“It’s simple,” Marc told her. “It’s standard protocol for everyone to be armed when a hostile entity is on the property. When you’re trained and this comes up again, you’ll be armed too. Raoul said senior staff will handle this, so we stay in, lock up the house, and we don’t invite anybody in. No Vampyres, and no visiting humans. Nobody gets inside. We close all the window coverings, and we keep them shut—day and night—until we’re told we can open them again. Aside from that, we sit tight and relax.”
“Relax,” she said.
“There’s nothing else for us to do.” He shrugged. “It’s a situation. It’s being handled by people who know what they’re doing.”
While they had been talking, one of the other men—Tess couldn’t remember his name, Scott or Brian—had been keeping watch out the front window.
He said, “They’re here.” Tess joined the others as they peered out. Three gleaming vehicles, all of them black, pulled into the parking lot, and several people climbed out.
Xavier was immediately apparent, with his slim figure and erect carriage. He walked toward the second vehicle as a tall, striking blonde woman climbed out along with two other Light Fae. The woman was dressed in a dark-colored, elegantly cut suit, while her silvery high heels caught the light and sparkled.
Recognition struck. Tess felt like reality took a sharp skid sideways, sending her hurtling into a dream. She murmured faintly, “Is that Melisande Aindris, the actress? Didn’t she star in that zombie movie They Ate New York?”
Marc glanced at her. “Yes. Her mother, the Light Fae Queen, owns Northern Lights Studios.”
“I knew that,” she muttered. “I just forgot.”
Three more figures emerged from the third vehicle. Tess recognized one of them as well, the beautiful redhead who had kept her female attendant on a leash at the Vampyre’s Ball.
“And there’s Justine,” said Marc.
The redheaded woman spun in a slow circle, looking around the property. As she turned toward the attendants’ house, Marc snapped the blinds closed.
“Show’s over. The blinds and curtains stay shut now, until we get the all clear.” Marc looked at Tess. “You know, you might as well go to bed. As far as we’re concerned, nothing else is going to happen tonight.”
Bristling at the thought of being sent to bed like a child, Tess lingered downstairs for close to an hour, but the others settled down to watch TV or open their laptops again. The only difference from earlier was that they did so with weapons close to hand.
Eventually inactivity allowed for exhaustion to creep back in. It weighed down her limbs and eyelids, until she muttered a good night to the others and went up to her room.
Troubled, she put on a nightshirt that came to the top of her thighs, brushed her teeth, poured a glass of water and climbed into bed.
All of her instincts felt askew.
Who was the monster now? Justine, Xavier, or both?
Certainly they were both old, dangerous and incomprehensible to her, but while they might be enemies, that didn’t make one of them good and the other one evil. It was possible, even likely, that they were simply two different kinds of evil.
While she tried to puzzle it out, a black tide crept over her and washed it all away, and for a few hours she forgot all her fears and uncertainties.
Then her nightmares returned. First one of her foster fathers, the one who had loved to swing his belt, chased her around a huge, shadowy house. Then Malphas appeared to greet her with an angelic smile.
“Tess.” He strolled toward her. “You know how this story ends.”
“No,” she said.
“Oh, yes.”
She tried to run, but her feet sank into a deep mud, and then he caught her and set her world on fire.
SIX
Drenched in sweat, she plunged awake, surrounded by darkness in a strange room.
No. Her chest heaved. Malphas couldn’t have caught her so soon.
As she looked around wildly, reality asserted itself. The red illuminated numbers on the bedside clock read 3:16 A.M. She was in her new room at Xavier’s estate, her sheets damp with sweat. The room felt airless and hot as an oven.
Kicking off the covers, she climbed out of bed and felt for one of the vents close to the floor. Hot air blew out of it. She was going to cook if she didn’t get the heat turned down.
She slipped on her robe, left the room and searched for a thermostat. Lights shone from another part of the house. Very dimly, she could hear sound, perhaps music, either coming from another area in the house or perhaps from one of the other buildings, while the area around her bedroom was shadowed and quiet.
When she found the thermostat, the temperature had been set for seventy-two degrees, which was far too hot for her at night. After only a brief hesitation, she thumbed it down to sixty-five then reluctantly went back to her small, closed-in room.
She didn’t have to stay in the bedroom. No doubt the basement would be much cooler, but she knew if she went downstairs, she would run into someone again. She was tired of dealing with so many strangers and all the odd tensions from the day and evening, and she needed privacy badly.
Reluctantly, she closed the door, but that made the heat even worse.
Now that she was fully awake, she could hear the sounds more clearly. Music played from the direction of the main house. She walked over to the small sink to splash cold water on her face and arms as she fought an almost overwhelming desire to peek through her curtains.
That was against The Protocol.
But why was that The Protocol? Was it to keep hostile Vampyres from mesmerizing anyone inside the attendants’ house? If so, why couldn’t they open the windows and doors at daybreak, when all the Vampyres would be cloistered from the sun?
Raoul had been so urgent about getting her back to the house, and Marc had been very clear. They were to remain in seclusion and not show their faces outside until they were told otherwise.
Was that to keep them safe, or to keep others from seeing them? But why keep them hidden from view, even in the daytime? It wasn’t as if keeping a household of attendants was a secret practice.
Earlier she had felt like something was slightly off at the estate, and that feeling washed over her again. She couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was. She didn’t know enough yet, but something didn’t add up, and wasn’t that typical—she had gone looking for a safe shelter and ended up in a place that felt full of hidden pitfalls and unexpected dangers.
And the temperature in her room was simply unbearable. A trickle of sweat slid between her shoulder blades.
She sidled over to one of her windows, not the one that faced toward the main house, but the other one that faced the cluster of pines bordering the top of the bluff.
How stupid would it be if she kept the curtains closed but cracked the window for a little fresh air, just long enough to cool down her room?
It might be pretty stupid. But she couldn’t make herself believe that anyone was paying attention to whether or not she cracked open a window. There was one hostile Vampyre in residence on the estate, with possibly two attendants, and they all had much better things to do than focus on this unobtrusive corner of the property. Besides, as concerned as Raoul had been, she was quite sure he was having Diego and the others watch their visitors closely.
Having talked herself into doing what she wanted to do anyway, she slipped her hands around the edge of the curtains and felt along the top of the window until she found the latch. She tried easing the window up, and it slid open quietly.
Cool, fresh air blew in around the edges of the curtain. Sighing in relief, she slid down the wall to sit on the floor between the bed and the nightstand. Just a few minutes more and she would shut the window again. Nobody would ever know the difference.
Now she could hear the music more clearly. Were they using the ballroom? She didn’t dare open the curtains to look—she was stretching things as it was—but in her mind’s eye, she imagined Xavier, Justine and Melisande in that jewel of a room, elegant and deadly.