Juliana.
This time I didn’t think. I pulled the towel from my head, left the nail polish on my nightstand, and went outside in my bare feet.
Most of the tourists had gone back to their hotels or gathered at the boardwalk bars to drink. The beach stood empty, the golden sands disappearing under the foam-edged curl of the gentle waves. I walked down to a fringe of sea oats and stood beside them, waiting for him to show himself.
Almost at once Shamaras came out of the shadows behind the life guard shack. Moonlight verified that he was as big and solid and bald as I remembered, but shied away from his face. He’d removed his tie and opened the collar of his cream-colored shirt, but even that couldn’t dim the perfection of his gray hand-tailored suit.
The paintings in my head, the only portraits I’d created of him, paled before the reality. The only thing better than looking at him would be to touch him. To stop from doing that, I bit my tongue, hard enough to draw blood, and slowly my head cleared.
“Good evening, Juliana.” Charcoal on oiled silk, his voice drew nameless things in the space between us. “I hope you are well.”
He hadn’t come here to check on my health. “What do you want now?”
Thirty seconds passed before he said, “I understand that the police questioned you about Eric.”
So he’d been having me watched. “You and your friend Gregory are safe. I didn’t tell the cop anything, and I won’t. Are we done?”
“I must speak with you about another matter.” He watched my face without blinking once. “You need work. I have a problem. I wish to offer you a business proposition.”
No one wanted to hire me but an oral sex addict and a guy who thought he was a vampire. Who said there was no such thing as universal balance?
“I’m really not interested in your business,” I told him.
“You saved my life,” he reminded me. “You are experiencing some financial difficulties. I should like to help.”
He’d run a credit check on me, too.
“Thanks so much,” I said, adding my warmest smile to the words, “but let me be clear: I’d rather peddle my ass outside a treatment clinic for HIV-positive sex addicts than work for you.”
Not bad for an exit line, I thought, as I started back for the cottage. Shamaras followed me to the back door, and put one huge hand on the door to keep me from slamming it in his face.
I didn’t feel the bizarre urge to put my hands on him again, but I had a feeling that wasn’t going to last. “Do we have to keep doing this? Can’t you take no for an answer, and change into a bat, and go chase hemophiliacs or something?”
“I cannot change into a bat.” He had black eyes, I thought, until the moonlight brought out glimmers of color in the irises, turning them opalescent. “Please, Juliana. At least hear everything I have to say.”
I wanted to kick him out. I couldn’t. Being near him made it impossible.
“Sure, why not.” I went into the kitchen to splash my face with cold water. After I scrubbed my face dry with a towel, I called out, “Do you drink anything besides people?”
“Wine, water or tea.”
I brought him a bottle of Zephyr Hills, and caught him going through a stack of my latest canvases. “That’s private. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?”
“My mother left me in a church a few hours after I was born. Thank you.” He took the water bottle and watched me retreat to my wicker rocker. “You have lost some weight.”
“I’ll find it eventually.” I drank some of my tea. “So what’s the problem?”
“I need a woman.”
I stared at him until the laughter bubbled up inside me. I let it out for few minutes before I wiped my eyes with the heel of my hand. “Beautiful, thank you, I needed that. Do you have a name for your penis?”
Shamaras frowned. “No.”
“Just so you know, Renoir is taken.” I sat back and closed my eyes.
“Tomorrow I am being presented to the suzerain of this region,” he said. “It is an important meeting. I need a woman to act as my tresora.”
I opened one eye. “Your what?”
“My human servant.”
I opened both eyes. He wasn’t kidding. “Why don’t you head back to Carfax Abbey now?”
He put the water bottle down on the polished slice of cypress trunk that served as my coffee table and linked his hands together. “I will pay you for your services. All you will have to do is accompany me for several hours.”
I wondered if he regretted not buying me from Eric when he’d had the chance. “Try a rent-a-maid service.”
