“Why?”
Roksana shrugged. “He inspires loyalty. Even from me.”
“Does it have something to do with the fact that Jonas helped Elias when he was freshly Silenced?”
“I thought our tiff had ended,” sniffed the slayer.
Ginny hid a smile. “I have to get to my meeting. Could you do me a huge favor and put these dresses in garment bags? It’ll save me time when we have to leave for the expo.”
“Nyet.” She slashed a hand across her neck. “I’m not to leave you alone. The Elder might have been eliminated, but now we have the High Order to worry about, since you’ve deemed it wise to give yourself to a bloodsucker.”
“Five minutes. Please?” Ginny was already backing from the room. “I’m going to be running late as it is. And anyway, the sun doesn’t go down for another half an hour. It’s nature’s vampire repellant.”
“I’ll walk you to the office and make sure there are no intruders. Or spiders. Or sharp edges. I’m not taking any chances with your fragile humanity.”
Ginny rolled her eyes, but didn’t protest as Roksana followed her down the stairs. “Maybe I’d be better off if…” She watched closely for the slayer’s reaction. “If Jonas made me a vampire.”
She didn’t necessarily mean it. Not yet. Losing her humanity wasn’t something she could ever take so lightly. But she wanted to know if it was possible. She wanted to know what it would take. And more importantly, the consequences. Ginny was more interested in satisfying her curious nature than floating the possibility.
Roksana’s face remained stoic, but her steps faltered. “You would no longer be able to sustain him.”
A pang hit her in the throat, the memory of him pale and out of his mind with hunger rushing to the fore. “Would anything sustain him if I was Silenced?”
“There’ve been no cases like yours. Vampire mates with girl, girl becomes only source of nourishment for vampire, girl turns to vampire…I don’t know what happens after that.”
Ginny processed that, the fear of the unknown weighing in her stomach like a boulder. She stood in the middle of the lobby while Roksana checked every shadow and hiding spot, clomping across the burgundy carpet with a sense of purpose, until finally she gave Ginny the all clear.
“Do not leave this office,” Roksana said, punching the air with her finger. “I’ll be back. Right after I bag these dresses like I’m someone who earns minimum wage and says things like ‘I’ll try and get a sitter.’”
“You’re the best,” Ginny called back, already pulling out her sample books and paperwork in preparation for the meeting. She took out the laptop and opened their trusty—and often malfunctioning—database to read through the information Larissa should have entered for tonight’s meeting. There was nothing there, though. Simply the initial “C,” a phone number and the appointment time. “Guess Larissa already had one foot out the door,” Ginny murmured.
A thunderclap brought Ginny’s head up.
Was it supposed to rain? Last time she checked, the sky had been clear.
There were no windows in her small, airless office, but when the lobby darkened considerably, she rose from her seat. The lights were still on, but the windows were almost black from the sudden storm. She came around the desk and stopped in the doorway, her heart flying into her throat when thunder rolled, immediately followed by a crack of lightning, briefly illuminating the empty lobby.
There. In the far end, near the visitation room.
Had she seen an outline of somebody or were her eyes playing tricks on her?
All she could hear in the muted stillness was the sound of her own breathing. In out in out. Something was missing. The gentle ticking of the grandfather clock. Had it stopped working? In the absence of enough light, she couldn’t see the time indicated by the two hands. The sound of rain intruded, pelting the windows like Tic Tacs falling from the sky and thunder blustered again, followed by another blast of lightning.
A movement occurred in her periphery and she whipped her head in that direction. Nothing. Just the movement of shadow, surely.
The hair on the back of Ginny’s neck stood up.
Slowly, she backed into the office and closed the door, twisting the lock. Roksana would be downstairs any minute. Of course Ginny was spooked. Her life had become a parade of the unusual. Things that never existed before were her new normal. Once a vampire makes an attempt on one’s life, one may never feel truly safe again. Wasn’t that a universal truth?
Someone knocked on the office door.
Once.
Pause.
Twice.
Pause.
A third time.
Roksana wouldn’t knock.
Ginny reached back and gripped the desk, remaining as still as possible. Who was on the other side of the door? If it was a vampire that wanted to do her harm, there would be nothing she could do to stop them. Even if she had a big, nasty stake, she didn’t have the skill or speed to drive it home.
Another, louder knock made her jump, her hand flying up to cover her mouth. “Ginny?”
Her hand dropped away. “Tucker?”
“What’s good, sweetheart?”
She heaved a choppy laugh and unlocked the door, opening it to find Tucker in a rain slicker and Wellingtons. Gold chain. No shirt. “Crazy weather we’re having.”
“Yeah, it’s not often I get outside before six o’clock in the fall. I feel like a kid again.” Even as he made the joke, Ginny could see the concern lurking in the corners of his downturned mouth. “Where’s Roks?”
“Bagging my dresses for tonight.”
“I’m right here,” the slayer said, striding into the room, wooden stake at her side. “What the hell is up with this storm?”
“You mind putting that thing away?” Tucker waited for her to tuck the weapon into her boot. “I don’t know. It came on pretty fast.”
“Too fast,” Roksana muttered. “Where is the prince?”
