So that was why Raphael had financed her education. I lifted the glass and took a sip, breathing in the lavender smell. “Is he still alive?”
“Oh, yes. Sabine and I helped him set up a practice in Zürich.”
I was starting to understand why Sabine was so fond of Raphael and why she’d cleared her schedule to work with Vivi. I traced my finger around the rim of the glass, then moved the lavender stem up and down in the glass. It was an unconscious gesture—at least I think it was. But then I saw Raphael’s gaze follow my hand. It was shameful how much that excited me.
I crossed my legs. But the friction only caused more stimulation.
“You seem restless,” he said.
“Do I? Maybe I should go jogging.”
“Swimming is more private.”
His pool was in the cellar. The last time I’d seen it, spiders were running up the walls, and the water smelled like brimstone. “You want me to swim in the birthplace of evil?”
“You’re thinking of the old pool,” he said. “I renovated the cellar last fall.”
“A renovation wouldn’t help,” I said, trying not to smile. “But an A-bomb might.”
“Go ahead and laugh. It’s going to be in Architectural Digest this fall.”
“A demonic cellar? That’ll be a first. Who was the designer? The one who messed up your drawing room?”
“No, a brilliant architect. Come on, I’ll show you.”
And just like that, I was having fun again and feeling guilty about it. I put down my glass, and we walked into the hall, past a hand-painted mural that depicted scenes from a vineyard.
“I have a new elevator, too,” he said.
He clicked the center panel and a door swung open. We stepped into a tiny car. Raphael looked around for Arrapato. The dog sat in the hall, glaring at us, his head resting on his paws.
“See?” I said. “The dog knows we’re going to a bad place.”
“Just wait,” Raphael said as the elevator whirred downward. “You’ll take back all of your cruel words.”
The door opened, and a fresh smell washed into the car. Music drifted from speakers in the ceiling, and Cary Brothers began to sing “Take Your Time.” The cellar of the damned had been banished. Clay pots bursted with ferns and vines. Three teak chaise longues were lined up in front of an angular pool, which shimmered with a pristine radiance.
At the far end of the cellar, another mural showed an Italian garden. A tiled bar held stemware and liquor bottles. On the counter was a huge brandy snifter filled with matchbooks from nightclubs. Next to the bar was a thick walnut door that stood open, showing a narrow stairwell.
“Where does that lead?” I asked.
“The courtyard.”
“And you just leave it open?”
“There’s a door at the top of the stairs. It stays bolted. Hold on, let me check.” He dashed up the stairs. I moved to the bar and lifted a matchbook from the snifter. Le Truskel on Rue Fey Deau, an after-midnight club. I dropped it.
He returned. “It’s locked.”
His hand closed around mine, and he guided me around the pool to the mural. “During the renovation, my architect found an old smuggler’s tunnel. It was used by the French Resistance.”
I glanced around, looking for a door. “Where is it?”
“Hidden.” He gestured at the mural. It covered the entire back wall—cypress and linden trees, benches, pergolas, rose beds, and fountains. I studied each image, looking for the outline of a door, anything with straight lines.
My gaze returned to the cypress trees. I ran the flat of my hand over the wall, feeling the rough paint. Then my fingers bumped over a rigid edge. I pushed against it. A door swung away from the mural. Standing behind it was a metal door with an electronic keypad.
Raphael punched in the code, 2276. The door grated open, swinging on its hinges, and cool, sour-smelling air drifted out. Rough limestone steps plunged into darkness. Way off in the distance, I heard dripping water. I opened the door wider, and light from the cellar shone on the old stone-and-mortar walls.
“Where does it lead?” I asked.
“To a bigger door,” he said. “Much thicker than this one.”
“What’s beyond that?”
“The sewer.” He gazed off into the darkness.
“You haven’t gone exploring yet?”
“No.”
“Let’s go sometime.”
“Really? You’d tramp through a smelly labyrinth?”
“Why not?”
“It’s a date,” he said.
A Les Misérables date, I reminded myself. We’d need hard hats, flashlights, nose plugs, and tall rubber boots.
