“So you have no further need of my…services?”
Daniel smiled, the same charming, confident smile that had been wowing voters for the last five years. “No, I’d like you to stay close, at least until after the election. In fact, I’m making you an official member of my security team. We’ll be leaving for San Francisco aboard my private jet in a little over an hour. Don’t be late.”
“Okay.” Sarge stuffed another two hundred fifty dollars’ worth of chocolate into his mouth.
“Da-da-da-DA-da-DA!” Great-aunt Leticia sang in her crackly voice.
Trick glanced up to see her descending the grand staircase of her Pierce Street home in a short fuchsia flapper dress and enough glitzy jewelry to blind anyone foolish enough to look directly at her.
“What do you think, Patrick?” She paused at the foot of the stairs, then did a slow-motion pirouette to show off her costume.
“I think you’d have made one hell of a flapper.”
“A bit before my time, dear boy, but yes, I agree.” She adjusted the fringe along her hem. “I would have made one hell of a flapper. You’re looking pretty spiffy yourself.”
Trick laughed. “Spiffy?”
“Dashing then,” she said with a fond smile. “With the boots, the scarf, the cutlass—”
“The eye patch.”
“The eye patch goes without saying, of course, but my favorite part of your costume is that shirt. Voluminous sleeves, the open V at the neck showing just a hint of muscular pecs. Very sexy. Pirate’s a good look on you, though personally, I’d lose the parrot.”
“Argh. A pox on you, woman. What pirate worth his salt would venture forth without his faithful feathered friend?”
“One who wantËuo;te ed to be able to dance without worrying about his partner’s eyes being pecked out.”
“It’s a fake parrot,” Trick pointed out, but Great-aunt Leticia still made a valid point. The parrot would definitely be in the way on the dance floor.
Trick was removing the bird when he heard Great-aunt Leticia give a gasp of excitement. He glanced up to see what had prompted her reaction and caught his first glimpse of Nevada as she came floating down the stairs like a fairy princess. The stuffed parrot hit the checkerboard tiles of the entry with a thunk. Trick wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if his jaw had done the same.
Nevada glanced at Trick and his great-aunt, then frowned. “What’s wrong? Do I look stupid? I look stupid. I’ll go—”
“Stop,” Trick said when she turned and started back up the staircase.
She hesitated.
“Don’t change. You don’t look stupid; you look fantastic.” And she did, in a glistening beaded white gown with a low neckline and a long, full skirt. “Who are you? Cinderella?”
“I’m supposed to be Snow White, not the early-in-the-story version, who lived in the forest with the seven dwarfs, but the happily-ever-after version, who lived with the prince in the castle.”
Great-aunt Leticia heaved a sigh. “Perfect, my dear. You look absolutely perfect. Without a doubt, you’ll be the fairest of them all.”
“Without a doubt,” Trick said.
“Of course,” Great-aunt Leticia added with a frown, “most of your competition falls into the over-forty category. Still”—she brightened—“you really do look fabulous.”
“So do you,” Nevada told her. “Though I thought you’d decided to go as a Gypsy.”
“It’s a lady’s prerogative to change her mind.”
“How about my costume? Very fitting, wouldn’t you say?” Trick asked.
Nevada smiled, then trailed her fingers along his jaw. “You, me hearty, belong on the cover of a romance novel.”
“That good, huh?”
“Better,” Nevada and his great-aunt said in chorus.
“Well then,” he said and swaggered out to the car, a lady on each arm.
NINETEEN
Nevada had expected to feel out of place rubbing shoulders with San Francisco’s elite. Instead, the situation felt both comfortable and oddly familiar. Or maybe not so oddly if she was, indeed, the missing heiress, Whitney Snowden.
“You seem to be having a good time,” Great-aunt Leticia observed in one of the lulls between dances.
Nevada smiled. “I am,” she said, surprised to realize it was true. “I can’t remember the last time I felt this relaxed, this happy.” Of course, those ten stolen minutes she and Trick had just spent in a darkened alcove off the short hall that separated the main ballroom from the buffet were probably responsible for at least some of those happy feelings. She waved at Trick, currently working his way through the crowd toward them while juggling three champagne flutes. He smiled, looking every bit as happy as she felt.
