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  Exhaling a growling breath, I said through gritted teeth, “I am not Marianne. And that, that man—”

  “Vampire if we’re going to be technical.” Violet lifted my foot and stuffed another pillow underneath.

  “Whatever.” I huffed out a breath, blowing a strand of hair out of my face. “I don’t need rescuing.”

  “Says the Conduit who didn’t use her magic to heal herself at the scene of the accident.”

  “Violet,” Clara chastised her twin, “don’t make Isadora feel bad when she’s been injured.” They were polar opposites in just about every way. They both had platinum-blond hair, but Violet dyed hers constantly. Right now it was a vibrant turquoise.

  “I don’t feel bad,” I assured Clara. And Violet’s snarky comments never bothered me. Too much, anyway. “I just want to rest here on the couch a bit while I heal my ankle. I just need some quiet.”

  She nodded. “I’ll get you some hot tea. That’ll make you feel better.”

  I smiled as they both went off to the kitchen, leaving me alone. I heaved out a sigh of relief. I wasn’t about to admit to anyone that Violet’s remarks had bothered me far more than they should’ve. That vampire had unsettled me enough to throw off my magic. Men didn’t throw me off-kilter. Honestly, they barely registered on any kind of barometer of mine at all. Whether for needs, desires, or just plain semi-interests. I didn’t dislike men. I just had no need of them. I could handle all of my needs by myself. Which is why Devraj Kumar shouldn’t have gotten under my skin at all. But he so had.

  No worries. At least now he was gone for good.

  Chapter 2

  ~DEVRAJ~

  * * *

  I stood in my new laundry room, holding the white shirt in my hand, staring down at it like it was a bomb. Or venomous snake. Or crack cocaine. Honestly, it might as well have been all three in one.

  “Don’t do it,” I muttered to myself.

  The mere fact that I was even standing here having this conversation with my shirt was a sign that something was terribly wrong. Hitting the witch on her bicycle hadn’t just tilted my world on its axis. It had blown a city-sized hole in it.

  Why?

  Because Devraj Kumar never lost control. Never succumbed to temptation. Hell, I never even felt temptation. As a Stygorn, an elite vampire warrior, I’d trained for decades to cull all basic weaknesses. I’d honed my special abilities to razor-sharp precision so the smell of blood or the scent of a woman didn’t send me into a downward spiral that culminated in sweaty dreams of orgasmic proportions. But her scent had.

  “Just once.”

  Then I would wash it.

  I’d stripped off the shirt the moment I’d stepped into my new home two nights ago, right after the accident. Strangely, the compelling need—no, the desperate desire—to inhale her scent from the small stains of her blood on my shirt hadn’t started until the day after. Yesterday.

  I’d filled the day with unpacking. A familiar feeling I’d experienced after doing this dozens and dozens of times over the years settled with a hollow thump in my gut. And yet, it wouldn’t be the last. The nature of my job kept me moving from country to country, continent to continent. Wherever the job required my skills and attention. So here I was yet again, stopping off in Ruben’s hometown, wondering if I’d ever fill that longing for a home of my own. A place to dig my roots deep.

  My Lamborghini was in the body shop, her bike was being repaired, and Ruben said he’d let me get settled before we met. So what had I spent the day doing? In between unpacking, I’d stalked the laundry room like a crazed serial killer. I must’ve marched past it a hundred times, trying to avoid the temptation in my laundry basket.

  “Fuck it.”

  I finally, finally, lifted the stained part to my nose and inhaled deep.

  Utterly. Divine.

  Abort. Bad decision. Very bad decision.

  I immediately threw it in with the wash, dropped in two pods of detergent, poured in three cups of fabric softener, and slammed the lid, setting it to heavy duty/hot cycle. If there was a whiff of her scent left on that shirt, I’d have to burn it.

  The doorbell chimed.

  I jumped like someone had caught me in a crime.

  Shit!

