She shivered, hoping it wasn’t that noticeable.
And that’s when Julien Lacusta cleared his throat.
Like a granite statue suddenly coming to life, he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his back remaining against the wall, and tipped his chin in an informal gesture of greeting.
Okay, so words were not even necessary with this guy.
Tiffany responded in suit, slowly nodding her head. “Julien, I presume,” she said, wishing she hadn’t.
The corner of his mouth quirked congenially, but it wasn’t actually a smile, and his haunting, moonstone-gray eyes seemed to stare right through her, as if he were measuring her soul instead of her features. He brushed his hand lightly over his classically tapered hair, which was the oddest hue of mahogany, and murmured, “Julien Lacusta.”
That was all he said, and for all intents and purposes, he may as well have said Death on Two Feet or Grim Reaper, instead. His tone and his countenance had the same chilling effect.
Wondering just what this guy’s story was, Tiffany took an unwitting step back and bumped right into Ramsey. The Master Warrior placed his right hand firmly on her hip and gave her a reassuring pat on the arm with his left. She allowed the contact. In fact, she used it to take a few deep breaths and reboot her courage. And then she smiled at Julien. “I’ve seen you several times at Napolean’s,” she said softly. “So, I guess we’re not really strangers.”
He continued to stare at her with those deep-set, mystical eyes, but he didn’t reply.
Not a single word.
Alrighty then. Maybe he only speaks gargoyle.
The awkward silence stretched out until Tiffany thought she might just scream to pierce the quiet. “So you guys like to play pool, I see.” Wow. Now that really sounded intelligent.
Ramsey dropped his head. Was he amused by her? Embarrassed? And Saxson’s mouth curved up in a sardonic smile. Santos just stood there, hanging out, as cool—and disinterested?—as a cucumber.
Fortunately, Julien didn’t seem to notice the uncomfortable moment. He simply smiled—or at least his lips bent in a general upward direction—and then he sauntered over to the bar, took a shot glass out of the cabinet, and poured some sort of 151-proof gasoline in it.
Tiffany was about to shudder, but the front door swung open and the clamor jolted her out of the moment, brought her attention to the sparsely decorated entryway.
Good Lord, could she really handle anything else at this moment?
Saber Alexiares strolled into the house like he owned the entire planet, all six feet, 185 pounds of his lean but muscular physique moving forward with equal stealth and swagger. He had a custom-made pool stick in his hand, and there were several intricate carvings etched into the base. His wild black-and-red hair fell about his shoulders like glistening waves of ether, and the entire visage brought Tiffany’s stomach into her throat.
It was just too much.
That subtle, almost cruel-looking scowl.
The way he prowled instead of walked, like a normal male should. Those intense, coal-black eyes, focused straight ahead like twin lasers on a flame gun, searching out their next target…
All of it was just too much.
She backed further into Ramsey and stifled a gasp.
“It’s just Saber, Blondie,” Ramsey drawled in her ear. “Not a Dark One.” He bent forward to make contact, sort of brushing the base of his chin against her hair. “And he likes to bring his own pool stick,” he whispered.
“As if that’s gonna help,” Santos chimed in from across the room, making no bones about the fact that he could hear Ramsey’s words.
“Jealousy does not become you, Santos,” Saber chided, stepping up to the bar. He exchanged a nearly gangster-looking nod with Julien, and then poured himself a drink—it looked like some sort of gin or vodka, and he mixed it with the contents of a small silver vial that he retrieved from his pocket.
Tiffany turned up her nose and groaned inside.
Ew. You so have to be kidding me—was that blood in the vial?
“Yeah, well, you’re late,” Santos retorted.
“So sue me,” Saber barked, never looking up.
“Did you stop by Nachari’s?” Saxson asked, lazily changing the subject.
“Yep.”
Julien looked up from his place at the bar, made fleeting eye contact with Saber, and cocked his eyebrows. “Well?”
Apparently, he could speak—to other males.
“Well what?” Saber asked.
“Well, did he figure it out?” Saxson reached for the billiard rack, placed it in the middle of the pool table, on top of the velvety red surface, and started racking the balls.
Saber laughed then, and the sound was as surprising as it was disconcerting coming from the terrifying male.
“Figure what out?” Tiffany whispered to Ramsey, peering over her shoulder to look at him, while angling her head to the side. As if all vampires didn’t already have super-acute hearing.
As if to make her point, Saxson took it upon himself to answer her question from across the room. “A human cop-ward,” he said, like that statement simply made sense to the masses.
Tiffany was curious, but she wasn’t sure if she should ask…
Oh hell, why not?
“A what?” she said, scrunching up her nose.
“A supernatural radar detector of sorts,” Ramsey clarified. “It’s for Saber’s Viper.”
