A touch of measured panic warbled in her voice. She didn’t want to go back, but at the same time, she was not afraid of such an outcome.
“Time for what?”
The vampiress looked aside, giving him her silence again. The streetlight adorned her profile, glistening off fine cheekbones in a tempting tease. It reminded him of the constant glimmer in Faery, and of what made him most comfortable.
“I am going to return you to your mother,” Vail said, forcing away the image of light-kissed skin, “but the deal was you and the gown. Where is it?”
“I fenced it already.”
“Liar.”
“Junkie vampire.”
“Junkie?”
“You sparkle. Around your eyes and at your neck. It’s in your skin. I know what that’s from. You’re a dust freak.”
He laughed again and pointed at his eyes, which were neither bloodshot nor clouded, which is what happened to dust freaks. “You think so?”
She nodded, knowingly. The vampiress could not begin to know him. Ever.
“Think what you wish. The faster I can get this damned assignment wrapped up the sooner I can be rid of you.”
“Just walk away. That’ll take care of your problem, like that.” She snapped her fingers.
Vail leaned over her. “So who’s the fence?” She gave him the side of her face again.
After her false accusation, he had no patience. He gripped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. He considered enthralling her, but the little he knew regarding vampire-to-vampire relations was that a vamp couldn’t enthrall their own kind. Since arriving in the mortal realm, his power of persuasion had been frustratingly absent. And if he dusted her, she’d be worthless.
“I don’t have a name,” she offered.
“How do you contact him?”
“He calls me.”
Vail swung a surveying look around the small apartment. The place was merely a safe house, he suspected. It was empty, save the bare-mattress bed. Just a place to hide out until … Until? “Where’s your phone?”
“I … lost it.”
He narrowed his brows—then remembered. “I think I can help you with that.” Reaching into his back pocket, he drew something out and slammed the phone on the kitchen counter. “I guess I’m staying the night.”
“No! Where’d you get that?”
“Found it under your bed when I was looking through your room for clues.” He crossed his arms and kicked out a boot to put his weight against the counter. “I’m here until your fence calls, sweetie.”
“I hate you!”
“Not feeling much love for you, either.”
“I hate it all. I hate this place. I hate this awful, smelly bed.” She stood and kicked the bed frame, slamming the entire twin bed into the corner.
“Hey now, that’s no way to treat those pretty red shoes of yours, is it?”
“And I hate you again,” she retorted. “And I’m starving, which, thanks to you, my supper got off but he didn’t get me off.”
“Frustrated?” Vail ran a hand over his crotch.
She understood the signal. Tiny fists formed beside each of her thighs. Her plan had backfired, and now he would drag her home to her mother, kicking her pointy red shoes and screaming hate and damnation to high heaven. He couldn’t wait to do it.
The petulant vampiress stomped into the bathroom.
“Where you going?”
“Where does it look like?” She slammed the door shut.
Vail hiked himself up to sit on the kitchen counter. After a few minutes had passed, he heard the shower turn on. Seemed kind of strange to strip with a stranger so near and to just … get clean.
If she thought to parade out naked in an attempt to seduce him, the ice princess had better rethink that plan. He was not interested. Despite the erection he’d run his hand over moments earlier.
Seriously, Vail? You did not get hard over a vampiress. It was … adrenaline. Yeah, that’s it.
This was going to be a long night. And he did not like the idea of sitting around, waiting for the fence to contact Lyric. She had to know the name of the fence. To assess the mental capacity of her minions, the vampiress was definitely the brains of the operation.
How to get the information from her?
Maybe if he brought the starving vampiress supper? Dangled a tasty mortal before her? Slashed its wrist and dribbled blood into a wineglass?
That would be too much fun. But not practical, and he wasn’t into the horror of mortal blood. And besides, a tough little chick like Lyric Santiago would probably grab the mortal from him and sink in her teeth before he got anything from her.
Subtlety was required. How to appeal to a woman he had no desire to connect with on an intimate level?
Really? You’re going to stick with that attitude?
Vail blew out a breath. So he was attracted to her. Hawkes hadn’t given him any rules on how to gain the prize. So, he’d wing it.
Lyric turned on the shower and put the toilet cover down and sat. The running water provided a white noise barrier between her erratic thoughts and the overwhelming presence of the arrogant vampire who stood on the other side of the door.
She had expected a search party—the demon guards Charish had hired to accompany her to the hand-off site. She hadn’t expected that search party to be only one, and so … efficient. And sexy. So sexy, in fact, that she had sat there on the bed like an idiot, instead of escaping out the window behind her.
She was supposed to have more time. A day or two to get her thoughts in order and then hop a plane to climes unknown. A place to hide, yet exist without the worry that the faery lord would ever find her. And Leo, her brother, was supposed to track down a means to free her completely. She needed to contact him.
Had she been stupid to believe such a plan could work? All she wanted was to live her own life. To not be sent to make an exchange, which would become so much more than Charish could ever imagine.
Because really? The faery lord wouldn’t simply take the gown and bid her adieu; he’d kill her. Lyric knew that as well as she knew the vampire out in the kitchen was not going to leave her alone anytime soon.
She had never thought her life would come to this.
Sure, her dreams as a little girl had been similar to those of other little girls—mortal girls. Until the blood hunger had emerged at puberty. She’d always known she was vampire—had been born that way—and that the hunger for blood was a given. But she hadn’t expected it to erase all those dreams of living happily ever after with the prince in his castle in an enchanted land far, far away.
“You idiot,” she whispered. “The prince doesn’t want to marry you, he wants to kill you.”
She laughed softly at the ridiculousness of it. In a manner, the little girl had been promised to a prince of an enchanted land. However, Charish was unaware of that devastating detail.
“So I guess I can’t deny dreams don’t come true. Does that mean I should accept it?”
No. She wanted to ride away from the castle and forge a new story. Something that didn’t involve faeries.
“You okay in there, sweetie?” the vampire called from the other room.
Sweetie.