Dead Man's Deal The Asylum Tales - By Jocelynn Drake Page 0,26

heavy vampire territory.

“No!” he said with a laugh. “Well, not since I last heard from her, which was about six months ago, and she didn’t sound like she had any plans to. She’s teaching a couple night classes for the vamps.” His smile faded and a frown returned to his eyes. “Though it does sound like she’s fallen in with some Gypsies. In her last e-mail, she was bragging about getting good with her hands. I thought it was best not to ask too many questions.”

I chuckled, scratching the back of my head. Yeah, that was our mom’s influence on us. She always seemed to know when it was best to pry into our lives with questions to put us back on the straight and narrow and when to let us run wild. “How’d she end up in Romania?” When I had last seen Megan, she had been twelve years old with blond pigtails, freckles, and a glare.

Robert relaxed on the bench beside me, stretching his legs out while rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “How do you think? Some guy.” I laughed at the disgust in his voice, but he wasn’t serious. “You know, our sister didn’t turn out half-bad-looking. Good thing she was the one in the family that also ended up with the brains. As soon as she finished college and got her teaching certificate, she ran off to Germany with this guy she met.”

“She still with him?”

Robert snorted. “Lasted three months.”

“And she didn’t come home after that?”

“Would you?” He arched one brow at me, mocking. I shrugged. Truth was, the Ivory Tower I had lived in was in Europe and I’d seen most of the hot spots in Europe by the age of fifteen. They were nice, but I liked living in Low Town.

“She lasted in Germany for another few months, then ran off to Austria, Croatia, Uzbekistan—don’t ask me why—and then Romania. I doubt that’s everywhere, but our dear sister has been kind enough to censor her e-mails to me.”

I smiled at his tortured expression, leading me to believe that our dear sister wasn’t censoring her letters enough for Robert’s comfort. I held on to the smile, pushing down a nagging feeling. By my guess, Megan had been traveling Europe for a couple years and Robert hadn’t seen our parents in a few years, so who was watching over them? When I left my family the second time after escaping the Ivory Towers, I had consoled myself with the thought that my parents still had my siblings.

There was one other bothersome question nagging me. Why had they left Vermont? It could have been nothing, but I doubted it. I pushed the question down with the other and looked at my older brother. It could wait. He was living in Low Town. We had found each other again, and if I was careful, we could safely stay in contact without the Towers ever getting wind of it.

“You know that leaves only one important question,” I said.

Robert stiffened a little as he looked at me. “What’s that?”

“What the hell are you doing here? I mean, of all the tattoo parlors in Low Town, how did you end up here?” I laughed.

The tension instantly flowed out of his body and he lounged against the bench again. He waved one hand at me and smiled. “Oh, that. Reave sent me.”

6

I DON’T RECALL getting to my feet, but I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of the lobby, barely holding together the rage that was burning through my brain. That fucking bastard! Reave had my brother. My older brother was working for that low-life Mafia scum. The dark elf had found a way to get even with me. I thought it was over when he had ordered Bronx’s beating. I had been punished and I thought we would be starting fresh, but Reave had shoved the knife a little deeper into my gut.

The Svartálfar was using my brother for whatever horrible job he needed done, putting him in danger. It was the perfect way to force me to do exactly what he wanted. I had to protect my brother. No matter what he was doing or how he was involved, I had to protect my brother.

“Reave?” I demanded in a rough voice when I could get my teeth to unclench enough so I could speak. “You work for the fucking Svartálfar bastard Reave?”

Robert pushed to his feet and pointed one finger at me, his expression losing all its earlier