“I do not want her! I want you!”
Meanwhile, back in reality-ville, I continued to keep a close eye on that passageway in case it disappeared on us again. “Veronique, we need to go. Now.”
She touched Stefan’s cheek, drawing his gaze up to meet hers. “I only wish it had been this nice at the time.”
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.
“You were a horrible, smelly little man. I reimagined you to suit a more palatable image of what might capture the imagination of my readers. Fear not, I did plan to write a sequel where you will get the girl. But that girl is not to be me. It never was. My heart belongs to Marcellus and no one else but him.”
Stefan rose to his feet, his fists clenched. “No!”
“I’ve endured quite enough of this,” Marcellus said.
He moved so quickly I could barely see him. Stefan’s henchmen released me and Veronique so they could fight him, but they were outmatched. Marcellus’s fists arched through the air like . . . well, like really fast fists, smashing into jaws and stomachs.
Stefan pulled a razor-sharp silver stake from the sheath at his belt and slashed it toward Marcellus, catching him in the arm before Marcellus kicked the weapon away. With another punch to the jaw, Stefan flew backward, crashing into a table.
“There were more casualties during the actual event,” Veronique told me with a sweeping glance at the enthralled patrons, many of whom were now applauding. “In fact, very few survived, even in the version I retold in my book. I much prefer this version where everyone potentially lives.”
Living was good. I was definitely on the side that favored living. “Me too. So . . . let’s go.”
“Stay down if you know what’s good for you, sir.” Marcellus jabbed a finger at Stefan as he began to push up from the table, shoving away empty goblets and plates of half-eaten food.
With a scowl, Stefan stayed where he was.
Marcellus then turned to me and Veronique with a bright smile on his handsome face. “That was rather exciting, wasn’t it?”
I nodded in wholehearted agreement. “You really kicked some butt. We appreciate it. That could have had an—” I paused. “Okay . . . you’re not even paying any attention to me at all right now, are you?”
No, he certainly wasn’t. His gaze was entirely fixed on Veronique and hers on him.
“It seems as if you’ve been rather busy in my absence entertaining the likes of Stefan,” he said with disapproval.
“Oh, darling, you know he never meant anything to me.”
“Like that husband of yours?”
“Are you still jealous of Thierry?” She smiled. “I will admit, I’m very pleased to hear that.”
“Was that your plan in marrying him in the first place?” I asked. “To make Marcellus jealous?”
“Of course not.” Her expression shadowed. “My heart was broken at the time, and my choices were questionable at best. If I were to go back and do it all over again, I’m not sure I would. He and his unnatural thirst have been troublesome over the years, to say the very least.”
I glared at her. “Then I guess it’s good he’s not your problem anymore, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yes, very true, my dear.”
She had absolutely no idea how frustrating she was.
Marcellus stood to the side, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his expression tortured. “Do you have nothing more to say to me, Veronique? After all this time?”
“It has been a long time.” There was a catch in her voice as she said this. “Longer than you might think. It was good to have a reminder of how things were between us, Marcellus.”
“And how is that?”
Everyone in the tavern, including Stefan, collectively leaned forward to hear her reply.
“That you could not have given your life in exchange for mine,” she said.
Silence hung heavy in the air as we waited for his answer.
“How could I give my life?” His eyes locked with hers. “You are my life, my darling. I would never sacrifice that.”
Several women and a few men made swoony noises at that answer.
I was about to argue the logic of such a sweepingly romantic statement, when Veronique pushed past me to stand directly in front of Marcellus. Her eyes flashed with anger.
“You dare to say such things to me.”
“Yes, I dare. Every day of my life since I met you, I dare.”
She threw her arms around him and kissed him passionately.
I waited patiently. Thirty seconds. A minute.
The patrons cheered as if this were the ending of a movie about two star-crossed lovers who’d finally found their way back to each other.
“Veronique?” I tapped her on her shoulder. “Hate to interrupt, really, but we can’t wait any longer. Passageway? Mansion? Potential death at dawn when the amulet self-destructs? Remember?”
She stepped back from Marcellus, touching his face, stroking his hair. “Go back without me, Sarah.”
I stared at her blankly. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Again, I say, Excuse me? This is fiction—it’s not real.”
She raised her chin defiantly. “I don’t care what it is. I’m happy here and it’s exactly where I need to be. Take me home, Marcellus, my love.”
He clasped his hand in hers and they walked toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at me. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Sarah. Good night.”
Could I get an edit here?
Veronique was not supposed to leave through that exit with her fictional ex-boyfriend. She was supposed to leave through the other one with me.
Nonfiction only!
I glanced over my shoulder at the passageway that I hoped would lead us back to the mansion and the drama still waiting for us there.
“If you disappear,” I informed it, “I’m really going to be mad.”
When the passageway didn’t reply either negatively or positively, I turned toward the door and chased after the lovesick author.
