Hearts At Stake - By Alyxandra Harvey Page 0,40

and Hope.” They looked at us.

“Lucy and Nicholas, upstairs.”

“Mom!”

“But—”

“Now,” Liam insisted. “Lucy, the presence of a human girl will not help our cause at the moment. And Nicholas, you can barely stand.”

He was rather wobbly on his feet. Dawn must be filling the garden on the other side of the drapes. We shuffled upstairs, reluctant but obedient.

More or less.

Mom says my temper isn’t my only karmic baggage. I have this thing about taking orders, no matter how well meant. And though I completely understood why it might be best to remain out of sight, it hardly followed that I should sit alone in Solange’s room and not know what was going on. Just because they shouldn’t see me didn’t mean I shouldn’t see them.

“Lucy?” Nicholas whispered, stopping when he realized I wasn’t following. “What are you doing?”

In point of fact I was lying on my stomach at the top of the curving staircase. From this vantage I could see the front door. I couldn’t see into the living room, but I heard Helena ask Sebastian if he wanted to retire and his emphatic refusal. He was newly turned—it had only been a few years, after all—but I wouldn’t have left either if I were him. No matter how exhausted I was.

I wondered again where Solange was. And if she was okay.

“They can hear your heartbeat, you know.” Nicholas stretched out next to me.

“Hey, I’m upstairs. Technically I’m not breaking the rules.” I slid him a sidelong glance. “Can they really hear my exact location?”

“Probably not,” he admitted. He was very close. I could feel the cool length of his body pressing against mine. His eyes were very pale, his teeth very sharp. If I was immune to his pheromones, then why did I find him so annoyingly attractive?

A knock sounded at the front door. The dogs barreled into the foyer, growling. Mrs. Brown barked from behind Hyacinth’s bedroom door. Bruno escorted the heads of Helios-Ra inside, his expression implacable and hard. He considered the Drakes his own family, and Solange an honorary niece.

“Hart and Hope,” I muttered. “If you’re going to name your kids like that, of course they’re going to think they live in a comic book.” Although I had to admit Hart was handsome, practically debonair. His hair was threaded with silver and rakishly messy. “Okay, he’s totally got that yummy secret agent thing going on.”

Nicholas scowled at me. I didn’t have to turn my head to look at him to feel his eyes burning.

Hope was short, barely five feet tall, with a cheerful face and a ponytail swinging from the crown of her head. She wore jeans and a thick leather belt hung with stakes under her long sweater, and sandals. Somehow I hadn’t expected her to be so perky, in her strappy silver sandals.

“They’re going in,” I whispered.

“I can see that,” Nicholas muttered. His nose twitched.

“You look like a demented bunny,” I told him. “What are you doing?”

“You switched to lemon shampoo.”

I blinked, thought back to my morning shower, which felt like years ago. He was right. His hands were clenched, but his voice was soft and husky. He turned his head away, was close enough that his hair brushed my cheek.

“Smells good.”

CHAPTER 15

Solange

I only woke up because I had a mouthful of mud and a lump of hard dirt as a pillow.

“Ow.” I sat up, blinking blearily. “What the hell, you guys?”

“Shh,” Connor hissed at me, his hand covering my mouth. “We’re not alone.” I could barely hear him, he was speaking so softly. I couldn’t hear heartbeats or frightened porcupines or twigs snapping under combat boots, but I knew the rest of my brothers could. He drew a sun in the dirt at our feet. I could barely make out the shape in the moonlight falling through the branches. Not just vampires then.

Helios-Ra.

The wind was warm, persistent. The crickets had stopped singing, no doubt sensing predators in every corner of the forest. This was our forest, damn it. The Helios-Ra had no business here.

Shadows flitted between the trees, making an unearthly sigh of displaced air. A vampire screamed and turned to dust, billowing between the leaves. A wooden Helios-Ra stake bit the maple tree behind her as she crumbled. Someone screeched. Connor leaped into the fray before I could stop him. Marcus was fighting, and Quinn, of course, who couldn’t be kept from a good fight no matter the circumstances. Logan crouched between me and the worst of it, Duncan was farther behind, guarding