“I cannot. Our human servants are not maids. They are more like personal assistants. There is no one else whom I can trust.” He reached out to me and took my hand in his. “Juliana.”
His hand was cool but his touch made my temperature spike. The instant heat came with other feelings, like the one that begged me to climb onto his lap and press as many parts of my body against him as was humanly possible.
“Juliana.” He waited until I looked into his eyes. “I will pay you one hundred thousand American dollars to do this for me.”
I tasted blood in my mouth and shook my head.
“Two hundred thousand.”
Was he bargaining with me, like I was a hooker holding out on him? Or was he that desperate? Why was I wondering about any of this?
“No.” I pulled my hand out of his and got to my feet. I put the chair and then half the room between us. “Please leave.”
He came after me. “You will have the money in your bank account tomorrow morning, before the meeting.”
My rent and utilities were past due. I was washing my clothes with dish liquid and living on the ancient, frost-encrusted microwave dinners in my freezer. At least, until FP&L cut me off, which would probably be on Friday.
I needed money. I wanted money. But not his.
I saw him reaching for me and moved out of reach. “No.”
“You owe me this much.”
I skidded to a halt and turned, because I couldn’t have heard that right. “I what? For what? I saved your life.”
“Lencho, my tresora, died saving yours when you were a child.” His pretty eyes changed, the pupils turning into splinters of black that sliced through the rainbow-sheened glowing blue irises. “Our customs require that you pledge yourself to take his place. I ask that you do so only for one night.”
“I won’t know what to do,” I said, heavy on the irony. “I’m not a personal assistant. You’re the only vampire I know.”
“I am not a vampire, and you are perfect for this.” He circled around and came up behind me to put one of his cool hands over the tattoo on my shoulder. “You bear my mark. You are not affected by our scent. You will not lose control among my kind.”
My heart pounded harder than my landlord wanting the rent check. “Back up a minute. You’re not a vampire?”
“I must have blood to survive, but my kind are not like the monsters of your folk tales. We do not kill humans. We are not evil.” He traced the outer edge of the black cameo inked into the flesh of my shoulder. “Our needs are very different.”
The glide of his fingertip against my skin sent a wash of warmth across my back. “If I refuse, are you going to tell the police about me shooting Eric?”
He shook his head slowly. “You must be willing to do this.”
That made it seem better, in a way. And worse. Still, this would be the end of it, and after tomorrow night I could get on with my life. “Go with you, just this once. That’s all I have to do.”
“Yes.”
I had to stop looking into his fairytale eyes. “Will I have to kill anyone this time?”
“No.” His voice softened. “Never again.”
“All right.”
Relief eased the lines around his mouth. “I will deposit the money–”
I slapped him, and I really put my whole arm into it. His cheek slammed like concrete against my palm. As
the insides of my fingers swelled and throbbed, I said, “Don’t you put a dime in my bank account. I’m doing this for the old man who pulled me out of the ocean. For Lencho. Not for the money. Not for you.”
“I understand.”
“And keep your damn hands off me.” I shoved past him, went into my bathroom, and splashed my face with cold water until I calmed down. When I came out, Shamaras had left gone.
#
A rain storm and Dr. Gregory showed up the next morning on my doorstep. The storm brought a nice, cool breeze with it. The doctor brought a briefcase and a garment bag.
I remembered the tired look on his face, but not the ponytail of dripping wet blond hair or the soulful brown eyes. He hadn’t shaved, and his damp clothes appeared slept-in, but his beard stubble golden against his rain-washed, tanned skin.
Raindrops sparkled on his eyelashes as he looked me over. “Good morning.”
There are guys that a woman sees and just knows, somehow, that they’re worth the trouble. To my dismay, Dr. Gregory was evidently one of them.
“First the monster, then Dr. Frankenstein.” I leaned against my door jamb. “What’s in the bags? Halloween candy?”
