put him down before anyone else gets hurt.”
“Well killing him didn’t seem like it was such a great solution last time,” I countered. “I mean, they’re all back now. And while the whole ‘kill the one who cast the spell’ thing would be my suggestion any other time, I don’t really feel like killing myself.”
“Who’s to say you can’t kill them again?” Magnolia said. “Sure, they came back once, but that’s because Genie cast the spell. If you kill them a second time, and then don’t bring them back, shouldn’t they stay dead?”
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I was always told cutting off someone’s head would kill them permanently, and yet here we are. Two bodies that were burned to nothing, one who was shot in the head, and one beheaded entirely. They’re all up and moving around.”
“And what’s up with the burned one?” Wilder said. “Morgan? She still looks all burned and mangled. But Lucas died in that same fire and looks like he just got finished auditioning for the next Thor movie.”
“I don’t know how any of this is even happening, let alone the finer points of how it works.”
“That’s why I think we try with Deerling first. Not to be a bummer, but no one is going to miss the guy if we kill him a second time. He’s the perfect one to test the theory on and see if he comes back again,” Wilder said.
“Perfect? How do you figure that? The cops are all over this, do you think they’re just going to let us waltz into town, murder someone, and then tell them it’s okay because he already died once? I think there are laws against that now.”
“For vampires.”
“I’m pretty sure they frown on killing anyone, even if it is for a second time,” I protested.
“Do you have any better suggestions?” It was obvious he was getting annoyed with me, and I wished I had a better alternative.
“If we kill him, I want to know he’s done for good this time. I think we need Santiago.”