Page 28 of Bound

“Is this freaky Vulcan mind meld going to permanently damage him?”

“If you’re worried about what happened to you, or Lacey’s mom, don’t. It’s always harder when you have to rewrite highly traumatic events in a target who’s likely to continue questioning the implanted memories. With the medical staff, I simply erased the memory of seeing our faces, which most of them had already started to forget anyway. Once we’re gone, August will go in and delete the security footage for the last fifteen minutes. No one will be the wiser.” He rose from the bed. “Let’s go. I’ve got all I need here.”

River’s black SUV had armored siding, bulletproof glass, and enough computer and navigational equipment to keep August’s inner engineering geek happy for days. An empty McDonald’s bag was crumpled in the passenger seat next to a brown leather journal, the latter’s place marked by a slim mahogany chopstick.

“Sorry.” He tossed the bag into the back. “Been living out of my car the past few nights.”

“They make you do that a lot?” Something about the journal nagged at me. With River’s ability to read minds, coupled with a near photographic memory, what need would he have to write anything down—

“What I know, is that memory can be manipulated, reshaped, and fabricated so convincingly that you’d swear something happened until your dying breath.” He fingered the little book’s worn edge, then dropped it into the side panel by the door. “Forgive me if I no longer trust what’s in my own head anymore.”

I stared out at the half-empty parking lot. I’d known this was how it worked with River, that the voices around him couldn’t be switched off except with exhaustive effort. There was no privacy, no possibility of hiding your worst fears, intimate desires, or most naked shame.

“I’m being a dickhead.” River pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sorry.”

“Pretty sure if there was an award for that this past year, I would have won it.”

After a moment, he said, “I make a point never to answer the questions people ask in their heads. Even those closest to me, who know what I am and what I can do, find it too invasive. Mine isn’t exactly a popular talent.”

I thought of West, of the fight we’d had two days ago, and the fact that we’d barely talked since.

With me everything is complicated by what I can do. And as much as I may care for someone, I can never escape the fact that my powers mean they may not be able to refuse me. That’s not something I can live with.

River had his little leather book. And Caldwell thought he needed to be locked in a tower somewhere with a dragon and a moat, a monster kept away from the world.

“So you write it down.”

“Figure this is an insurance policy in case anyone comes after me. August is the only one who knows where I keep them.” He paused, eyes glazing over. “Brody’s in.”

“What’s he doing, anyway?”

“Getting us access to the lab.”

My phone buzzed. Pulling it out, I checked the screen.

West: Can we talk after, for real this time? I hate leaving things the way we did.

I bit my lip, thumb hovering over the screen. When I closed my eyes, I remembered how it felt to wake up with Caldwell in my bed, his breath warming my wrist as we slept twined together like two pieces of a puzzle I’d been trying to solve since the moment I woke up as a wolf. And then the utter emptiness of hearing him say it could never happen again.

Topher: Pretty sure we covered everything there was to say the other night.

“Change of plans,” River muttered under his breath. I glanced up to see Brody stalking out of the hospital entrance, face dark as a thundercloud. “We’ve got problems.”

* * *

We made it to Guillermo’s just before the Saturday morning brunch crowd got there. Brody had texted West on our way over and coffee and water were already waiting at our booth, plus an ice-cold Dr. Pepper for me. River and Brody took the booth across from us, leaving me to slide in beside West.

“So what’s going on?” West asked after we’d ordered breakfast platters of French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon and hash browns from the werewolf server. “You didn’t say much over the phone.”

River gulped his coffee, then slid his phone across the table so we could all see the young dark-haired vampire dressed in designer clothes, sporting a model-worthy scowl for the camera. “This is the guy. Cristof, oldest son and first lieutenant of Zara.”

West angled River’s phone closer, frowning down at the screen. “Thought he was killed.”

“That was the younger son. No name on him, but he was taken out a few years ago by a rival coven during the height of the Blood Wars, just before Zara’s rise to power. We estimate now she controls close to half the southern United States.”

“So what did he want?”

“Information on Topher and the vampire who came to his apartment on Thursday.”