“He’s going to be late. That newbie he met with the other day is having an existential crisis. He’ll meet us there.” He hopped up onto the desk and tossed a wink at Ginny. “Until then, I’m putting the body back in bodyguard.”
Fighting a smile, Ginny checked the time on her laptop. “My meeting is late. I’ll just call him to make sure he’s still coming.”
She picked up the office phone and dialed, getting a series of beeps in her ear. “The number you dialed is no longer in service,” she murmured, repeating after the robotic voice. “We’ll give him five more minutes.”
Her appointment never arrived.
A while later, as she, Roksana and Tucker carried her dresses out and loaded them into the waiting car, Ginny looked up at the sky and couldn’t find the merest whisper of a cloud.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It was one thing to be the outcast of Embrace the Lace. It was quite another to have so many people witnessing the obvious shunning.
Ginny had been assigned to a display table in the mustiest, darkest corner of the church basement, complete with cobwebs and rattling radiator. The light panel overhead no longer worked, leaving her in the shadows. There was a clear division of her and everyone else, the other tables bathed in light and surrounded by friends and family, who’d come to see the hard work of their loved ones and place bids on the finished dresses.
Ginny had Roksana and Tucker.
They basically waltzed in, fell into the two metal folding chairs she’d been allotted and glowered at everyone who even considered a visit to the distant glacier that was her table.
With a final adjustment, Ginny stepped back from the mannequin to which she’d affixed her Christmas dress and removed the pin from her mouth. “Did I mention how glad I am that you’re both here?”
The pair grunted and continued their hard scrutiny of every living soul in the basement.
“That being said, if you could try and appear just a smidgen less life threatening, that might help increase traffic to my table.”
“This basement is a fire trap and the alley out back doesn’t exit to a street. Coincidentally, if something happens to you, Jonas is going to set fire to my insides.” Tucker held up his hands, palms out. “His words, not mine.”
“How am I supposed to auction off my dresses if you’re scaring everyone away?”
Roksana shrugged a shoulder. “We could bid.”
Tucker batted his eyelashes. “Do you have anything in turquoise?”
Ginny slumped. She’d harbored no delusions that she would arrive tonight and suddenly be the belle of the ball. But she’d hoped, at the very least, her dresses would speak for themselves. That unlike the meetings, the expo would place the members on an even playing field. Not everyone in the room knew she was Death Girl, did they?
Determined to keep her optimism, Ginny took her next dress out of its garment bag and arranged it on the mannequin. As she was doing so, someone called her name from across the room and she turned to wave at Gordon. He stood with his mother at the cookies and coffee table in a suit and tie. And wasn’t that nice of him to get dressed up for his mother’s dress club, even if he looked distinctly uncomfortable fidgeting with his collar?
Yes, it was nice. A lot nicer than buying half of her funeral home without telling her first and then surrounding her in people repellent à la Tucker and Roksana.
Lord, that sounded mean-spirited of her. She was grateful for the protection of her friends, but Jonas being high handed and princely was only going to work if she had some input into the decisions that affected her.
A hot poker prodded Ginny in the sternum.
Anger?
Yes, that was anger.
In fact, she couldn’t wait for Jonas to arrive so she could express it. As soon as he walked in, she was going to march right up to him and…and ask to speak to him privately! After all, she didn’t want to make a scene. She just needed him to realize she wasn’t going to live her life like a dog’s favorite bone, constantly being buried for her own protection—and without her consent!
An elderly woman with a sweet smile approached the table. Ginny shot Roksana and Tucker a warning glance over her shoulder before welcoming the potential customer. A dress customer, not a funeral home customer, although her advanced age did technically qualify her for both. Don’t be dark. You’re selling dresses tonight, not coffins. “Hello,” Ginny said brightly. “Are you having a nice time?”
“Yes, I am. Thank you.” The woman re-shouldered her purse and leaned in to admire Ginny’s Christmas dress. “This one caught my eye across the room. Look at the holly detail—I love it!”
“Less talk, more bidding,” Roksana called, smacking her gum.
Ginny brandished a pin at the slayer and imbedded it in the table, in the V between her index and middle fingers.
Roksana looked impressed. “Just trying to help.”
“I would like to bid, actually.” The woman seemed wary about approaching the table. Could anyone blame her? She’d just managed to pick up the little, square bidding sheet when a voice split the air.
“I wouldn’t bid on that one,” Galina sing-songed. “It was manufactured in a funeral home. Who knows what kind of nasty diseases it carries. Honestly, there should be a rule against her selling them.”
All movement ceased in the church basement. If Ginny had felt cold in the corner before, she was freezing now, inside and out, yet her face burned with heat. How she could listen to such comments her entire life and still have them land like daggers in her chest was beyond her. She should have been a seasoned pro. But in the wake of Galina’s words, she reeled. Her hands shook. Every eye in the room was on her and it took all of her inner strength not to flee the room.
A chair scraped back.
“Can you please watch Ginny’s back while I kill the dumb bitch?” Roksana asked in an oddly formal tone, receiving an immediate—and alarmingly bored—“of course” from Tucker, thus rousing Ginny from her stupor.
