Deceived By the Others

Deceived By the Others - By Jess Haines

Chapter 1

My hands shook as I put my pen to the contract laid out before me. The Notice of Mutual Consent to Human/Other Citizen Relationship and Contractual Binding Agreement that would permanently cement my relationship with Chaz.

If he’d sign it too, that is.

“Shia?”

The pen left a streak behind when my hand jerked. I looked up, quickly shuffling some other papers over the contract to hide it amidst the clutter on my desk.

“Yes?”

Jen, H&W’s receptionist and bookkeeper, peered into my office over the rims of her glasses. She eyed the papers like she knew I was hiding something, but was too tactful to say anything. “What was the name of that crazy guy who was here a month or so ago? The one you didn’t want to take calls or appointments from?”

I wrinkled my nose. “You’re talking about that tall, blond guy, right? His name is Jack.”

She nodded and disappeared around the corner. Curiosity piqued and the contract momentarily forgotten, I rose from my squeaky office chair to lean against the doorframe. Jen was on the phone, her feet propped up on her desk while she wrapped up a game of solitaire on the computer.

“No, sir, I just checked, and she’s in with a client. I’m sorry, but I’m not about to interrupt her meeting. Like I said, you can leave her a voice mail, or I can take a message.”

I frowned, folding my arms as I watched her multitask her game and the phone call. Jack’s calling wasn’t a good sign. The man was a member of the White Hats, one of those crazy vigilante groups who go around destroying any supernatural critters that cross their paths. The first time I’d met him, he’d threatened me at knife-point to attempt to get me to join his cause. The second time around, he had walked into my office in broad daylight and held a gun on me because he thought I was working for vampires. Aside from being a few beers short of a six-pack, he was bad news, pure and simple.

“Like I said, sir, she is not available.” Jen’s tone had turned professionally icy, and I strongly considered giving her a raise. She was doing an excellent job of putting off the pushy creep. “You’re free to leave a message with me or call back another time.” She paused, listened to his reply. Soon she was nodding along to whatever he was saying with a sly, triumphant smile. “Yes, I’ll see she gets it right away. What’s the message?”

Swinging her feet off the desk, she opened up an e-mail and clattered out Jack’s message. She saw me out of the corner of her eye and made a face, though she kept her voice cool and polite on the phone.

“Yes, I’ll get this to her as soon as she’s free. Thanks for calling Halloway and Waynest Investigations.”

“Thanks for getting rid of him,” I said as soon as she plunked the phone down. “That guy is nothing but trouble.”

“No kidding. I’ll forward the message since he left a phone number, but I don’t know if it’ll mean anything to you. All he said was, ‘tell her this time it isn’t us.’ Any idea what he’s talking about?”

I frowned, brows furrowing. “That’s all he had to say? ‘It isn’t us’?”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea.”

Shaking her head, she turned back to her computer and sent me the e-mail, my preferred form of message. Sara was much more organized than I was when it came to keeping track of Post-it memos. My desk was a rattrap clutter of dust bunnies, chewed up pens, and scattered business cards that should’ve been filed away or organized somehow long ago.

“If he shows up here looking for me while I’m out of town, call the police. He’s a nuisance.”

“Okay,” she agreed, not bothering to look away from her game. Shrugging off my uneasiness, I turned back to my office, but she stopped me with another word. “Oh, Shia?”

“Yes?”

“I almost forgot. Some guy named Alex or something left a message on the main voice mail for you last night. I forwarded it to your phone.”

I’d ignored my calls earlier so I could avoid any new emergencies getting piled on me before going out of town. Which Alex might have attempted to reach me before I left? Alex Mills, the insurance agent? No, he was out of town on vacation. Alex Temps, the client I tracked down a stolen antique for a couple weeks ago? No, no, he had bitched about my rates from start to finish and hadn’t been in the least grateful when I completed the job. He’d already paid, shortchanging me by a hundred and fifty bucks, the stingy bastard. I doubted I’d ever hear from him again. Who could it be?

Wait a minute. “Alex” calling me right around the same time as Jack the White Hat?

Oh, no. No, no, no. That could only mean one thing.

