Edge of the Night (Night #3)

by Crystal Jordan

  “We don’t want to dust that for prints?” Erin asked. “What’s psychometry?”

  “The ability to read the history of an object by touching it.” Luca glanced down at her, noting that her chin was tilted at that obstinate angle he adored so much. She wasn’t going to let this bastard get her down, and he saw a rage that matched his firing in her gaze. “And we sent the original roses to be printed, and it came back with nothing but my prints, the florist’s and yours. This was in the possession of your stalker for much longer. A psychometrist has a better chance of getting a reading from this, but only if we don’t muddy the signature with more people touching it to get prints.”

  “Oh.” She smoothed a hand down her blouse. “Whatever it takes. I need to get to the café. My shift will be starting soon.”

  “Are you sure you’re up for that?” He caught her chin in his hand. “No one would think less of you if—”

  “I would think less of me.” There was a glimmer of tears in her eyes, but she pulled away from him and squared her shoulders. “A little routine right now would be welcome.”

  He sighed, glanced at Gregor, who shrugged. Luca nodded to Erin. “Get her out of here and keep her safe. I’m going to have a chat with the waitress.”

  As the one with a badge, he’d have an easier time questioning the restaurant staff. Even though he wanted to remain at Erin’s side and make absolutely certain she came to no harm, he couldn’t do that. The best way to ensure her safety was to catch her stalker.

  The redhead wrapped his hand around her elbow and drew her away from the table. Erin looked back at Luca as she was pulled toward the door. “But how will you get home?”

  “That’s what cabs are for.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two days later, Luca drove them toward his uncle’s home in Medina. Erin clenched her hands in her lap and stared out the passenger window. The tension in the car was thick enough to slice with a knife, each of them stubbornly silent as Luca maneuvered through the light Sunday traffic. She’d finished the brunch shift at Emerald Bistro and then went home, hoping to curl up in front of the television and do a whole lot of nothing for the rest of the day.

  Apparently, Luca and Gregor had other plans.

  Gregor had finally gotten a lead on Asher’s whereabouts from one of his shadier contacts, and he’d needed pay off the informant and make sure the intel was good. Within ten seconds of getting that call, he’d disappeared, asking Luca to keep an eye on her as he went.

  Unfortunately, Luca had a family dinner to attend, which he refused to bow out of. So here she was, on the highway to vampire central. She could almost hear every single member of her werewolf family howling in protest.

  “This is a bad idea.” It was about the fiftieth time she’d said it, but it bore repeating.

  He took his eyes off the road for a second to look at her. “Leaving you alone would be a worse one.”

  “Yeah, but…they’re going to make assumptions about us,” she pointed out. “You can’t bring someone to a family dinner without that happening. I doubt they’d believe we’re just friends.”

  “No, they wouldn’t.” He shrugged as if that idea didn’t bother him in the least, while she was over here having a mild panic attack. It was bad enough that she was misleading her family about them, but now he wanted her to do it with his. Could vampires sense when you were lying?

  “I don’t like this.”

  He sighed, and she could feel him reining in his temper. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

  “One of them could bite me.” She twisted in her seat to face him. “Seriously, this is like dropping Nemo into a shark tank.”

  Gripping the steering wheel until it squeaked, he growled. “Leaving you alone was not an option.”

  She licked her lips. “I have to be alone sometime, Luca. This can’t last forever.”

  “No, it can’t. It lasts until we figure out who’s stalking you and take care of the problem.”

  “You couldn’t skip this dinner?”

  Shaking his head, he accelerated onto the freeway. “I skipped last week. Besides, I need to speak to a cousin who can help with your stalker, and frankly, after the mess with Elinor, I owe my father some support. If I don’t show up again, my family will assume it’s because of my case, and that Father and I are on the outs.”

  Complex family dynamics overlapping a murder-suicide. Awesome. She rubbed a finger between her eyebrows, trying to fend off a headache that wanted to bloom there.

