Bride (Ali Hazelwood) by Ali Hazelwood

            Alex’s shoulders relax at the change of topic. “Sure. Maybe stay out of Lowe’s and Ana’s rooms. And his office.”

            “Of course.” I smile just a little. Fangless. “And where’s the office?”

            He points at the hallway behind me. “Left, then right.”

            “Perfect. I just hope I don’t get lost.” I shrug airily, and plant my first lie: “My orientation skills are pretty bad.”



* * *





            The first time I searched online for L. E. Moreland, I found two things: a semi-defunct GeoCities website promoting a wholly defunct real estate agent, and the infinite vastness of nothing.

            So I searched again, the way penetration testers do: with some disregard for doors. I jumped a fence or two, slithered between gates’ pickets, took advantage of windows left half open by their owners.

            That’s when I discovered that the late Leopold Eric Moreland, who died peacefully in his bed in 1999, had previously settled out of court on a lawsuit for negligence in his fiduciary duties, and was obsessed with Yorkies.

            And nothing else.

            So I took off my white hat. And when I started searching next, there was less stealthing around ajar doors, and more knocking over entire walls. In hindsight, I got a little reckless. But I was getting frustrated, because—no offense to my animal-lover-but-sloppy- worker friend Leopold—no decent records of L. E. Moreland could be found.

            With one exception.

            Deep in a Human server with ties to the governor’s office, hidden in a memo locked behind a bewildering number of passwords, I discovered a communication regarding a summit that had occurred a couple of weeks earlier. Around the time Serena hadn’t shown up for laundry night.

            Lowe Moreland and M. Garcia are expected to be present, it said. Security will be increased.

            I like data, and numbers, and thinking things through with logic and pivot tables. I’ve never been instinctive, but in that moment, I knew—I just knew—that I was on the right track. That Lowe Moreland had to be involved in Serena’s disappearance.

            So I started searching for him twenty-four seven. I took time off work. Called in favors. Stared at security camera footage. Went deep into the dark web, which is even less fun than it sounds. After weeks, I discovered one thing about Lowe Moreland: whoever took care of erasing his digital footprint was nearly as good as I am.

            And I’m pretty fucking good.

            Once I found out from Father that Lowe was a Were, the secrecy finally made sense. Their firewalls have always been exceptional, their networks hack-proof. I’d love to meet the person who keeps it up so I can either fangirl or deck them. But wandering around Lowe’s beautiful home, which is even larger than I thought, I know that it’s not going to be a problem anymore. Because while there might be several things I can’t do remotely, if I’m physically in front of a computer? It’s happening, baby. And once I’m in, I’m going to scour every single document and piece of communication the Weres have, and I’m going to find Serena, and then . . .

            Then.

            “What’s the plan?” Serena would ask if she were here, even though the little schemes she hatched never worked out. She liked the vibe of organizing more than the actual job of it, and my usually impervious heart clenches a little at the thought that I cannot call her out on it.

            I have no plan—just the only person I ever cared about, displaced from my life. And maybe it’s a little amateur sleuth of me, all this skulking around through semi-dark hallways in the hope of finding a whiteboard with “List of people Lowe disappeared” written on it. I’m begging for something, anything, while being aware that this entire endeavor melting into nothing is a distinct possibility.

            A slightly nauseating one.

            “And there she is.”

            I jump, startled. The good news is, Lowe didn’t come home early from something that definitely wasn’t a run to find his reeking Vampyre bride pretending she mixed up his office with the linen closet.

            The bad is . . .

            “You are very beautiful, aren’t you?” the Were says.

            He’s younger than me, maybe around eighteen. When he comes closer, I try to place him, wondering if I remember his short, wiry frame and aquiline nose from the ceremony. But he wasn’t there. And I believe he’s seeing me for the first time, too.