Stifling a shudder, I made sure to keep my expression calm and blank. I didn’t want to upset Jen. If she’d listened to the message more closely or caught me looking upset she’d realize who it was, too. Her wounded, disapproving looks were the last thing I wanted to deal with right now.

“Thanks, Jen. I’ll check it out.”

“No prob.”

I closed the door, moving back around my desk and moving the files aside so I could review the contract one more time. My concentration was shot; my good mood soured. A White Hat and Alec Royce had both tried to get in touch with me, and I had no idea why.

The clock on my computer read 3:15, which meant I still had a little over two hours before my boyfriend Chaz would pick me up for my first real vacation in months.

Being stuck recuperating in a hospital or taking time off from work to wait for the effects of a vampire’s blood bond to wear off does not count as a vacation, by the way.

Sara was supposed to keep an eye on my apartment and my messages while I was gone. It was only for a few days, but that was more (voluntary) time off than I’d taken in quite a while. Her boyfriend was letting me borrow one of his lap-tops so I could keep an eye on my e-mail and stay in touch. He’d threatened to sic his familiar, a tiny black mouse named Bob, on me every night for a week if anything happened to his coveted Fragware 5000. I’d sworn up and down I’d treat it like my own. Seriously, who wants a mouse crawling on them in their sleep? Ugh.

Anyway, things should’ve been winding down. My current clients had been given the message that I would be out, and Jen was supposed to refer everything to Sara until I got back. Jack and Royce’s surfacing again changed all of that.

I frowned down at the blinking message light on my phone, strongly considering waiting until I returned to town to listen to it. Alec Royce, like Jack the White Hat, was straight up bad news. He was wealthy, good-looking, and had made a couple of halfhearted attempts in the past to seduce me away from Chaz. We should’ve been able to go our separate ways since I’d saved his life and he’d returned the favor by saving mine.

However, the guy was a vampire, and I should’ve known better than to think that he’d forgotten about me over the last month. He’d used threats and coercion to get me to sign a contract that bound me to him by letter of the law, and then later he bound me to him in a much more tangible way—by blood—in order to save my life. While I was grateful for being saved, the method he used to get me out of the clutches of Max Carlyle still gave me nightmares. The remembered taste of his blood on my lips made me shiver, and not entirely in a bad way. Disgusted and horrified as I was, it had been an electrifying experience to feel so needed, so safe, so complete, while under his sway.

As you might imagine, I’d done everything possible to keep the hell away from him since then.

I thought when I changed my cell phone number that it might keep him and some of the other undesirable elements of my past from contacting me, but the number to my office was plastered all over the Yellow Pages and the Internet. I wasn’t thrilled to know he wanted to talk to me again, but having him call me was marginally better than having him show up here at my office or, worse yet, at my apartment.

Grumbling under my breath, I lifted the receiver and punched in the password to listen to the messages. There were a couple others I had to wade through before Royce’s smooth, cultured voice came on the line.

“This is Alec, and I’m leaving a message for Ms. Waynest. Shiarra, I just wanted to make sure you know that whatever happens while you are out of town is not my doing. If someone tries to make it appear otherwise, I’d appreciate being informed so that I can take action. I hope all is well with you, and enjoy your vacation.”

Well, that was confusing. Both Jack and Royce were telling me they weren’t responsible for whatever was going to happen while I was out of town. First and foremost, how the hell did Royce find out I was traveling? I didn’t post my itinerary on the ten o’clock news. Second, what were they so worried about?

It wasn’t unusual for Royce to cover his bases. Though he hadn’t tried contacting me since I’d run away from his home after the blood bond wore off, it wasn’t entirely out of character for him to make efforts to keep his name out of anything potentially nefarious. If he was worried that something might upset some plans of his or make him look bad, he’d take action.

Jack’s covering his ass didn’t make any sense to me. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms. Actually, the last time I’d seen him, I was walking out of the White Hat Super Secret Ninja Hideout after announcing that I felt safer with the monsters than I did with the hunters.

Yeah, I do need to brush up on my people skills a bit.