I love you, she thought.
Then someone tapped her on the shoulder. “May I have this dance?”
She turned, still smiling, but when she saw the handsome cowboy gazing down at her, her heart did a cartwheel, and for a second or two, she couldn’t catch her breath. “Mr. Faraday? What are you doing here?”
He tilted his head and extended one big hand. “Well, miss, I’m fixing to dance with the prettiest girl in the room. That’s what I’m doing.”
Next to Nevada, Great-aunt Leticia heaved a sigh, fanning herself with one wrinkled hand. “John Wayne couldn’t have delivered that line with any more sincerity. Dance with the boy, Nevada. He’s earned it.”
“But Trick—”
“A little healthy competition never hurt anybody,” Great-aunt Leticia said. “Now go. Dance.”
But Great-aunt Leticia didn’t understand. She didn’t realize Ethan Faraday was a demon hunter, and that where there were demon hunters, there were bound to be demons.
Not sure what else to do, Nevada placed her hand in Faraday’s and let him lead her onto the crowded dance floor, where he pulled her into his arms, not a body-to-body embrace but rather a formal waltz position. Even so, she knew he must be able to feel her trembling. The only saving grace was that her trembling was only partly fear. Another, almost equal part, was anger. She’d been having such a good time, a fairy-tale evening, and now here was Faraday, a flesh-and-blood reminder that no one got a happy ending without earning it, that monsters lurked in the dark, and that at least some of them were waiting for her. “How did you recognize me? I thought between the mask and the costume, I was pretty well disguised.”
“You are.” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “If I hadn’t seen you dancing with Granger, I wouldn’t have made the connection. Who’s the old lady?”
“Trick’s great-aunt. She helped plan the event. She’s why we’re here. How about you? Why are you here? Did you follow Sarge?”
Faraday missed a step. “No. He’s here, too?”
“I haven’t seen him. I just assumed…What do you mean ‘too’?”
“I’m chasing more dangerous prey tonight.”
“More dangerous than Sarge?”
“A hell of a lot more dangerous. Older, richer, smarter. We don’t know his real identity or what he looks like, but—crazy as it sounds—we think he’s trying to Óuo;routake over the world, manipulate financial markets, control governments, heavy-duty stuff like that. Apparently, blood’s not enough to satisfy him anymore.”
“And he’s here?” she said. “Why?”
Faraday shrugged. “Lots of rich, powerful people in attendance. Maybe he’s planning to make a deal with one of them.”
Nevada glanced around the crowded ballroom full of costumed guests. “How will you recognize him?”
Faraday shrugged again. “No saying I will, but hell, I figured it was worth a shot. Not every day a guy gets the opportunity to take down royalty.”
“Royalty?”
“That’s a joke,” he said. “The guy’s code name is King. All I know for sure is that he’s English. You haven’t heard any British accents this evening, have you?”
“A couple,” she told him. “That actor, Hugh Sterling, for one.”
Faraday
shook his head. “Hollywood’s full of blood-suckers, but I can’t see a centuries-old vampire making romantic comedies.”
Trick tapped Faraday on the shoulder. “May I cut in?” he asked.
“Music’s finished,” Faraday told him with a grin.
“Bad timing on my part,” Trick said. “I didn’t expect to see you here, Faraday.”
“Yeah, I’m not much for these fancy shindigs, but I got word that Number One on our Ten Most Wanted list was going to be here. Couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that.”
“Not Sarge then?” Trick asked.
Faraday shook his head. “Lost him in Sacramento a couple days back.”
“Sacramento,” Trick said. “Wish I knew what it was with vampires and Sacramento.”
Trick noticed that it took a while for Nevada to regain her spirits after the run-in with Faraday, but for the last half hour or so, she’d been glowing, and damn, he thought, Nevada in jeans and a T-shirt was sexy as hell, but Nevada in silk with her glow on outshone Hollywood’s loveliest young starlets, several of whom were scattered around the ballroom.
