Her bright blonde curls danced around her sweet, cherubic face as she took in the sight of both of us, her pretty pink dress swirling about her knees, her pink high-heels the exact same color as the fluffy skirt of the dress. Her cherry-red mouth was pouting, and she looked right past Branna at me, her eyes growing wider as she took me in.
“Bran, you’re late!” she chided, and Branna’s smile grew wider and more indulgent as she stepped forward, placing a chaste kiss on the side of Dolly’s mouth. But Dolly didn’t even really acknowledge her. She was still staring at me.
“Are you…are you all right?” she asked, pulling me into the room with a gentle hand before shutting the door behind me with a soft click.
“She’s fine, Doll,” said a gravelly voice in the smoke-shrouded room. A woman was sitting at the same card table that Dolly and I had played gin rummy at just yesterday—but it seemed like a lifetime ago now. She was shuffling the cards, and, as I watched, began to deal herself a game of solitaire. Her full lips seemed like they were stretched into a permanent frown, and her bleached-blonde hair was carefully slicked into a pompadour at the front of her head. She wore a loose-fitting blazer, and the top six buttons on her creamy shirt beneath it were unbuttoned, so that I could see the gray sports bra under it. This woman was hard butch all the way, and just seemed hard in general as she glanced up at me, her dark eyes flashing. “She’s still kicking, isn’t she? She’s fine.”
“Jane, Mags could have killed her,” said Dolly with wide eyes, making small, reassuring circles with the palm of her hand on the small of my back.
“And she didn’t, did she?” asked Jane, kicking back and balancing the chair on its back two legs, regarding me with a tilt of her head and quick eyes. “So give it a rest. God, you’d think the rest of you had never had a drink before.”
“Not like that, Jane,” said Branna lightly, but there was a bit of an edge to her voice.
I felt eyes on me, then. And there were other women in the room, it was true, but I knew the weight of these eyes, a familiar weight that made butterflies beat against my heart. I glanced to the back of the room, to the wide fireplace that smoldered, its marble mantle carved with vines and violets and devilish looking cherubs.
She stood there, leaning against the mantle, her hands curled loosely in her pockets, her long white-blonde ponytail loosely curved over one shoulder, and a cigarette dangling out of perfect, full lips.
Kane.
Her bright blue eyes had me in their sights, and the way she gazed at me…my heart beat too fast, my breath coming in short gasps. There was a magnetic quality to that gaze, and I was pulled by it, tugged by it, drawn by my heart all the way across the room, until I hadn’t even realized that I’d come the full way, and I was standing before her, close enough to touch.
Her gaze raked me up and down, taking in the dress, my body, and my skin pricked at that, goosebumps rising to be so wholly appraised in a single glance. Her blue eyes flashed, darkening, and she took a single graceful step toward me. She set her hand purposefully on the mantle behind me, then, and she towered over me, this handsome, intense creature, as she stared down at me with unblinking blue eyes that seemed electric in the dimly lit room. She stood close enough to me that when I breathed out, then, my breath came between us like smoke. She was so cold that if I touched her, I’d be burned by it. But I wanted to touch her just the same.
“Are you all right?” she asked me, then, and her voice was a low growl as she offered the question. Yes. I was all right. But as I stared up into her eyes, I knew that I wasn’t really. I was completely bewitched by her. And that wasn’t really all right, was it.
Someone cleared her throat behind us, and Kane straightened a little, her eyes flashing as she gazed past my shoulder to the woman standing behind us. Branna.
“Rose, I feel that I should introduce all of us, if I might,” said Branna, then. There was a violin dangling from her hand, just then, and I remembered her as the woman who had played for us yesterday. How could I forget? But everything else faded away as I gazed around at the assembled women—noting, with a fair amount of relief, that Mags was not among them—realizing in one odd, surreal moment, that I was standing in a room full of vampires. Who were all staring at me.
“Full introductions would be wonderful,” I said with a quavering breath.
