I didn’t know if that made the situation easier or harder to bear, to be honest. I wouldn’t have strolled up in there laughing and thinking I’d just made friendly with the local clan, but dang, I’d clearly held out hope that it wouldn’t be as bad as I’d feared, judging by the Texas-sized knot of anxiety currently gnawing away at my innards. As I brushed a hand down my corset, one of the embedded gems winked in the light of the buttery yellow candlelight.
The dress was a veritable bomb, so I had nothing to fear, right? Right?
Why didn’t that make me feel in the slightest bit relieved?
Mercer pulled me in tight against his side.
“Relax, female.” His voice rumbled in my ear, making my skin break out in a wash of goosebumps despite the fact that I also felt like yakking a little bit.
I glowered at him from beneath my porcelain mask.
The place was eccentric and ridiculous. The moment we’d walked into the vestibule, we were greeted by a mask man. I didn’t know how else to describe him, but he had been standing behind a large booth dripping in Venetian-style masks. The men got to wear black velvet Zorro-style masks while the women had to wear heavily ornamented ones covered in gemstones and painted feathers.
Mine was simpler than most of the others. I’d opted for one with a painted rose-red mouth and ebony eyebrows. Seeing beautiful people swaying and dancing around us, while able to see only their eyes and not much else, was a little on the macabre side.
Surrounded by a sea of vampires and other unsavory characters, I’d yet to bump into another shifter besides Mercer, which had me clinging tightly to his hand, fighting like hell to stave off the rush of nerves marching like an advancing brigade inside me.
I didn’t like the fact that since arriving, we’d been greeted by no one, yet people were obviously aware of us. We’d been getting several hard and curious looks for the past half hour.
At first, Mercer and I had stood by the wall as I hadn’t been much for dancing. However, after noticing that we’d begun to draw a crowd, Mercer had dragged me out to the dance floor pretty much against my will.
“Relax,” he rumbled again, fingers idly tracing distracting patterns on my spine.
“What are you doing?” I snapped at him, not because I didn’t like it—I actually kind of did—but I was irritated and suspicious and frustrated as hell about the past night, and my damn bite scar was tingling.
His brows rose beneath his dark mask. “Trying to dance with you, Scar. Is that a crime?”
My nostrils flared, but my lips twitched, fighting off a stupid grin at his own cocky one. Something had happened between us the night before, but I still wasn’t really sure what. One thing I knew for sure—Mercer was definitely changing.
Knowing there wasn’t much else to do at the moment but dance, I forced my mind away from whatever nefarious scheme Cole was concocting as he continued to force us to wait.
“I can practically hear you purring,” he murmured, tugging me in tight against his body.
I should have fought him, should have kept my distance from him, because in just days, I’d lose Mercer to the throne. Why did I always let him in this way? Why did I never try to shield myself? Why?
“Maybe because...” Should I do this? Should I say this?
Ah hell, there was no doubt going to be a hit on our life at some point tonight. Why keep fighting?
Rolling my eyes, I forced myself to ignore the voice of reason and said, “Maybe because you look good in your suit. Never thought I’d actually see you in one in my lifetime.”
He snorted, but the sound was pleased, which caused my toes to curl. The orchestra switched songs to one that was slower, darker, sexier.
The air between Merc and I shivered with expectation and a sudden heightened awareness.
He glanced around before quickly looking back at me. “Why haven’t we ever done this before?”
I smirked. “What? Come to a vampire ball?”
His chuckle was deep and made my pulse sing. “No, you little smartass.”
I laughed back, feeling myself curl deeper into his massive body, forgetting for a moment where we were. I was losing myself in him, in his scent of bergamot, in the steely strength of his arms, in the overwhelming presence of a man as intense and brooding as Mercer was.
His fingers tightened against mine, planting them harder against his chest, right above the spot of his steadily beating heart. I swallowed.
“This. Go out. Just you and me. Why did this take so long?”
He sounded genuinely confused, which confused the hell out of me.