“Your uniform,” he said, answering my smirk with a scowl, “and my name is Neal.”
I imagined him saying that against my lips, until my common sense kicked the nymphomaniac out of my head. This was the maybe-vampire’s pal, not a normal guy. As soon as this was over, I’d go out and find a nice, non-psychotic boyfriend, and make him the happiest man in Florida. “Well, Neal, I don’t wear uniforms.”
“You do tonight.” He stepped over the threshold and walked past me.
“Don’t you have patients to see or something?” I asked as I followed the trail of shoe-shaped puddles he left in his wake. “You’re getting my floor wet. Why do you smell like a dog?”
“I stopped by the office on the way here to deliver some puppies.” He glanced around. “Where do you keep the towels?”
I pulled one out of my linen closet and tossed it at him. “A doctor, delivering puppies.”
He rubbed the towel over his face. “I’m a vet, not a doctor. And before you get angry, I wanted to take you to a hospital that night. We couldn’t risk moving you at first, and then Eric showed up.”
I had the right to be pissed off. Eric Locke had ordered one of his men to beat me nearly to death, and then he had shot me in the shoulder. Neal Gregory had treated me for my injuries after I’d escaped Eric.
“For what it’s worth,” Neal continued, “I tried to talk Shamaras out of doing this. He wouldn’t listen to me.”
“You should have tried harder.” I trailed him into my bedroom, where he draped the garment bag over my bed and began unloading things from his briefcase. “What is all this stuff?”
“Shoes, jewels, gown.” He handed me a large black velvet box and a smaller one. “Can you do your hair and makeup, or should I call a salon for an appointment?”
I was too busy staring at the contents of the large box. “Whoa.” A double row of diamonds set in platinum sparkled up at me. “Are these real?”
“The Kyn don’t buy cubic zirconium. There are matching earrings and a bracelet in the other case.” He unzipped the garment bag and took out a web of black silk. He shook it out, held it up, and it became a dress that might cover twenty percent of my body, max. “You’re a size eight, right?”
“If I wear that,” I said, “people will think I’m a working girl. Who are the kin?”
“The Kyn, shorthand for the Darkyn.” He spelled it for me. “They’re Shamaras’s people.” He held the dress up to me for a moment. “You can’t wear a bra with this.”
I side-stepped the gown and a short, white-hot flash of Neal’s fingers taking off my bra. “What’s going on with him? Why does he have to have this meeting or whatever it is?”
“He intends to settle here in Florida. Before he can do that, he has to meet and get permission from the local Kyn lord.” He began to say something else, and then shook his head. “Look, the less you know, the easier this will be. All you have to do tonight is stand beside Marco, look beautiful, and keep your mouth shut.” Neal saw my expression and sighed. “If you start talking, they’re never going to believe you’re his tresora.”
Marco. The almost-vampire had a first name. Then again, why would I care if he had a first name? “You’re his friend, right? Why can’t you play Renfield?”
His mouth tightened. "I’m not able to resist their scent the way that you can. L’attrait — the scent they give off that affects most humans — turns me into a babbling idiot in five seconds flat.”
But not me. Interesting. “You can’t wear nose plugs or something?”
“It’s not the only reason.” He put the little black dress on a hanger and hung it in my closet. “They’d smell Marco on me.”
I could smell Marco on me, even after my shower. If the guy ever bottled himself, he’d own the perfume industry. “So?”
“So I’m not a woman.” Neal put the jewelry boxes on my dresser. “The Kyn are very old-fashioned when it comes to that sort of thing.”
I hadn’t picked up a gay vibe from either of them. The sensible part of me felt relieved. The other ninety-nine percent wanted to weep with frustration. “Sorry.”
His shoulders moved. “I don’t like them, either. Now, let’s go over exactly what will happen.”
What Neal told me sounded like very odd stuff, but I didn’t comment. Like Shamaras had said, it was only a couple of hours. I’d play the part, then we’d be even. I’d never have to see him again, and he and Neal could live happily ever after.
