Dust

XXVI

After Leopold has gone, I sink down to the floor, my fingers trembling along with the rest of me. My chin is throbbing from the vampire's grip, blood still dripping down the front of my shirt in tiny droplets. My legs are jelly, my insides a twisted mess—I've just watched someone be murdered, the life slipping from them like sand through my fingers. If only I had seen it coming; maybe I could have done something, anything.

"Hey, hey, Gemma," Damien is saying, his voice soothing but gravelly. I feel his breath stir the hairs near my ear as he crouches down, pulling me up with a gentle but adamant grip. "Calm down, calm down—"

"Dame, what if he knows about Gael?" I ask, the volume of my voice low. I turn, hugging Damien to me, just because I need someone to hold me up. I nuzzle my face into his chest, used to the desolate iciness underneath. "I...I was right. The initiation was a bad idea...they sniffed him out, just like I thought they would, Damien."

"No, no we don't know that," Damien argues, unlatching my arms from around him and holding me at arm's length. He peers down into my face, eyebrows furrowed, gaze intense. "It was just a threat, Gemma, just a threat. He might know anything at all."

"That's not a chance I'm willing to take," I say. "We have to figure something out—something to keep Gael safe, somehow."

"The safest thing for Gael to do right now," Damien advises, taking my hand and pulling me out into the hall, "is to go about life here as he's been doing. If we don't give them anything to be suspicious about...it's likely they'll give up."

I stop walking, looking up at Dame, the question just as lucid in my eyes as it is from my mouth: "And if they don't?"

Damien gives me a small, toothless grin, then leans forward and drops a brisk kiss on my forehead. His eyes shimmer with admiration, respect. "Then we'll fight for him, just like we've always fought for everything."

I manage to survive the rest of the day without keeling over and giving up. We tell Sloane what Leopold ordered us to, that Meredith's death was a suicide, and say nothing more. I can tell Sloane's suspicious, and—as I always do—hate myself for keeping anything from her, but consider myself doing her a favor. If she's not involved, she can't get hurt. If we leave her out of this, so will Leopold.

The kitchen smells like coffee when I enter it, the earthy scent startling but comforting. Natural sunlight filters through the French doors that mark the end of the living room, and through the glass I can see Finn crouched in the grass, his tutor Alanis beside him.

Gael has his back to me, crouching down to get something from the lower cupboards. He really has become a part of our small family, if I have to admit; he knows where we keep everything, what temperature we prefer the air conditioning on, even how Finn likes his sandwiches. He has very specific taste, like the fact he wants two sides crust-free with the other sides left alone. Upon doing this for him once, he had almost thrown a tantrum, because the two sides I'd chosen that time weren't parallel.

I drop my bag near the island and poke Gael in the small of his back, and he grins, whirling as he stands up. "Oh, thank God," he breathes, pulling me against him and kissing me on the cheek. Blood rushes to the surface of my skin. "Being at home all day is not as fun as it seems. I was beginning to feel like a housewife, er, husband." Releasing me, Gael frowns. "House...boyfriend? If that's what I am now..."

He smiles down at me again, and I say, "I don't know what you are, Gael. There's just no name for someone so special."

"How cute," Gael remarks, producing the two mugs he'd been supposedly crouching for. He slides them onto the island, and I snake my arm around his torso to retrieve the coffee maker, the source of the smell that was so prevalent when I walked in. Pouring the hot drinks with one hand, Gael taps me on the nose with the other. "You're cute when you try to be romantic, Gem."