“Um, maybe because you’re such an obstinate asshole, who kept pushing me away all the time.”
A Gothic couple dancing close to us glanced over at me when I said that. Bloody red eyes looked intrigued even as they also appeared repulsed by the very idea of a vampire-and-shifter romance.
I hissed at the two vampires, and Mercer bristled at my sudden agitation. The couple drifted slowly away.
Mercer’s feather-light touch on the back of my hand made me look up at him.
He shrugged. “Let it go, Scar. Stop thinking about it.”
Feeling stupid, I wondered why was I even bothering to try to defend what Mercer and I did or didn’t have to any of the yahoos in that place. I’d always known things couldn’t happen between Mercer and me.
Whether here among my kind or back in Silver Creek among his, everyone let it be known what they thought of people like us, abhorrent abominations mingling outside our species—not that it didn’t happen. It did, infrequently.
It was rarely tolerated or accepted, though. I thought of James and his vampire bride and how even they had ended in tragedy.
Nothing good could ever come of a liaison like ours.
“Stop,” he said, tilting my face up with a gentle finger to my chin.
I glared at the bands of radiant green cutting through his normally turquoise irises.
Biting down on my back teeth, I said, “This is so stupid.”
“What? What’s stupid?” he asked quickly.
“You. Me. This.” I turned out a hand. “We’re at a freaking vampire ball, for crying out loud. This isn’t the time or the place, and I’m so sick and tired of dealing with this.”
His chest exhaled, pressing tightly against my own, making me feel hot and sweaty all of a sudden, making my dress feel too tight, too constricting.
“Dealing with this or dealing with me?” he asked quietly.
In a moment of blunt honesty, I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just tired, Mercer.”
I shook my head, noticing the floor was suddenly becoming more crowded, forcing us even closer and swirling in tighter circles. We had already been in each other’s bubbles, but I frowned as an awareness of being watched suddenly fell over me.
A low rumble tore from Mercer’s throat, causing the dancers around us to cast him dubious looks. I was really surprised that they’d let him in at all and that so far, things had remained as civil as they had.
I wanted to talk about Cole, about Luc, about Juliet, and about what they were planning, but I couldn’t, not with all the ears and eyes around. Still, I felt a choking sense of helplessness invading my bones.
Even though I’d knowingly walked into that trap, being aware didn’t make it any better for me. Soon, Cole would have to make an appearance. The master vampire had invited me personally, so to not greet me would be a terrible breach of protocol, and if nothing else, we vampires were punctilious when it came to observing tradition.
“I never did thank you for saving me,” he said quietly, drawing me away from my thoughts.
I shook my head. “Nothing you wouldn’t have done.”
He stopped swaying, causing a few bodies to bump into us with agitated huffs before swirling off. More bodies were definitely on the floor. I wasn’t imagining that.
The low hum of chattering and tinkling of light laughter suddenly seemed to change in pitch, becoming more of a buzzing irritant
than background noise.
I could tell by the swirls of jade banded through Mercer’s eyes that he was also aware of the shift in atmosphere.
“Scar,” Merc said in his thick whiskey drawl, eliciting a rush of goosebumps, “I know that you’re still feeling—”
My lips thinned. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Yeah, well maybe you should,” he said. “You can’t keep ignoring what’s going on with—”
“Why not? Because ignoring shit seems to work so well for you,” I snapped with cold sarcasm.
Instantly regretting my words but too damn stubborn to take them back, I clenched my back teeth. He stiffened, his eyes fully green, and the phantom image of his wolf glowed back at me.
I knew he was pissed, but dammit, we didn’t have the time to argue about our relationship, and especially not there.
Glancing around, he lowered his voice nearly to a whisper, forcing me to lean in just to hear him. “I know that burying feelings can become a cancer, can eat away at your soul, can twist you, change you. We need to talk about it, Scar. And if not here, then where, huh? When? There’s never going to be a right time for any of this shit. There’s just time, which we have now.”