She didn’t hesitate. “I am Branna—call me Bran, though,” said Bran with a wink. “You’ve met Kane and Dolly…and, most recently Jane.” Still at the table and still leaning her chair back on two legs, Jane threw me a salute. “But this lovely here, is Cecelia.” Bran indicated an intense, serious-looking young woman who leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed at the waist. She wore a buttoned dress shirt, with a loose tie, the top few buttons open at the neck, and her tie dangling. Her hair was pinned up in a no-nonsense but pretty updo, a few stray brown curls escaping it. Cecelia seemed to be able to stare right through me, and I felt completely exposed to her. I shivered a little. “This here, if you remember, is Victoria.” Bran indicated the stunning black woman who raised her ever-present martini glass to me, giving me a wink, her Elvis-style hair tilting a little to the side, her purple sheath dress shimmery today. “This is Luce.” This woman was taller than even Kane, her flowing red hair down her back like a waterfall of satin, silver band around her bare upper right arm twinkling in the firelight as she gave me a fierce, wild grin. “And this,” said Bran, clapping her hand on the last woman’s shoulder, “is Thomasina—but call her Tommie.”
Tommie was lounging backward, her elbow on the back of her old wooden folding chair, her shoulders curved away from me under her immaculate white dress shirt, nonchalant and easy. She had chin-length black hair that curved out from her jaw at a sharp angle and she was wearing a floppy old fedora, a black that had become gray from age, though she, herself, appeared to be in her twenties (though I half-wondered if she was actually much older than the fedora itself). She gazed up at me from under the brim of the hat, just then, and her grin was lazy, wide and it took my breath away. She didn’t glance at me for long, but she gave me an appraising gaze, too, raking over my body with her green eyes that seemed to be able to see right through the fabric of my dress. I actually blushed when Tommie looked at me, but then she went back to her conversation with Luce, and I was just left with my blush.
A cold few fingers curling around my elbow made me turn a little, and Kane was there, glancing down into my face, gazing deeply into my eyes in the dim light as if she was searching for something. “Have you considered what happened to you this morning?” she asked me then, quietly.
Branna stepped forward, shaking her head. “I read her. She won’t tell anyone about the vampirism, at least—that’s not her intention,” she said, warm brown eyes on mine.
Kane glanced up at her, and then back down to me, taking another deep pull of her cigarette before flicking the ash off with long, graceful fingers. Again, I realize that cigarettes are terrible for you, no one should use them, I know, I know, but when Kane took a pull on it, it was so damn sexy.
And now that I knew she was a vampire, I realized that cigarettes probably didn’t affect her like they did humans. So I no longer felt quite so terrible for thinking she was incredibly attractive when she smoked.
“It’s not just about that, though, is it, Bran?” asked Jane, her chair thumping down in an instant. She rolled onto her feet, stretching overhead. Her permanent frown seemed to deepen. “If she spills the beans anytime, anywhere, whether she intended to or no, we’re in jeopardy.”
“But I won’t—” I began, but the door to the room opened, just then, the door we’d recently entered.
And there, framed in the entrance to the room, the setting sun behind her outlining every one of her dangerous curves, stood Mags.
She was still stunning, still lethally beautiful with her round, curving hips sheathed in a pencil skirt today, her breasts hardly concealed by the vintage cream-colored top that followed her lines perfectly.
Her long black hair was swept into an up-do that seemed to sparkle with crystals, and her makeup was retro and flawless—honestly, she looked like a movie star from the fifties.
But when she gazed at me, just then, her eyes flashing like a lioness who’s picked out the weak zebra from the watering hole to hunt later, she didn’t really look like a movie star.
She looked dangerous.
“Mags…” Dolly’s voice was gentle, but there was a surprising hard edge to it. “You know you’re not to come here tonight—”
“Last I checked, Doll,” Mags snarled as she prowled into the room, the door thudding shut behind her, “it was my house too.”
I didn’t even register the fact that Kane was moving—she was at my side, and then, in an instant, she was in front of me, between me and Mags, her hand behind her back, and her fingers curving and cold around my wrist, but the pressure there a reassuring weight.
“Leave,” whispered Kane. It was only a single word, but it seemed, for half a heartbeat, that the red and black checkered floor beneath us seemed to shudder a little with the gravity of the syllable.