The smug bastards, my wounded ego muttered.
Neal wouldn’t leave until I showed him what I planned to do with my hair and the type of make-up I used. We were arguing over lipstick color when someone kicked in my front door.
“Fort Lauderdale Police,” a familiar female voice shouted. “Juliana Jones, come out with your hands where I can see them.”
I shoved Neal in the bathroom closet and closed it before I walked out and faced Detective Brown and a black-haired man. Both wore sunglasses and held very large guns pointed at my face.
I did my best imitation of a statue. “I’m not armed.”
“Put your hands on top of your head,” the man told me, his voice rich with an odd Latin accent. “Slowly.”
I did as he ordered, and Detective Brown came around behind me, taking hold of my arms and bringing them down to hold my wrists together at the small of my back.
“We got great prints off that coffee cup from Denny’s,” she told me as she snapped handcuffs on my wrists. “The DNA from the saliva on the rim was a match, too.”
“A match for what?”
“Skin and blood we found under his fingernails, and the fingerprints we found on his eyelids.” She turned me around to face her, and smiled with grim satisfaction of the righteous. “Juliana Jones, you’re under arrest for the murder of Eric Locke.” She took hold of my arm and marched me toward the door. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law . . .”
#
I didn’t make it all the way through the booking process.
Once the two detectives had taken me downtown, I was fingerprinted and photographed, and sent to a room with a female corrections officer. Detective Brown stepped in just after I began stripping out of my clothes to be searched, and told the officer something about the arrest warrant.
“If you say so, Sam,” the officer said.
Detective Brown ordered me to dress and come with her.
We didn’t go far, only down the hall to an interrogation room, where she shoved me inside and locked the door.
“Who do you serve?” she demanded.
I almost gagged on the smell of boiling-hot coffee, and wrapped my arms around my stomach. “No one.”
She grabbed the collar of my t-shirt and yanked it down, tearing it as she exposed
my shoulder. “Who marked you? What’s his name?”
I imagined telling her the whole story, and spending the night on a psych ward. “I had the tat done when I graduated high school. I designed it myself. The artist still works at an ink shop in Dania–”
She pushed me toward one of the chairs around the table. “Sit down.”
She left, and came back a few minutes later with her partner. The scent of coffee became tinged with citrus as he pulled my shirt aside to inspect my tat.
“I do not recognize it.” He looked down at me. “You are among friends, tresora. Name your master.”
I didn’t know how they’d found out about what I was doing for Shamaras. They were cops, though, and that made them almost as bad as the Brethren guys that Eric had been mixed up with. I couldn’t think straight anymore. The air in the room seemed to be disappearing, and I thought I might choke on the reek of orange-flavored coffee.
“Name your master,” Samantha repeated.
I coughed to clear my throat. “I’m not into S&M.”
“She’s resistant.” Rafael breathed in. “There is a trace of him on her, Samantha, but not enough for me to track.”
Samantha pulled a chair next to mine and sat down. “Did you kill Eric Locke willingly, or were you compelled to do it?”
“I’ve told you everything I can about Eric.” I put on my best bewildered face. “Am I still under arrest?”
Samantha swore under her breath.
“She’s lucid,” Rafael said. “And she is concealing something, or she would not be avoiding your eyes.”
A strong hand grabbed the front of my T-shirt. Samantha used it to haul me close to her face. “Do you know what my talent is? I can read the blood of murder victims. You left just enough in Eric Locke for me to see the last moments of his life. I saw you pointing a gun at his face. I saw you pull the trigger.”
“That’s an interesting hobby.” I kept my voice even. “All I can do is garden and paint.”
She back-handed me, and I felt my lip split. “You’re going to tell me why you did it.”
Her questions and the taste of blood in my mouth made my stomach clench. “I’d like to be provided with that attorney I can’t afford now.”