Aloud Xeke said, “Your knife makes me nervous.”
Jay took a step away, and then turned his back on the vampire so it wouldn’t be taken as a threat when he drew his knife.
This blade wasn’t just a weapon; it was an anchor. Generations of magic imbued in the silver helped Jay ground himself and focus, despite his limited ability to filter what his empathy picked up. Without it, he might still be staring, slack-jawed, at Kendra, lost in her mind.
He could probably live without it for a few minutes.
He flipped the knife around so he was holding it by the blade, and offered it to the vampire.
“Put it somewhere safe, or give it to someone you trust to get it back to me after.”
The offer shocked Xeke. Voice laconic but mind nervous, he asked, “Isn’t this violating some kind of ancient law?”
Jay laughed, shaking his head. “You’re thinking of Vida’s line. Mine trusts us to make up our own minds. I know you’ll get it back to me.”
“How?” the vampire asked.
“I just know.”
And he did. There were mysteries in Xeke’s mind, but he would honor any deal he made, and any power relinquished to him willingly would never be abused.
“Telepath?” Xeke asked.
Jay nodded.
Empath, actually, but most people didn’t know the difference and didn’t care. The crucial distinction at the moment was that, while Jay could shield his mind to keep telepathic creatures from reading his thoughts, and could protect himself from most magical intrusions, he wasn’t very good at shielding against the empathic impressions he always picked up from those around him. Xeke needed to make his mind up, because Jay needed to get out before he completely burned out.
The clock began to toll midnight.
“Well?” Jay prompted.
“Keep the knife,” Xeke said. “I don’t know you well enough to accept it.”
“Want to get to know me a little better?” Jay asked as he returned the knife to its place. He had been on his way out, anyway. He might as well round out the evening with another new experience.
Xeke was said to be of Kendra’s line, and though he was nominally allied with Midnight, he was outspoken against the slave trade. He was also politically savvy enough that he wouldn’t want to cross SingleEarth and the witches, which meant Jay was probably safe with him.
Probably. Xeke was also known for breaking rules and crossing people who shouldn’t be crossed.
“I think it would be best if I ask you to make very clear what you are offering,” Xeke said.
Jay tilted his head—a very feline expression of impatient curiosity—as he met the vampire’s eyes directly. “I’m offering blood. I’m offering to let you into my mind. Is that clear enough?” Sometimes he forgot that others needed words to make these things obvious to them.
“Clear enough to be irresistible,” Xeke replied as he stepped forward and gently grasped Jay’s wrist. He wanted to control Jay’s dominant hand, the one best angled to draw his knife.
Jay closed his eyes and let the vampire maneuver him into the position he wanted. Unsurprisingly, he had never done this before.
Xeke was firm but not rough, making it clear in the pressure of his grip that it would be best if Jay didn’t struggle. Jay relaxed into the restraint.
At the moment when fangs punctured skin and the blood began to flow, he felt Xeke’s mind nudge his. Jay’s shields were too good to be penetrated without permission, but he gave that consent, dropping his mental walls so he was as defenseless as a human.
Suddenly—screaming.
Jay shoved away from Xeke and ran toward the shrieks of pain, agony, anguish. He raced through the crowd, dodging couples in bloody embraces, until he was once more at the paintings of Freyja.
No one in the crowd approached the artist while she shredded her own work with her nails, leaving bloody trails behind.
The wild madness rising from her made Jay’s head spin. Why had he left her alone? He looked around, and the question changed to Why is everyone leaving her alone? Some people stood and stared with bemused curiosity. Others simply walked away.
Xeke approached but then drew back, shaking his head.
She was like an animal with its foot in a trap, desperate to chew off its own leg, and they were all just going to let her.
How can they be so callous?
As he approached, the woman snarled and raised her hand to strike him. When Jay dodged the first blow, she gave up and let him pull her back against his chest. He laid his cheek against her matted hair and wrapped his arms around her waist as he tried to project a soothing image into her fractured mental landscape.
