“No.”
Oh man.
“What?” I asked. “Did you find something yesterday?”
“Nothin’ happened yesterday, Lilah.”
Well, at least that was good.
Still, I studied him, stretched out in his chair, ankles crossed, hands sitting loosely on his thick thighs, neck supported by the back of the chair, but head up, eyes on me.
There was something that wasn’t right about that, a casualness that seemed false, and I didn’t like it.
“Why are you not okay?” I asked.
“I lied yesterday.”
Great.
I did not like this.
Lying sucked. I didn’t do it. Dad taught me not to, and the lesson I’d had meant I’d only done it once, mostly because when he’d caught me in the lie I told (a lie I didn’t remember, just his reaction to it), he was disappointed in me and that killed.
I could count on three fingers the times he’d been disappointed in me.
The first was when I’d dated a preppy who drove his parents’ hand-me-down Mercedes. His family had a stable of thoroughbred horses, a huge house, and he wore pastel-colored sweaters draped over his shoulders (we’d only gone out five times, but that was five times too many for Dad).
The second was when I’d told him in a moment of weakness that I thought maybe Mom was right and I was whacked in the head.
And last, when I’d lied.
I’d never done it again. As far as I knew, Dad never did it with me either. He might not tell me everything, but that wasn’t the same as lying to someone’s face.
And if I made a list of what I’d want in a man, that would be in the necessary column.
Well, at least Abel was owning up to it. That was something.
“What did you lie about?” I asked, pushing up to sit cross-legged in the bed, the covers over my lap.
But when I did this, his body visibly tensed, his eyes dropped to my lap, and his jaw went hard.
I stared.
What was that?
“Abel?”
He sliced his eyes to mine and I saw a muscle jump in his cheek before he said, “That card the vampires gave me, it said something.”
“I reckoned that,” I replied.
He nodded once and continued, “It said they mean you and me no harm and invited me to The Biltmore.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered, not taking this as a good thing.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Are you going?” I asked.
“I’m considering it.”
My eyes got huge and my voice was two octaves higher when I cried, “Why?”
I did this because I knew one good supernatural being: Abel. The rest left a lot to be desired, considering they wanted us both dead. Therefore, I didn’t want to have anything to do with them.
It was more, though. I didn’t want Abel to have anything to do with them. He was strong, he had backup, but there were only so many times you could be outnumbered and come out the victor.
He drew in a breath and sat forward, putting his elbows on his knees but keeping hold of my eyes, just like he did the morning before.
Then, with no warning, he commenced in breaking my heart.
“I’m a monster, Lilah.”
“What?” I whispered.
“I’m a werewolf vampire. I exist on human blood. I can tear a man’s head off and I have. I’m a monster.”
“You—”
“I am,” he stated flatly. “And the first chance I’ve had in all my years to understand why I am as I am is to go to that fuckin’ hotel.”
I stared at him, then straightened my body so I was fully facing him. This caused his jaw to get hard again, but I ignored that and stated, “Okay, let’s break this down.”
“Nothin’ to break down.”
“Humor me,” I snapped, his head jerked, and his lips curved up.
“Carry on,” he muttered.
“Thanks,” I bit out. “First, how many men’s heads have you torn off?”
“Four, and two wolves.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“These being the night we met,” I stated.
“Yeah,” he repeated.
“The night some of them were trying to kill me and the others were trying to kill you.”
To that he said nothing.
I kept going, “So you haven’t torn off unsuspecting citizens’ heads willy-nilly, for the fuck of it, or on a psychotic rampage?”
He pressed his lips together and I knew it was to hide his humor because his eyes lit with it before he unpressed them to say, “No.”
“Right,” I said sharply. “Have you ever had a psychotic rampage?”
He shook his head.
“So let’s get to the human blood part,” I suggested. “When you were,” I paused, “drawing from one of your ex-bitches, did you ever kill one of them?”
“Fuck no.”
“Take too much and make them sick?”
“No.”
“Do it against anyone’s will?”
His eyes went guarded, but he said, “No.”
I threw up a hand. “Okay, so what’s the problem?”
He blinked, straightening in his chair, but again said nothing.
“I mean, seriously,” I went on, “I’ve seen lots of vampire movies and TV shows and even the good vamps screw up and overindulge. Hell, Jessica killed three fairies in a ravenous attack. She might have had her issues as a young vampire, but by that time, she was full-on good.”
His brows shot together. “Fairies?”
“Fairies.”