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Gravel crunched beneath the wheels as we neared the castle of red bricks and red stones with about a zillion s, set square in the ht behind it and stretching all the way into a gray forever If it looked thisthe day?

I proet stuck with an eternalthe prophesied queen was the way to go Not only did I wake up in the afternoon, instead of sunset, but I could go outside I&039;d never burn up, not toyour hand stamped at a club, only a zillion ti in the car like a startled blond lump, and yanked on the door handle I could hear the ot out of the lirass field Tilted my head back and looked at a sky of stars I had never seen before, dangling over the pure ocean

I aleous night and, by God, it s my enhanced senses (which had not always been the case, believe et ot here, I hadn&039;t known that gorgeous could be a s up to the main doors with Jeannie almost in lockstep beside him Sinclair was also abreast of theht beside the biggest and strongest like he belonged there?)

So I tried to stop gaping and trotted after Jessica, as trotting herself to keep up I&039;d unhooked BabyJon&039;s car seat and carried it with us, though it suddenly felt like it was full of several gold bars as I hurried and sniffed and looked around and kept ainstout of shape if a simple walk to a housecastletaxed my attention, not to mention ht Michael was talking I should absolutely be listening

"Gee, ya think?" Jessica whispered to ht ere here for the lobster"

I s that even if Antonia and Garrett weren&039;t dead this was no tiles We had a pretty scary itinerary and never h I wondered if I could eat clam chowder) Maybe it seemed weird for a vampire to fret or be stressed-this vampire, at least-but despite how it always looks in books and movies, whole weeks-months-could pass by without any life-or-death bullshit

Not last week, though I thought the early part of the week had bitten the big one, ith the Fiends going all, you know, fiendish, solving the et good at just from sheer repetition, and wasn&039;t that the opposite of a a helpless witness to a murder/suicide in my foyer Okay, technically Jessica&039;s foyer

So Antonia was dead, Garrett had killed himself, but the fun wasn&039;t over yet, which is why I was standing in front of the Atlantic Ocean instead of the Mississippi River

Yeah, I figured we&039;d all earned about six years off-shoot, I was still a need, I had a pile of thank-you notes yet to write-but the joke was on me, as it so often is, and all the tears and terror and bullets ht us to Wednesday Noas the weekend, and Sinclair and I had a fresh set of proble a mess was this? How much blame would fall on my friends and e? Most i to do about it? About us? And how could I explain Antonia&039;s for too far and screwing over my own people?

Had Antonia ever even told her Pack she&039;d been sleeping with a vampire? I should have known the answer to that But Antonia had always made it clear that her phone calls with Michael were Pack business, and we all tried to respect her privacy

Only to the olves, it would probably look like negligence, or carelessness

I had never wanted a drink so badly in my life

We followed Michael up red brick stairs and into a vestibule the size of a ballroo like a tourist instead of an invited head of state Which is just fine, because you&039;ll never fool a real leader

while trying not to look like I was doing so This place randest, richest streets in the Midwest-look like a one-bedroom apartment in the warehouse district Michael&039;s castle

Yep, now there&039;s a real leader, so quit fakin&039;, bacon

was lit up in a blaze of lights (mostly from the overhead chandeliers) and what little furniture I could see was any The place smelled like old wood and cedar, floor wax and furniture It was theI&039;d ever seen, and I&039;d only seen a tenth of a fraction of it

We cliht of stairs (Marble floors! Marble floors! Werewolves ), followed the Wyndhaht think, an orangey red, a dark pink-no, this was red red, a deep, rich, true red), and were soon in a roo as my kitchen that was clearly Michael&039;s office

He probably filled out paperwork, or clipped coupons, or downloaded songs fro the world froinormous desk almost directly across frorand piano-sized, reddish brown, beautifully appointed, glea chunk of wood as a desk?

More fool me The President of the US sat behind a desk Elementary school teachers sat behind desks Prison wardens Librarians DMV eeants (Thus the na was a wooden monument to Michael&039;s status

There were a few comfortable chairs scattered about, all dark ith plush seats Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined two of the walls; the other walls had s and pictures and such One fraht my eye-obviously old, but the people were familiar to me somehohich was impossible

I stepped closer and stared harder No, I didn&039;t know them The man had lush dark hair and the woolden than brown, more like-

More like Michael&039;s

Of course! The mater and pater of the Pack Daood stories

(Can you hear them, Elizabeth?)

I stifled a yelp of surprise and darted a look in Sinclair&039;s direction It was handy to be able to read your husband&039;s ht it was natural, nor The fact that our telepathy tended to show only during extre to figure out if va about Sinclair&039;s state of ht come across as calm and reasonable, even a little bored, and yet he orried enough (about ht into aphone

(Elizabeth Can you hear the an answer I nodded Sure I could And I knehat Sinclair was getting at There wasn&039;t a soul to be seen, and the castle seemed almost deserted, but it wasn&039;t Not even close to deserted We could hear the still I was-don&039;t askto us Believeto us? Give me a break

Except we absolutely could And that was the scariest thing of all, knowing the castle was full of re in a fairy tale

My, Grand ears you have

My worry for Jessica increased by a factor of about eight hundredshe had nothing in the way of enhanced paranor up on the tension Boy oh boy, I hoped we&039;d be able to ht I&039;d have to think, much less articulate