This time, Tiffany rotated her shoulder to look directly at Ramsey. “What the heck is that?” She took a measured step to the side, hoping to force his hand from her hip—what had started out as reassurance was starting to feel a bit more possessive, perhaps some sort of unconscious male territorial thing, and she wasn’t having any of it. “Besides,” she added, “I thought he drove a truck.” The off-hand comment slipped out before she could catch it.
“Now just how would you know that?” Saber asked, finally sauntering toward the pool table, his macabre drink in his hand.
Tiffany felt slightly faint. Was he angry? Just because she thought he drove a truck? “I… I… just heard—” She caught herself and stopped abruptly.
“You just randomly heard that I drove a truck?” he asked.
She started to recoil but caught her reaction and tried to minimize it at the last second. “Well, no, but… uh, yeah. Something like that.” She cringed at her stuttering, and the Dark One, the redeemed one—hell, the lost boy—laughed. He actually laughed.
“Yeah, what you heard was that Vanya slashed the tires on my Ford F350, right?”
Tiffany looked down at the ground. Holy shit, how did he know that? That was exactly the story Brooke had told her, and from the way Brooke had explained it, everyone in Dark Moon Vale had heard, and retold, the story, probably a dozen times.
She tugged at her earlobe nervously and shrugged. “I might have heard something kind of like that.”
“Yeah… yeah,” Saber groused. “You and everybody else.” This time, he turned that devil-may-care smile directly on her, and she immediately felt more at ease. At least a little bit. “It’s all good.”
Santos and Julien laughed out loud, and frankly, that weirded her out—could gargoyles actually display humor?
“I heard she carved her name into the seats,” Saxson said.
“And smashed out the headlights,” Julien added.
Saber rolled his eyes, and there was a mischievous glint in their depths. “You guys listen to too many country-western songs, and you sound like a bunch of teenage girls, all that gossiping.” He growled, and Tiffany couldn’t tell if he was playing or not. “Drop it already. It’s over.”
Ramsey started to laugh with the others. “Aw, is someone getting a little sensitive? Maybe a bit defensive? Touchy issue, Dragon?”
Saber scowled and shook his head. “Nope. S’all good.” He set his drink down on the edge of the table, right on top of the black Italian granite, grabbed a cube of pool chalk, and began to chalk his c
ue. “But speaking of sensitive issues, since you wanna go there… ” He leveled a slow, thoughtful gaze at Tiffany, then an equally measured glance at Ramsey, each one in turn. “Tell me, Chief: How are the two of you getting along? Everything roses in paradise?”
Ramsey stiffened, ever so slightly, but he didn’t reply.
“Damn, that’s cold,” Saxson uttered, his voice betraying a hint of humor.
Julien chuckled with abandon—apparently, this was the tracker’s idea of good humor—and Santos quickly looked away.
Ramsey snickered in a smooth, seamless recovery. “Don’t worry about it, soldier.” He punctuated the last word for effect—everyone knew that the Dark Ones referred to themselves as soldiers, not warriors, so it was par for the course in terms of their underhanded banter. “And if you must know, we’re getting along swimmingly.” He pressed a quick, soft kiss on the crown of Tiffany’s head and smiled. “Aren’t we, baby girl?”
She jumped…
And Saber laughed. “I can see that.”
Ramsey drew back his shoulders, stretched his traps, and then popped his neck, rotating it from side to side. “Anyhow,” he said with undue emphasis, “back to the cop-ward.” He leveled his gaze at Tiffany, who knew she had to be staring at him like he had two heads about now. “Saber’s truck was only a rental. He drives a Viper now, and rarely under one hundred miles per hour, by the look of things.”
Santos removed the billiard rack from the balls and surveyed the table with his head bent sideways. “He seems to have a habit of attracting every human police officer within a fifty-mile radius,” he said. He reached toward a mounted boxwood cue-holder, grabbed a thick maple cue stick, with a burgundy base, and tossed it to Ramsey, who caught it with two fingers and brought it down to his side. “Apparently, Nachari Silivasi has the same problem with his Mustangs.”
Ramsey jacked the stick up in his hand and took a measured step toward the head of the table, leaning over to eye the triangular set of balls. “While it’s no big deal for a vampire to use mind control on a cop, tell him to go away, advise him to stop writing that ticket—”
“Make his car careen off the road,” Saxson inserted wryly, “it’s still—”
“A royal pain in the ass,” Ramsey said.
“Ain’t nobody got time for that,” Saxson said, chuckling.
Tiffany drew back and stared at the comical vampire. She opened her mouth to comment on Saxson’s turn of phrase and then closed it, thinking better of remarking. These guys were finishing each other’s sentences, and she wondered if the twins even realized how seamlessly they did it.
