ACROSS THE LINE
AMY LEE BURGESS
LYRICAL PRESS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/
This one is for Kristen Malone. We met in New Orleans and had so many magical times there. Now we’re both living in Houston and the good times roll on!
Acknowledgements
I never know until my beta readers tell me whether the next Stanzie novel is going to fly or if I have to go back and start again. Kim Murphy, Portia Scott Palko, Chris Wilbanks and Nerine Dorman–you all keep Stanzie’s adventures on track. Thank you, Antonia Tiranth, for your editing expertise and to all my Lyrical Press family for their continued support. You all are awesome!
Chapter 1
The red dress on the back of the bathroom door called to me. Short, but not indecent, filmy but not see-through. Sexy but not trashy. I stared at it from my vantage point in the tub and couldn’t help but smile.
I loved to wallow in my favorite mint-scented bathwater until my fingers and toes pruned, but I couldn’t ignore the siren song of that dress.
Tonight marked an entire year since Liam Murphy and I had exchanged vows at the Great Gathering bonding ceremony.
Once on the bath mat, I toweled off, never taking my gaze from the new dress. The peridot and pearl bond pendant Murphy gave me that night shifted around my throat as I drew the towel across my arms.
Murphy didn’t know it, but I’d made reservations at an expensive French restaurant in the heart of Dublin. If we didn’t hurry, we’d be late.
A pang went through me as I briskly rubbed the towel through my wet hair. All day I’d waited for him to remember the date, but so far he hadn’t said a word. Thankfully, it wasn’t one of his bad days—when he brooded about Paddy and his father, but it wasn’t a great day either.
He’d spent most of it behind his laptop connected to the stock market. He made money for our pack, Mac Tire, that way. For us, as well.
For all I knew, he might have been using his work as a shield against grief—it wouldn’t be the first time, but I preferred it to the days when he sat on the sofa with a cold cup of coffee and stared into space. Those were the days I hated.
I’d managed to smuggle the red dress into the bathroom so he wouldn’t see it until I had it on. The cherry red stilettos I planned to wear with it were from Paris. I’d worn them the night we’d met.
I smiled, remembering that moment. Polite, yet reserved when we’d been introduced by Councilor Jason Allerton, Murphy had obviously resented my presence at the table. He’d barely glanced in my direction until one of the other people there asked me if I was the Constance Newcastle who’d killed my bond mates in a stupid, careless car accident. Then Murphy looked at me and his polite facade crumbled, replaced by disgust. He’d left the table and stranded me in a sea of British pack members who, after they’d had their fun making me squirm, cold-shouldered me out of subsequent conversation.
To hear Murphy tell the tale, he’d been smitten the moment Jason Allerton led me to the table. One of the stories he told people about us featured my red dress and how he’d known from the moment he saw me in it, we were destined to bond.
I didn’t all the way believe him, but maybe the truth was somewhere in between. All I knew was that he’d protected me at the Great Gathering and saved my ass by bonding with me.
Now a year later, we both had admitted our love for each other, but instead of wine and roses, we had grief and an invisible wall.
We talked—about inconsequential things. What should we have for dinner? How about this movie tonight? Jesus, the weather’s awful, isn’t it? But if I brought up Paddy, Murphy would shut down as if he were one of those animatronic robots at Disneyworld and it was closing time at the park.
Fee couldn’t make him talk about Paddy either, but he listened to her talk about him. Listened and held her when she sobbed against his chest while I dealt with Fee’s new baby, Will.
Four nights out of seven Fee and Will slept at our apartment—Will in his portable crib, Fee, Murphy and I tangled together on the bed.
What must it be like to have a twin? Murphy was endlessly patient with his sister and she relied on him with a faith that must weigh so heavily, but he never said a word of reproach.
This morning, after Fee packed up Will’s crib and his diaper bag and left to go home, I’d held my breath waiting for her to return. Usually when she left, she stayed gone for at least twenty-four hours, but with Fee it was hard to predict. All I knew was she’d be back, I just didn’t know precisely when.
So when I heard her voice in the living room, just as I reached for the sexy bra that went with the dress, my heart sank. Should I get dressed? Could I? How could I walk out there and remind her I had something to celebrate and she didn’t?
Paddy had been dead for three months. Fee was swamped with pain and guilt she hadn’t known he was in trouble, that he hadn’t shared his fears with her. I kept waiting for her to turn on Murphy in anger because he’d known everything, but so far she hadn’t. Murphy and I knew the stages of grief from bitter experience. We’d both lost our first bond mates to the conspiracy.
The bitter conflict between the Guardians, who wanted our world to remain as it was and Pack First, who wanted the Pack to reveal itself to Others killed them as it killed Paddy. Fee, Murphy and I were members of an exclusive, horrible club. Devastated survivors because our bond mates paid the ultimate price. I was determined the ranks of this club would not swell with more reluctant members.
That was why I was Jason Allerton’s Advisor and worked to reveal members of the Guardians, who took matters in their own hands and murdered Pack First members or sympathizers.
In the living room, Fee’s voice rose to a shrill pitch. I winced. Murphy’s murmured response was meant to soothe her, but she overrode him and now I discerned the thread of anger. She was bitching about her bond mates, Colm and Deirdre, especially him and since that was nothing new and I’d heard it all ad nauseum, I didn’t pay much attention to actual words. I was too busy mourning the fact my night out with Murphy had been torpedoed. So much for my red dress and fancy dinner reservations. Most likely it had been a bad idea anyway.
In the bedroom, I hastily hung the dress at the back of my side of the deep double closet. As always when I saw my shoe collection piled in a sorry-ass heap beneath my dresses and skirts, I heaved a sigh and mourned the loss of my walk-in closet in Boston. Dublin had taken a lot of getting used to and sometimes the lack of a walk-in closet seemed the deepest cut.
I threw on a pair of jeans and the red hand-knitted sweater Paddy’s mother, Maureen, made me. She ran a small mail-order clothing line. Sweaters, vests, jackets, baby clothes—all knitted by hand. Some of the other members of the pack contributed their talents and recently one built her a website. The website made me nervous. Too high tech for some of the Guardians. I hoped we’d rooted the bad ones out with the deaths of Grandfather Mick, Declan Byrne and Glenn Murphy, but didn’t know for sure. So I kept an eye on Maureen and the girl who’d designed the website, just in case.
When I walked into the main room of the apartment, Fee still stood in the doorway, her face flushed red with fury. Will dangled in his car seat from one of her clenched fists and made fussy noises indicative of hunger.
Did