“You mustn’t,” whispered Logan. “Please.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“Mustn’t what?” asked Nicholas.
Logan swallowed. “There are things you don’t understand.”
“Explain them to me.”
“I will.”
“No,” said Nicholas. “I’ll be the one to do the explaining. She’s getting all sucked in by your pretty face and I can’t let that happen.”
“It’s not your decision,” said Hope.
“It’s not yours, either,” said Logan. “Any more than it is mine. Things are as they are and neither of us can alter that truth.”
“That’s it,” said Nicholas. “She’s going to Dabyr. Tonight.”
Hope whirled around and glared at him. “I’m not going anywhere but to a hospital with my friend.”
Logan slipped out from behind her, putting the couch between them. She didn’t understand his actions, but she didn’t like the way he went cold whenever others were around.
He wanted her. She knew he did. She’d seen proof of it more than once. She didn’t understand why he kept avoiding her.
Unless he was ashamed to be attracted to her. Maybe vampires were too good for humans. Or whatever she was—even they didn’t seem to know for sure. What she did know was his rejection stung.
Good thing she had more important worries to distract her.
“I need to leave,” said Logan.
“The hell you do,” said Nicholas.
Logan’s lips thinned in anger. “Would you prefer I stay with her? My attraction isn’t exactly convenient for me, either. I’d think you’d be willing to keep me busy elsewhere.”
The thrill that he admitted an attraction to her was steamrollered by his desire to avoid it. And her.
“Okay. Whatever,” said Hope. “I’m done dealing with you all. I’m taking Jodi to a hospital. Will one of you take us? Or are you going to make me call a cab?”
Nicholas was scowling at Logan, puckering his scars. Logan’s face was smooth and stoic, but he was avoiding her gaze.
She reached for her cell phone only to find it missing, lost back in that alley where she’d been attacked. “Is there a phone in this house?”
“I’ll take you somewhere safe,” said Nicholas.
“What about Jodi?”
“Jodi, too. She’ll need to have her memories altered.”
“Not only no, but hell no. No one is touching my friend’s memories.”
“We must,” said Logan. “Any Synestryn taint must be removed or demons could be drawn to her.”
“To kill her and eat her,” added Nicholas, scowling. A bright plume of fiery anger exploded in his aura, drowning out the pain and flashes of silvery honor she’d come to associate with him. “This is nonnegotiable. Logan cleans your friend’s memories or she dies. Period.”
Hope didn’t know what to think. If Nicholas had been lying, she would have seen a hint of deception surrounding him. There had been none, which meant he was telling the truth, at least as he believed it.
“I don’t want her to live like I have,” she whispered, her eyes pleading with Logan.
His voice was gentle. “It won’t be like that. I’ll be careful. I’ll make her think she went out drinking with friends and had a little too much. She’ll wake up tomorrow and go on with her life. Safe.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I know. I’m afraid we can’t let that matter. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
She needed a few minutes alone. These two men sucked all the oxygen out of a room. And she couldn’t stand to watch the man she’d grown to care about do something as despicable as erasing her friend’s memories.
Hope pushed past Nicholas and went outside.
Logan had to lock his knees to keep from going after her. “Go,” he told Nicholas.
“Do you want to explain what’s going on between you two?”
“I wish I knew.”
Nicholas ran a hand through his hair in frustration. “I’m used to women tripping over their tongues when you’re around, but I’ve never once seen you do the same.”
“Just go. She’s not even wearing a coat.”
The Theronai stared at Logan for a long second. “She’s not a Theronai, is she?”
“I don’t believe so, but that could simply be a case of wishful thinking.”
Nicholas closed his eyes and let out a long breath, as if he’d come to a hard decision. “You go and I’ll watch Jodi. Hope trusts you, as foolish as that may be.”
“Around her, I don’t trust myself.”
“Do you think you’d hurt her?”
“Never.”
“Then go. Calm her down so we can gain her cooperation. It’s the only way to ensure her safety in the long run.”
Logan knew it was a mistake, that he was tempting himself with something he could never have. Still, his feet moved toward the door and carried him out into the night.
Finding Hope was easy. Even blinded, even without her blood flowing through him, he’d be able to find her by scent alone. No other woman called to him like she did. It may have been a cruel twist of fate, but that didn’t change how he felt.
She was sitting on the porch steps, hugging her knees, shivering.
Logan stripped out of his coat and draped it over her shoulders before moving away. He didn’t dare stay within reach of her. Not because of what she might do, but because of what he wanted to do.