  “After Francesca, do you think I relish taking a Normal to meet my family?” He flipped on his blinker to switch over to the fast lane. “Not to mention the Cavallis are hip-deep in politics. They know the Kerr side of your family, and I’m certainly going to hear about it. I’m sucking it up for your safety, Erin. Do me the same courtesy.”

  Oh, like this was her fault? She dropped her hand and glared at him. “I didn’t ask for your protection.”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw, and he stared straight ahead. “No, but you should have. Look, I’m sorry Gregor’s busy. You’re just going to have to cope tonight.”

  Because she hadn’t coped with enough already? She had to hold herself back from smacking him upside the head. Between Luca and Asher, she might be better off becoming a lesbian. Okay, that wasn’t fair. Luca was amazing, except when he was a pain in the ass. She said coolly, “I didn’t ask for your help because I knew anything more than sex would end up in exactly the kind of mess we’re in now—negotiating ugly, awkward family drama. This was always supposed to be convenient, no-strings and fun.”

  “Well, it’s none of the above now,” he grumbled. “You’re going to have to cope with that too.”

  “I know.” She closed her eyes, willing herself not to cry. It felt as if everything had fallen apart in a matter of weeks. And there was no end in sight. When would they catch her stalker? Who was her stalker? She blinked hard to push back the tears. Time to think about something else. Anything else. “Why do vampires and werewolves hate each other? How did the fight between them start? No one has ever been able to explain it to me without making some seriously racist and hateful remarks, whether they’re a vampire or a wolf.”

  “Topic change?” His eyebrow quirked.

  She dipped her chin in a nod. “I need one. Indulge me.”

  “It’s a complicated question.” He was quiet for a long moment, but she wasn’t sure if he was just considering what to tell her or wondering how to say it. The silence stretched on long enough she thought he wasn’t going to answer. “You know that werewolves and vampires have different mutations of a Magickal disease that makes them different from other Magickals, which is why they can change humans, right?”

  “Therianthropy, yeah.” She brought a knee up to her chest. “If you’re so similar, why don’t you get along better?”

  “That’s more a matter of history than biology.” He slanted a small grin in her direction. “Though most wolves and bloodsuckers would kick my ass for saying so.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  His fingers beat a short tattoo on the wheel. “Unlike other races, we weren’t born Magickals. We’re different because we were created ourselves. The original vampires and werewolves were humans who were infected with strains of the therianthropic disease, which they passed on to their children. Why we hate each other is simple: we were designed to kill each other.”

  “What?” She sat up straighter. “No one has ever told me that.”

  “Of course not.” He snorted. “The original documents that talk about this were deliberately destroyed to cover up exactly who did what, but enough remains that people who actually look into the old archives can get a general idea.”

  “You looked into the archives?”

  Nodding, a smile slashed across his handsome face. “My father made me as punishment when I was a kid.”

  “What did you do to get that kind of punishment?”

  “Ha, that was almost a century ago.
I don’t remember.” He frowned. “I’m sure you know that every Magickal race has a governing body, and the All-Magickal Council oversees them all, but what you probably don’t know is that the Fae used to have two governing bodies. The Seelie Court, you’ve heard about, but there was also an Unseelie Court. They were supposed to be a balance between light and dark.”

  “And in a classic villain move, the Unseelie queen wanted to have all the power for herself.” This was fascinating. Like something out of a twisted fairytale. “Am I right?”

  “Bingo.” He winked at her, then focused on exiting the freeway. “She used black magic to create therianthropy so she could have an army loyal to her—a powerful Magickal army. There are conflicting reports about whether she just wanted to overthrow the Seelie queen or if she wanted to rule every Magickal race. But the moon madness of her army made them uncontrollable.”

  “She made werewolves,” Erin whispered, leaning toward him, rapt.

  “Yep. She had a pet wolf and used it as part of the original spell. In fully shifted form, it’s difficult to tell the difference between a werewolf and a real one. Same thing with vampires and real bats. But most of the time, you only see a partial shift with the fangs and claws.” He shrugged. “A half-shift is when both species are at our most dangerous. We look like something out of a Hollywood horror film—huge, hairy and scary. Vampires even have huge wings in half-shifted form.”