Mags paused in her approach of us, paused with one pointed toe before her, on unreasonably tall stilettos, and the other beneath her. She paused as still as a mannequin, and then a very slow, lazy grin began to spread across her face, twisting her full red lips.
“All right,” she said, tracing her finger over the curve of her shoulder and down her neck, toward her collarbone as she looked past Kane and directly into my eyes. The ruby-red nails on her hand seemed to prick her skin, because she had two little wounds on her neck, then…exactly where mine were. I shuddered as her smile turned malicious, and she turned on her heel, practically flouncing back toward the door.
It slammed shut behind her.
“Branna,” said Kane softly, quietly, “please follow her and make certain that she obeys the letter of her punishment.”
Bran turned to me, brows up. “She has to leave the house for a week,” Bran told me with a careful shrug.
I don’t really believe in capital punishment, and I certainly don’t believe in punishment in general…but I’d also never been almost drained dry by a vampire who sought me out for a nonconsensual drink and purposefully hunted me down and apparently had not a shred of remorse for either of these things. I honestly didn’t even know what it was about me that she found so utterly repulsive. From the very first moment that I’d met Mags Sullivan, she’d seemed to have it out for me, and I didn’t know why.
But it was incredibly unnerving.
“But…doesn’t it seem like she’s going to try to drink me again?” I managed to keep my voice from shaking, but just barely. Bran was already out the door, it closing softly behind her as she followed Mags, and Kane turned her full attentions to me.
“This is her warning, this week away from the safety, companionship and home of Sullivan Hotel. To do so again would be complete and irrevocable expulsion from us. And I promise you: she doesn’t want that,” said Kane’s voice, still dark and growling, but softer as she gazed down at me. I realized, then, that Kane’s fingers were still at my elbow, still curled gently over my skin, still cold as ice. She seemed to notice it at the exact same moment, too, and she let go of me, taking a step back, and reaching up for her cigarette, taking a pull and flicking the ash away.
“We need to discuss if she’s leaving or not,” said Jane, then, nodding toward me and crossing her arms. She’d sunk down into her chair again, but the way she looked at me…I realized she didn’t trust me. And probably wanted me gone.
“Let’s not be hasty,” said Dolly, stepping forward briskly so that her pink skirt flared out around her. “Yes, Rose knows about us. But she isn’t like Betty—”
“Let’s be honest: we thought Betty wouldn’t be like Betty,” said Jane, pulling a hand over her face for a heartbeat before sighing and leaning back again.
“Who was Betty?” I asked, worrying at my lip with my teeth.
“Betty was the only other employee of the Sullivan Hotel who found out about us. She worked here in the forties,” said Dolly, pulling at one of her curls alongside her face so that it elongated like a spring. “Um…she fell in love with—”
“She doesn’t need to know all the details,” said Jane with a growl. I realized with a start that her full lips were up and over her teeth, and her eyes had darkened…and her fangs had grown. I took a step back, but Jane wasn’t looking at me—she was looking at Dolly.
“Well, anyway,” said Dolly hastily, with a quick, conciliatory smile as she spread her pink-nailed hands. “She fell in love with someone here and when things didn’t really go as planned, she threatened to tell everyone.”
“What happened to Betty?” I asked, breathing out. I was close enough to Kane that this breath hung suspended in the air, like I stood outside on a winter’s night, even though I actually stood in front of the fire. I felt the cold length of her behind me, could see her out of the corner of my eye toss the stub of her cigarette into the blaze as she leaned against the mantle again, her eyes not on Dolly. But on me.
“She was out on a boat. She drowned,” said Dolly, her pretty face contorted in a grimace.
I stared at her.
“It wasn’t…it wasn’t foul play,” said Dolly quickly. A little too quickly. “But the facts of the matter are that she would have gone to the authorities and the town with the knowledge that we’re vampires. And we’d have to leave. Everything we’ve built would be destroyed.”