“Beautiful lady,” he whispered to her, letting himself see her the way she saw herself. “Lovely dear one, beloved night.”
She stilled physically in his arms, though her mind continued to struggle. Her shrieks turned to quiet whimpers. She collapsed, sobbing.
“He’s gone,” she whispered. “He’s gone.”
“I’m here,” Jay whispered, over and over, trying to soothe the woman’s utter loneliness. In her head, she walked through a barren wasteland of parched red earth. “I’m here.”
CHAPTER 4
TOTAL WASTE, BRINA thought savagely. Useless drivel.
Brina had started the Freyja series, inspired by her brother’s Lady with a Falcon on Her Fist, just before her brother’s death. Technically the paintings were excellent. Color theories and compositional techniques were instinctive to her by now, and she could mix media and pigments in her sleep.
But how could an artist do justice to a goddess of passion when she herself felt no passion? Brina had painted battle scenes without hope or triumph, lovers with no love. The only painting in the set worth the cost of its oils had been the one of Od, Freyja’s slain husband.
She had given him Daryl’s face.
She couldn’t stand looking at it; she couldn’t stand that everyone else was ignoring it. They all just walked by. Walked past the statue in the hall, walked past the painting, didn’t even think to look, because they didn’t …
Didn’t care.
I’m here. You’re not alone.
She half heard the voice, but it only made her angrier. That was what he had promised. Put on a pretty dress and a beautiful smile, Kaleo had said. You’ll feel better when you aren’t hiding alone in here.
She’d tried to do what he said.
She’d dressed. She’d put up her hair.
But at the thought of facing that painting, her still blood turned cold in her veins. Impossible. Instead she had fashioned a noose. Strung it from the rafters of her studio. Climbed onto a stool.…
“Come away from that,” the voice said now. “You don’t need to be there.”
Who is that?
She opened her eyes.
Ah, the stranger from the gallery.
He was pretty, but his ignorant attempt to compliment those pieces of trash had been almost as infuriating as being cut down from the rafters by a slave who didn’t have the good sense to just let her mistress be alone. This vampiric curse, which had once seemed so freeing and beautiful, now denied her the right to die.
She should have died with Daryl.
“You really loved him, didn’t you?” the stranger murmured as she leaned against him.
He sounded surprised—a tone she had heard too often. A tone like the trainers had, those bastards who were supposed to be experts in manipulation but constantly thought they could belittle and slur her brother, and then turn around and try to woo her.
“I’m sorry,” the stranger said, his voice softer, more sincere. “I never knew him. What was he like, to you?”
He was my world.
When they had been on the streets, hungry and cold, Daryl had taken care of her. Had insisted she eat even when there was only enough food for one. Had sold himself in any way he’d needed to, so she wouldn’t need to do the same. Despite his attempts to keep her ignorant of the
sordid details, she knew he had done things that had horrified him—demeaning, illegal, and often dangerous work, which had left him exhausted, bruised, and heart sore.
He’d sworn he would get them a life worth living, no matter what he had to do.
And he had. For more than a century, they had lived as Lord and Lady di’Birgetta. Even when Midnight had burned, and it had seemed like they were certain to end up on the streets once again, he had gathered what was left and kept them comfortable while their world was rebuilt.
“He’s gone,” she said.
The stranger didn’t say much, but he held her tightly, in a way no one had in a long time. The gentle rhythm of his heartbeat and breath formed a lullaby that soothed her panic. At some point, she had turned to hold him back. Now she never wanted to move. If she could just stay right here, like this, she might not fracture into a million pieces.
But … where is here? she wondered at last.
She couldn’t well recall the moments—perhaps hours—since she’d made the decision to kill herself.
As she lifted her eyes and focused on his face, the stranger said, “I’m Jay.”