  Combing both hands into my hair, I laughed at myself. Maybe I’d spent too many months off the grid in Romania, tapping into my natural vampiric instincts. That must’ve been it. I’d gone too deep, living in the Carpathian Mountains, letting the beastly side roam free too long. I’d needed the time to track an elusive vampire gone rogue for the overlord of the Bucharest Coven. And yet, the time I’d spent in the wild seemed to tap into my uncivilized side.

  I tilted my head and popped my neck. Time to come back to reality and focus on the new job at hand. The hiss of water filling the washing machine calmed me back to reason.

  I heard the front door open and close.

  “Dev?” Ruben’s voice and scent carried to me.

  Shaking off whatever the hell had just happened, I sauntered through the kitchen and into the living room where he stood staring at my painting of Crann Bethadh hanging over the mantel. I’d commissioned the Celtic Tree of Life from an old Irishman on the island of Inishmore about sixty years ago. He’d made his own paint, mixing thirty different shades of green, and flecked gold-leaf into the brown for the trunk.

  That painting along with a few other treasures, like my Grecian vase, my Icelandic wall tapestry, and my white marble statue of Shiva, always moved with me. When I’d gotten the call from Ruben, needing a favor, I’d left Romania immediately and then cleared out my apartment in Paris to make the move here.

  It seemed a visit with an old friend for a few weeks was just what I needed before I moved on to the next job. There were other vampire overlords looking for Stygorn to hire in the United States. In the meantime, Ruben and I could catch up, he could show me his city, and I could lend a hand with his current case. Besides, my restlessness for something else, something more, was pushing me harder than usual these days. There was an itch I couldn’t quite scratch.

  “Good to see you, Dev,” he said with a smile.

  I met him in front of the painting, shook his hand, and pulled him in for a hard hug and clap on the back. “And you, my friend.”

  “How was Romania?” he asked, turning back to study my artwork with intense focus.

  Ruben Dubois was one of my oldest friends and one of the few of my kind I actually trusted. I shook my head at his three-piece tailored suit in midnight blue, complete with cufflinks and personalized vest.

  Ruben and his eccentric vests. This one was the same blue as the suit with silver threading in a seemingly random geometric pattern. But I knew Ruben. Nothing was random with him. Ah. It was the subtle design of the DNA triple helix. Not double like humans. The DNA code for a vampire required a third strand.

  “Romania?” I sighed. “Peaceful, if you can believe that. After I’d caught a rogue vampire for the Bucharest Coven. And gotten the book for you, that is.”

  Ruben had asked me to find a witch and acquire a rare book in heavy werewolf territory in the Carpathian Mountains. After I’d gotten the book, I stayed on in a cabin for several weeks, finding the solitude comforting but also lonely. It had twisted a bittersweet longing in my breast, though I still wasn’t quite sure what that yearning was for. A desire just out of reach.

  “Thank you for doing that job so last-minute,” he said.

  “No worries. I was glad to help.”

  He turned to the living room, giving me a bright smile before surveying the layout. “The place looks great though you didn’t need to uproot yourself to come here.”

  The furniture was delivered yesterday and fit nicely in my new place. I probably didn’t need to rent such a big house, but its quaintness and charm called to me.

  “I wanted to,” I said before admitting softly, “I needed the change.”

  My life in Paris was full of posh parties and wild nightlife and beautiful women. Tho
ugh I’d stopped filming Bollywood movies a few years ago, I still caroused with the celebrity crowd, venturing often to Monaco, Berlin, Mykonos, and the Amalfi Coast. I enjoyed the endorphin high that the fast life provided. It kept me from thinking too long, too hard about what was missing.

  Permanence. A place I could call home. Though it had been hundreds of years since my mother—my only family—had died, I’d managed to fill my life with pleasure and entertainment. Travel and parties, clubs and conquests. And though that life had lost its shiny allure years ago, I’d been going through the motions, knowing it was lacking in filling that deeper, more intimate need.

  “Oh? That sounds serious,” he said with a smile though there was a pensive pinch between his brow.

  “Perhaps.” I laughed, noting the tone of bitterness in it.

  “Tell me.” Ruben was the kind of friend I trusted deeply, no matter how much time had passed between our reunions. We were brothers of a different sort.

