Crimson Death
Page 63

   “I don’t think I’ve ever traveled with explosives; that’s your gig.”
   “You used phosphorus grenades on ghouls and other undead.”
   “Fine. I’ll leave them at home. Besides, the European grenades you had in Colorado were a hell of a lot more destructive.”
   “If we need them, Brian will get us some.”
   “Good to know.”
   “Pack and get in the air as soon as you can, Anita. I’ll meet you on the ground in Ireland.”
   “This would be so much easier if I weren’t still afraid of flying.”
   “I keep forgetting you’re phobic of flying. I should take you up one day and get you over it.”
   “Can you fly? I mean, are you a pilot?”
   “I’ll see you in the Emerald Isle, Anita.”
   “Damn it, Edward.”
   “Yes?”
   “Nothing. Just keep your secrets and be all mysterious. You keep telling me I’m your best friend. You know, people don’t keep this many secrets from their best friends.”
   “I do,” he said. “See you across the pond, Anita.”
   “See you there, Edward.”
   “Good-bye, Nathaniel.”
   “Bye, Edward.”
   “You didn’t tell me not to endanger Anita.”
   “I know what Anita does for a living and I know that she trusts you at her back more than anyone else. I trust her judgment.”
   “That is not how my fiancée would have taken this conversation.”
   “Donna knows what you do for a living, too,” Nathaniel said.
   “She knows some of what I do for a living, but she doesn’t want to know all of it.”
   “Maybe, but Peter does.”
   “He told me you and he have been talking on the phone,” Edward said.
   “He’s wanting help putting together the bachelor party.”
   “I’m your best man. Shouldn’t I be planning that?” I asked.
   “Do you really want to be planning my bachelor party?”
   “No, but I’m not sure I want your nineteen-year-old son planning it either.”
   “He asked to do it,” Edward said.
   “He’s doing fine with the planning,” Nathaniel said.
   “I admit I was a little worried how much you and Peter were talking,” Edward said.
   “Why worried?” I asked.
   “You think I’m a bad influence on him?” Nathaniel asked.
   “No, according to Anita, that’s my job.”
   “I just don’t think him going into the family business is the best thing,” I said.
   “Before we got grandfathered into the Marshal Program he was going to be a vampire executioner, but now he’d have to go through the new training program. He’s too young to go straight into it, so he’s rethinking his options.”
   “Does that mean he’s not going into the other side of the family business either?” I asked.
   “Not now, Anita.”
   “You don’t have to be afraid to talk around me, Edward. I know what you do, or did, before you put on a badge,” Nathaniel said.
   “Do you?”
   “Yes, Donna asked me to help talk to Peter about college.”
   “So you were just pretending not to know that he’d agreed to try college?”
   “I wasn’t lying. I just didn’t know Peter had made up his mind. He was still debating the last time we talked.”
   “I didn’t know you and Peter were such good buddies.” Edward’s voice was not happy. It was a tone that would have made me afraid for Nathaniel once, but I knew that Edward would never do anything to endanger my domestic happiness, just like I would never do anything to endanger his; we’d both worked too hard to find people to love to screw it up now.
   “We’re not.”
   “He seems to talk to you more than any of his friends here.”
   “He doesn’t talk to me more, but he talks to me about the things he can’t discuss with his friends from high school. I already know the deep dark secrets that even his mother doesn’t know. You’ve put Peter in a position where he can’t talk to his mother, his sister, his therapist, or his best friends there in New Mexico, because it would be betraying your secrets. It’s like he knows his stepdad is Batman, but he has to pretend he only knows Bruce Wayne. He can’t talk about it with anyone.”
   “He can talk to me about it,” Edward said.
   “You can’t talk to Bruce Wayne about Batman if you know they’re the same person.”
   “I know where all the bodies are buried,” I said. “He could talk to me without telling me anything I don’t already know.”
   “You’re a woman, a beautiful woman who is tough enough to go out hunting monsters with Batman. You’re also Edward’s best friend. How can Peter talk to you without wondering if you’ll tell Edward?”
   “Point made,” I said.
   “Peter needed someone to talk to who already knew your secret identity. Trust me, if he’d had someone else he’d have talked to them.”
   “Why did you say it like that?” I asked.
   “He wouldn’t have confided in one of your boyfriends if he’d had anyone else.”
   “What does you being my boyfriend have to do with it?”
   “We talked about this, Anita,” Edward said.
   “I know, I know. I rescued him and he’s bonded to me like a baby duck.”
   Nathaniel looked angry then, his beast’s energy trickling out. “Don’t do that, Anita. Don’t make less of it than it is.”
   “I don’t know what you mean.”
   “I hope you don’t mean that, because it’s one of Peter’s most important truths.”
   I shook my head. “I don’t know what you mean about his truth.”
   “Fine. Here’s the truth. You’re right. He did fixate on you, but how could he not? He was kidnapped and they tortured him sexually. It was scary and horrible, but it was his first sexual experience and then Anita shows up and saves him. Then you’re with him when he killed the woman who had fucked with him. It was you who grabbed him off her body and shoved him up against a wall and told him that she was dead, that he had killed her, and that was as good as revenge got.”