Chapter 24

Silver

I wake up disoriented in a white hospital bed, a strong smell of washed cotton, disinfectant, and sickness permeating my nostrils. Someone has removed my jacket and blouse, and I’m wearing a hospital gown with tiny blue diamonds. My arm is swathed in a bandage. I look down to see a ginger head of hair on the bed beside me, face buried in the starchy sheet.

“Ollie.”

He sits bolt upright. From the crystal-sharp look in his eyes, I can tell he wasn’t sleeping at all.

“Silver, don’t try to move again. Just stay still.” He rises from the seat, hands outstretched as if I’m some wild animal about to bolt for the door.

My mind is foggy. I know I’m supposed to be somewhere else—Dad’s house with Logan?

Logan.

“Where’s Logan?” Memories flood in—Anastasia, the garden, a blond vampire bending over me on the grass, and a hazier memory: Logan kissing me on the lips, telling me he loves me.

Ollie pushes a button by the bed. “I don’t know anything. I arrived at your house to say sorry for being a judgmental jerk and the street was swarming with cars. An officer asked if I knew you, and I told them I was your brother—they never tell non-family members anything, do they?—then a short guy in a beige overcoat let me go with him to the hospital. Inspector Davies, he said his name was. He was all right for a copper. He asked for the score in the West Ham match.”

“Ollie. Logan?”

A nurse comes in, smiling as if I’m her favorite patient. I resist the urge to drag her onto the bed by her fluorescent-pink pocket watch.

“You’re a lot calmer,” she says, smoothing down a corner of my bedcovers. “We had to give you a sedative when you first arrived. Screaming your head off, you were. Gave Darren our porter a cut lip.”

I reach for her wrist but narrowly miss. “I need to see a police officer. A tall, blond man who looks like a movie star, a vampire. You must have seen him? He was there in the garden.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen anyone who looks like that. But I’ll see if I can find out.” She tucks the blanket in tight before leaving the room, and I waste no time in kicking it back off.

Ollie moves swiftly to the opposite side of the bed to block the doorway. “Silver, you need to calm down.”

“You calm down, Ollie,” I hiss, tears pricking the backs of my eyes. I wrench the sheets off, about to jump out of bed, when I notice the gown barely covers my butt. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

Ollie opens his mouth to answer when a shadow falls across the doorway. Sergeant Davies ducks into the room, and I pull the covers over my bare legs again. I stare at him, half expecting to find answers scrawled across his face.

“What’s going on? What happened to Logan?” I demand. “If you don’t give me answers, I’ll rip this hospital apart.”

He and Ollie exchange one of those maddening looks men give each other when a woman is screaming and they think she’s crazy.

Davies slips into a chair beside the bed. “The bloke in the garden is alive. He’s being treated now.”

I sit bolt upright. “Treated for what? Vampires don’t get sick. They’re either alive or they’re dead. Which is it?”

Davies sucks in a breath before saying, “He’s very much alive, I assure you.”

I slump back against the pillows, a hot wave of relief rolling through my veins so intensely that white dots appear in my vision. He’s alive. Logan is alive. “What happened? Who was the other vampire? He said he was an inspector.”

Davies stares pointedly at Ollie, who is about to sit down in a chair at the bottom of the bed.

“Oh,” Ollie says, standing up and shoving hands into his pockets. “I’ll wait outside.”

After Ollie leaves, Davies turns to face me. “That was Inspector Vincent Ferrer. It’s a long story, but he’s recently joined our special division. We first suspected you were in danger after finding out what happened last night on your date. You see, after you gave us the name of Dolores Gericke, we were able to match a criminal ring from the Victorian era to Maria Bryant, or Anastasia as she appears to be known. Exactly the sort of information we’ve been looking for since we set up the operation.” He smiles, leaning back in the chair and steepling his fingers as if he’s some sort of mastermind genius. All that’s missing is a white Persian cat sitting on his knee. When he clocks my less-than-impressed expression, he quickly continues. “Gerhard Johnson belonged to that gang for a time. When we discovered how the date ended, we realized there was a chance Maria Bryant could come after you.”

I raise a hand. “Wait. Are you saying you knew all along he was a murderous villain?”

The detective fidgets in his seat. “Not until after we found out what had happened at the restaurant. If we’d known beforehand, we would have made sure you were safe.”

“How thoughtful,” I hiss sarcastically. “Or maybe you would have let me go anyway. You were never going to reopen my mother’s case at all, were you?”

He looks away, eyes darting around the room. “It’s always difficult to predict how these types of investigations will go,” he mutters.