Chapter 12
I couldn’t just leave her there.
Veronique and I had had our share of differences, but letting her wander off to her fictional happily-ever-after with Marcellus would . . .
Well, I honestly didn’t know what would happen for sure, but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was nothing good, especially since all of this was due to a djinn and its amulet needing some significant repairs in the next few hours.
I had to talk her out of this. Even if she was safe here—which I didn’t think she was—I still needed her help to talk sense into Sebastien.
Veronique and Marcellus emerged on a moonlit cobblestone street. There was a cool breeze in the air. I followed at a respectable distance to give them a couple of minutes to say what they had to say, and then I planned to swoop in and do what I had to do to save her from making a deeply bad decision. They stopped every couple of moments to kiss.
“Helloooo? Are you still there?”
I froze in my tracks at the sound of the familiar voice. It was one I recognized now whether I wanted to or not.
Ghost head!
“Where are you?” I said under my breath.
“Oh, good! You can still hear me. Do you know you’re the only one who can?”
I scanned the dark street. Some of the patrons from the tavern had begun to spill out of it, scattering in every direction, but not following us. “Lucky me. The resident ghost-whisperer.”
“I’m not a ghost. At least, I—I don’t think I’m a ghost.” His voice now held trepidation. “Do you think I’m a ghost?”
“You said yourself you’d been murdered when you were in the freezer.”
“It was a reasonable deduction, don’t you think?”
I wasn??
?t going to debate it. I had about fifteen other things on my current to-do list and, sorry to say, the head was low on that list of priorities.
“Definitely reasonable.” I chewed my bottom lip nervously as I passed by a street lantern that lit a small area so I didn’t have to pay quite as much attention to the jagged cobblestones threatening to trip me up. “What do you want?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You’re the only one who can hear me, so you’re the only one who can help me.”
I inwardly cringed at his pleading tone. “I don’t even know who you are. Who are you?”
“I don’t know. My memories are hazy right now.”
“Why did I forget you?”
“Maybe whatever forgetting problems I have temporarily spread to you.”
I considered that. “That sounds vaguely logical.”
He sighed. “Maybe you’re right about me being a ghost.”
He sounded so depressed about that possibility that I wasn’t sure what to say next.
No one else had followed in this direction, which made me the only one currently stalking Veronique and Marcellus. They turned the corner up ahead and I followed without hesitation. They didn’t even notice me twenty feet behind them talking to myself like a lunatic.
Still, I couldn’t ignore the head. He sounded so lost and alone.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“I don’t remember. What’s yours?”
I hesitated. “It’s Sarah.”
“Sarah! What a lovely name for someone willing to help a lowly ghost in need.”
So now he’d accepted that he was a ghost. Progress. “How can I help you?”
“You need to find my body. I think. Yes, that’s it. My body needs to be found!”
I repressed a shudder at the reminder that this poor guy had been decapitated at some point in history. “Why? Is that the reason you’re stuck haunting that mansion? Because someone killed you years ago and hid your body behind the plaster and wallpaper?”
“You don’t sound very sympathetic to my plight—if that is what happened to me.”
“I am sympathetic.” A thought occurred to me. “You haven’t seen an amulet around the mansion, have you? Small green bottle on a thick chain? Somebody hid it.”
“Sorry. I have no idea what you’re talking about. And the last thing I saw was you staring at me with horror before slamming the door shut on my frigid prison.”
I frowned. “How come I can hear you without seeing you?”
“I don’t know. We must have established a connection, Sarah. Yes! One that transcends sight!”
I kept talking to the ghost head while staying on Veronique and Marcellus’s tail. How far were they walking? “I promise I will try to find your body and make sure it gets a proper burial. Maybe that will free you to go to Heaven, or wherever you want to go next.”
“That sounds very nice.” He sounded relieved to know I wasn’t trying to give him the brush-off. “I do feel like there’s something else I’m forgetting. All I know for sure is I’m all alone, and it’s so dark and cold, and”—his breath hitched—“and I’m scared.”
I hated the thought of anyone being in pain, even if they were already dead. “I swear I will do whatever I can to help you. Okay?”
He sniffed. “Okay.”
“First, though, I have to help steer a friend back onto the reality highway.” I waited for a reply. “Hello? Are you still there?”
He didn’t say another word, so I figured he was gone. I didn’t know where ghosts went when they disappeared, but I had a very strong feeling that he’d be back. And when he was, I hoped to be in the mansion again so I could actually do something to help him.
First thing first.
Marcellus and Veronique arrived at a stone building and entered the front doors through a carved archway. Before it closed, I slipped in behind them.
“Oh, Sarah.” Veronique glanced over her shoulder. “You secretly followed us.”
She sounded so casual about it, I barely felt guilty. “I wasn’t trying to be all that secret about it.”
She leaned against Marcellus, her arm tight around his waist. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate your concern, because I do. But I am fine.”
