Dark Choices - I. T. Lucas Page 0,69
to work.”
He cast her a sad glance. “No offense, Wendy, but it’s not the same. This was the fourth attempt, and I had to beg Kian for it. I also asked him to allow me to stay in the village as a human, but it doesn’t look as if he’s going to grant my request.”
Vlad put a hand on his shoulder. “As long as he didn’t say no, there is still hope.”
Wendy shook her head. “If you don’t turn, why would you want to stay? Isn’t it better to have your memories of immortals wiped so you don’t walk around sad and disappointed about not transitioning?”
He cast her an incredulous look. “Would you have liked your memories wiped?”
“I wouldn’t want to lose my memories of Vlad, but I wouldn’t have cared about everything else. If I weren’t in love, I would have preferred to forget about immortality and live a normal life.” She grimaced. “Or as normal as it was possible for me. I wasn’t in a good place before I met Vlad.”
Richard patted her arm. “I’m really happy for you, Wendy. Compared to how you were in the program, you are a different person now. I’d never noticed how beautiful your smile was because you hardly ever smiled. Now you are smiling all of the time.”
Even though Richard's comments were harmless, Vlad didn’t like him complimenting Wendy, or noticing how beautiful she was. But it made her happy, so he could live with it.
Wendy was glowing and becoming more and more beautiful by the day, and it wasn’t just because he was watching her through love-tinted glasses.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have asked Roni to dig into what had happened to her mom. Why ruin all that progress by dragging out misery that was best forgotten?
“But that’s the thing,” Wendy said. “I’m in love with Vlad, so if I had faced the same dilemma as you do, I would have probably wanted to stay on as a human even though it would have been selfish to put Vlad through watching me get old and die. But you are not in love with anyone here, so you are better off forgetting all this.” She waved a hand around.
“I’m not in love, that’s true. And no one is in love with me either. But I have good friends here, and I feel like I belong. I never felt like that in the human world.”
Wendy arched a brow. “Really? I remember you being quite the player in the program, and I even thought that you were a jerk with an overinflated ego. You’ve never been a wallflower.”
Vlad would have loved to hear Richard’s response, but his phone rang right as the guy opened his mouth, and Roni’s face was on the display.
“I’ll take it outside.”
Hopefully, they would think that he was being considerate, but the truth was that he didn’t want Wendy to hear him talking with Roni.
Out on the porch, he accepted the call and sat on the bench. “Hi, Roni. What’s up?”
“After what you told me about Wendy’s father, I couldn’t wait until Monday to do some digging. I found out stuff that you’ll find interesting.”
“Where are you?”
“At the lab. Can you come down here?”
“Right now?”
“I’m not going to stay long. I promised Sylvia to be back by lunchtime.”
“Can’t you tell me over the phone?”
“I can. But if you want to keep this investigation a secret from Wendy, you will need time to calm down after you see this.”
The guy knew him well. Just imagining what Roni wanted to show him was enough of a trigger for Vlad’s fangs to elongate.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
“Bring a six-pack. William is here too.”
“Okay.”
That was actually a pretty decent excuse he could give Wendy for going to see Roni. He was just doing a favor for a friend, delivering beers to the guys working in the lab on a Sunday.
49
Kian
A glass of scotch in hand, Kian walked out onto the back patio and sat down on a lounger.
Sundays were usually reserved for relaxing at home with Syssi, but she and Okidu were busy with preparations for dinner.
Thankfully, Kalugal and his people were leaving right after that, and things would return to normal, or as normal as they ever got. There was always something to disturb the peace and take his mind away from running the clan’s business empire.
He liked Kalugal and Jacki, but playing host was exhausting, especially when a visit took over his weekend and he didn’t have time to recharge.
A new week