  Clearing my throat, I tucked both hands in my pockets then faced the Crann Bethadh, remembering the ancient trees in the Carpathian woodlands. “After I’d gotten what you needed in Romania, I stayed on in the mountains.” Pausing, I tried to find the right words to express what I experienced there. “It was so, so quiet there. I hadn’t slowed down in so long. It hit me hard.”

  “In what way?” he asked softly. “How did you feel?”

  “Very serene. And very sad,” I confessed as I faced him. I wasn’t surprised to find understanding there. Though Ruben wasn’t as old as me, he was old enough to feel the marrow-deep hollow that came with age. And the lack of what we needed to fill that tender emptiness.

  Romania was the first time I’d been alone for an extended period of time. In my everyday life, I was surrounded by people. But even amidst a throng of friends, the aching loneliness found me. It always did. In Romania, the feeling was amplified, screaming through my blood like a feverish virus.

  “Anyway,” I added lightly, “it was time for a change. I’ve had other overlord vampires in the States reach out to me for work before. Seemed like now was a good time. Perhaps see what kind of trouble I can get into over on this side of the pond.”

  He clasped me on the shoulder with a smile. “I’m glad you’re here. Even if you did hit one of my friends with your precious Italian sportscar.”

  “Ouch.” I pressed a hand to my chest.

  Though I was particular about the make and model of my cars, I wasn’t attached to any of them. I’d sold my Maserati Alfieri in Paris and bought the Lamborghini from a seller in Boston and drove it down here. I had been, literally, three blocks away from my final destination after two weeks of preparation, packing, and traveling when I’d run into Isadora.

  Damn. I did feel bad for hitting her, no matter what she seemed to think. She hadn’t broken anything, but the incident had shaken me all the same. It was the kind of mistake I never made. I’d find a way to apologize properly soon enough. For now, I had a smaller token to deliver to the Savoie sisters, which I planned to do as soon as Ruben left.

  Fortunately, he’d said they were the forgiving sort. That was good to hear since Jules Savoie—a name I’d heard more than a few times over the past ten years—was the Enforcer of the New Orleans supernaturals. She kept everyone in line. Her powers as a Siphon, a witch who could suck the magic from any supernatural creature in a blink, ensured that.

  Ruben bit his lip on a small chuckle, his gaze sliding over my shoulder toward the western-facing windows for a few seconds. “Come on. Let’s have a drink, and I’ll tell you briefly what I know about this case.” He glanced at his watch, a silver TAG Heuer. “I have a dinner meeting uptown, but I wanted to check in with you.”

  He followed me into the kitchen. “I would’ve gone to The Green Light yesterday,” I called over my shoulder, “but I had to wait on the furniture delivery and get it all straight.”

  Pulling down a bottle of Maker’s Mark from the cabinet, I then grabbed two rocks glasses.

  “You still like everything in order and in its place.” Ruben took a seat on the stool and tapped his fingers along the granite countertop, looking around the kitchen.

  I filled both glasses with ice, poured us each a drink to the brim, and then slid his across the granite. “It’s the only way to keep the chaos at bay.”

  “As you say.” He lifted his glass. “Welcome to New Orleans.”

  We clinked glasses and took a deep gulp of whiskey.

  “While I do want to experience the pleasures of the city,” I said, swirling the amber liquid over the ice, “why don’t you give me a brief rundown of where you are?”

  “Well said.” He drained the rest of his drink in two more gulps then set it down. That in itself was rather telling. Ruben wasn’t a big drinker. But this case had him on edge. “I didn’t bother to tell you because I knew you were in the middle of the move, but another girl went missing last Saturday.”

  After setting down my drink, I crossed my arms and leaned back against the counter opposite him. “That’s, what, four girls total? In four weeks?”

  “Right.” His sapphire-blue eyes darkened to the color of his suit, a silvery sheen icing over them. “No bodies yet. All of them rather young.” He clenched his jaw. “College age. And taken from neighborhood bars.”