I sniffed, glaring hotly at him. “What the hell, Merc? You don’t talk to me for months... Now suddenly, you want me to think everything’s changed? Want me to just believe that—”
“Yes, goddamn it.” His hands clenched around my biceps, and though his words were low, his presence was intense. “Everything’s changed. I told you I’m all in, and I fucking meant it. I’m not going anywhere.”
My heart pounded so hard in my chest I feared it might try to punch out of my ribcage. I kept pushing him because I didn’t believe him—I couldn’t. I couldn’t let him in again. I’d been burned too many times before.
I shook my head. “I don’t—”
“Ah, the freed vampire.” A voice silk as honey and smooth as molasses curled around me, almost knocking me on my ass from the power of thrall laced behind it.
My breathing deepened as I turned, expecting to look into the eyes of the master vampire himself, but instead it was a blonde looking back at me from beneath a velvety black mask.
His hair looked like burnished gold, and his eyes were baby blue. He was tall, nearly as tall as Mercer, but nowhere near as large and overpowering.
Thin but athletic looking, he filled out his black suit nicely. A crimson brocade vest and tie made his otherwise dark outfit pop. Then I looked at his mouth, and my pulse jumped at the small angular scar just above the spot of his cupid’s bow.
“Scarlett Smith.” Luc grinned, one corner of his devastatingly handsome lips slid up, and I swallowed hard. “You’re far more beautiful than I’d been led to believe.”
He held out his hand to me, his manners nothing short of gentlemanly, but I didn’t trust him. Odd, just seconds before, I’d been so nervous I thought I would puke from it, but now I felt calm, unflappable.
“Funny how you can tell, Luc,” I said, letting Mercer know who the Veiler was.
Luc flinched, clearly aware I’d been doing my homework. I grinned behind my mask. Mercer’s grip tightened on my hand.
“Even while I’m wearing a mask.”
Luc, clearly not a man easily offended, shrugged casually and grinned. “Yes, quite.” Then he glanced over toward Mercer. “Would you mind if I stole your partner for a dance?”
Mercer, who’d moved in behind me, stiffened at the request. I glanced over my shoulder and noted that though I felt his tension radiating off him, he didn’t project it. His smile was easy and affable.
“Of course, but do try to bring her back in one piece.” The sharp edge of a growl shivered behind his words, letting Luc and me both know it for the threat it actually was.
Luc bowed deeply though he never took his eyes off Mercer. “Please, enjoy yourself, shifter. Take refreshment. Find a new partner. Ms. Smith and I have much to discuss.”
Whether Mercer would have said something more, I never knew because I was instantly whisked away and flanked on all sides by men and women dressed all in black and looking like the spook’s version of the secret service.
My brows rose at the obvious wall of bodies encircling us. I glanced toward where I’d seen Mercer last, but he was gone without a trace, forcing the nerves I’d not felt just a second before to come blazing back to life.
Luc wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in tightly as he began a simple waltz around the dance floor. He wore gloves. I’d hoped to maybe scrape a finger across a ring or something like that, to try to gain some sort of an upper hand in the situation, but the man didn’t even wear a necklace.
If I were a suspicious kind of person, I’d say it was almost as if he knew what I could do, which was silly because no one there, other than Mercer and myself, knew I was an empath.
“So you plan to kill me?” I asked without preamble, in no mood to play the vampire’s silly games of what if.
Luc’s brows lifted in astonished surprise but were quickly smoothed out as he smiled brightly. “Yes, if you must know, Scarlett, that is our intention. I assume that at this point you know who you’ve killed.”
Hearing him actually admit it helped me to focus, to breathe more easily, ironically enough. I sniffed. “Juliet Infantes.”
I intentionally said her name to see what kind of reaction I might get out of him. He was the man I’d seen in the memory, the man she’d obviously held some sort of affection for, considering how cleanly his face had been imprinted in her pendant.
To be able to pick up that kind of psychic link without a murder involved or some other form of madness or torture meant only one thing... She’d loved him. The only way for an item to imprint was if some type of great emotion was involved in the making of it.
Few emotions were more emotive than fear and love.
