Overbite by Meg Cabot Read Free Book Online

use,” he replied, his voice like liquid smoke, drifting from the shadows and curling around her in burning tendrils.
    “Still,” Meena said, shivering. She felt as if she were sitting in a cool, dense fog. “It must be difficult to find human blood to purchase on such restricted resources.” She gripped her duvet, white-knuckled, as she waited for his reply.
    “Are you worried I’m not eating enough, Meena?” She heard a hint of mockery in his tone. “Or worried I’m resorting to murder for my meals? Let me put your mind at rest on both counts.” She heard a rustle of cloth. He was reaching into his coat pocket. “Here.” He tossed something onto the bed. She reached instinctively to catch it.
    It was the impromptu stake he’d given her, and that she’d used to kill David.
    “You have my permission to kill me if I ever try to bite you again,” he said. “Against your will, anyway. I should hope there’s still enough man in me to keep me from ever hurting you. But should an occasion ever arise to prove otherwise . . . well, you’ve more than amply proved this evening that you know what to do with one of those.”
    Meena stared down at the chair leg. She had to swallow before she felt able to speak.
    “Lucien,” she said. “I told you six months ago: I don’t ever want to hurt you. I’ll always do everything in my power to try to help you . . . even help you despite yourself. That’s why I told you about the dream. I think I can prove—”
    He stepped from the shadows then. His eyes had gone back to their normal color, but a million different emotions played upon his face.
    “You know what I want from you, Meena,” he said, in a rasping voice. “As soon as you’re ready to give it—and admit that’s what you want, as well—come find me. You won’t have to look far. I’ll be close. I always have been.”
    Then he opened the bedroom door and walked out. A second later, she heard the apartment door slam.

Chapter Six
    A laric Wulf was not having a good day. Technically, he wasn’t having a good week.
    This streak of misfortune had started when his supervisor, Abraham Holtzman, called him into his office, saying he had something he wished to discuss in private.
    “I already know,” Alaric announced the minute he arrived.
    “You do?” Holtzman looked up from his computer screen, surprised. “How?”
    Alaric shrugged. “You’re kidding, right? She told me. She’s been telling anyone who’ll listen. You should hear her in the commissary at lunch . ‘What if there is good in Lucien Antonescu, and in all demons? And our job isn’t to destroy them, but to restore the good in them?’ ”
    He felt like his imitation of Meena Harper was dead-on. Sometimes he found himself mimicking her when he was alone. Not on purpose, which was faintly disheartening. He couldn’t seem to get her voice out of his head.
    “Oh.” Holtzman lowered his scraggly gray eyebrows. “That.”
    “Yes, that,” Alaric said, annoyed. “What else? I certainly hope you put a freeze on that request she made to the Secret Archives.”
    Now Holtzman’s eyebrows went up. “I did no such thing,” he said, looking offended. “If any of my staff members wants to request material the Vatican Library might have on file—even material from the Secret Archives—that might in any way help us in our efforts to better understand our enemies, why on earth would I stand in their way?”
    “You must be joking.” Alaric could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You don’t believe this dream she’s been having has any sort of merit, do you?”
    “I don’t know that it doesn’t,” Holtzman said. “And I don’t see why you feel it doesn’t. In any case, Meena Harper is not why I asked you in here today.”
    Alaric’s frown deepened. “Are you saying you actually believe that there’s a chance that Lucien Antonescu—the anointed one, listed in the Palatine Guide to Otherworldly Creatures as he who performs the