“I still can’t believe it,” Nevada said. “Your great-aunt introduced me to the governor!”
“I met him, too.”
“Wasn’t he charming? Not nearly as intimidating as I would have expected him to be.”
“Charm is political currency,” Trick said dryly, “and readily doled out.” Especially when the recipient of said charm was as young and beautiful as Nevada.
“I was introduced to one of the Silicon Valley geniuses, too, but I have to admit I didn’t understand a single word she said after ‘how do you do.’”
“Geek speak is a whole different language,” Trick said. “Marcello’s fairly fluent, but I only know a smattering myself.” Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Faraday. With a tall, curvy Wonder Woman in tow, he was headed in their direction. “Let’s get out of here,” Trick whispered in Nevada’s ear.
“Your great-aunt won’t mind?”
Trick nodded toward the fringe of the crowd where Great-aunt Leticia was involved in a lively discussion with a tall, paunchy Abraham Lincoln. “I doubt she’ll miss us.”
“All right,” Nevada agreed, giving him an impish smile that set his heart thumping so loudly, he could scarcely hear the music.
“Let’s go make our excuses to Great-aunt Leticia.”
“You go,” Nevada said. “I’ll meet you at the entrance. I need to freshen up.”
One minute Nevada was working her way through the crowded bar and buffet area, heading for the ladies’ room. The next, she heard a man laughing and stopped dead in her tracks, chills running up and down her spine. She knew that laugh.
In an instant, all her missing memories came rushing back: her father’s body slumped in a chair beside the fireplace, her screams, footsteps pounding down the hall, then the murderer’s reflection looming up behind her in the octagonal mirror.
The flash had been unbearably painful, much worse than normal, perhaps because the crime had been so fresh. “Dead,” she’d managed to say in the split-second before she’d lost consciousness.
Nevada’s anger flared white hot. She whirled around to face the man who’d taken her father’s life, then done his best to destroy hers. He had his back to her, but once again, she saw the truth, reflected this time in the mirror behind the bar. A dark-haired man in a Zorro costume sat chatting with a distinguished-looking older gentleman dressed as Julius Caesar. “A pox on the Republicans!” Caesar said, speaking with an upper-crust British accent.
Another memory nagged at Nevada, but before she could extract it from the depths of her still-clouded mind, her half brother Daniel glanced up and saw her reflection. He stared intently. Caesar murmured something to him, but he didn’t respond.
Surely he couldn’t see through her disguise, not with half her face covered by the sequined mask. Move, she told herself. Just turn and move away. Casually. But she remained frozen in place.
She knew the instant he made the connection. His eyes narrowed even before he leaped to his feet.
A surge of adrenaline sent her racing. Even so, she seemed to be moving in slow motion. She dodged around guests heading to and from the bar, the voluminous skirt of her costume slowing her down as she made her way toward the exit sign. She didn’t dare look back to see if Daniel was following her. If she could just make it to the women’s restroom…
Halfway along the deserted hallway, he grabbed her roughly from behind and spun her around. “Spying on me again, Whitney?” He shooÓ&rd%" k her as if she had no more substance than one of Great-aunt Leticia’s rag dolls.
Nevada didn’t waste time with pointless denials. She just screamed. Or started to. She’d barely sucked in a breath when Daniel clamped his hand across her mouth.
Ignoring the elevators, he dragged her toward the stairwell, forcing her inside.
The instant he removed his hand, she screamed, the sound echoing in the enclosed space.
His fingers tightened viciously on her arm. “Shut up.”
But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Someone might hear. Someone might come to investigate.
“Shut the hell up!” Daniel slammed her against the cinder block wall, then slapped her repeatedly across the face, knocking her mask askew.
She couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but gasp for air as tears ran down her face.
Daniel ripped her mask off and tossed it to the floor. “Thought you could hide from me, did you?”
“I wasn’t hiding. I didn’t know you were here.”
“Just like you didn’t know I was at the mall that day in Sacramento.” He gave a harsh laugh. “How much did that bitch, Yelena, tell you?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Liar!” he said. “I paid her to keep an eye on you, and she betrayed me.”