“‘Concern’ isn’t the word I’d use. ‘Frustrated’? ‘Flummoxed,’ perhaps?” I tried to stay calm and reason with her. “Think about what you’re doing, Veronique. You know this can’t go on.”
She looked away without answering me.
“I welcome you to my home, Sarah Dearly,” Marcellus said with a sweeping gesture.
It was a stunning stone villa, the likes of which would have been owned by only the richest men at the time. I’d seen pictures of similar dwellings in history books back in college.
But I didn’t care about architecture. I cared about getting Veronique back to safety. Or, well, back to the mansion from Hell. Close enough.
I couldn’t feel the tingle of the amulet’s magic at all here, which worried me. We had no idea how long this would last or when that second passageway might close up. Why didn’t she seem to care?
A short man with a thick beard approached from down the long, shadowy hall.
“Marcellus,” he said, “there was a problem while you were gone.”
“What’s the problem?”
“An old acquaintance of yours has unexpectedly returned. I discovered him on the street nearby, draining a man almost dry. Had I not stopped him, the human would be dead.”
My breath caught. Was that acceptable in this era? Killing humans? Or had it always been frowned on by more refined vampires?
“I see.” Marcellus exchanged a look with Veronique. “Whoever it is must know the rules as well as we do if he’s an acquaintance.”
“He’s a danger to us all and he should be eliminated,” the man said.
“If what you say is true, then I see no other answer,” Marcellus said, then glanced at me. “Sarah, this is my manservant, Francois.”
Francois was close enough that I noticed something strange.
I sniffed. “No offense, but do I smell . . . wet dog?”
Marcellus smiled broadly, showing off his perfect white fangs. “I’m not surprised you would notice that. With your enhanced senses, you would easily be able to tell that Francois is a werewolf. Humans can’t sense this, but vampires can.”
A werewolf manservant who smelled like a dog.
Man’s best friend indeed.
“It is my great honor to serve Marcellus,” Francois said, bowing deeply. “Now, if you’ll follow me, I have the culprit restrained in the basement. I had to knock him out. He’s incredibly strong.”
“Lead the way,” Veronique said.
I caught her arm. “Veronique . . .”
She slipped away from me. “We must see to the prisoner.”
At what point should I give up on her and head back to the tavern? There didn’t seem to be any reasoning with her now that she’d rediscovered her true love in the fictional flesh. Had he really been so great that she was willing to sacrifice everything to stay by his side?
Would I do the same thing if it was Thierry?
Damn it. I probably would.
Fine. Five more minutes.
The stairs creaked with every one I descended. They led to a small, sparse basement with a wooden chair in the direct center.
An unconscious man was tied to that chair. A very familiar unconscious man.
My heart sank right down to the dirt floor.
“Thierry,” Veronique whispered. “But, I don’t understand. He was not in this section of my book, so what is he doing here?”
I knew why. In fact, it was fairly obvious to me. “Unless they had black tailored Hugo Boss suits back in the old days . . .”
This was not fictional Thierry. This wa
s real Thierry.
His chest hitched and his eyes popped open. But they weren’t gray right now, they were pitch-black. His gaze took us in one at a time, ending on me. A frown creased his brow.
“Sarah. You’re here.”
“I am.” What had Francois said? He’d attacked someone out there, draining them nearly dry?
Thierry glanced down at his bindings. “Why have I been tied up?”
I grimaced. “Somebody please untie him.”
“Are you mad, woman?” Francois said, gesturing at Thierry. “I told you what he did. Look at his eyes.”
Marcellus peered closer. “Are you out of control, old friend?”
“Marcellus.” Thierry scanned the length of him. “This is a surprise, but perhaps not nearly as much as I would have thought.”
Marcellus pursed his lips. “I was under the impression you were in England.”
“You were under the wrong impression.”
“Veronique tells me you are now involved with this young woman.” He gestured to me.
Thierry’s expression was maddeningly unreadable. “That is very true.”
“Thierry, what are you doing?” I asked. “Was the werewolf right about you attacking someone?”
His expression didn’t change as he turned those black eyes on me. “This isn’t real. That was obvious from the moment I found myself here. This is your book come to life, Veronique.”
“How do you know that for sure?” I asked, testing him.
He shrugged. “Because no one is speaking French.”
Veronique cleared her throat. “That seems to be the case, yes.”
“You knew your victim wasn’t real,” I said, trying to piece this together as best I could and avoid freaking out over Thierry giving in to his deadly thirst. “So you knew you weren’t hurting anyone who could actually be hurt.”
He didn’t either confirm or deny this.
“He must be eliminated,” Francois stated bluntly. “There is no other way. It’s clear that he’s lost his mind.”
Marcellus had been carefully watching all of this, confusion etched into his handsome face. “What on earth are you all talking about? Fiction? French? I am speaking French—what other language would I be speaking?”