In another few moments, he’d be out of the club, out of reach, and the girl would be lost.
Not this time.
Some nights, she’d lost their quarry. Many nights, she was at the wrong club. Once in a while, she found his prey before Daniel could. Tonight, she’d decided to step up the confrontation.
She intercepted Daniel and grabbed the hand of the barely conscious girl.
“Chastity!” Eavan squealed her name with false excitement, an act for the crowd around them. She had no clue what the girl’s real name was. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Eavan was taking the girl from Daniel. The two men on either side of him stepped closer. If they wanted to, there was a good chance that they could take the girl out of reach. Eavan was banking on Daniel’s dislike of scenes.
She smiled at him, a flash of teeth that animals still understood as aggression. She didn’t bother glancing at his employees. Daniel waved them away as usual when she was near. He either didn’t see her as a true threat or was amused by her efforts. She hadn’t figured out which it was, but she knew that he preferred to be alone with her when he had a chance.
Once the men vanished into the sea of bodies, Daniel stepped closer to Eavan. He didn’t let go of the girl, but he didn’t do anything obvious to keep her out of reach, either. “She’s with me, Eve.”
“Is that what you really want?” Eavan let her conservative habits slip farther away and turned her full attention to Daniel. It wasn’t a hardship to look at him: he was a pretty specimen, wrapped up in Armani and attitude.
For a few heartbeats, he said nothing, but he wasn’t immune. Real humans never were.
“She’s not meant for my bed.”
“I know,” Eavan admitted, enjoying his momentary meekness. “I know your taste, Daniel. Unconscious isn’t it.”
“So tell me, little Eve, what is my taste?” He came closer, still holding the barely standing Chastity. “Say it aloud for a change. Give me that much.”
It was painful to let those tendencies come closer to the surface; hungers best left unfed were already omnipresent when he was near. Eavan sized him up openly, caught and held his gaze just long enough to be too-bold. “You look good tonight.”
He smiled then. “Admitting you’re tempted?”
Ignoring that challenge was hard, but Eavan had been too close to the edge with him for weeks. If she didn’t know he was a monster, she’d want him. I do anyhow. If she had been thinking clearly, she wouldn’t be talking to him at all. I’d miss it. If she didn’t want to stay human, she’d take him to her bed and kill him tonight. I am not a monster.
She reached out and lifted the girl’s eyelid to peer into her extremely dilated pupil. “I’m taking her with me.”
“Fine.” He relinquished his hold on the girl. “There are dozens more just like her.”
Chastity was swaying, barely sober, and soon to attract attention. She was so far gone that Eavan wasn’t convinced she could be saved. Anger threatened to surface—at herself, at him, at the inability to make a real difference.
Daniel stepped closer, invading the bubble of personal space she usually kept between herself and regular humans. “You need to start saying hello when you arrive at the clubs, or say good-bye and come home with me…”
Despite her growing anger—or maybe because of it—Eavan enjoyed his aggression. Something about him made her want to push the rules a bit further, made her want to see how close to forbidden she could get without crossing over. Nice girls don’t hunt; human girls don’t like murder. She knew the boundaries; she knew she wanted to stay on the right side of them. He’d be such fun to kill though.
Daniel’s smile made clear that he sensed her interest, even though he undoubtedly read it as merely sexual. He was close enough that she could taste scotch on his breath. “Can I give you a lift tonight? Anywhere you want to go. Or we’ll call someone for her so we—”
“No.” She moved so the girl was farther out of his reach, so she was farther out of reach too. Glaistigs drank down a mortal’s last breath. He’d sweetened his with a peaty scotch.
I’m not hunting him.
“We could go to the Chaos Factory.” He reached out and ran a finger over her bare midriff. “Tell me what you want, Eve. What’s it going to take to get you home with me?”
“It would be a bad idea,” she said—not a lie, but not an answer. She stepped backward, retreated from him. Not everything was about dominance. She’d rescued Chastity; she’d taken the prey from his hands. Now she needed to get away.
“So we’ll do this another night.” He leaned in and brushed a kiss over Eavan’s lips, unknowingly teasing her with his sweetened mortal breath. “Unless you’re planning on running already?”
“I’ll be back.” She couldn’t do otherwise, and they both knew it. “I’ll be at your clubs.”
“And I’ll find you.” And then he vanished into the crowd of feverishly dancing mortals. It was easy to see why people came willingly to his feet. He was everything a man should be—dangerous, sexy, and just ever-so-slightly aware of it. In many cases, he’d be the alpha predator.
Which is why I want to kill him.
Logic insisted that her macabre fixation on him was basic animal law, but it was outside logic to stalk Daniel. He dealt in magicks that made the Other community—at the prompting of Eavan’s own matriarch—set a geis, a ban forbidding fraternizing with him. That ban on contact with Daniel was as law for Others.
But Eavan wasn’t purely Other. Glaistigs were female only, each one born of a human father and glaistig mother. Unless she crossed the two lines into adulthood, she was technically mortal—with a few extra traits. Geasa don’t apply to mortals. That was her excuse, at least. Not that I’m going to “fraternize” with Daniel. No sex. No death. I can do this.
2
Muriel opened the door before Eavan could knock. She didn’t quite scowl at the sight of the mostly unconscious girl in Eavan’s arms. Her usually welcoming expression vanished, but she kept her tone light. “For me? You spoil me.”
“I’m sorry.” Eavan carried the unconscious girl inside the apartment. “She’s…I know better. I know we talked about it…I just…Daniel had her and—”
“Later.” Muriel’s blue robe was the only color in the black and white room. It made it impossible not to stare at her as she closed the door. The generous bit of bare skin didn’t help matters.
“I had to,” Eavan whispered.
“I know. That’s the problem, isn’t it?” Muriel took the girl and carried her into the den.
As with every other time, Eavan went to the kitchen and fixed herself a drink. She couldn’t drink on the hunt, but afterward she was shaky enough that she needed a few fingers of whiskey. Tonight was worse than usual. It had been growing worse every time she saw Daniel.
Chastity whimpered.
Muriel’s voice was too muffled to make out the words, but the tone made clear that the words were some comforting lie. Muriel could do that, lie at will. Eavan didn’t have that luxury: partially fey things could lie sometimes, but it wasn’t a predictable sometimes.