While Raphael put the mural back together, I walked around the pool. The water lapped against the smooth turquoise tiles that lined the perimeter. I tucked my hair behind my ears, but it wouldn’t stay. The humidity was causing curls to spring free all over my head. I glanced over my shoulder.
Raphael was smiling. “You walk with a dancer’s awareness,” he said. “Alert and poised. Shoulders back. Head up. Floaty steps.”
“Funny you should say that. When I was six years old, I got kicked out of ballet class. The instructor said I had flat feet.”
“They’re not flat now.” He walked toward me, glancing from my ankles to my face. A dazzle moved through me. I had a couple of options. I could get in the elevator or I could do something reckless. I mean, why not? So what if we make love? I didn’t need to turn it into something it wasn’t. A dweeb could be cool, right?
I kicked off my shoes and dipped my right foot into the warm, silky water. This was about as wild as I could get. If only I were bold enough to strip down to my bra and panties, but Raphael had always seen me fully clothed, except for that one tiny moment in Norway, and the bedroom had been dark. I hadn’t seen much of him, either.
He edged in beside me. His pupils dilated, obscuring the dark irises. A pulse leaped in his neck. “Are you going in?”
“I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Coward.”
If I didn’t do something, and soon, he was going to kiss me and I wouldn’t stop him. The music changed, and I recognized the melancholy opening notes to “Be Here Now,” a poignant ballad about lovers and their unstable inner walls.
I thought of the sparrow dress that Raphael had given me. Now his stereo—which he was controlling with his mind—was playing symbolic music. What was he trying to tell me?
His hand grazed mine. His skin felt cool and slightly rough. Water pattered to the stones as I lifted my foot from the water. Steam drifted from the surface, glided under the hem of my dress, and brushed across my thighs.
“Don’t think too much, mia cara.”
Who could think? I couldn’t catch my breath. All I had to do was put on my shoes, and he’d smile and make a joke, putting us both at ease. He was so good at changing a debauched situation into a pleasing one.
I stepped back, and his hand fell away. I wiggled my damp feet into the pumps, and then his hand caught my cheek. My nipples tingled, and I leaned into his hand. He looked into my eyes, then lowered his head until his lips were almost touching mine. I slid my hands along the back of his neck, knotting my fingers in his hair, and gently tugged his face closer to mine.
“You’re still thinking,” he said.
“Not that much.” But he was right. My mind was on premeditated orgasms.
His hands tightened around my waist, and he lifted me off the floor. I felt a rush of cool air on my feet as my shoes slid off and clattered against the floor.
“La sua bellezza porta via il mio fiato,” he said.
It took a few seconds for my brain to translate: Your beauty takes my breath away.
He was such a good liar. He moved me higher, and my toes brushed over his shins, scraping over the rough khakis. I felt a massive hardness behind his zipper. I locked my ankles around his waist, and pleasure unfurled deep inside me.
My face was just a little above hi
s, and I leaned down to kiss him. He tasted like grape juice, the kind that’s served at communion, just a dribble in a tiny glass, never enough to fill you. One of his hands moved to my face. The other slid down to my bottom. I was dimly aware that the music had changed, something a mermaid might listen to, all wordless and watery. He slid the tip of his thumb into my mouth, and I gently sucked the plump mound until his breath came in short gasps.
Inside me, a wave rose to a peak, quivering, then crashed through me so fast I barely had time to catch my breath before the next swell moved in. His lips felt cool against my neck. My head tipped back, and I shuddered against him.
Raphael’s iPhone rang. He ignored it and kept kissing my throat. The phone stopped trilling abruptly, and the phone in the elevator buzzed. He went on kissing me, moving his lips up and down my neck.
I put a little more energy behind the kiss, and he moaned.
His cell phone went off again. Arrapato’s muffled barks echoed from the elevator shaft. I dragged my lips away from his.
“Raphael, something’s wrong.”
“No.” His lips went back to my neck.
But I was distracted by the ringing, and I eased away.