“No,” she murmured to Roksana, though she even found it hard to look even her friend in the eye after her embarrassment. “I think…I can do this.”
Until recently, she might have smiled and whispered some altruistic sentiment about killing people with kindness. Not now. Letting people step on her to elevate themselves had been fusing her to the ground for so long. And now that she knew what it felt like to be lifted up by friends, by purpose, she didn’t want to stay down.
Roksana pursed her lips and sat back down.
“Galina.” Ginny called, facing the room again. “Since you’re so worried about the rules, they state that you must be a Coney Island resident to be admitted to the club and I’m almost positive you dwell in Gerritsen Beach.”
Galina gasped and dropped the clutch purse she’d been holding onto her folding table with a dramatic thwack. Guests turned to look at her and she let out a high-pitched laugh. “Yes, but…very, very close to the border. And no matter where I live, my dresses aren’t tainted, Death Girl.”
Ginny’s composure faltered when the woman set down her bidding form and scurried back to the bright side of the room. She could feel the crack running from forehead to belly, but she faced the basement and kept her chin up, ignoring the hot pressure building behind her eyes. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry—
The air in the room changed.
Whipped up, lifting her hair as if on a breeze.
She wasn’t the only one who felt the shift, either. Everyone in the vicinity looked around for the source of renewed energy, some people rubbing their arms, others whispering amongst each other. Even Gordon stopped yanking on the collar of his dress shirt and faced the entrance, just in time for Jonas to stride in.
Time slowed down and Ginny…she quite simply stopped breathing.
Remember you’re mad at him.
How on earth was she supposed to do that when he walked purposefully in Ginny’s direction, through a sea of dumbstruck guests, looking at her like she’d just completed work on the Sistine Chapel? Or perhaps turned water into wine. And really, the way he regarded her with such reverence would have been enough to tumble her tower of anger, but he looked…
Righteously sexy.
Careless, black hair. Eyes that held the weight of dangerous knowledge. An air of total command—that was the part she was mad about. Or supposed to be mad about. What was happening to her? Was she melting?
Did he always look like this?
Yes. Yes, but…in a room full of regular, everyday humans, he was transcendent. He dropped the jaws of everyone he passed, one person dropping their Dixie cup of fruit punch, as well.
He wore jeans. Dark ones, much nicer than the pair he’d donned the night they met. Along with boots, a white shirt and an overcoat of soft, chocolate brown.
Flowers. There were flowers in his hand.
For her.
“Ginny,” he breathed, stopping in front of her. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
She nodded. Or shook her head. Hard to be sure.
He handed her the flowers, then cupped her face in his hands, brushing her cheekbones with adoring sweeps of his thumbs. Their lips met and they both shuddered, the cellophane crinkling beneath her grasping fingers. Ginny didn’t have to look around the room to know they were the center of attention and she couldn’t have cared less anyway. She only saw Jonas.
“Why are you over here in the dark, love?”
“Am I in the dark?” she whispered, his green eyes imbuing her with a sort of lovesick delirium. “It doesn’t feel like I am anymore.”
His expression softened. “I’ll have you moved.”
“No,” she blurted, snapping out of her Jonas Hypnosis. “The proper way to phrase that question was, shall I have you moved? Or even better, shall we see if you can be moved?”
Cautiously, he took the bouquet out of her hands and set it down on the table. “I’m not following.”
“You bought half of my funeral home, Jonas.
”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “Owning property together is a way humans express commitment to each other, isn’t it? I thought you would be pleased.”
The fact that Jonas appeared perplexed by her anger dulled the edges of her irritation considerably. He genuinely thought she’d be thrilled by his actions. Still, she couldn’t just let his highhandedness go so easily, could she? Not unless she wanted that kind of behavior to become the norm.
“I suppose I’m pleased that you thought of me—”
“I never stop thinking about you,” he rasped, placing a hand on her hip and squeezing. “Ever, Ginny.”
She lost more steam. “I never stop thinking of you, either.”
His brow knit. “Then don’t be cross with me.”
“I don’t want to be, but until very recently, you were planning to rob my memories against my will. I’m shuffled around among bodyguards and…and I have to find out by accident that you’re going to kill yourself. Then today, you buy the funeral home. You have to clue me in or I will feel like I’m standing in the dark.” She brushed their fingers together and he immediately clung, bringing her hand to his mouth and mashing her knuckles to his lips. “More partnership, less prince and subject, Jonas. Please?”
Thoughts churned behind his eyes. “I’ll do my best to discuss certain matters with you. If I feel it’s possible to land on an acceptable compromise.”
“You mean, land on a compromise you like.”
His jaw ticked. “Every decision I make is with the intention of keeping you safe and close to me. I refuse to stop doing that.”
“I’m not asking you to stop, I’m asking you to confide in me. I’m asking to be a part of those decisions.”
“And if you disagree with my judgment?”
“Then we work on a new one together.”
He huffed a mint-laced breath and started to respond with something she almost certainly wasn’t going to like, but his shoulders stiffened.
A slight turn of Jonas’s head and he was face to face with Gordon.
Well. Chin to face. Jonas was at least five inches taller than the collar-tugging ginger.
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