“How did you know what happened to the sleazebag anyway?”

He sinks back into his seat. “Inspector Ferrer has connections. When you dropped the phone earlier, we sent out a unit straightaway. Vincent got there faster than the rest of us.”

I shiver, wanting answers but at the same time afraid of what they might be. “What happened to the woman? The ancient. Did she get away?”

Davies frowns. “She’s gone,” he says as though he can hardly believe it.

“Escaped?”

He scratches his balding head. “No, gone. Destroyed. Left a black hole in the ground. She burned to a cinder. We don’t understand it ourselves yet.”

“Is Logan burned too?”

His eyes flick away. I can tell there’s something he’s not telling me. “No, not burned. But he’s receiving treatment. I can’t say any more than that.”

“Is he in intensive care?”

“I’m not sure, but I can check with Burke. He was there too when Bryant went up in smoke.”

I nod. “Anastasia killed my mother—Maria Bryant as you know her.”

His eyes widen. “We will, of course, need to formally question you about the events leading up to tonight.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “Of course you will. Make sure you squeeze every last drop of information out of me.”

Davies stands. “I’ll ask Burke about the young man. I am sorry to hear about your mother.”

A sob rises in my throat like bile, and I turn away from him to the dark square of window on the opposite wall, the faint outline of high-rises and skyscrapers making a shadow against the cool-blue horizon. “Just find out about Logan, please,” I mutter.

By the time I turn back, he’s gone.

* * *

Shortly after Sergeant Davies leaves, Ollie appears back in the room, Dad and Sheila trailing behind him.

“I called them,” he explains sheepishly, staring at his shoes as I glare at him.

Typical Ollie—always trying to do the right thing.

“Dad, I’m fine,” I say, bracing myself for a barrage of questions as he perches on the bed, hugging me tightly. When he pulls away, I notice he’s still wearing his tartan slippers. Sheila, on the other hand, is fully dressed and carrying a bright-blue cooler bag. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Whatever the situation, Sheila always finds time to make sandwiches.

She pats her hair as she gives the room a critical once-over. “I’ve heard the meals are terrible in these places, so I brought food from home.”

Her gaze drifts to my bandaged arm and I lift it up to show them. “Just fractured apparently,” I say as Dad pales.

“Ah,” he says, looking relieved. “No acrobatics for a while then.”

I smile for the first time in what feels like forever. “Actually,” I say, eyes fixed on my father’s soft-gray eyes, “I wouldn’t mind talking to Dad alone.”

Sheila sighs, looking across at Ollie. “Do you still like cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, Oliver? Or are you one of those gluten-free types now?”

Ollie gives her his best boy-next-door smile. “Nah, not me. I’d love a cheese-and-pickle sandwich, Sheila.”

Sheila smiles, flushing pink, as they both retreat into the corridor, Ollie shutting the door behind them. I turn to Dad, who sinks onto a chair beside the bed, twisting his thin hands nervously.

“I know what happened to Mum,” I start, the words sticking to the back of my throat.

His face goes slack, the light disappearing from his eyes. “What?” he asks in a voice little more than a squeak.

I pull myself up straight against the pillows, reaching to take one of his hands in mine, and tell him everything. From the V-Date setups and the police right down to what I learned from Ronin earlier today—how Stephen Clegg reappeared when I was nine years old and Mum ran away. How a powerful overlord finally killed him and ended up paying the ultimate price. I leave Logan out of it for now. There are some things he doesn’t need to know yet. My being in love with a vampire is one of them.

“Don’t cry, Dad,” I whisper, as his face crumples, tears trickling into his wrinkles. I lean forward to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Suddenly, he feels frail and birdlike, as if he’s no longer my parent but a child.

Eventually, Sheila trails back into the room and Dad tells her snatches of the things I said. Watching Sheila comfort him, arms wrapped around his shoulders, I wonder for the first time in my life if maybe I’ve judged her too harshly.

A tall doctor with a mop of brown hair strolls in, looking surprised to have stumbled onto such an emotional scene. He pushes black-framed glasses up the bridge of his long nose. “I’m just going to check Miss Harris’s arm, and then she can be discharged.”

“We’ll wait outside,” Dad says, steering Sheila toward the door as the doctor begins prodding my arm.

Once they’re gone and he’s finished poking at me, I ask, “Where are my clothes?”

