5
Stefan’s house was nearly as big as Adam’s and mine, and for much the same reason—it might need to shelter a lot of people at any given time. Unlike ours, it sprawled out instead of up, and was set in a neighborhood of upscale houses built around half a century ago.
The outside lights were on, and several of the windows were dimly lit, as if reflecting lights deeper in the house. Only the basement windows were absolutely dark, but I knew they were painted black. Stefan told his neighbors that he had a movie theater downstairs.
Adam pulled his brand-spanking-new SUV into Stefan’s driveway. It looked exactly like the last two SUVs, which had suffered tragic deaths this year. Adam told me that in his worst year, suffered before he and I got together, he’d lost six vehicles—but they had been a lot cheaper. I asked him if they’d all been black, and he’d laughed. But he hadn’t denied it.
Adam parked next to Stefan’s Mystery Machine, not that anyone else would know what it was. The old VW bus’s paint job was shrouded in a protective cover.
“I thought you had gotten it ready for him to drive again,” Adam said.
“I did.” I tried to keep the worry out of my voice. “After the smoke dragon took him for a ride, he told me that he didn’t suit the bus just now.” But I took the cover as a good sign. Not now but someday, it said.
“The cover’s a good sign,” said Adam. “Stefan is planning on driving it again someday.”
Our mating bond did things like that sometimes, when Adam wasn’t keeping a close eye on it. I’d gotten used to having my thoughts come out of his mouth—or possibly his thoughts run through my head before he spoke. I didn’t like it. But when our bond had been suspended a few months ago, I’d learned that I preferred chafing under its inconveniences to silence.
I’d gotten used to sharing part of my inner self with Adam. It didn’t leave me in a blind panic anymore. Mostly.
“I was just thinking that,” I said.
He grimaced. “Sorry.”
He understood. I took a breath, leaned against him, and kissed the side of his jaw.
“It was a good thought,” I said. “I haven’t had a chance to really talk to him since the smoke dragon.”
Stefan had bowed out of the last few bad-movie nights. We held them at Warren’s and kept them down to eight or ten people—up from the days of our four-person maximum, but still more manageable than if the whole pack showed up. I should have approached Stefan after the first one he missed, but the vampire and I had a complicated relationship.
He was one of my oldest friends; I’d met him very soon after I’d moved here. He’d protected me from Marsilia for years before I’d known I needed protecting. He’d bound me to him at my request, to save me from another vampire. It had worked—and that was not the only time that bond had saved me.
But a vampire’s bond is not like the bonds of the pack or the mating bond I shared with Adam. A vampire’s bond is one between master and slave. Stefan had never used it that way, but he could. It scared me.
Adam ran a thumb across my cheek—the one without the scar because the scar could be sensitive. He didn’t say anything, because he knew all about Stefan and me, about my misgivings. I knew that he struggled with it sometimes himself. There was nothing useful to say, but his touch helped a lot.
We walked side by side in companionable silence to the front porch. I glanced up at the dimly lit windows and realized why there had been an itch on the back of my neck since we’d driven up. Stefan, like Adam, had been a soldier, albeit in a much different kind of army in a much different century. He would never have let his people present themselves as a target. Those windows should have been curtained.
Adam, who had gotten ahead of me while I looked at windows, lifted his hand to knock just as a strange scent drifted through the air. I took two quick steps and caught Adam’s arm before it landed on the door.
He stopped midmotion, raising an eyebrow at me.
Stefan’s house was more soundproof than most, but it was unlikely the occupants hadn’t heard us drive up—or seen our headlights. We weren’t going to take anyone by surprise.
Still, instead of speaking, I tapped my nose and mouthed, Fae. No sense advertising what we knew to anyone listening.
Adam inhaled through his nose and shook his head. He couldn’t smell it.
That told both of us I was probably smelling magic rather than body scent. Usually I could tell one from the other, but this scent was very faint, almost as if someone had taken some pains to hide it.