“Speaking in tongues is a side effect, as well?”
“It’s gibberish. It doesn’t mean anything. Look, the condition of my skull is really not the issue here. Are you going to tell me what this job entails or not?”
Melina looked at her, pursed her lips and lowered her voice. “I want you to steal it,” she whispered.
Stormy wasn’t sure what she had said as she had made a hasty exit from the museum. She thought she had told Melina Roscova to do something anatomically impossible, and then she’d left. She hadn’t stopped until she’d pulled up in front of the Royal Arms Hotel, where she handed her car keys and a ten-spot to a valet.
“Be careful with her,” she told him. “She’s special.”
He promised he would be, and she watched him as he drove her shiny black Nissan, with the customized plates that read Bella-Donna into the parking garage across the street. As he moved into the darkness, she heard tires squeal and winced. “One scratch, pal. You bring Belladonna back with one scratch…”
“Madam?”
She turned to see a doorman with a question in his eyes. “You’re going inside?” he asked.
“You tell that moron when he gets back that if he scratched my car, I’ll take it out of his hide. And it’s mademoiselle. Not every thirtysomething female is married, you know.”
“Of course, mademoiselle.” He opened the door, his face betraying no hint of emotion. It would have been much more satisfying if he’d been defensive or hostile or even apologetic. But…nothing.
She headed straight for her room and started a bath running, intending to phone Max and fill her in from the tub. She was upset. She was shaken. She was damned scared of what the sight of that ring had done to her.
She’d spoken in Romanian. And she knew exactly what she’d said, even though she didn’t speak a word of the language and never had.
The ring belongs to me.
Elisabeta. It had to have been her voice.
Sixteen years ago, she’d begun having these symptoms. Blacking out, speaking in a strange language, becoming violent, attacking even her best friends and, usually, remembering nothing. It was as if she were possessed by an alien soul, as if her body were a marionette with some stranger pulling the strings.
Max said her eyes changed color, turned from their normal baby blue to a dark, fathomless ebony, during those episodes.
Through hypnosis, she’d learned the intruder’s name. Elisabeta. And she knew, in her gut, that the woman had some connection to Vlad. An intimate one.
Vlad had been under attack, had taken her hostage to aid in his escape. Even then, she’d been drawn to him. His muscled, powerful body. His long, raven’s wing hair. His eyes—the intensity in them when he looked at her. She remembered kissing him as if there were no tomorrow. Or maybe that had never happened; maybe that was fantasy. A delicious erotic fantasy that left her with a deep ache in her loins and her soul. She remembered hoping he could help her solve the mystery of who Elisabeta was and why she was haunting Stormy. Trying to take over. And maybe he had. But though, upon her return, Max had told her that she had been Vlad’s captive for than a week, Stormy remembered nothing.
She only knew that since her return, she’d felt almost no sign of that intruding soul’s presence. And she’d determined that it was Vlad’s nearness that stirred the other to life. As it would stir any woman.
She was still there, though. Stormy had never doubted it. Hoped she was wrong, but never truly doubted. Elisabeta, whoever she was, still lurked inside her, waiting…for something.
Stormy stopped pacing and held her head in her hands as she stared into the mirror that was mounted on one of the lush hotel room’s antique replica dressers. “Dammit to hell, I hoped you were gone,” she whispered. “I honest to goodness was beginning to let myself believe you were never coming back. Not a peep out of you in sixteen years. And now you’re back? Why? Will I ever be rid of you, Elisabeta?”
A tapping on her door startled her and brought her head around, and she swore under her breath. She had things to work through, and there was a nice hot bath—and maybe a few tiny bottles from the mini-bar—in her immediate future.
“Please, Ms. Jones,” Melina Roscova called from the hallway. “Just give me ten minutes to explain. Ten minutes. It’s all I need.”
Stormy sighed, rolled her eyes and stomped into the bathroom to turn off the faucets. She pulled the plug on the steamy water with a sigh of regret, then went to yank the door open. She didn’t wait for Melina to come inside, just turned and paced to the small table at the room’s far end, yanked out a chair and nodded toward it.
“We are investigators,” she told her unwelcome guest, her tone clipped as she bent to the mini-bar and yanked out a can of ginger ale and a tiny bottle of Black Velvet. She popped the tops on both and poured them into a tall glass that sat beside an empty ice bucket. “Not thieves for hire. We don’t break the law, Ms. Roscova. Not for any price.”
“Call me Melina,” the woman said as she sat down. “And all I want you to do is listen to what I have to say. That ring…it has powers.”
“Powers.” Stormy said it deadpan, dryly, without a hint of inflection. Then she took a big slug of the BV-and-ginger.
“Yes. Powers that could, in the wrong hands, upset the supernatural order—perhaps irrevocably.”
“The supernatural order?”
“Yes. Look, this is very simple. Just…just let me make my pitch, promise me it will remain confidential, and then, if you still refuse, I won’t bother you again.”
Stormy downed half the drink and sat down. “And my word that this will remain confidential is going to be enough for you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Melina blinked, and it seemed to Stormy she chose to answer honestly and directly. “Because my organization has been observing yours for years. We know you never break your word. And we know you’ve kept far bigger secrets than ours.”
Another big sip. The glass was getting low, and she was going to need a refill. Seven Canadian bucks a pop for the BV. And worth it, right about now. “Your…organization?”
“The Sisterhood of Athena has existed for centuries,” Melina said. She spoke slowly, carefully, and seemed to be giving each sentence a great deal of thought before uttering it. “We are a group of women devoted to observing and preserving the supernatural order.” She licked her lips. “Actually, it’s the natural order, but our focus is the part of it that most people refer to as supernatural. Things are supposed to be the way they are supposed to be. Humans tend to want to interfere. We don’t, unless it’s to prevent that interference.”
Stormy lifted her brows. “Humans, huh?” She eyed the woman. “You say that as if there are non-humans running around, as well.”
“We both know there are.”
They both fell silent, staring at each other as Stormy tried to size Melina up. Could she truly know about the existence of the Undead?
Finally, Stormy cleared her throat. “This is sounding awfully familiar, Melina. And not in a good way. You ever hear of a little government agency known as DPI?”
“We’re nothing like the Division of Paranormal Investigations, Stormy. I promise you that. And we’re privately funded, not a government agency.” She licked her lips. “We protect the supernatural world. We don’t seek to destroy it or experiment on it the way the DPI did. We are guardians of the unknown.”
Stormy nodded. “And why do you want the ring?”
“Strictly to keep it from falling into the wrong hands and being