I’d been thinking it for so long, I finally said it: “What I don’t understand is how you can stay in one place for so long anyway,” I said with a shake of my head. “Eternal Cove looks like it’s a small town—don’t people get suspicious?”
“We trade out the task of figurehead of ownership of the hotel every generation or so, and we’re not seen in the town that much,” said Victoria, taking a sip of her martini and leaning back in her plush chair, her hand resting lightly on her bare thigh. The slit on that dress went spectacularly high. “To be perfectly honest,” she said, leaning forward, her red mouth curling upwards, her dark eyes dancing, “I don’t think our dear Rose here is going to say anything. I think she should stay with us. She did just arrive.”
“All the more reason not to trust her,” Jane rumbled.
“I don’t want to go,” I said then, my hands curling into fists. I swallowed, tried to find something tactful to say…failed. “I didn’t volunteer to be tricked, almost drowned, bitten, drained. I didn’t want this knowledge. But now that I have it, I don’t see what’s so different about me. I need a job. I’m a good worker, and I’ll do my best here. Just because you’re vampires…it doesn’t change anything.” That sounded weak, even to my ears, and Jane chuckled—though it didn’t sound at all humorous—as she pushed her chair back and balanced it on the back two legs again.
“Right,” she said, with a snort. “You’re in a house full of vampires, and you’re not the least bit alarmed by that fact? Every human fears us, Rose. We’re predators, pure and simple. We’re the stuff of nightmares.”
Kane straightened at that, and I couldn’t help it—I didn’t want to see her out of the corner of my eye, I wanted to be looking at her headlong. I turned just as Branna slipped back into the room, leaning against the door as she shut it, her arms crossed.
“I want her to stay,” said Kane softly.
The room stilled.
Kane stepped forward, but she didn’t look at me. She moved past me without even acknowledging me, though her long ponytail drifted over my bare arm as she stepped past—it felt like silk, and I shivered as she moved past me, close enough to touch, to stop, but I did not. She slipped past Bran, and then she was out of the room, and into the corridor. The door shut with a soft click.
“Well, I suppose that’s that,” said Dolly uncertainly as she gazed at the shut door.
“Great,” muttered Jane with an eye roll, turning her attentions back to her game of solitaire.
Branna appraised me with a single brow up as I stood, alone and unsure by the fire, shifting from foot to foot like I was the new kid in second grade. I felt awkward and out of place, and my skin pricked to attention, all my thoughts revolving around the fact that Kane had left, and I very much wanted to go after her. That is, until Tommie stood.
She’d been silent during the proceedings, but she’d been watching me from under the brim of the old fedora. I was awash with too many feelings, too many uncertainties. Why had Kane said that? What did she mean? Did she feel this strange thing growing between us? I was desperately attracted to her, but I fought against that. I didn’t want to be desperate about anything, but every single time I was around Kane Sullivan, I seemed to lose all of my reasoning abilities in favor of my heart pounding much too quickly, and my body curving toward her like I was compelled by her form.
Tommie strode over to me, her hands in her pants pockets, her head cocked a little. She was lithe and lean and seemed to be in complete control of every inch of her body. She leaned her shoulder against the mantle, gave me another once over, her green eyes flashing as her lips turned up at the corners. “Been a strange day, huh?” Her voice was warm and low, but there was a little laughter to it, too. I glanced sidelong to her, turning to the fire, instead, holding out my hands to the blaze. I felt cold.
“Yeah,” I managed, biting my lip as I breathed out.
“It’s going to start getting stranger. Just a bit of friendly advice,” said Tommie, her brows up as she glanced down at the fire, too. “The guests are going to start arriving tonight for the Conference.”
“Conference?” I asked her, turning to look at her. She was so beautiful. Beautiful would actually not be the right word for Tommie. She exuded sexuality, but was masculine, too. She was handsome, absolutely handsome, but there was a hardness to the glint in her eyes, the turn of her smile. It was incredibly difficult not to be attracted to her on sight, and if I was being completely honest with myself…I was. It wasn’t like with Kane, though. Tommie was handsome, yes…but there was something about Kane that drew me to her. It was different.
Meeting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 1 Page 9