Then another thought hit me.
“Don’t you worry?” I asked Daniel quietly, not sure if he was asleep.
“Hmm,” he said groggily.
“Don’t you worry about turning into the wolf again? I mean, I’m wearing a moonstone, so that will at least help me stay balanced for a while. But this is all pretty psycho—aren’t you afraid you’re the one who’s going to change? Maybe you should take the necklace back.”
Daniel’s chains shifted. I could tell he’d rolled over on his side, facing me.
“That’s the thing, Grace. It’s totally different than before. I mean, I’ve got the ability to heal, and my strength and speed are coming back, along with the enhanced senses … but I’ve finally realized over the last few days that even though I’ve been totally freaked out … I don’t feel the wolf inside of me at all.”
I took in a quick breath. “Then maybe you have been cured.”
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “I really don’t know.” He was quiet for a moment. “The fact that Caleb wasn’t able to recognize the smell of my blood didn’t surprise me. But it makes me wonder … makes me wonder if I’m turning into something completely different.”
“But what?”
“I wish I knew. I had my blood tested. That’s where I was the last few days. I know a guy who works at a research lab in Columbus. He owed me a favor, and I knew he’d be discreet. I drove all the way out there just to find out that he couldn’t tell me anything, either.”
“Is that what you were doing, all those times you wouldn’t tell me where you were? Just looking for answers? I wish you would have told me all along.”
“I know. I should have. It’s just that sometimes I had to go to some dark places to look for what I wanted.”
I swallowed hard. “Like where?”
“That night you saw my motorcycle outside that bar?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t at the bar. I was at the motel behind it … with Mishka.”
“What?” The wolf snarled terrible things in my head. I pressed my hand against my moonstone, forcing its calming power into my chest. “What do you mean?”
“I wanted her to get inside my head. She has a mind-control power she does with her eyes—steals her victim’s free will.”
“I know,” I said, remembering how she’d almost used it to kill me. And then I remembered what Mishka had said about partying with Daniel. The wolf growled—trying to make me embrace my jealousy. “Why would you want her in your head?”
“She can read thoughts, as well as manipulate them, if she’s got you in a deep enough trance. I wanted her to get inside my head to see if she could find the wolf in there. Tell me why I don’t hear it or feel it inside of me.”
I pictured Daniel lying on a motel bed, Mishka straddling him, staring deep into his eyes. No wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell me what he’d been doing that night. “What did she find?”
“Nothing. I didn’t go through with it. Her price was too high. I wasn’t willing to give her what she wanted in return.”
“What did she want?”
“Me.”
I gritted my teeth as an angry wave of power passed through me. My eyes stung, and my night vision kicked in for a moment. When I saw Daniel’s mud-pie eyes rimmed with sorrow, a rush of reassuring love pushed the wolf away.
“I left, and she was pissed,” Daniel said. “But then she texted me the next day and said that she’d changed her mind, that she’d take my bike as payment instead. We were supposed to meet up again—I was waiting for another text from her that night at dinner when I ran out. Only when I got to her place, some house on the outskirts of the city, I discovered the person who texted wasn’t Mishka. It was her friend, Veronica. They were in the same coven—like a family—and when Veronica had returned that evening, she’d found that Mishka and the rest of her friends were dead, and that someone had made off with about ten thousand dollars of stolen cash. Veronica wanted me to help her track down whoever killed her friends and get the money back. She said she’d help me if I did—get into my head for me. I tried. I wasn’t even with Katie on Sunday like I told you. I was trying to follow a lead that turned out to be nothing.” He groaned. “And I can’t believe I made up that lie about being with Katie at my place. It was the first plausible thing that popped into my head. But it was also the dumbest thing I could have said.”
I almost laughed. “No, the alone-in-a-motel-room-with-Mishka thing tops it. But I did almost take Katie’s face off the other day. I’m just glad I didn’t act on the urge.”
Daniel’s eyes went wide. He rolled over flat on his back, I guess deciding not to pursue that line of conversation. “The lead I followed was a total dead end. I never did figure out who attacked that coven.”
“Um … Well, I’ve got good news and bad …,” I said, and then I told him the story about what happened at that house that day. How terrified I’d been the first time I saw Talbot cut off someone’s head, and then how he had staked Mishka with a chair leg just before she almost killed me. And then, in an effort to be truly honest, I told Daniel about how Talbot had taught me to heal the burns on my face.
“I can see why you were attracted to him,” Daniel said. “You always go for the dangerous guys.”
“Yes, but I only love you,” I said.
And then we fell silent for a long, long while.
I must have drifted off to sleep at some point, because my eyes popped open when I heard a shout and a scuffle outside the door. The first thought I had was that Jude must have come to his senses and was trying to rescue us. I sat bolt upright, but then I realized there was no noise at all.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asked. His voice cracked a bit. If he was like me, he was probably getting parched. It had been several hours since I’d had anything to eat or drink.
“Yeah, it must have just been a dream.”
“I had one, too,” Daniel said. He was quiet for a minute. “Do you think after Trenton, we could get married and settle down in an apartment in New York City or somewhere? I could be an industrial designer, and you could fight crime like a part-time ninja assassin.”