Luc’s smirk remained as it was, imperious, cold, and detached. Whatever he’d meant to Juliet, she’d not meant nearly as much to him. The strings playing in the background shifted, becoming more upbeat, forcing us to move and twirl faster. On the last twirl, I caught a glint of gold dangling from his vest pocket.
He was wearing a pocket watch, an extremely Victorian accessory. My heart thumped erratically in my chest. The older an item, the more opportunities for imprinting. Juliet’s pendant had been too new to pick up anything other than a cloudy, wispy image of his smile, but if by some miracle the pocket watch was one Luc had worn during the eighteen hundreds, something could be there. The odds were stupidly low, but I didn’t have much else to hold out hope for at that point.
“When did you know that she loved you?” I asked the question mostly as a throwaway, trying to buy time, never expecting to feel him suddenly tense up beneath my hands.
Around us, a buzz of anticipation grew. The low chattering, which had been white noise in the background, seemed to me to be growing just a teeny bit louder and more expectant.
His eyes were thinned slits. “How did you kill her?” he asked quietly, the words so low I had to lean in to hear them. “And I mean the real story. Not the ridiculous one you gave Declan.”
My insides quivered as I realized they hadn’t seen me vaporize her. Thank God. I’d been hopeful, but I hadn’t known for sure.
I shrugged, gliding easily with him. Luc was a great dancer. Too bad I was going to be forced kill him.
“Does it matter? Dead is dead.”
His neck visibly thickened as he bit down on his back teeth, causing the large vein in his neck to distend. His pale ivory skin, so like my own, trembled with suppressed rage.
Very interesting. That reaction didn’t jive with the fact that he’d not seemed a bit concerned when I’d mentioned Juliet’s obvious infatuation with him, but me killing her mattered terribly. It could have been loyalty, but I didn’t think so.
I grinned. After years of being a detective, I had learned to read people fairly well. Mercer called it an instinct of mine. Luc was unf
lappable and dismissive, but he also couldn’t hide his rage, not from me. Even though he was masked, I could see how often he blinked, how his lips tightened just so at the corners, how his nostrils flared now and again.
Emboldened, I ran a nail down the front of his vest, idly rubbing circles down his chest as I drew closer and closer to the tempting dangle of chain. I doubted anything was there, but...
“Do you honestly think,” I leaned into his ear and whispered hotly, “that I would have just strolled up in here without some sort of a backup plan? Do you really think I’m that stupid?”
I was that stupid, totally that stupid, because I didn’t have shit, but he didn’t need to know that. I was on to something. I knew it. I just didn’t know what... yet. I was going to find it, though, find it and learn it, and I was gonna get Mercer and myself the hell out of there in one piece.
His fingers curled tightly around my arms, squeezing to the point of pain, but I knew he’d do nothing, not out there, not while we had an audience. Not everyone there that night was in Clan Infantes. Others were there—fae, dwarves, shifters.
The castle that evening, until midnight, was neutral ground, meaning no one who’d accepted the Infantes invitation would be allowed to come to harm while under their roof. After midnight, all bets were off, but until then, the terms of peace were an unbreakable oath.
I grinned, and a low, humorless chuckle spilled off his tongue.
“You know shit, little freed vampire,” Luc snarled, even as he gently twined a length of my hair around his finger, breaking me out in a wash of heated revulsion.
I wanted to pull away from him, wanted to punch him in his fucking face, turn and run and grab Mercer and get the hell out of that place. The bodies dressed in black had nearly doubled around us.
His smile was satisfied, his eyes gleaming with victory, as though he knew I was just posturing. Opening my olfactory senses, I reached out to try to sense Mercer, to pinpoint his location, but he was still absent.
I didn’t like that, not at all. No way in hell could I let on, though, because my finger was within an inch of that damned chain. All I needed to do was keep Luc distracted just a second longer, but he was holding my hand tightly, not letting me move farther without risking letting him know that my touch was far from random.
Me and You and a Ghost Named Boo Page 23