The doctor opens a cupboard by my bed and brings out a pile of plastic-wrapped, grubby-looking rags. “You might want to ask your family to bring you something from home,” he says, scribbling something onto a chart. He clicks his pen. “All done. I’m happy for you to leave when you’re ready.” He looks up through the little window out into the corridor. “I think you may have a police officer waiting to speak with you.”

I let out a long, withering sigh. “Okay, send him in on your way out.”

I stare at the door as the doctor leaves, expecting either the squat frame of Davies or lanky Burke to fill the gap in the frame. I jolt in surprise when a tall, handsome man in a gray suit enters. Instantly, I recognize him. Dark-blond hair swept off his forehead, storm-washed blue eyes, a jaw you could measure right angles by—it’s the vampire from the garden.

I ball the sheet in my fists. “What happened? Where’s Logan?” If I were fully dressed, I would fling myself across the room at him.

“Miss Harris.” He nods before giving an almost imperceptible half bow, like some long-forgotten gesture of a bygone era. “I’m not sure you remember me, but I’m Inspector Vincent Ferrer. I was there earlier when you collapsed. Sergeant Davies sent me to talk to you about Logan. May I sit?” He gestures to the chair at the foot of the bed and I nod. “Logan is upstairs in the intensive care unit.” He pulls the chair closer. Beneath the harsh, yellow strip light on the ceiling, I notice violet shadows under his eyes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vampire look tired before.

“What’s wrong with him?” I ask, heart thudding beneath my ribs. “Why was Davies being so cagey?”

His blue eyes search my face for a moment before he answers. “They are treating him for dehydration.”

I screw my face up. “Dehydration? With what? Blood?”

“No, water. I’m not sure what happened yet. You see, I wasn’t there when Anastasia was destroyed. Logan had made me promise to get you to safety.” His eyes seem to glaze over, a trace of sadness softening the brilliant blue of his eyes. “He loves you very much,” he murmurs.

I think of the hazy memory from earlier. “Did he kiss me in the garden? Was that real?”

“Yes, that was real.”

I nod slowly. “Thanks for getting me out of there. I hope I didn’t cut your lip open like I did Darren the porter.”

He laughs, his whole face brightening. “I rather think Darren took the brunt.”

“Will you take me upstairs to Logan? I have to see him.”

His eyes flick to the grubby pile of clothing on the bedside cabinet. “How soon can you be ready?”

* * *

Luckily, when we leave the room, Dad and the rest are nowhere to be seen. I trail after Vincent, my stomach in knots as he leads me through a maze of corridors and stairs. Finally, we reach a small, blue-and-white waiting area outside a pair of double doors with a sign reading ICU.

“I’ll wait here,” Vincent says, hands thrust deep in his pockets.

I nod, stomach churning, scowling down at the dirty clothes I had to put back on—grass-stained jeans and muddy sneakers, my beloved leather biker jacket with a large gash across the back. I take a deep breath and tear my gaze from the calm blue eyes of Inspector Ferrer, raking hands through my messy hair before opening the double doors.

On the other side is a long hallway lined with closed doors. I trail up the corridor until it eventually widens out onto a spacious ward. There are rows of neatly made beds and curtained-off cubicles, the scent of disinfectant strong in the air. I’m wondering if I’m in the right place when a familiar Irish voice cuts through the air, reaching my ears like oxygen to a drowning man. My knees wobble, my heart skipping a beat.

“Are you stalking me, Miss Harris? Can’t a fella even check into a hospital without being badgered by needy women?”

I turn to a bed tucked away in a corner, and there, sitting up and grinning, shirtless, with his messy, dark hair all over the place, wearing the same cocky expression as ever, is Logan.

I erupt into a flurry of pent-up tears as I hurl myself across the squeaky floor and onto the bed, his arms closing around me as I drop into the familiar folds of his body, burying my face in the stubbly warmth of his neck and sobbing so hard my head feels like it’s about to crack open under the pressure.

He tightens his arms around me, fingers tangled in my hair as he rains feverish kisses onto the top of my head. “Silver,” he whispers as the tears run off my face and drip onto the sheets. “I love you, Silver. Don’t cry. It’s more than okay now.”

When the tears finally stop and my shoulders cease heaving, I lie cocooned by his warm, silky body for a few moments, reveling in the glory that he is unhurt, before propping myself up to look at him. “Your eyes look different.” Though still the same beautiful shade of sea green, they are less intense, the flecks of gold around the iris softened to brown.

He smiles. “Do they?”

My eye falls onto the tube running from his arm to an intravenous drip hooked up beside the bed, and I sit up straight, legs tucked beneath me. “What’s going on? What’s that for?”