No, that’s all wrong. “You’re more of a sparrow, or lark,” she said. He had a thick mane of deep auburn-brown hair, smooth skin of a color somewhere between caramel and burnt sienna, and lovely eyes specked and swirled with green, gray, gold, and brown. “Blue jays are cold colors. But you can be a songbird if you want. That’s fine.”
“Do you know where you are?” he asked.
Kendra’s manor. The Heathen Holiday. Several pairs of eyes were fixed on her with varying amounts of concern or annoyance. One of the most concerned was also one of her favorites.
“Exequías,” she greeted the Italian vampire. He had first come to work for her as a model, many years ago, when he was still human. Daryl had tried to convince him to stay longer, after his contract had expired, but he had disappeared.
Brina had always regretted that she hadn’t been the one who’d changed him.
“I need to borrow Jay for a bit,” Exequías said, with the same charming but fake smile that he liked to use for fans and cameras.
Brina held on tighter to her knight, until he let out a grunt that reminded her that he needed to breathe. She let go of him reluctantly, and he pulled away to go with Exequías, saying, “My lady, if you’ll excuse me.”
She nodded. She wouldn’t embarrass herself by asking him to stay. He left with Exequías’s arm across his shoulders.
No help for it. He was mortal, and mortals at Kendra’s Heathen Holiday were there only by coveted invitation from one of her line. If this “Jay” came here with Exequías, then that was who he would stay with for the evening.
She was still watching where they had gone, when Kaleo knelt beside her. Brina glanced up to see Kendra standing in the opposite doorway, probably having sent Brina’s maker here to clean up the mess and avoid future drama.
“I’m fine now,” she snapped, rising to her feet.
Kaleo caught her shoulders and turned her to face him.
“I see,” he said, looking around at the carnage left by her wild fit.
“It’s my own work,” she pointed out when he crouched to examine the shattered frame of one of the paintings.
“The canvas on some of these is still sound,” he remarked. “We’ll see if Kendra’s staff can repair any of them.”
“Don’t bother.” Kaleo had dragged these pieces from her studio after she had tried to tell him she didn’t have anything to display this year.
Despite her protest, Kaleo started handing bits of wreckage to the slaves who materialized at his hands, anticipating his needs.
“Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said. “I’m sorry I left you alone earlier. I should have realized how much distress you were in.” He lifted her hand and examined her fingertips, which were smeared with the coppery dust that remained when vampiric blood dried. Somewhere in her frantic destruction of her own work, she must have torn fingernails and flesh. Those wounds had healed now.
“I would rather be alone.” She had embarrassed herself enough for one day.
“Nonsense.”
Three and a half centuries ago, his arrogance had drawn her like a magnet drew iron filings. She had fallen helplessly into the well of his charisma, and hopelessly in love. Daryl had warned her that Kaleo’s affections were as deep as paint on a canvas, but she hadn’t listened. Hadn’t cared.
Now he brought her back to her home, dragging her like dust in his wake as he blinked out of Kendra’s home and reappeared in Brina’s living room across town. He shook his head at the doors she had left wide open after she had ordered the slave who’d cut her down out of her sight.
“Do you have a lady’s maid?” he asked as he poked through her wardrobe, searching for something more acceptable to wear back to Kendra’s gala.
“No,” she lied, though of course she did. That servant had been a gift from her brother. Brina’s whole household would certainly fall apart without Brina’s lady’s maid. But she had also been the only one with the temerity to cut Brina down earlier, and Brina didn’t want to face her just yet.
Kaleo looked at Brina with a familiar expression that asked, Why must you be so difficult?
“I don’t want to go back to the party,” she announced when Kaleo pulled out a crimson sheath dress that was perfectly his taste and absolutely the opposite of hers.
He sighed in frustration. “Brina, I am trying to help you. You obviously can’t be alone right now.”
“I’m better alone than with you.”
