Chapter Thirty-six

I didn’t find him; I didn’t really expect to. John had been outwitting Jäger-Suchers for over fifty years. A PI from Philly didn’t stand a chance.

I ended up sleeping one last night in my room above Rising Moon. King returned as I was packing. He stood in the doorway, beneath the worthless horseshoe. “Watch your back, girlie.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said. Though I didn’t feel fine. I felt bruised, battered, deep down achingly sad. I was going to miss John for the rest of my life.

“Your sister could be anywhere,” he continued. “She might come after you.”

“I hope she does.”

“She ain’t Katie. She will kill you.”

I pulled out my letter opener, turning it this way and that, until the light caught the silver and sparkled.

“No,” I said, and met King’s eyes. “She won’t.”

King peered at me for several seconds. “You’ve changed.”

“The whole world’s changed.”

King spent the night in Rising Moon with a baseball bat across his lap, protecting the place against looters. I figured I was safer there than anywhere. In the morning, I’d catch a plane to Philly. In the meantime, I needed to figure out what I was going to tell my parents. Certainly not the truth.

Bright and early, there was a knock on the door of the club. Sullivan stood on the stoop.

I was tempted to sneak out the back and head straight for the airport. From the expression on King’s face, he expected me to.

Instead, I opened the door, then moved as far away from the detective as I could get and still be in the same room. His gaze lit on my packed bag, then lifted to my face. “You’re going?”

“Yes.”

“What about your sister?”

He didn’t remember what Katie had become, what she’d done to him, and that was good. I wished I
didn’t.

“I don’t think she’s here.” I figured Katie was as far away from New Orleans by now as she could get.

“Something’s changed.” Sullivan fidgeted, uncomfortable. “I did something or said something that’s made you…” His gaze met mine. “Hate me.”

He had, but I couldn’t explain it to him. He deserved the oblivion Elise and the Jäger-Suchers had provided.

Sullivan was a good man once more, and he’d go on to do great things.

“I don’t hate you,” I lied. “But I have to go home.”

“It’s Rodolfo,” he said.

“Yes.”

He nodded as if he’d expected as much, then crossed the room to take my hand. I flinched; I couldn’t help it.

Why couldn’t I cut Sullivan the same slack I’d cut John? Why couldn’t I see that the beast who’d hurt me wasn’t the same man as the one in front of me? Perhaps because I’d never seen John as Henri, but I had seen Sullivan as Satan.

Or perhaps it was because I’d never completely trusted John, sensing something in him he was holding back. But I had trusted Sullivan; I’d felt safe with him. For Sullivan to turn on me, even though it hadn’t been him, had been devastating. I doubted I’d ever get over it.

Sullivan dropped my hand, but he was still too close for my comfort, and I inched out of his reach.

“I was sick,” he said. “I don’t remember things. I’m taking a leave of absence from the force until I feel more… myself.”

“That’ll be good.”

I wondered momentarily if he’d give up on his quest for the serial killer, but I kept my lip zipped in case Edward had purged the NOPD of the case. From what I’d seen of Edward, he probably could.

Our good-bye was awkward. He wanted to hug me; I didn’t want him to, and he knew it. We shook hands, and as soon as he left, I did too.

Back in Philly, life just wasn’t the same. How could it be? I hadn’t been kidding when I’d told King the whole world had changed.

Now I knew that evil could lurk behind every smiling face. The night held horrors I easily imagined. I’d seen them, touched them, almost become them.

In the first hour back in my parents’ company I lied to them so many times I lost count.

“The DNA was Katie’s,” they greeted me as soon as I walked in their door.

I’d completely forgotten we’d sent evidence to the crime lab.

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “The bracelet was found at the j azz club Rising Moon.”

“Katie had to have been in New Orleans after she disappeared from here,” my father said.

“Yes.”

She had been, just more recently than we’d thought.

“So she must be alive.”

My parents were conveniently ignoring what blood on a bracelet might mean, and I decided to let them.

“Sure,” I lied.

Katie wasn’t alive. Not really. She wasn’t even Katie anymore. However, I couldn’t tell my parents that, so I began to avoid them.

My j ob bored me. My friends too. Suddenly I didn’t fit in in the place I’d been a part of my whole life. I spent most of my time searching the Internet, trying to find a trace of Katie somewhere. That is, when I wasn’t looking equally hard for a trace of John.

When Edward called and offered me a j ob, I jumped at the chance.

“You’re going to hunt for your sister anyway,” he said. “Why not do so with the resources of the Jäger-Suchers behind you?”

I couldn’t think of a single reason.

The night before I was scheduled to leave for J-S training, I watched the sun set from my window and sighed.

“You need to stop searching for me, chica.”

I spun around, the pure silver knife I’d bought to replace the letter opener in my hand. John stood just inside the room.

He didn’t look much better than I did. Oh, his black pants were pressed and his white dress shirt was spotless, but he was pale, with dark circles under his eyes; he’d lost weight too. He’d shaved off his goatee, but his five o’clock shadow darkened his j aw, making him appear both dangerous and a little bit sad.

“Who said I was searching for you?”

“Elise.” His smile did not reach the deep blue eyes I just couldn’t get used to seeing. “The woman knows everything.”