Regardless, it didn’t matter. Whatever it was they were worried about couldn’t possibly be any worse than what I’d already been through. Fighting mad sorcerers and psychotic vampires was not on the to-do list while I was on vacation. I was anticipating a few awkward moments, since this trip was intended to help me get to know Chaz’s unofficial family better, but that shouldn’t have been enough to make either Royce or Jack stir themselves into giving me some kind of warning.

Chaz and I had been discussing doing something like this for a while. The biggest problem with our relationship was that Chaz is a werewolf. He’s the leader of the Sunstriker Tribe, one of a few packs that live in and around New York City. The Moonwalkers have the biggest pack in town, and they’d laid claim to Central Park, along with a bunch of the parks and reserves all up and down Long Island. That meant the Sunstrikers and many of the other smaller packs had to head out to places like Caumsett State Park, Blue Mountain Reservation, or even as far as the Catskill Mountains when getting together as a group to run as a pack or to hunt. All that travel just to avoid difficulties with the Moonwalkers.

It was pretty inconvenient for the smaller packs. Not everyone can explain away needing to take three or four days off from work every month around the full moon without people getting suspicious. So, as one might imagine, the parks and preserves not claimed by the Moonwalkers were always coveted and fiercely protected. Sometimes the smaller packs got into skirmishes with each other, vying for the same hunting grounds on the full moon. It generally didn’t get so out of hand that humans, like me, got caught up in their problems. However, if Chaz and I stayed together during the height of the lunar cycle, I would need to be prepared to have lots and lots of furry critters around.

This vacation was our “trial run” to see how I might handle having a whole crapload of shifted Weres around me during the full moon. We’d drive up to the lodge in Hunter tonight, and the daylight hours would be devoted to getting to know the people who made up his tribe. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, the moon would be full, and I would get to see them together as a pack. I’d have to be careful, though. Tempers would be short, and some of them might change before the full moon.

No doubt, this would be one weird four-day weekend. I was reasonably certain I could handle it. As long as Chaz was with me, I would be fine.

To be honest, I was more excited about the prospect of staying in a cabin out in the woods with Chaz than about seeing a bunch of furry people running around in the dark but, hey, I could deal with it.

Though I was awfully nervous about the contract I’d been in the process of signing when Jack called. While we had resumed dating, Chaz and I hadn’t slept together since he’d revealed what he was. Legally, he couldn’t touch me. Even sleeping in the same cabin would be pushing it—but I was tired of how careful we had to be, and of how distant he was with me after both Royce and that psycho vampire, Max Carlyle, had temporarily bound me to themselves by blood. Offering to sign a Notice of Mutual Consent to Human/Other Citizen Relationship and Contractual Binding Agreement with him should make him sit up and take notice that I wasn’t going anywhere, that I truly wanted to be with him, and that I trusted him again.

My worry was whether or not he trusted me enough to sign it, too.

This little camping trip seemed like the perfect opportunity to make things right between us. We’d gotten a good group discount at a small resort up in the Catskills. It was too early for snow but too cold to tempt many vacationers. Plus, now that school was back in session, tourist season was officially over. Chaz had assured me that the guy who owned the property wouldn’t have any problem with the Sunstrikers—he was also a Were. One well-known among the supernatural community for having bought a bunch of forestland out in the mountains and cordoning off his borders to keep out hunters and tourists, which helped any packs staying with him know exactly how far out they could safely range on the hunt.

It was hard to picture anything going wrong. After all, I’d been introduced to Chaz’s pack before. We’d even gone out to dinner or the movies with a few of them. The only other time I’d seen the entire pack in one place was when we showed up to fight David Borowsky, the crazed sorcerer who meant to enslave all of the Weres and vampires in New York using a weird magic artifact. Sure, they were dangerous, but since I was the pack leader’s girlfriend and had helped save their furry butts, as long as I didn’t do anything too stupid they should be able to hold their hungers and tempers in check.

What could go wrong?

I pondered these things while I stared at the contract. Screw it. I tucked the papers away in my bag and followed Jen’s example, amusing myself with a card game while I waited for the clock to tick by and Chaz to come pick me up.