He grabbed her arm when she tried to sweep past him. “Get dressed, Brina. Come back to the party. By the time you get back here, your studio will be repaired and you can pretend none of this ever happened.”
Will a clean dress and a canapé bring my brother back, too? she wanted to demand.
No. She knew better than to mention Daryl to Kaleo, who would only use it as an opportunity to twist the knife. Kaleo didn’t care about her grief or her dead brother. He cared about his image, and the fact that her breakdown reflected poorly on him. Now her “tantrum” was causing him to miss his precious party.
“Believe it or not,” she snapped, “playing dress-up and hanging paintings I despise to make you feel better is not my priority.” If her heart could beat, it would have been pounding with the exhilaration of standing up to him. If only she had done so when he had first swept into her home that afternoon, demanding that she and her art put in an appearance. Though if she hadn’t been at the party, she wouldn’t have met that intriguing stranger. “Who was Exequías’s toy tonight?” she asked, cutting off Kaleo’s saccharine retort. “I haven’t seen him before.”
“If I heard right, he’s a witch, and a hunter,” Kaleo replied, shaking his head at her abrupt change of subject. “They’re better left alone.”
Her own laugh was so sudden, so sharp, that it made her jump. “Oh?” she challenged. “And what was the name of that witch you wooed, back before Midnight fell? You know the one. You took her from her family. Left behind her human husband and two darling infants … mm, Rachel and something. I can’t remember the boy’s name. How many times did Rachel try to kill you?”
Her words finally hit their mark.
“Fine,” he whispered, his temper coming out not in volume or violence but in his words. “Go throw yourself at the witch. If nothing else, I’m sure he can help you kill yourself.”
Kaleo disappeared, leaving her to absorb the echo of his words.
I’m sure he can help you kill yourself.
She turned that last sharp retort over in her head, examining it. Before the witch had come to her, she had wanted to kill herself.
What had he done to her?
She thought back to her suicide attempt, and shuddered. At the time, it had seemed like the only option. Now the heavy yoke of grief wasn’t gone, but she could start to see past it, as if the witch’s magic had lanced the worst of the poison from
her spirit.
CHAPTER 5
“THAT WAS BRINA?” Jay asked as Xeke led him away. The vampire’s arm across his shoulders was meant to look possessive, so Brina would let him go. Jay was grateful that it helped him stay upright despite the pounding in his head.
“She tends to conveniently forget that laws such as freeblood status exist,” Xeke said quietly as Jay walked with him back to the room where they had first spoken.
Freeblood laws had been an invention of the original Midnight, back in the sixteen hundreds. Humans could be abducted into the empire by anyone’s whim, but witches and shapeshifters were given the right to remain free as long as they abided by Midnight’s laws.
“Daryl was her brother?” Jay asked, confirming.
“I’m surprised she’s noticed he’s dead,” Xeke answered dryly.
Jay winced. “She has.”
“Should I assume this all means you are no longer in the mood to follow through on that delightful offer you made earlier?” Xeke asked.
Jay considered it. He was shaken, having reached too deeply into Brina’s madness, and now felt raw and vulnerable.
“Rain check?” He closed his eyes a moment, trying to focus, and felt his body sway.
“Are you all right?” Xeke shifted his arm from Jay’s shoulders to around his waist, taking some of his weight. “You look faint.”
“I’ll be fine. I should head out.” He needed to be anywhere else, far away from so many ancient minds pressing against his.
“Are you driving?” Xeke asked.
“Yeah,” Jay answered. He didn’t want to drive. Should he take Xeke up on the offer to stay at his place, though? “The couch would be fine,” he said.
Xeke chuckled, and said, “Why, yes, I do happen to have a couch where you can crash.”
“Sorry,” Jay said. “I’m unfocused. It’s hard to tell what you’ve said out loud.”
“Most telepaths can’t read vampires,” Xeke said.
“I’m not a telepath,” Jay answered. “I’m an empath. Similar talents, different mechanism.”