Raphael groaned. He set me down and pulled the phone from his trouser pocket. In the seconds before he raised it to his ear, I heard La Rochenoire’s excited voice, but I couldn’t make out the words.
Raphael’s eyebrows slammed together. He abruptly turned. “What does she want?” he said. From behind he looked tall and chiseled, and I had no trouble imagining him naked.
“Yes, yes. I’m on my way,” he said, and dropped the phone into his pocket. His hand caught my arm. “I won’t be long.”
He was leaving me in the cellar? Renovated or not, I wasn’t staying here.
“I’ll come with you.” I started to follow, but the terror on his face stopped me.
I drew back. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to Vivi?”
“No, no. Just a household disturbance. Please wait for me.”
He’d spoken with a light tone, but he’d looked at the elevator, as if he were impatient to rush upstairs.
He hadn’t been gone three minutes when I heard shouting—a woman was cursing in French. “Fucking incubus,” she yelled, her voice soaring down the elevator shaft. It seemed to be coming from the first-floor drawing room.
Raphael’s told the woman to leave—loudly. There was a crash, and I heard weeping. Okay, it didn’t take telepathy to figure this out. One of Raphael’s girlfriends had found out he was in town.
I stepped into the elevator. Before I reached the first floor, I heard Arrapato’s yelp, followed by a scrabbling noise. The elevator door slid open, and I walked into the hall, hurrying to the ice-blue drawing room.
The heavy doors stood ajar, as if someone had shoved them. I peeked inside. The room was empty. The air smelled odd and sulfuric, as if a match had been snuffed out. The windows were shuttered except the one in the middle; the wooden panel gaped open crookedly. Had it been wrenched from the frame?
A wedge of sunlight glimmered on the floor, where a copper bowl lay upside down, dozens of antique keys spilled around it. I knelt beside the bowl, lifted a dark bronze, baroque key, and studied the fleur-de-lis on its bow. When I’d been an undergraduate at King’s College, I’d studied etymology; the Old English word for key basically meant a solution. A tool to unlock hidden places. Uncle Nigel used to say that if you owned a key, you owned something you didn’t want to lose.
I heard a noise from the doorway and looked up. Monsieur La Rochenoire stood just outside the room, his face bland and unreadable. “Dinner will be served at six in the dining room,” he said. “Unless you’d like a tray sent to your room.”
The key made a decisive clink when I set it in the bowl. “I’m not hungry.”
“As you wish, madame.”
“Where’s Raphael?”
“I do not know.”
I hadn’t expected him to lie. I pushed the bowl aside and glanced at the gilt mantel clock. A quarter after two. Raphael couldn’t leave the house until dark. I turned back to La Rochenoire. “But he’s home?”
His face still held no expression. Then one wooly eyebrow began to twitch.
I got to my feet. “I heard shouting.”
La Rochenoire tucked his hands behind his back. “If you change your mind about dinner, let me know.”
After he left, a deep weariness pushed in around me. I couldn’t stop yawning—a sure sign of anxiety. It was still daylight, but I went up to my room and slumped onto the bed. Now I understood why I’d kept my distance from Raphael all these years. I was the opposite of cool. I couldn’t settle for casual sex, although casual was the wrong word, because sex with a vampire wasn’t laid-back, though it involved getting laid. Over and over. It was addictive. Once you’d had sex with one of them, you had no desire to be with a human.
This reaction has a physiological basis. Vampires are built for predation, and all good predators know how to attract whatever they want. When vampires become aroused, they exude some type of chemical that causes euphoria in the victim, along with temporary numbness—luckily, I was immune to the latter symptom.
But I wasn’t immune to the next phase: an exaggerated sexual response. A male vamp doesn’t experience a refractory period after orgasm. He can literally make love for days. Or he can send his partner into a climactic frenzy with the barest touch. When Jude had kissed me, sometimes I climaxed. And I’d already witnessed what Raphael could do.
As for Raphael…well, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened by the pool. Then I heard Arrapato’s muffled barks, and I knew that they were in this house.