  “Wow.” Her eyes grew round. “I’ve seen every stage of a wolf shift, but only the fangs and claws with vampires. That’s fascinating.”

  He chuckled and reached over to take one of her hands. “If I’d known it would give me your undivided attention, I’d have told you all of this a long time ago.”

  “You get my undivided attention any time we’re in bed together.” She brought his hand to her mouth and bit his thumb lightly. “Finish the story.”

  “I’ll take your attention any time I can get it. Every single day.” His breezy tone meant she didn’t know how seriously to take that comment. “So all the other Magickal races freaked, thinking that rampaging werewolves would turn Normals against anyone suspected of possessing even a scrap of magic.”

  “Not an irrational fear, considering things like the Salem Witch Trials,” she pointed out. “People were punished for witchcraft during the Inquisition too.”

  “The Seelie Court was authorized to use whatever means necessary to deal with the werewolf abomination.” He wove the car through several neighborhoods, and Erin noticed the houses grew more posh as they drove. “They created a weapon of their own—one whose sole purpose was to eradicate wolves. Vampires. But there were also wolves who wanted to stop the reckless turning of humans, who wanted to bring all wolves under a pack law that had nothing to do with the Unseelie queen.”

  “Wow.” She blinked. “Those had to be some pretty dark days in Magickal history.”

  “Some of our darkest.” He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “When all was said and done, the Unseelie Court was destroyed, and vampires and werewolves were acknowledged as new Magickal races. Vampire culture was embedded with the sense they were good and wolves were bad, that they were the best that magic could create, that they were better.” He slowed to a stop, then turned into the driveway of the biggest house they’d passed yet. A man stepped out of a small guardhouse and waved them through a fancy wrought iron gate. “At some point, my people thought they were better even than their creators, and thus better than everyone. The general vampire elitist attitude and hatred of wolves stems from how and why they came to exist in the first place. And that’s why vampires and werewolves don’t mix.”

  “There’s never been a wolf and vampire who fell for each other?” She couldn’t help the wistfulness in her voice.

  “Like Romeo and Juliet? No. That would have been news in the Magickal world.” His lips pressed together. “For a while, I thought Tess and I would be the first, but it didn’t happen.”

  She cringed. “I didn’t mean to bring up—”

  “It’s fine. It’s not a painful topic anymore.” He pulled into a spot behind a silver BMW and shifted the car into park. “The bald truth is that while the prejudice is starting to wane with younger Magickals, it’s still too ingrained in vamp-wolf culture for such a couple to be accepted. The older, more powerful vampire families cling to the elitism, and werewolf packs are just starting to let go of their isolationist policies. Chloe’s cure for their full moon rampages has helped a lot. Things are changing, but it’ll take another generation or two to really get there.”

  “And Magickal generations are five hundred years long.” She glanced up at him, but his expression was unreadable.

  “Yes.”

  He couldn’t have said anything else to make it clearer how little a chance their relationship had. That was the real fairytale. She couldn’t imagine his family would see her as anything other than tainted by her wolf relatives, and she knew enough of pack affairs to know it would cause problems for Darren and Angela if she were to publicly flaunt her connection to Luca. Especially since Darren was making a bid to be the next pack alpha after the current one stepped down or died. It wasn’t unheard of for packs to shun those who didn’t conform. If Darren and Angela supported Erin and Luca, it could be a disaster for all the Kerrs. Vampire culture might be very much the same. Maybe it would have been more feasible if the Kerrs or Cavallis were nonentities, but two families who were movers and shakers in their respective races meant falling for Luca was a mistake. Unfortunately, it was one she’d already made. She just had to keep her feelings to herself until the stalking issue was resolved.

  Then she had to break it off with him, once and for all. No letting her passion for him get the better of her, no excuses. Done.

  Luca got out of the car and came around to open her door. “Time to jump in the shark tank, Nemo.”

