Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            Serena.

            I’m with Serena.

            “Holy shit,” I mumble, trying to sit up straighter. It takes two attempts and substantive help from her to manage a still mostly prone position. “Holy shit.”

            “Why, hello. How lovely of my oldest and most treasured friend to join me in my humble abode.”

            “I’m your only friend,” I cough out, wondering whether my brain is making shit up. Vampyres do not dream, but they do hallucinate.

            “Correct. And rude.”

            “I . . .” I smack my lips. This dry-mouth situation needs to be addressed. Is this why Humans and Weres drink water all the time? “What the fuck?”

            “Did they knock you out? I couldn’t find a bump on your head.”

            “Drugged me. Mick did.”

            “Mick being the older Were who deposited your lifeless body here like a sack of potatoes and brought me SpaghettiOs?”

            “Not lifeless.”

            “The thing about Vampyres is, you tend to look pretty lifeless.”

            “Shit—Serena, you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

            Her smile is commiserating. “No. But if I may hazard a guess, I would say . . .” She taps her chin several times. “Three months, two weeks, and four days?”

            “How—?”

            She points behind her. She’s been carving lines on the side of the bookshelf, tallying time in groups of five days.

            “Shit,” I whisper. There are so many. The physical manifestation of how long Serena has been gone and—

            Without thinking, I half roll, half push off the bed to hug her close. I can barely hold my arms up, and it cannot be a good experience for her, but she valiantly squeezes me back. “Did you just initiate physical touch? What is happening? Did you start therapy while I was gone?”

            “I missed you,” I say into her hair. “I didn’t know where you were. I looked for you everywhere, and—”

            “I was here.” She pats my back. Squeezes me harder.

            “Where the fuck is here?” I pull back to study her. She’s wearing a pair of too-large jeans and a long-sleeved shirt I’ve never seen on her. She’s soft and curvy as always, but the last time I saw her she had bangs and a bob that made it just past her chin, and her hair has now grown into a completely different cut. “You look good.”

            Her eyebrow lifts. “That’s a weird thing to say in the let’s-exchange-vital-info stage of a joint abduction.”

            “It was a damn compliment!”

            “Fine. Thanks. I was always very self-conscious of my forehead, as you know, but maybe unnecessarily? Maybe I’ll spare myself the whole monthly trim—”

            “Okay, now shut up. Where are we?”

            She rolls her eyes. “I have no clue. And believe me, I’ve tried to figure it out, but there are no openings and the place is really well acoustically insulated. There must be at least four or five stories underneath us, just based on listening to the pipes in the bathroom. The guards who feed me are very careful not to show themselves or come near enough for me to guess their species, but now that your friend Mick is in the picture, I’d guess we’re in Were territory. That doesn’t narrow it down by much, though.”

            Emery. She has to be part of this. And Mick must have been helping her all along. He was one of Roscoe’s seconds, after all.

            I pinch my forehead. “Why did you get yourself involved with the Weres?”

            “Excellent question! Would you like the long or the short answer? I’ve had plenty of time to workshop both versions in the last months.”

            “Did they hurt you? Are they torturing you, or interrogating you, or—”

            She shakes her head. “They treat me well, if you discount the perpetual infringement of my Human rights. But they’ve never brought me out of this room, and I’ve tried. I’ve pretended to be sick, I’ve gotten aggressive—no dice. The guards are assholes of unspeakable proportions and refuse to talk to me.”