  I flattened a palm on the countertop and began tapping with my index finger, the wide silver band of my ring tinking against the granite. “Their age may only be a by-product. Our predator may feel more comfortable hunting the local bar scene, late at night, where the easiest prey is in the twenty-something age range.”

  “True,” Ruben conceded. “And their minds are more malleable at that age. Easily persuaded for even a young vampire.”

  “How are you sure it’s a vampire? Could be a werewolf gone rogue.”

  His brow pinched into a frown. “I’ve got a guy who says he’s got proof it’s one of our kind.”

  “What kind of proof?”

  He chuckled lightly. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

  “This is one of your men, and he refused to tell you?”

  I found that hard to believe. Ruben was a cool, calculated leader, but ruthless when he needed to be. It wouldn’t be wise to hold information from him.

  “Not one of my men exactly.” He rolled the base of his tumbler on the rim, the ice clinking in the glass. “He’s on my payroll, but he’s a grim.”

  “Ah. I see.”

  Grims were notoriously private. Everything to them was on a need-to-know basis, including the most trivial of things like whether they took their coffee black or with cream. Yet, they were founts of knowledge themselves.

  “So when is he handing over this information?” I asked, suddenly curious what this grim had as proof.

  “Sometime this week. I’d like you there if you don’t mind.”

  “Whatever you need.”

  “How about dinner tonight?” The tightness around his mouth softened. “Then we can catch up properly. I haven’t seen my oldest friend in more than three years. You’ve been busy.”

  I shrugged. “Always some asshole to put in his place. Bring to justice.”

  “They never seem to go away, do they?”

  “Never.”

  He glanced behind me toward my stove. “You’re baking these days? That’s new.”

  Taking his glass and mine, I rinsed them both in the sink. “Not baking exactly. You don’t bake penda.”

  “A recipe from home, I take it?”

  Home. Varanasi, India hadn’t been my home in over two hundred years. To be truthful, no place had. But Ruben was right. I tended to cook dishes that reminded me of the spices and scents of where I’d been born for the first time. And where I’d been reborn as a vampire. Cardamom, nutmeg, and saffron still scented the kitchen even though it was two hours earlier that I’d made the doughy balls of flour, condensed milk, and sugar then topped them with cashews and crushed pistachios.

  “Yes.” I dried my hands on a dish towel an
d leaned back against the sink. “I thought my new neighbors might enjoy a welcome gift.”

  “Isn’t the tradition for the current residents to welcome the new neighbor with some sort of baked gift? Not the other way around?”

  Crossing my arms, I stared out the window that faced the side of the Savoie home next door. From here, I had a good view of the carriage house over the garage, the driveway, and the second-floor balcony with a wrought iron railing.

  “I figured I’d better sweeten the deal after my incident with Isadora. Especially now that we’re neighbors.”

  Ruben walked closer to the window, tucking his hands in his pockets. “I’m sure she’s fine. Isadora is a powerful Conduit.”

  “It’s not her ankle I’m worried about.” I joined him at the window, catching sight of a small shed-like structure surrounded by chicken wire fencing. “Is that a hen house?”

  His grin widened. “No hens. Just a very dominant rooster named Fred.”

  “Huh.” Didn’t know what to say to that. There was also the roof and opaque glass walls of a greenhouse tucked in the back corner behind the carriage house. I’d bet my original Pollock painting that I knew who spent most of her time in there.

  “What is it you’re concerned about?” Ruben asked.

  Heaving out a sigh, I turned from the window and stepped into the living room. “I fear I’ve offended her, though I’m not sure how.” I threw up my arms in exasperation. Taking a seat on the dark suede sofa, I added, “I mean, I did apologize. But she seemed even angrier by the time I’d left her safely tucked up on her sofa.”

  Ruben’s throaty laughter snagged my attention. He didn’t laugh as often as he should. “I can’t believe the famous Devraj Kumar failed to win over a woman with his illustrious charms.”

  That had me frowning. Not because I needed to win over any woman for any reason, but because, well, I suppose I was accustomed to women being more receptive to me. At the risk of sounding vain, I never had to try too hard to charm the ladies.