“Really?” Bones mulled it. “That’s interesting. Oh, everyone knows Marie killed her husband when she was human. What I’ve never heard before is how she did it.”

“I thought she hit him with an ax,” was Liza’s response. “That’s the story I was told.”

“Interesting,” Bones repeated. “Why do you believe this makes her sympathetic to our side, luv? Seems she stated whom she’d support.”

I’d rather not say.

I shifted on the seat, wishing I’d shut up before.

“You’re blocking me.” His eyes flashed green.

Yeah, I was keeping him out of my mind with all the mental armor I could muster. Big mouth. Why can’t you just leave well enough alone?

It wasn’t directed to him; I was berating myself. There were a few things I’d wanted to discuss privately with Bones after meeting Majestic. This wasn’t private by anyone’s standards.

“We agreed not to do this,” Bones went on. “Hide any knowledge or speculation. Whatever it is, Kitten, tell me.”

I blew out a deep breath. He wasn’t going to like this.

“Marie told me Gregor could return my memories, and that you and Mencheres knew it. She wondered why you didn’t want me to remember what happened. On the street back there, she had the chance to demand I get my memories back. We were in her backyard, outnumbered; she could have insisted. But she let us go. I think she did it…because she believes I am bound to Gregor, and she knows she’d have to back him if it was proven.”

Bones went absolutely still. His glare intensified until it felt like I was being hit with emerald lasers.

“Do you want to remember your time with him?”

I took another deep breath, longer than the first one.

“It bothers me that there’s over a month of my life I don’t know about. You should have told me, Bones. You promised you weren’t going to hide things from me anymore, either, but I had to find this out from Marie.”

“I didn’t tell you because I wasn’t certain. In any event, I wasn’t going to let that filthy cur put his hands on you, have your mouth on him—”

“Are you serious?” I interrupted. “Where in all of this did you think I’d kiss him?”

Bones shot me a harsh glance. “The power to open your mind is in Gregor’s blood, as he said. You’d have to bite him.”

“I didn’t know how it worked.”

“Right, but you’d do it if you could,” Bones said with such accusation that I clenched my hands to keep from shaking him.

“If someone ripped over a month of memory from your life, you’d want to know what it contained, too.” Spoken without shouting. Good for me.

“No, I wouldn’t.”

His tone wasn’t calm. It was almost a snarl.

“If someone took from my memory an event that might unravel our marriage, I wouldn’t want to remember it under any circumstances, but perhaps our marriage means more to me than it does to you.”

There went my Zen moment of tranquil chi. Blackout rage, aisle five!

“The only person who could unravel our marriage is you. Let’s say I did find out I married Gregor. Does the thought that there might be a chance for you to be single again sound too tempting to you?”

“You’re the only one admitting to looking for a loophole,” Bones replied with equal fury. “Fancy the look of Gregor? Wonder if you might have preferred shagging him to me? Is that what you want to remember?”

I was so insulted, it made me incensed.

“You’ve lost your mind!”

I shoved him, but he didn’t move. “I bled my first time with Danny, got it? Or do you need me to draw you a picture?”

Under normal circumstances, I would never say something so personal with a crowd, but rage is funny. It makes you oblivious to everything else.

Bones drew his face right up next to mine. “That sod could have shagged you all night, and you’d have still bled with Danny later. All Mencheres would have needed to do was give you his blood once he found you. Heals all wounds, right? If they took you from Gregor shortly after the first time he’d bedded you, you’d have had a simple wound that could have been healed.”

“That’s…” I was so aghast at the idea, I couldn’t begin to respond. “That’s bullshit!” I finally managed.

“Really?” Bones leaned closer. “I happen to know differently, because I’ve done it.”

The soft way he said the words made them even more emphatic. Fury, denial, and jealousy spat out my words faster than I could think.

“Damn you for being a conscienceless whore.”

Bones didn’t take his eyes off me, nor was his response any louder.

“That’s what you married, Kitten. A conscienceless whore. But if you recall, I never pretended to be anything else.”

Yeah, I knew he’d been a gigolo when he was human, but that’s not what stung. If only his screwing around had stopped once he didn’t need the money to survive, I thought bitterly. But no. After he became a vampire, he did it for fun, as he just reminded me.

I didn’t want him to know how much his past still had the power to hurt me, so I drew my mental shields around me. They were my only defense to shut him out. Then I looked out the window. I couldn’t bear the sight of his beautiful face at the moment.

Bones let go of me and sat back. We didn’t speak the rest of the trip.

NINE

YEE-HAW!”

The cry made me shake my head. A bar with an inside rodeo. Nope, I wasn’t kidding. It even had a live, snorting bull. For the listed price, proof of prior experience, several signed waivers, and a complete lack of common sense, anyone could ride it, too.

Bones and I were still barely speaking. I told him about the rumor of me wanting to turn into a ghoul, but beyond that, we didn’t talk much. Nothing else was going on, either, and that may have been mutual. When we reached the Fort Worth motel after a straight day of driving, I swallowed the pills Don had sent to me and passed out. The most intimate moment I’d had with Bones was when he woke me with his wrist against my mouth. I’d swallowed his blood, declared that I needed to shower, and that was that. He was dressed and waiting for me when I came out, coolly detached with nothing but business to discuss. The invisible wall between us was worse than fighting, in my opinion.

Bones was meeting a ghoul contact at this bar. He didn’t like the ghoul rumor going around about me and wanted to see how seriously it was being taken. Spade was meeting us here, too, since Hopscotch, Band-Aid, and Liza were being quarantined.

Fabian proved helpful by checking out the bar first, making sure this wasn’t a setup with the ghoul. Only two things cheered me from my current depressed mood. My best friend Denise lived in Texas now, so she was coming tonight. The other plus to the evening was that Cooper, my friend and former team member, was coming, too. Spade was picking both of them up.

When they walked into the bar, I was so glad to see them that I almost shoved past people in my way. Denise returned my hug, albeit with less desperate fervor, and Cooper was somewhat taken aback by my fierce embrace.

Spade came in behind them. He cast an appraising glance at Bones and me while he said hello. No doubt mentally weighing our friction.

“I say, Crispin, you’d look better if you were being nailed inside a wooden box,” he commented. His gaze flicked around the bar with mild distaste. “No doubt this wretched music’s to blame. I don’t know why country singers feel the need to set depression to a melody.”

Denise smiled. “I think this place is great. Is that a bull?”

“You bet.” As if commanded, the animal snorted unhappily. He and I were in perfect agreement.

“Oh, I wish I could ride it,” she said.

It was good to see Denise smile. In truth, I hadn’t seen her much at all recently, smiling or otherwise. After her husband Randy was killed, Denise stayed with Bones and me for a few weeks. Then she went back to Virginia, saying she wanted to get away from everything supernatural.