“I’m not going back to the Appleton Institute.”
“No,” he agreed. “That would be pointless. I only allowed it the first time because Regina was dead set against silencing you more…permanently.”
“You mean by killing me?”
“I don’t like loose ends, and that’s what you are, Whitney. I think it’s time for you to disappear again, for good this time, just as our dear stepmother did.”
“You killed Regina? But why? I thought you two were in this together.”
“She grew tiresome.”
“But you killed Dad because he found out what you and Regina were doing behind his back.”
“No, Whitney.” Daniel’s smile chilled her blood. “I killed Dad because he threatened me, threatened my career. And it had nothing to do with Regina. Dad was no fool; he suspected what I was doing to you.”
“Doing…to me?” she faltered.
“While you were sleeping. Drugged, actually. I was careful, too, not to leave any obvious marks. You never suspected a thing, did you?”
Nevada shuddered uncontrollably. She stared at Daniel’s handsome face, but all she could see was the monster who lived inside his skin. To think this foulness had touched her, had…
“Don’t look like that. It wasn’t as if I had a choice,” he explained reasÓ exllionably. “Regina was willing, of course, but I needed more than she had to offer. I’ve always been cursed with a voracious appetite.”
Wave after wave of horror and disgust rippled through her. “You raped me? Your own sister? You drugged and raped me?”
“That’s half sister,” he corrected her. “And don’t be ridiculous. Of course, I didn’t rape you. Rape implies forcible entry, and I was always very careful, very gentle. It was never sex for its own sake anyway. Arousal increases blood flow, you see.” He paused, but she was too horror-struck to say a word. “Greed was my downfall. Everyone started to comment on how pale and anemic you looked.”
Pale and anemic?
“Then Dad caught me in your room at one in the morning with blood on my chin and my hand in the cookie jar, so to speak.”
A horrible possibility occurred to her. “You were feeding more than your sexual appetite,” she said faintly.
He showed his fangs in a travesty of a smile. “Yes, I am a vampire, though I’d appreciate it if you didn’t spread it around. Oh, wait. I forgot.” The vicious expression twisting his handsome face made her blood run cold. “You aren’t going to have that option, are you, Whitney? You’re about to disappear.”
Trick glanced at his watch. What was keeping Nevada? He scanned the crowd in the ballroom, but there was no sign of her anywhere.
“Problem?”
He turned to find Ethan Faraday at his side. “Nevada went to the ladies’ room, but she’s been gone longer than expected. I’m probably overreacting.”
“Or not,” Faraday said. “If Nevada accidentally stumbled across that vamp I told you about…”
And had one of her unpredictable psychic flashes…Trick’s heartbeat kicked up. “What does this vamp look like?”
Faraday shrugged. “See, that’s the thing. Nobody seems to know. Or if they do, they’re not talking. I did spot another mutual ‘friend’ of ours about five minutes ago, though.”
The only candidate for that role was…“Sarge?” Trick’s alarm level jumped from concerned to panicky. “Sarge is here?”
“Yeah,” Faraday said. “Dressed as a clown. How’s that for irony? Right now he’s hovering near the elevators just outside this entrance.”
“Shit,” Trick swore. “Where he can’t miss seeing us leave.”
“There’s a second bank of elevators in the hall beyond the bar,” Faraday said.
“Where the restrooms are,” Trick said. “I’ll go wait for Nevada there. We’ll have to leave the back way.”
“Just in case,” Faraday said, “you might want to keep this handy.” He passed Trick a pointed wooden stake. “Takes more muscle than a cÓmus &lrossbow but works just as well. Keep an eye peeled for my badass, too. King’s a major threat.”
Trick slipped the stake into his pocket. “More dangerous than Sarge?”
“A thousand times more dangerous.”
Dangerous. Nevada’s father had died, and her stepmother had disappeared. What if…? Fear made Trick’s voice hoarse. “How much do you know about Daniel Snowden?”
Wicked is the night Page 26