Page 53 of Mortdale

When I started to shiver, he began pulling away.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “Don’t send me away.”

He stopped at the threshold. His wet, still-dripping shirt had stuck to his body, clinging to every inch of hard muscle. And I briefly forgot my argument.

“I think today proved you’re better off somewhere far from me.”

“I will bribe every ghost in this household to haunt you.”

He blinked slowly. “I’m rich. I’ll bribe them back.”

“They have no use for your money.”

“Everyone has use for money,” he said, taking the silver tin out of his pocket and bringing a cigarette to his lips. “And I have a lot of it.”

I felt like a snot-dripping snail going up to him and bringing the tip of my finger to his cigarette to light it. “If you weren’t so pretty, the arrogance would really piss me off.”

He stuck a hand in his pants pocket and braced a shoulder against the doorframe, tipping his head back to blow the smoke overhead. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Clearing my throat, I reached to itch the tip of my nose. “Where were you? Why was no one here? What did they even want?”

“The man you killed,” he said, running a hand through his bloodied wet blond hair, pushing it all the way back. “He was a king’s guard. We received news of an infected horde of vampires approaching the city centre and I was asked to deploy as many soldiers as I could spare. We realised a little too late it had been a distraction. By the time we got back on the estate, they’d lured almost all of the remaining guards out in the woods.”

I shook my head. “Why would the king do this to you?”

“He wants anything he can leverage against me. And he knows where to find them.”

My hand came to my mouth. “Piper.”

For some reason, his eyes paced between mine for a while. And then he nodded.

“Why?”

“Because he knows my loyalty is to the people of Mortdale, not to him. He has no control over me. If he loses my parliamentary vote, he’s sort of fucked,” he said, blowing more smoke overhead, filling my lungs with the warm, burning scent of cloves. “This was a last-ditch attempt at pissing me off.”

“You stand against your king?”

“Let’s say I am not his biggest admirer.”

“Is that smart? You have a lot to lose. And he clearly knows that.”

“So do the people of Mortdale. I have a duty to them, too. And it’s something personal, too. I enjoy seeing him writhe under pressure.”

“What are you planning on doing?” I swallowed. “You probably are planning something. You look too relaxed for someone whose home was broken into and daughter-niece almost kidnapped.”

The tip of his tongue was pressed to the front of his teeth. “I’ll teach you to shoot a gun.”

“You want me to shoot the king?”

He took a long drag from his cigarette. “For the next time you feel the need to blow someone’s skull to pieces.”

Heat climbed to the tip of my ears. “It was just something I pulled together last minute.”

“You did good.”

“You already said that.”