CHAPTER 25
Caro
PLACE DES VICTOIRES
PARIS, FRANCE
I slept through supper, breakfast, and lunch. I awoke at four P.M., and when I finally got moving, I found a note wedged under my door.
Mia cara,
Please join me at 7 P.M. for a picnic in the courtyard.
R
I turned over the note to see if he’d written on the back, but it was blank. That was all? No explanation about the screaming woman? I carried the note to the window and pushed back the curtain. The afternoon sky was packed with gray clouds, and I remembered Monsieur La Rochenoire’s weather prediction. Rain was headed to Paris. Before I shut the curtain, a golden shaft of light cut through the dirty clouds and brightened the slate rooftops across the street. Somehow that made me feel better.
A maid with curly gray hair brought a tea tray and set it on the table. Sugary beignets sat on a paper doily, next to pots of butter and gooseberry jam. Steam drifted from the teapot’s curved spout.
“Where’s Monsieur Della Rocca?” I asked.
“Upstairs, madame,” she said. “He and the little dog were injured yesterday.”
I felt all the blood leave my head. The room swirled, and I sat down on the chaise longue. “Are they all right?”
“Oui, madame. A small injury.”
“What kind?”
“You must ask Monsieur La Rochenoire.” She backed out of the room, her forehead puckered. “If you need anything, ring the kitchen on the house phone.”
I poured a cup of tea and sat back down on the chaise longue. Had the screaming woman punched Raphael in the eye? No, the maid had said that Arrapato had been injured. What could have happened to them? I remembered the broken window panel and the scorched smell. They’d been sunburned?
He’s well enough to host a picnic, I reminded myself.
I’d almost slept with him—again. I shouldn’t be thinking about Raphael. I should be thinking about my daughter. Was she still in Paris? Or had Sabine taken her away? Maybe when Vivi returned, we could go shopping like a regular mother and daughter. I had such fond memories of the time that Uncle Nigel and I had gone to the Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen. If you pumped a flea market with steroids and added a dash of caffeine you’d get the Marché aux Puces.
; Vivi would love the flea market. I’d buy her earrings, bracelets, vintage dresses, anything she wanted. And we’d come home on the Metro like normal people.
I took a sip of tea, and as the warmth moved through me, I thought of Jude. When we’d gone into hiding, I had believed the danger would eventually end. Perhaps my parents had thought the same thing when they’d moved to Tennessee. Their narrow, carefully constructed world hadn’t saved them. But like Jude always said, if they’d lived in the open, they would have died sooner.
Jude and I had made the same choices that my parents had made, except we’d kept moving. We’d been convinced that my parents had died because they’d stayed too long in one place. But now, I realized that Jude and I had overlooked a critical point. My parents knew who’d been chasing them, and why. I couldn’t put a face or name to the threat.
Who were the players? What did they want? To kill my daughter or put her in a cage? Who’d slaughtered Keats and put my husband’s ring on his finger? Who’d sent assassins to Scotland?
I’d had a decade to think about evil, but now it seemed as if fear was my biggest enemy. Fear is portable. It fits into the tiniest suitcase and speaks all languages. It can reduce your life to the width of a pin head. Maybe it was better to spend one morning at the flea market, with your senses fully engaged, than to spend a hundred years in a fortress.
Just before seven, I got dressed. I found a white, ankle-length tank dress in my plaid bag. I put it on, then slid my feet into purple flip-flops. I wasn’t sure what to expect at the picnic, but I hoped my clothes would telegraph my intentions: I’m not sprucing myself up for you. I’m a slob who doesn’t even paint her toenails.
As an afterthought, I tied back my hair with a thin black ribbon. Then I grabbed a white sweater and buttoned it up to my neck. I walked down to the first floor. The courtyard was just off the blue drawing room. Lamps burned softly on the tables, warming the icy color scheme. The panel on the French doors had been repaired, and one stood open, letting a breeze stir the curtains. I stepped outside, my flip-flops ticking over the pavé stones. Lavender and rosemary grew in pots, and their pungent scents blotted out the gritty exhaust fumes that clung to Place des Victoires.
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