“Doesn’t matter.”
His hard gray eyes softened as he listened to her pitiful history. “No wonder you’re mad at yourself and the world. If I didn’t have Gabrielle, if I had lost the chance to have her in my life as my mate.” He blew out a sharp curse and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lilliane. For everything you’ve been through. It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem right. To have your entire existence shaped by one choice like that.”
She wasn’t accustomed to compassion. Lord, it was so rare she hardly knew what to do with it anymore. She spent most of her time caring for the other Radiants. Bossing them around. Cautioning them against leaping seven-story buildings in broad daylight or getting their aliases confused. To suddenly have her needs addressed by this inhuman predator whose reputation for cold justice and a general lack of mercy was legend, even among her kind, left her at a total loss for words.
She watched in awkward silence as he pulled something out of his trench coat, his dark brow furrowed, his broad mouth flattened in a dismayed line. From out of a sodden paper bag, he withdrew a waterlogged book.
His eyes were filled with disappointment.
“A souvenir for your lady?” she asked.
“A novel by one of her favorite authors. A signed first edition. Now it’s only fit for the trash.”
She caught the author’s name on the jacket and smiled. “I know some people who might be able to help. The business I run, we’ve made a lot of contacts in the city over the years. Maybe when this is over tonight, I can arrange to procure you another copy.”
He stared at her for a long moment, the hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips. “You’re a good person, Lilliane Smith. Better than you seem to believe.”
Reluctantly, she allowed a rare smile to curve her mouth too. “I have a feeling the same could be said of you, Lucan Thorne.”
He chuckled as he donned his wrung-out shirt, then tossed his wet trench coat and the ruined book onto a pile of rubbish in the corner of the decrepit house.
“What do you say, partner? Ready to go conduct a breaking and entering on Ricky’s friend with the camera?”
She nodded. “Let’s get out of here. Oh, and Lucan?”
He stared at her.
“It’s Williams. Lilliane Williams.”
ALTHOUGH THE PEELING, STENCILED SIGNAGE on the door of Harold T. Grainger’s office in the Ninth Ward proclaimed him a private investigator, Lucan was willing to bet the man collected just as many fees for skip tracing and bounty hunting than he did legitimate investigative work.
Sitting alone in his dingy office, Grainger yammered on the phone at his desk with his back to the door, oblivious, as Lucan silently tripped the lock and he and Lilliane entered.
“I’m telling you, this footage is the real deal, Bart. The woman threw a grown man halfway across the street with one hand and the big dude in black leather who came to her rescue had a mouth full of fangs and eyes like a pair of glowing coals. What? No, I’m not smoking something, wiseass. I saw the whole thing with my own eyes and I’ve got the damned footage to prove it right here in front of me.” He leaned back in his brown leather swivel chair and chuckled, pausing to munch on a half-eaten Slim Jim. “Look, the point is there’ve been rumors about this Desire Exchange place for years and I’m willing to bet the house this woman’s part of it.” He paused, listening. “Who cares if I don’t own a house? Goddammit. Listen. Never mind how I managed to get the video. You want a piece of this action, or not?”
Lucan barely contained his growl as he stole farther into the office. Beside him, Lilliane radiated anger too, all of it focused on the sleazy opportunist seated a few paces in front of them.
Under the glare of the fluorescent ceiling lights, Grainger’s pale, balding head gleamed like a sweaty cue ball as he rocked in his creaky chair.
“So, what do you say, Bart? I called you first because we’re friends. Wanted to give you first dibs, but I gotta tell ya. This video is not gonna come cheap. Soon as I can link this woman to one of those rich bitches who head out into the swamp to have their deepest fantasies realized, or some such shit, this whole thing’s gonna blow up. But for now, I’ll be generous. I’m looking for twenty grand, no less.” A pause. “What do you mean you want a clip to prove it’s legit? I wouldn’t shit you, Bart. Yeah, yeah. Okay, sure. I can send you a couple of frames. Tell you what. I’ll e-mail—”
Some instinct must have finally clued Grainger into the fact that he wasn’t alone in the dank little office. With the skinny tube of processed meat clenched between his molars like a cigar, he swiveled slowly in his chair.
All the color drained from his jowly face.
Lucan gave him a flash of fangs. “You have something that belongs to us.”
Grainger’s mouth opened in mute shock, his eyes bulging in their sockets. The gnawed stick of salted meat tumbled into his lap, along with his cell phone. Lucan severed the connection to the man on the other end of the line with a sharp mental command. Grainger fumbled with the center drawer of his desk, pulling out a revolver, barely holding onto the weapon in his shaking hands.
“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” Lucan asked, confident that the terrified human wouldn’t be able to squeeze off an accurate shot, much less one that could stop a member of the Breed.
Grainger’s fearful, bug-eyed gaze bounced between Lucan and Lilliane. “What the hell are you two?”
Lilliane’s answering smile was cold. “We’re your worst nightmare.”
Lucan nodded. “If you’re lucky, when you wake up tomorrow, that’s all this will be.”
“Fuck both of you,” Grainger shouted, overcome with a sudden burst of bravado and stupidity.
The barrel of the gun wobbled, his finger tightening on the trigger.
With his mind, Lucan whisked the weapon from the human’s hands and sent it clattering away. Grainger let out a high-pitched scream and threw himself out of his chair, frantically crawling for the door. Lilliane planted the heel of her boot in the center of the mortal’s back, pinning him to the floor.
“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “We need to have a little talk about why you’ve been following me.”
“It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t you I was following,” Grainger sputtered, his cheek mashed into the filthy commercial tile. “Not at first, that is.”
They exchanged looks.
“Explain,” Lucan growled.
“I was on a job. Tailing a cheating husband around the Quarter.” His terrified eyes rolled up to look at Lilliane. “That’s when I noticed you and that fancy briefcase you always carried with you. I saw you going into a candle shop with it one day. And while I was watching you, I swear to God I saw the place just disappear.”
“What else did you see?” Lilliane asked.
The investigator squirmed under her foot, but she gave him no room to break loose.
“What else did you see?” Lucan demanded.
Grainger wheezed beneath her boot heel. “I started following you after that. Shadowed you for a couple of weeks. And I saw you go into that same shop again. Feu de Coeur. Except the shop was in a different place than before. An entirely different part of the city. And then I knew I wasn’t imagining things. Something odd was going on. I knew there was something odd about you. And I figured it had—”
“You figured it had what?” she asked.
“Look, we’ve all heard the rumors. Some place out in the swamp where rich folks go to get their jollies on. Either it’s some club or some weird cult. But they do all sorts of crazy stuff. Some folks come back saying it’s the drugs they were given. Others, they say it’s some crazy shit. People who can lay their hands on them and make their fantasies come true. Almost like they’re transporting them to another world. Look, I didn’t make this stuff up, I’m just saying that is a great story. We’re talking Pulitzer quality.”