He grabs one of my hands and places it, palm down, over his heart.

I flinch, feeling a pulse beneath the skin—steady, like the beat of a moth’s wings. “What was that? It feels like a heartbeat.”

Pushing the hair away from my face, he smiles. “It is a heartbeat, Silver. I’m human.”

I lean back. “That’s not funny, Logan. I—”

But I don’t get to finish my sentence. He pulls me across the bed toward him, pressing his lips to mine, and I melt into the embrace, forgetting what I was about to say as my mouth opens to the heat of his and we devour each other in a tight tangle of limbs. Pressed up against his muscled chest, I feel the odd sensation of our two heartbeats pulsing as one.

“What is that?” I gasp, breaking away and placing my palm back over his heart.

He covers my hand with his, pressing it into his satiny skin, rubbing a callused thumb in circles across my fingertips. “When Anastasia tried to kill me, it backfired. My necklace saved me.”

I glance at the hollow of his throat, where his gold medallion has always rested. The skin is bare. “Your necklace?”

“My grandmother put some kind of spell on it all those years ago. She must have listened to Mary Beth’s prediction and realized that one day the same creature who turned me into a vampire would also destroy me. I didn’t even know magic like that was possible—but it worked. When Anastasia struck me with the machete, death bounced back at her. She exploded, and shortly after, my necklace crumbled to dust. All these years, I thought my family didn’t care about me when all along I had been given the greatest gift of all.”

I shut my eyes, trying to keep my breathing even. I daren’t hope. Not yet. “I get how that might be possible, but human? If this is a joke, Logan, it isn’t funny.”

“You remember how Ronin said he’d never known an ancient to die?” he continues, toying with a strand of my hair.

“Yes.” I swallow heavily, my voice little more than a squeak in my throat.

“Well, it seems that when an ancient dies, all those they turned revert back to their human selves.”

“But you’re Ronin’s now. Like you said, an ancient’s blood overpowers its vessel.”

He shakes his head. “She switched me back before she killed me. She said she wanted me to die hers. If she hadn’t, I would still be a vampire. It’s the only good thing she ever did for me.”

I gaze at him, at the rosy pallor clinging to his pale cheeks, the green eyes twinkling amid their forest of dark lashes, and a lump rises almost painfully in my throat. “Are you sure?” I mumble, tears streaking my cheeks, because how can it be true? That I get to keep him forever?

Reaching up, he brushes tears from my face, dimples flashing. “I’m quite sure. The doctors have confirmed it. They’re treating me for cholera, just in case I still have it, as a precaution. I felt a little sick back in the garden, but that could have been the shock of it all. I feel fine now.”

My tears stop midflow. “Cholera?” I say, gaping. “But that’s bad, right?”

He laughs. “Silver. I’ll be fine. Even if I did have it, it’s easily treatable these days. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for the foreseeable future.”

“This is too much,” I say. “Am I dreaming? It feels like a dream.”

“No, it’s real,” he says, rubbing the nape of my neck. “We can grow old together if you’ll have me. We’ll be two old duffers, frail and gray, hobbling along together—if you want it, that is?”

I look into the eyes of the man who I believed would never be able to share a lifetime with me, who I daren’t even imagine as a long-term boyfriend, let alone a husband or a father, and smile. “Yes. I want it. I want it all with you.”

“Even children?” he asks, green eyes teasing.

“Yes, even those.” I beam. “Well, you know, one day.”

We chuckle, and he hooks his arms around my back, drawing me into a deep, passionate kiss.

“At the very least,” I murmur, running my hands over the smooth ridges of his stomach muscles, “I’m looking forward to making them.”

“Oh, me too,” he agrees, sliding a warm hand up under my jacket. “I think we should start practicing as soon as possible.”

“Yes,” I whisper, brushing my lips against his. “Shall I pull the curtain around?”

We snicker as he takes my hands in his. “Does this mean you’ll hold my hand in the street now?” he asks, cocking a brow.

“Maybe,” I tease. “But no pet names, agreed?”

“Marriage, kids, carnal debauchery, but no pet names—that seems completely reasonable.” He cups my face in his hands. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whisper.

We kiss again, long and lingering, smiling into each other’s mouths.

“I’ve just realized,” I say when we eventually break apart. “No more biting.”

“Oh, there will always be biting, Miss Harris,” he says with a wicked grin. “And you needn’t worry—you’ll still be getting the ride of your life out of me.”

He’s right about that, of course.

I do get the ride of my life.

Always.