“That’s right.” Tucker slid the salt shaker back into place. “He was a pain in the ass before, but now he’s a royal pain in the ass.”
She shook her head. “You don’t mean that. I can tell.”
“Naw. I don’t. Jonas is good people.”
A wrinkled formed on her forehead and he could almost hear what she was thinking. When she married Hadrian, she would inherit Jonas as an enemy—and this girl wasn’t the type to have a foe at all. Let alone end up on the dark side. And it was clearly bothering her. Just not enough to give up the chance of gaining her sight and righting things with Tilda. “How…did you meet him?”
In spite of his troubling thoughts, Tucker smiled at the memory. “He got into the back of my Uber.”
Mary’s nose twitched. “What’s an Uber?”
His chest panged at the reminder of how little she knew of the world. If only he could have the privilege of showing her everything. He’d never ask for a single thing ever again. Not in his entire damn existence. “It’s a cab that you can order on your phone,” he explained gruffly. “And I’ll have you know I’m five-star rated.”
“Wow,” she breathed, sipping her milkshake. “So you drive humans?”
“Yes, ma’am, mostly drunk ones.”
“You talk to them?”
Even though Mary couldn’t see how vulnerable this discussion made him, he glanced away. “Sure. I…like talking to them. And every time one of them is brought home safe, I feel a little better about what happened. That night.” He’d gone too deep, so he hurried to lighten up the conversation. “When I’m just their driver and we’re talking about sports or good restaurants or cars, it’s kind of like being human again. For a few minutes.”
Mary seemed to gather herself. “You miss being human so much?”
It took him a moment to answer. “Yes.”
“What do you miss the most?”
“Besides meatballs?” They both laughed quietly. “I miss going home. Having a permanent place. Going to sleep in the same bed I had my whole life.” He ground a knuckle into the tabletop. “Can’t stay in one place too long when you never age.”
“No.”
Jesus, why was he being such a downer? Might be the fact that he’d spent the whole day with an incurable erection, but that was only the half of it. There was something about this girl that made it feel natural to spill his guts. Maybe it was the way she seemed to read him that made it pointless to do anything but be forthright. Whatever the reason, was this really how he wanted Mary to remember him when he dropped her off and turned tail? All doom and gloom and woe is me? “But hell,” he chuckled, forcing some buoyancy into his tone. “I’m not complaining. If I have to keep moving around, at least the work is honest.”
Tucker’s sudden brightness didn’t appear to fool Mary, but she didn’t comment on it. “You mean driving the Uber?”
“Yes. And the work I do for Jonas.” She shook her head slightly to indicate she had no idea what he meant. “We counsel new vampires. Try and teach them how to live as normal a life as possible. Sometimes we have to give them a place to stay, train them in how to feed without murdering anyone in cold blood. That kind of thing.”
“That’s what you do for the new king?” she whispered, some of the color leaving her cheeks. “I had no idea. My mother said he had no use for the fae, but I never stopped to ask what he stood for beyond that. I really am joining the bad guys, aren’t I?”
“You’ll never be bad, Mary. Your intentions are pure.”
His words did nothing to ease her troubled expression. “When my father returned with the fae, she was never the same. I’ve been wanting to make this right my whole life.”
“You’re not the one who made it wrong in the first place, kid.” He paused to stop his voice from vibrating. “But if you’ve set your mind to changing the situation with your family, you’ll see it through.”
“What if I’ve just been waiting for any opportunity to fix the past for so long, I can’t see why this opportunity is the wrong one?”
“I can’t answer that for you, Mary, but I believe one thing.” With a swallow, he curled his hand around her wrist and listened to her heartbeat pick up. “In my experience, there’ll be a moment when you know exactly what to do. Okay?”
“Okay.” Her pulse thrummed beneath his fingertips. “I give you a five-star rating for advice.”
A laugh caught him off guard. “That’s being generous.”
“You never told me what happened when Jonas got into your car.”
“Oh.” He pried his hand away from her before he could do something stupid. Like try to scent her blood through the delicate skin of her wrist and horrify the poor girl. “He, uh…he said he’d been watching me for a while and needed someone with my restraint. So I could instill it in others.” He cleared his throat hard, trying to dispel the hunger that wouldn’t leave him alone. How ironic that he was having a conversation about willpower while battling the most insane thirst of his life. “I don’t just drive humans for the banter. It helps me build resistance to their scent.” He nudged her foot under the table. “And the tips don’t hurt.”
A smile bloomed across her face. “Good. You can pay for my milkshake.”
Tucker grinned back in her direction and just kind of got lost there, somewhere among her freckles and lips that were probably strawberry flavored. Soft. Had she kissed a member of the opposite sex before? His gut didn’t seem to like that possibility at all. It churned loud enough that Mary raised an eyebrow. But whatever she was going to say fell on deaf ears, because a prickle of awareness danced up Tucker’s spine.
Long before Tucker was Silenced, he’d had an odd knack for sensing when something was about to go wrong. It dated back all the way to childhood when he’d decided to walk to school one morning because his skin had prickled sharply when the bus turned the corner onto his road. Ten minutes later, he’d heard sirens in the distance. Once he arrived at school on foot, he was told the bus skidded on a patch of ice and slammed into a tree.
Around the time he went through the nasty business of puberty, he’d experienced a tremor in his fingertips and the full-body shakes while playing baseball after school. The tremor had moved down to the soles of his feet. Seconds before a water main broke, he swore he could see straight through the soil and grass to the rupturing pipe, witnessing it shake.
He’d been stunned by the incident and scores of less significant ones, but his mother always danced over his concerns, ruffling his hair and telling him not to worry. Eventually he’d listened, ignoring his heightened senses, desperate for normalcy. And they’d mostly gone away, except for his intuition for trouble.
Now, as inconspicuously as possible, Tucker glanced back over his shoulder and watched the group of slayers saunter into the diner, taking seats at the soda counter. Three of them. He’d tangled with plenty of slayers in his lifetime as a vampire, but he’d never once been scared. He was now. Because the beautiful soul sitting across from Tucker had chosen him to bring her somewhere safely. She trusted him. And the fact that her safety could be called into question made a growl burn up the walls of his throat.