“When you didn’t show up for three days, I knew something was wrong. I asked al around about the man you were with, but no one seemed to know who he was. It took me almost a week to final y find someone, a new vampire, who remembered someone named Sebastian, someone who fit the description of the man I’d seen you with.
“After that, the trail went completely cold. I wasn’t able to pick up on any scent or find anyone who’d seen you for months, so I eventual y gave up. It wasn’t until I moved to the states about five years ago that I stumbled across Sebastian again.
“I was in a smal town in Texas visiting a bar I’d heard was a good place to feed. That’s where I saw him. He didn’t know that I had seen him that night in Lindersberg. I struck up a conversation about the local hunting grounds and he was more than happy to chat when I flashed him a smile and showed him a little cle**age.”
Annika paused to show us exactly the smile she’d used, one I could see being persuasive to nearly any male creature and probably even some females. Bo wasn’t impressed, however, only wanting more details about his father at that point.
“What did he say?” Bo asked stiffly.
“Er, not much real y. He was very careful, which just made me that much more suspicious. That is why I fol owed him.
Tracked him to a house. It was an old house, sort of off the beaten path. It didn’t take me long to figure out why it was so secluded. He was keeping a woman there. A woman and her son.”
Annika’s eyes darted to Cade before she continued.
“The woman was beautiful. She had dark hair and eyes, and she looked like an angel. I watched her house until he left and then I went and knocked on the door. It only took me about ten seconds of talking with her to figure out she was under the influence of his blood. I knew I would never get any information from her, so I thought to fol ow Sebastian. I kept up with him until he stopped in a town in Colorado cal ed Buford.
“But just like before, I lost him. He can just vanish. It is incredible,” Annika exclaimed, her voice saturated with admiration. When she saw that no one else shared her fascination, she cleared her throat again and continued.
“Luckily, after a few days of sniffing around, I saw your picture in the local paper in an article related to missing persons.
That is when I knew without a doubt that Sebastian had something to do with your disappearance.
“I have traveled around America for nearly five years, seeing the sights and looking for signs of you. I found nothing so I ended up going back to Texas to try to catch up with Sebastian again. I had a feeling he would return to visit the woman and the boy eventual y, so I hung around there until he visited them again a couple of months ago. When he left, I fol owed him as far as Virginia before I lost him again.
That’s where I was when I saw the newspaper article about a rash of missing kids in South Carolina. There were a few pictures. Two of them were real y blurry, but I stil recognized you. I’d know your face anywhere.”
The smile that Annika aimed toward Bo made me distinctly uncomfortable. It hinted at a history that made me feel queasy. Bo seemed not to notice. He was too wrapped up in her story.
When it became clear that Bo wasn’t going to respond, Annika’s smile faded and a ghost-of-a-frown appeared. It looked like a tiny dent between her tawny brows.
Though it didn’t seem that he real y saw me, Bo glanced toward me before he turned back to Annika and prompted,
“And then?”
“Wel , the rest is pretty much history. I came down here and asked around until I found out where Sebastian lived and…wel , here we are.”
Narrowing his eyes first on Annika and then on Cade, Bo asked sharply, “And how did he get to be a part in al this?”
“Uh, I saw him in town a couple of days later and he recognized me from the first time I visited his mother. He’d heard that I was asking around about a man named Sebastian and mentioned that he was looking for him as wel . We sort of hit it off and decided we might make good travel companions.”
Something about her vague answer made me suspicious of what she wasn’t saying, but I thought it best to keep that to myself for the time being.
“This al sounds very…convenient, but none of it explains how you came to the conclusion that he’s my brother.”
Annika snorted. “Look at him! You two could be twins.”
Both Bo and I turned to Cade. His eyes shifted lazily between us, not the least bit ruffled by our examination.
Annika was right, though. Bo and Cade were amazingly similar, right down to the intensity that shrouded them like a thick cloak. Bo began to scowl as he inspected Cade.
I was wondering about their physical characteristics just as Annika voiced a thought that explained away the doubts I was having.
“Your mothers must have looked a lot alike, because other than your swagger and your smile, neither of you look like Sebastian.”
“Swagger? I don’t have a swagger,” Bo snapped defensively.
Annika smiled. “Then that is another thing that has changed because you used to dominate any room you walked into. You certainly got my attention.”
Although Bo ignored her flagrant flirtation, I found that I could not and it was not doing good things for my temperament. I was becoming more and more irritated by her references to their past. It was obvious that they’d shared a relationship that was more than simple friendship and even though Bo didn’t remember it, I felt increasingly threatened by it.
I reminded myself that Bo was a different person now, that he was mine and that we were divinely destined for one another. No old flame could change that. But tiny termites of doubt and insecurity began to eat away at the foundation of my confidence, eroding the faith I had in our union.
Bo’s voice brought me back to the conversation at hand.
“That stil doesn’t explain how you know he’s my brother.”
“He told me that you were his brother.”
Al eyes turned back to Cade.
“And how do you know you’re my brother?”
He shrugged offhandedly before he spoke.
“My mother used to talk a lot about my father, Sebastian.
He was basical y absent for almost my entire life. He would drop in every few years and stay for a day or two and then leave.” Cade’s upper lip curled in bitterness. “Of course she didn’t mind. He made sure of that. Even though she had no memory of it, I knew what he was doing to her. I saw him do it a couple of times. He would feed her his blood and tel her al sorts of things, things that would erase al that had happened, al that they’d talked about. But I heard him. I knew.”