I scowled, not only at the knowledge that he’d spoken to her and not to me, but at the revelation Elise knew so damned much. I shouldn’t be j ealous—the two of them couldn’t even touch without getting a migraine—but I was.

“She told me to come here,” John said.

My spirits fell even further at his words. He hadn’t come because he couldn’t bear to be away from me any longer, he’d come because Elise had told him to.

“You’ll never move on with your life unless you see the truth,” he continued.

“What truth is that?”

“I’m a monster, Anne,” John began to unbutton his shirt. “And I always will be.”

“I know what you are. I don’t care.”

“You don’t really know.”

The shirt slid to the floor; the fading sunlight glistened across his beautiful skin. He unzipped his trousers; the sound ripped through the heavy silence.

“You don’t know,” he repeated, “because you’ve never really seen.”

He kicked off his shoes, shucked his pants, then stood before me completely naked. I couldn’t even enj oy the view, because he was making me very nervous.

“What are you doing?”

“What I should have done in the beginning.” He glanced at the window. “Only a few more minutes.”

I followed his gaze. The sun had disappeared; the moon would soon rise.

A crescent moon.

My fingers tightened on the weapon, and John nodded. “Keep the knife handy. You never know what an animal might do.”

“I don’t need it.” I slapped the thing onto the table. “You won’t hurt me.”

“Dammit, Anne! Don’t be a fool. Pick that up.”

I backed away from the table. “No.”

Fury flashed across his face, sparked in his eyes, and for a minute, I was uneasy. My unease increased when he strode forward, grabbed the knife and came toward me.

Despite his being stark naked and gorgeous, all I could do was stare at his long, supple artist’s fingers wrapped around the hilt.

“You’re holding it,” I said.

“So?”

I lifted my gaze from his hand to his face. “That knife is pure silver, John. Every last inch.”

He frowned, opened his fist, and stared at a palm that should be smoking but wasn’t, then he looked out the window. The crescent moon hovered just above the horizon.

“What the—”

Before I could protest, he pressed the flat of the blade to his chest.

Nothing happened.

The knife clattered to the floor. “The—the curse is broken,” he said.

“Just like that? How?”

“I’m not sure. Let me think.” John turned away, seeming to forget he wasn’t wearing any clothes. I didn’t mind. “Mawu said I had to commit the ultimate sacrifice.”

“And her great-grandson times ten said you had to kill all the werewolves,” I pointed out. “You haven’t.”

“Maybe both methods are true.”

“You didn’t die. Lately.”

“The ultimate sacrifice was never my life,” he said slowly, “because it wasn’t worth saving.”

“I hate it when you say that,” I muttered.

He ignored me. “In not killing Katie, I gave up my chance to be free, and in doing so was freed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The ultimate sacrifice, for me, was losing any chance I had to break the curse.”

Why do we always think the biggest sacrifice is our lives? There are other things that mean a whole lot more.

Love. Happiness. Family. A future together. Did John want those things too?

“You’re cured?” I asked. “You’re sure?”

“I’ll go to Montana, turn myself over to Elise. She can run all her tests and make certain I’m human,
but—

” He looked at the moon again. “I don’t hear it calling me. I don’t feel the pull. I don’t have a taste for —”

He stopped, cleared his throat, shrugged.

“Blood?” I asked, and he nodded.

John bent and picked up his pants. While he dressed, I waited for him to say something, anything, about us, but he didn’t.

I couldn’t let him walk out the door again without knowing how he felt.

“After you go to Montana,” I blurted, “and Elise proves you’re human, what will you do with the rest of your life?”

John lifted his head and his gaze met mine. I couldn’t read his eyes any better now than when he’d hidden them behind dark glasses.

Then he reached out, snaked a hand around my waist and tugged me close. He brushed his lips across my brow, laid his cheek against my hair. “I love you, Anne. You’re the only thing that’s ever mattered to me in two lifetimes.”

His arms tightened; at last I felt like I belonged somewhere, with someone.

“I’ll probably never be a cheery fellow,” he continued. “I’ll always remember what I did. I’ll always need to atone.”

“How?”

“I hear you’re working for Edward.” I nodded. “I should too.”

“But your music—”

“Can be practiced anywhere. There’re clubs in every city in the world, and being a musician is a good way to get to know a certain element in most of them. You think Edward will hire me?”

“Yes.”

Edward was no fool. He never had been. He’d see the advantages.

“Where should we live?” I wondered.

John lifted his head, touched my cheek. “Do you really have to ask?”

Two months later, after John had passed all of Elise’s tests and was declared human again, we went through J-S training together, then got married in the Crescent City. We moved into John’s apartment and let King manage Rising Moon.

Once I’d looked at New Orleans and known I would never fit in. Ancient, ghostly, and magical, with the echoes of j azz floating on the sultry air, the place had become as much a part of me as it was a part of John. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

However, we weren’t there very often. Edward sent us to cities across the United States and Europe.

We went everywhere together. The werewolves were up to something; they always were.

Katie had disappeared completely; I wasn’t sure we’d ever find her. But I’d never stop trying.

HE AWAKENS SOMETHING WILD IN HER...