“No, I know that. I’m just wondering why. Lucas seems like such a nice person — ”
“And my brother isn’t,” Connor finished for me.
Oh, shit. “That’s not what I meant — ”
“It isn’t?” He smiled thinly, and again the resemblance between the two brothers struck me, although most of the time it wasn’t that obvious. “Well, Lucas has an interesting gift. Luck.”
“Luck?”
“Not about everything. He’s never been married, always says he hasn’t met the right one yet. I know he’s had a lot of girlfriends, both civilians and not, but it never works out. Not that he doesn’t keep trying.”
“Like trying to pick up my cousin Margot?”
Despite everything, he flashed a quick grin at me. “Never thought I’d say I was glad to see a McAllister being so standoffish. She never even gave him a chance to get close, and thank God for that. We’d already had enough scenes that evening.”
That was true. It was hard for me to even imagine someone thinking of Margot in that way, but I had to remind myself that being a clan elder was all about power, not age. She was probably a little younger than Lucas. “You were saying about his luck?”
Connor shrugged and went into the kitchen, then extracted two bottles of water from the fridge and handed one to me. I smiled my thanks at him; it was cold, but very dry, and all that talking had irritated my throat. “But with money, finances? He has a sense. He just knows. The Wilcoxes have always done well for themselves, but the last thirty years more than ever. When things went sour with the last stock market crash, he’d told everyone in the family to move their investments into safer things like T-bills a month before it happened. I was in college, but I remember friends dropping out because their families had just lost everything and couldn’t afford to keep paying tuition. But we Wilcoxes? We sailed through it like nothing happened.”
“That is a pretty handy gift,” I admitted. “Better than talking to ghosts, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, you could say that. So you can see why my brother would want to keep Lucas around. And also, with Lucas there’s no agenda. As you said, he seems like a nice person — because he is one. When you’re always looking over your shoulder the way my brother is, having someone like Lucas around makes a lot of sense. He’s always been very loyal to Damon. You and I know that he’s too good a person to really turn you into some kind of burnt offering, but Damon doesn’t. He’ll believe that his friend is doing his best to help him out.” A grimace twisted Connor’s mouth, and he added, “If Damon is even capable of rational thought anymore. I can’t imagine that he would knowingly have killed any of those girls. Especially Jessica. He might not have loved her, but he would have been protective of her.”
I shivered. Yes, I could see that. Jessica was willing to sacrifice herself to provide a Wilcox heir, and Damon would respect that, would take pains to make sure she was safe. The skin-walker spell truly had to have driven him out of his mind for him to kill her.
“So,” Connor continued, “logically I know Marie’s plan makes sense. And I know why we have to do it, but….”
The hopelessness in his voice broke my heart. I set my bottle of water down on the kitchen table, then went and put my arms around him. “I’m sorry, Connor,” I said, and I meant it. No one should have to go through this torture. Not even Damon Wilcox.
It seemed that Connor heard the sincerity in my tone, or maybe he simply felt it vibrating through our bond. Whatever it was, this time his arms went to encircle me as well, and he crushed me against him, clinging to me the way a man might cling to a life raft in a storm-tossed ocean. I stood there and offered whatever wordless comfort I could.
In that moment, it was the only thing I could do for him.
17
Equinox
It was not quite nine the next morning when Connor’s phone rang. We’d both gotten up early, our sleep restless even after making frenzied love sometime after midnight, when he’d woken me and pulled me to him, clearly needing the reassurance of my flesh against his. Of course I didn’t protest; I needed his touch just as much as he needed mine.
We were tired and preoccupied, but at least we’d already showered and dressed. No TV this morning; we were sitting at the dining room table and nursing another round of coffee when the call came through.
The hesitation before he reached for the phone was obvious, but after the third ring he picked up, handling the phone as if it had been infected with some sort of highly contagious virus. “Marie,” he said. A pause as he listened for a moment. Then he asked, “Are you sure?” Another pause. “Okay, we’ll be out there as soon as we can. I’ll need to get Lucas’s car from him.”