Cold air slid around him, but he barely felt it. Not with her this close. She seemed to drive the chill away by her mere presence.
“Will you come back inside?” he asked.
She looked up at him. “I didn’t want to distract the two of you from your plans to control our lives.”
“It’s not like that, Hope. We only want you to be safe.”
She shook her head. Moonlight gleamed off her pale hair. “That man came after me for some reason. Maybe he knows who I am. What I am.”
“Does it matter?”
“Apparently it does to you. And Nicholas.”
“His kind are desperate. It’s his pain that makes him possessive. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Now you’re just trying to manipulate me. Again.”
She was right. He spent so much time manipulating others he barely even realized he was doing it. “I apologize.”
“Don’t. You don’t really mean it.”
“Tell me what you want, Hope. Tell me how I can help.”
“I want Rory and the others found. I want the monsters who took them stopped. I want Jodi safe and happy. And I want my memories back.”
“We’re already working on the first two. The last will take more time, but it is possible.”
“You can’t know that. You’re just telling me what I want to hear so I’ll play along.”
Was she right? Was he fooling himself into thinking he could help her so he’d feel less guilty over forever altering the course of her life?
“We could try now,” he offered.
“Try what?”
“Accessing your memories again.”
“How?”
He wanted this for her, but she was so skeptical right now. He needed her to let down her guard, and the only time she did that was when he got close enough to distract her and slip past her defenses.
“Come, we’ll get out of the wind and find some quiet.”
“I don’t want to go inside. It’s too . . . crowded.”
“As you wish.” He reached out his hands to her.
Hope looked at his hands, then back to his face. Her shoulders slumped on a sigh of defeat and she put her fingers in his.
They were cold, and the need to see her warm and safe brought out a dangerous, feral side of him.
He’d kill to see to this woman’s comfort. Or worse.
If the man she ended up with did not treat her right, Logan wouldn’t hesitate to tear his mind to shreds until even her slightest whim was a compulsion he couldn’t resist.
It was the ultimate form of evil to take away someone’s free will, to strip them of what made them human and destroy it. It was what the Synestryn did to their Dorjan. And yet if the options were to go against everything he held sacred or watch Hope suffer, he knew which he’d choose. Without hesitation.
Logan shoved those bleak thoughts from his mind and led her to a nearby barn. The structure was showing its age. Some of the boards had rotted out near the ground, and the dingy white paint was peeling. The doors were unlocked. He turned on the lights so she could see, but only one was working. The bare bulb hung from a wire near the back, barely bright enough to illuminate all four corners.
The interior was empty but for a few sacks of grass seed, a lawn mower, and lawn furniture that had been stored for the winter. It smelled of gasoline and the hay that had once been stored here, but without the wind, it was definitely warmer than outside.
He unfolded a lounge chair, retrieved the thick cushions from their plastic storage bin, and made her a comfortable place to lie. “Have a seat.”
“Why do I feel like this is a couch at a psychiatrist’s office?”
“How does that make you feel?” he joked.
A smile pulled at her soft lips, and a glow of satisfaction radiated from his core, warming him. He’d made her smile. Surely that was as close as he’d ever get to having the sun warm his skin, and if so, he’d count himself lucky to have come this close.
Hope took his coat from her shoulders and handed it to him. He was sure she’d meant to give it back, but as soon as she was settled, he draped the leather over her like a blanket.
He did not miss the shiver that coursed through her, though he couldn’t tell whether it was from the cold, regaining the warmth of his coat, or from fear.
“We don’t have to do this,” he told her.
“I want to. Something changed tonight as we were searching for Jodi.”
“Changed?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I felt a kind of soft spot in the barrier to my memories when something struck a chord.”
“What was it?”
Her lips pressed together as if she wasn’t going to tell him.
Logan sat down beside her and took her hand. There wasn’t much space on the lounge chair, but that only gave him a reason to touch her, to press his thigh to hers. He knew their time together was drawing to a close, and he wanted to take from it what he could for as long as he could.
“Tell me,” he urged her. “It could help.”
She pulled in a deep breath, but when she spoke, she did not meet his gaze. Her amber eyes were fixed firmly on the opposite wall. “I thought that if I remembered, we might know why Jodi was taken or where she’d gone.”
“How would that have helped?”
“These things that have been happening—the people that are going missing—are all connected to me. None of the other shelters are suffering the same problem. Just ours. That could have connected to anyone at the shelter, but then Jodi was taken. She doesn’t go there, which means that the common connection was me.”