“Stop, Dev. What are you doing? I think I need to lie down.”
He grinned over me and put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.” He winked and laid me back down on the deck. He was gone before I could push myself up.
The minute my head was down again, darkness threatened. The world went hazy once more and I lost some time. I had no idea how long I was there, lying by the pool, but a sound finally woke me again.
“Jesus, Zoey.” I heard Daniel curse from above. He leapt over the balcony and hit the deck with a resounding thud. “What the hell happened?”
I pushed the wet hair out of my face and glanced around, trying to see where Dev had gone. Why hadn’t he stayed with me? My head was so foggy. Daniel hauled me into his arms, his blue eyes glowing in the dark as he stretched his senses outward. He stilled, a sure sign that he was trying to catch a scent or a sound that would lead him to his prey. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he was looking for any evidence that Lucas Halfer had surfaced, but I knew he wouldn’t find any.
He shook his head. “I’m getting a bunch of small animals and Dev. When was Dev out here?”
I let Daniel cradle me, loving how safe I always felt in his arms. I tried to force myself to focus. “He saved me. There was this bird and then this chick with weird feet and she turned into a bat with a freaky tongue and then the bird had this mouth and it tried to eat me, but Michael Kors saved me.”
At least his well-designed black leather belt with metal grommets had been wide enough to protect my midsection. If I hadn’t had it on, the bird likely would have punctured my middle and I would have been a nighttime snack.
Daniel looked down at me like I was crazy. I probably sounded like I was. I was slurring my words slightly, and he was still out of focus. “How much did you drink tonight?”
“I am not wasted,” I protested, except that I was a little bit. The evening had been crappy, and Christine was always generous with the good vodka. But I was pretty sure my pounding head had to do with the fact that I’d bounced it off the side of the deck. “It happened and when the bat thingee dropped me, I fell in the pool. Dev must have pulled me out. When I woke up, he was holding me and trying to get into my pants.”
Daniel didn’t look convinced. “Dev’s been inside talking to Ingrid for the last thirty minutes. They’re going over the ceremony and all the things you have to do to prepare yourself. There’s a whole purification process.”
I shook my head to try to clear it. It didn’t work. It just throbbed more. “That’s not possible. I know what happened, Danny. Dev kissed me and felt me up and then he was gone.”
“What’s going on?” Dev walked through the French doors that led from the kitchen to the back porch. His clothes were dry, and I had to admit that maybe I’d hit my head harder than I thought I had. “Where the hell have you been, Zoey? I checked the bathroom and you weren’t there. Halfer is out there just waiting to get his claws into you. You had to know how disappearing would scare the crap out of us.”
“Apparently Zoey decided to take a little swim,” Daniel said with an obnoxious smile.
“I didn’t jump in the pool, Daniel Donovan.” He was treating me like an obnoxious kid, and I’d had about enough of it. I knew what I’d seen. “Put me down.”
He acquiesced, and I immediately felt my knees buckle. Daniel cursed and helped me back up. I watched as he and Dev shared a look.
Dev shook his head, his eyes deeply disappointed. “I’ll go tell everyone we’re heading out.”
“I’m not drunk,” I protested, but my skull felt like it was going to split open and I bit off a cry.
Dev held my head in his palms, gently inspecting my scalp. “She has a bump on her head.”
“I hit it when I fell in the pool,” I explained.
Dev’s eyes went wide as he thought about the implications. “You fell in the pool? You could have killed yourself. I realize we pushed you tonight, lover, but that’s not an excuse to get so drunk you can’t walk. I can’t believe I didn’t see this. She was all right earlier.”
Daniel’s mouth was grim. “This wouldn’t have happened if we’d brought Zack.”
“He has to have the night off sometime, Dan,” Dev replied.
“Screw Zack,” I said, needing to rebel. I could see exactly what was coming since neither one of them seemed willing to believe I wasn’t drunk off my ass. “What’s he going to do? Monitor my alcohol intake?”
Dev frowned. “If necessary, yes. At least he would have been here to catch you. I’ll start looking for some more muscle because she needs twenty-four-hour surveillance. Somebody should be with her even when she’s out with us.”
“But you were here, Dev.” I teared up because my head really hurt and I didn’t understand what was going on. It was all a jumble in my mind, and now they were talking about more restrictions. I couldn’t take it. “You saved me.”
Dev looked at Daniel for explanation. “She thinks the two of you got it on out here after she nearly drowned herself.”
Dev shook his head. “God, she’s out of it. I should never have come. I should have just let her have her way. It’s not like it worked anyway. Harry still hates me, and now he blames me for corrupting the both of you. What a clusterfuck.”
“Dev, I wanted you to come.” I tried to explain as I sought to make things stop spinning. “He’ll come around.”
“Not when he sees the condition I let you get into, sweetheart,” Dev said bitterly. “He’s going to think I’m turning you into an alcoholic.”
“Once and for all I am not drunk.” And that was the moment my gut decided to completely betray me. “Oh, god, I’m going to be sick.”
I pulled away from Daniel and managed to make it to the grass before emptying the contents of my stomach.
Dev was behind me, trying to hold my hair and making sure I didn’t fall over. When my insides stopped clenching, I sat back up. I was so miserable and it wasn’t all about the concussion I was pretty sure I had now. There was no way I was going to be able to make them believe me, and it really pissed me off. I was willing to ponder the idea that Dev had been a hallucination. The hit to my head was obviously more serious than I’d first thought. I must have managed to get myself out of the pool. But the weird bat and bird were no hallucinations. They’d been very real, and I needed to figure out what the hell had happened tonight. It looked like I was going to be doing the research on my own, though.
“Can you get up, sweetheart?” Dev asked. “Daniel’s gone to get a cool towel. We’re going to move you into the limo and then see how well vampire blood works on a hangover.”
“It’s not a fucking hangover.” I was forced to let him help me up because my legs weren’t exactly listening to commands. I would have to take that blood, too, because while I wasn’t certain it would help a hangover, I was pretty damn sure it would work on my concussion. My stubborn nature told me to tell the boys to screw themselves, but I didn’t want to end up in the hospital. At this point, they would take the concussion as a symptom and not the cause.
Dev sighed. “All right, sweetheart. We can call it anything you like.”
“Don’t you condescend to me, Dev,” I managed to get out. Daniel was back, and he pressed a cold rag to my forehead.
I found myself in the limo before I could say anything vaguely like good-bye. I was an embarrassment to be dealt with, and Dev was good at smoothing over a difficult situation. I was hustled out with all haste and scooped into the limo, still shivering in wet clothes.