Only Him

Chapter 43

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, swinging the door open wide and letting Sydney and her entourage enter the apartment. She pulled me into a quick hug as she passed into the living room, followed by Adrian, Eddie and Jill.

Jill squealed and immediately held her arms out for Aleksey who I happily transferred over.

"Good to see you too, little dhampir," Adrian drawled, laconic smirk in place.

I rolled my eyes at him but submitted to a hug of welcome.

"I didn't know you were coming," I admitted. It was only October and I hadn't been expecting them until the holidays at the soonest.

"It was kind of a last minute trip," Eddie said. "Sydney found something and demanded that we be here in person to tell you."

"Tell me what?" I demanded, icy fear trickling down my spine. My eyes immediately flitted to Aleksey but he was safe for the moment, Jill's head bent over him as she cooed her admiration for him.

Sydney didn't answer right away, instead she looked around my apartment and, catching sight of what she was looking for, swiftly moved to the kitchen counter. She snatched my phone off of it and without further ado slammed it onto the tile floor bringing her sensible two inch block heel down on the screen. It shattered on impact.

"What the hell?" I screeched, darting towards her. "Do you know how many pictures of Aleksey I have on that?" I demanded. Eddie caught my arm and prevented me from stopping Sydney though he looked as shocked as me.

"Sorry," she said. "But they'll be backed up to the cloud anyway." She gave the phone one last stomp and bent down to examine it, sifting through shattered glass and broken metal with a pen that miraculously appeared out of her purse.

"Care to explain why you did that?" I demanded. "Lissa got that for me!"

Last Christmas Lissa had given me a phone. I had never had a cellphone of my own before. Up until that point I'd had a business cell provided by the guardian headquarters. That had been a basic phone and I'd enjoyed the perks of the newest iPhone when Lissa gave it to me. After Marlen had kidnapped me Lissa had replaced my phone with this one.

"I'm sure she'd be happy to get you another one," Sydney murmured, still sifting through the wreckage of my phone with a sharp eye. She gave a sound of satisfaction and pulled out a small chip from the mess of plastic and glass.

"And what's that?" I demanded, weariness eking its way into my indignation. Sydney wasn't one to smash phones for fun and I knew that.

"That," she said with grim satisfaction as she straightened up and held the small rectangular piece of plastic and metal the size of my pinkie nail up for everyone to see, "is a cloning chip."

"Cloning chip?" Eddie asked, eyes fixed on the chip. He was still holding my arm and his grip tightened. I barely felt it. I'd gone cold at her words.

"Yes," she said grimly. "Someone slipped this into your phone, Rose. And whoever did has had access to everything on it. Calls, texts, emails. Pictures," she nodded towards Jill and Aleksey.

I couldn't breathe. We had been asking ourselves how Marlen could know so much about what was happening inside Court. How his partner could be in so many places and have so much access to our private conversations. It hadn't been anything as convoluted as covert spirit dreams. Instead it had been a much simpler solution: I'd been giving them everything they needed.

"Oh my God," I gasped, clutching Eddie's arm tightly, in desperate need of support as every conversation, text, email and web search I'd had since returning to Court ran through my head. When had my phone been bugged? How much had they found out? I remembered the chilling phone call from Marlen and how he'd known what Aleksey looked like before he'd been seen by anyone than our inner circle of friends. Just before that Dimitri had video called his family. From my phone.