  A low chuckle was the best she could manage, nerves twisting her insides into knots. These people were going to hate her. She was a too-tall, frumpy Normal chef who was the next best thing to a wolf. Her luck really was that bad.

  The front door was thrown open by a little girl in a frilly green dress. The kid was adorable, big brown eyes, shiny black curls…a porcelain doll come to life. She scowled at Luca. “You’re late.”

  “My humblest apologies, Principessa.” He swept a deep, courtly bow. “Does this mean we’ll be thrown in the dungeon with nothing but bread and water?”

  She clapped a hand over her mouth and giggled. “You’re silly. Nonna made us wait until you got here to eat. Giovani has been complaining for twenty whole minutes.”

  “That’s terrible.” Luca wagged his head sadly, then turned to Erin. “My cousin Rosa’s daughter, Allie. Principessa, this is my friend, Erin.”

  The girl stared at her for a very long moment. “Hi.”

  After spinning on her toes, she darted down a long wood-paneled hallway. The house had the hushed atmosphere of a mausoleum, and a shiver skittered down Erin’s spine. If one of his vamp relatives jumped out of a coffin, she wouldn’t have been surprised. Then she heard a burst of laughter from the end of the hall, and Luca drew her toward that doorway.

  All conversation stopped the second they stepped over the threshold. Fifteen gazes pinned Erin in place like a bug under a microscope, very few of the expressions welcoming. Ice had more warmth than this group. The biggest chill emanated from the vampire who looked the most like Luca. His father, Salvatore, she guessed. If looks could kill, this man would have skewered her alive. She lifted her chin and refused to be cowed.

  “Ah look. Cousin Luca brought dessert,” purred a slender male who’d draped himself across the arm of a couch. The corners of his eyes burned red, and his fangs extended as if he intended to do a little taste testing before dinner.

  “She carries a knife with her, and she has my blessing to use it on you if you step out of line.” Luca’s gaze moved over the crowd, his face set in cold, harsh lines.

  “As if she could—”
r />   His laugh was humorless. “She got me. Do you think you’re faster than I am?”

  The skinny vampire swallowed and said nothing. Erin hoped the confrontation ended at that, but she wished more than ever that she could have stayed at home with Balthasar and watched TV.

  “Someone get him a dose of elixir,” Luca spoke to the room at large. “Also, a lesson in manners wouldn’t be out of line.”

  “I agree. Giovani, your mother would be ashamed.” A petite woman decked out in cashmere and pearls stepped forward, her hands extended. “Welcome to my home. I’m Carmela Cavalli, Luca’s aunt.” She gestured to a man who looked more intrigued than hostile. “My husband, Vito. He says he met you at your cousin Jack’s wedding.”

  Erin blinked and looked at him again. He seemed vaguely amused, though he didn’t smile. “Um, yes. I believe he officiated the ceremony. It was kind of him to do so on such short notice.”

  Luca bent to kiss the female vampire’s cheek. “Zia Carmela. This is Erin Bates. She’s a chef, so you can talk cooking for hours and she’ll never get bored.”

  “Lovely. It’s good to see you, dear.” She patted his jaw. Turning to Erin, she smiled. “It’s delightful to meet you. We’re having traditional Tuscan cuisine. I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

  “Ribollita soup?” Erin returned with a hopeful lilt to her voice. At least there was one friendly person in the room, and there was food. Food was always good. She surreptitiously swiped her clammy palms on her skirt.

  Carmela hooked her arm through Erin’s and leaned in conspiratorially. “One of my specialties.”

  “Wonderful.” Erin tried for a grin. “I haven’t had in years.”

  They all made it into the dining room without incident, and Erin breathed a sigh of relief when conversation became sporadic as they dug in to the first course. Carmela, Vito and Luca drew her in on several topics, and they seemed nice, which was downright refreshing after the chilly reception. The dinner wasn’t what she’d call comfortable, but it wasn’t bad either. A few people gave her sidelong glances, but most of them ignored her in favor of chatting and teasing other relatives.