by Hall, Alexis
“So, dear,” she purred, “how was your day?”
I told her about Patrick and Sofia and Percy and Sybil and the ritual and having to listen to Clair de Lune about eighty million times.
“Well,” she said, when I was finally done, “apart from Clair de Lune, that sounds just like the sort of thing you’d enjoy.”
“What, nearly being crushed to death by a giant snake?”
“You like danger, Kate. There’s no point pretending otherwise.” She glinted at me. “If you didn’t, you’d have a different girlfriend.”
I moved between her legs and caught for her wrists, holding them over her head. “You’re not that dangerous.”
She smiled up at me, her hands fragile under mine. “Keep telling yourself that, sweeting.”
She kind of had a point. “Oh come on, you haven’t tried to kill me in at least three months.”
“I haven’t needed to. Everyone else has been doing it for me.”
“And look how well that worked out for them.”
She arched her body against mine, hooking a leg around my waist. “Ah, but they don’t know your weaknesses like I do.”
“You have a weird line in pillow talk.”
“You started it.”
She kind of had a point. Again. But I was too tired to care. I let go of her hands and just kissed her, sinking into wine and rose leaves and the promise of a long, dark night. Julian wrapped herself around me and held me tight like only an ancient immortal sex monster can.
Julian’s lips moved, featherlight and velvet soft, over my jaw. “I’ve got you a present,” she whispered in my ear.
I popped the top few buttons on her starched white shirt. “Can I unwrap it now?”
“No, I mean an actual present. But you can unwrap me anytime, sweeting.”
I jerked up. “Shit, I haven’t got you anything at all.”
“I’m an eight-hundred-year-old vampire prince with near limitless resources. I’m quite difficult to buy for.” She leaned over the back of the chaise longue and fished up an extravagant hat box that looked like it had been wrapped by Rowan Atkinson in that scene in Love Actually.
“Uh, thanks.” I sat there, cradling it in my lap and feeling awkward. “Do you want me to save this for Christmas?”
“You know how I feel about delayed gratification.”
“Right.”
“Besides, I assume you won’t want to take me home to meet your parents.”
There was a slightly too-long silence. “I’ll just open it now.”
To be honest, my parents probably wouldn’t mind, but I couldn’t really see Julian playing Trivial Pursuit or joining in our annual family tradition of ignoring the Queen’s speech.
I pulled out my sanctified steel knife and cut through the ribbons.
Julian laughed. “How Alexander the Great of you.”
“Oh, shut up.” I suddenly remembered I was meant to be sounding grateful and pleased. I’m really bad at the whole present thing. I’m bad at giving them and bad at getting them. I kind of wish everybody would just buy their own stuff. It’d be less hassle all round.
I finally broke into the box.
I stared.
“Holy shit, how the fuck did you manage that?”
She looked just a little bit smug, but I guess she deserved to. “We sent some people to clean up Syon House, and that was lying in a pond in the middle of the courtyard, along with one of Percy’s lackeys.”
“Oh my God.”
I reached into the box and pulled out my hat. It smelled a bit damp and it looked, if possible, even more battered than before, but it was my damn hat, and Julian had got it back for me.
I put it on.
Julian pounced on me, and we rolled off the edge of the chaise longue onto the floor. She straddled me and tugged off her jacket. Beneath her partially open shirt, I caught a glimpse of purple satin.
Then she leaned down and kissed my neck, her teeth scraping lightly over my skin, following the line of my artery.
I tipped my head back, baring my throat to her.
My hat fell off again. I didn’t care.
Start at the beginning of the Kate Kane, Paranormal Investigator series with Iron & Velvet:
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Once again, thanks to all the usual people, particularly my partner, my wonderful editor Sarah Frantz, and my dear friend AB for trudging around Highgate Cemetery in the snow while I engaged in the haphazard tourism which, in my world, passes for research.
Glitterland
Glitterland: Aftermath (free download)
Kate Kane Paranormal Investigator series:
Iron & Velvet
Fire & Water (coming soon)
Coming Soon:
Prosperity
Alexis Hall was born in the early 1980s and still thinks the twenty-first century is the future. To this day, he feels cheated that he lived through a fin de siècle, but inexplicably failed to drink a single glass of absinthe, dance with a single courtesan, or stay in a single garret.
He did the Oxbridge thing sometime in the 2000s and failed to learn anything of substance. He has had many jobs, including ice cream maker, fortune teller, lab technician, and professional gambler. He was fired from most of them.
He can neither cook nor sing, but he can handle a seventeenth-century smallsword, punts from the proper end, and knows how to hotwire a car.
He lives in southeast England, with no cats and no children, and fully intends to keep it that way.
Website: quicunquevult.com
Twitter: @quicunquevult
Goodreads: goodreads.com/alexishall
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