Chapter Seventeen
Harper stared at the slender mortal female with short, dark hair and a pinched, angry face. She was trembling, no doubt trying to fight the control Drina had taken of her.
“Sue?” he said finally, his voice as blank as his thoughts as he stared at Susan Harper. He hadn’t seen the woman since Jenny’s death, and his brain was having a little trouble accepting that Jenny’s sister would be here at all, let alone pointing a weapon at him.
“Why can’t I pull the trigger?” she growled, sounding furious. “I’m trying to, but my finger won’t move.”
Harper glanced to Drina.
“I woke up as she entered the room,” Drina said quietly. “At first, I was half-asleep and thought it must be Leonius, but then I realized she was a woman and mortal and she wasn’t going for Stephanie but heading for you. I waited to see what she was up to, but when she pointed the gun at you . . .”
Harper nodded, not needing her to tell him that she had taken control of the woman enough to prevent her harming anyone but leaving her free to think and speak. He shifted his gaze back to Sue; his eyes slid from her face to the gun and back, before he asked with bewilderment, “Why?”
“Because you killed Jenny,” she said bitterly.
Harper sagged in his chair, his old friend guilt gliding through him like a ghost . . . Jenny’s ghost. If he’d been the one controlling Sue at that moment, his control would have slipped, and he’d no doubt have a hole in his head. Fortunately, Drina didn’t slip at this news, and after taking a moment to regather himself, he cleared his throat, and said quietly, “I never meant for that to happen, Susan. You must know that. I wanted to spend my life with Jenny. She was my life mate. I’d sooner kill myself than my life mate.”
“She wasn’t your life mate,” Susan snapped with disgust. “Jenny didn’t even like you. She only put up with you so you’d turn her. She bought into all your promises of young and beautiful and healthy forever . . . but you killed her.”
Harper winced as those words whipped him. He didn’t know which hurt him most: the suggestion that Jenny had only been using him or the reminder that she was dead because of him. Susan’s saying that she hadn’t even liked him fit with what Teddy had said the night he and Drina had flown back from Toronto in the helicopter, and he supposed it was possible. They’d only known each other a week or so before she’d agreed to the turn. And while he was immortal and had accepted her as his life mate the moment he couldn’t read her, she was mortal. Mortals didn’t understand the importance of being a life mate, didn’t automatically recognize the gift of it. She may have just gone along with it to let him turn her. But he was sure that she would have eventually recognized that he was the only one she could find peace with and passion.
Harper frowned as he recalled that he hadn’t experienced that passion with Jenny. He’d been putting it down to the fact that she’d kept him at arm’s length, and still believed that. If she’d even allowed him to kiss her, they both would have been overwhelmed by it, he was sure. Just as he and Drina were constantly bedeviled by it.
Finally, he said solemnly, “She was my life mate, Susan. I couldn’t read her.”
Susan snorted. “Jenny figured that was the brain tumor.”
Harper stilled, his heart seeming to stop in his chest at the words. It was Drina who growled, “Brain tumor?”
Eyes locked on Harper, Susan flashed an unpleasant smile that suggested she was enjoying his shock and dismay. “She was having headaches, and her vision would blur at times. She was also having trouble concentrating, and her memory was suffering. It turned out she had a tumor. They’d started chemo to try to shrink it before they operated, but then Jenny met you and decided she didn’t need any more treatment at all. She’d just let you turn her and live forever.”
“Harper?” Drina said quietly. “A brain tumor could prevent you reading her.”
“She was my life mate, Dree,” he said quietly. “I was eating. My appetites had been reawakened.”
“We can always eat,” she pointed out gently. “We just get tired of it and stop because it’s a bother, not because we can’t.” She paused a moment to let that sink in, then asked, “Did the food taste as good then as it does now?”
Harper automatically opened his mouth to say yes, but caught himself and really thought about it. In truth, he realized, it hadn’t. It had been okay, some of it tasty even, but he’d only eaten when the others had, and hadn’t found himself stuffing himself until his stomach ached, or constantly wanting it as he did now.