Ramsey slowly pulled back on the pool cue, slid it back and forth with a lethal grace, running it effortlessly over his elongated bridge, and then blasted the rack of balls at breakneck speed, following through immaculately, hitting the one-ball dead center. He continued to talk while eyeing the new formation of the remaining balls. “So anyhow, apparently Nachari figured out a way to put an energetic ward over the license plate. The moment a police officer runs the plates—”
“Or points his radar gun at your car… ” Saxson chimed in.
“The ward tells him or her to get lost, and they never pull you over to begin with,” Ramsey finished.
“Nice break,” Julien grunted.
“Thanks,” Ramsey said. He turned back to Tiffany. “So now the wizard has to install wards in half the cars in Dark Moon Vale.”
Saxson grinned playfully. “Word spreads fast.”
Tiffany nodded. She felt like she was watching a game of verbal ping-pong instead of pool. “I see.” She took a step toward the table and gawked at the perfect break Ramsey had just orchestrated—he immediately sank five balls. “You cheated,” she whispered. “You had to.”
There was a collective gasp around the table as several of the males looked away.
She frowned. “What? Did I say something wrong?” She pointed at the remaining balls and raised her shoulders. “You used mind control.”
Saxson grimaced. Santos began to rub his chin. And Saber stared at Ramsey like he was about to bite him, raising his eyebrows in question.
Ramsey moved toward Tiffany, even as she took a couple of cautious steps back. “What?” she repeated, starting to get concerned.
Ramsey placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Nothing, baby girl. It’s just… we take cheating pretty seriously around here.” He exchanged a knowing glance with his twin. “Since there are so many ways for a vampire to get over, we employ some pretty strong deterrents in our games.”
Julien shook his head. “You don’t call cheating unless you’re sure.”
Tiffany grimaced. Okay, that sounded ominous, if not barbaric. She stared at Ramsey expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate on these so-called deterrents. When he didn’t speak, she turned to each male in turn, noticing how quickly they looked away. Now this was definitely concerning. “Ramsey,” she spoke pointedly, “what do you do to cheaters?”
He shrugged, stepped up to the table, and bent over. “Six-ball, corner pocket.” He lined up the shot and made it with ease.
She waited quietly until he finally missed a shot and Santos stepped up to the table.
“Ramsey,” she whispered, staring implicitly at him. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what, sweetie?”
She shook her head in annoyance. “Don’t play games with me. Tell me what you do to deter cheating?”
Tuned into his twin as always, Saxson pointed at a mid-sized mason jar nestled in the corner of the parlor on a high, decorative shelf. “You just have to pay the piper, that’s all,” he said.
Tiffany stared at the mason jar. Money? They took each other’s money?
That seemed harmless enough.
Unless…
“How much?” she asked.
“How much what?” Ramsey echoed.
Okay, so he was still playing stupid. “How much do you have to put in the jar every time you cheat?”
This time it was Santos, not Saxson, who answered. “Just one.”
Tiffany gaped at Santos, suddenly confused. “One? One dollar?” She turned back to Ramsey. “How is that a deterrent?”
If Ramsey could have cringed while still looking cocky, he probably would have. As it stood, his expression was more like that of a kid who had just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Taking a deep breath, he mumbled, “It’s a finger jar, baby.”
Tiffany tilted her head to the side and paused.
She looked at Ramsey; then she looked at the jar; and then she turned back to the vampire and frowned. Holding both hands up in the air, she said, “Okay, so what gives?” She just couldn’t quite comprehend what he was saying.
“Oh, hell,” Saber Alexiares jumped in. “You cheat, you put a finger in the jar.”
Tiffany literally squinted at Saber. That was the weirdest thing she had ever heard. Unwittingly placing both hands on her hips, she squared her shoulders to Ramsey. “Okay, so let me get this straight. If someone is caught cheating, they basically go to time-out. They stand in the corner and hold their hand in that jar… well, a finger?” She scrunched up her nose for punctuation.
Julien started to laugh then. “Damn, Ramsey. Just tell her.”
Ramsey sauntered over to the shelf, reached behind the jar, and withdrew a pair of gnarly-looking pliers. No, shears. He held them up and smirked. “You put a finger in the jar.”
Tiffany’s jaw dropped open as she gasped. “Are you kidding me?” She held up her left hand and pointed to her fingers, each one in turn. “You cut off a finger—an actual finger from your hand—and put it in a jar?”
“Sometimes it’s the third finger,” Saxson offered, “which makes it a little less—”
She glared at Ramsey’s twin, and the room grew quiet. “And then what?” she demanded. “You just keep on playing, with one less finger, until the game is over?”
Julien shrugged, and she almost lost her composure. “You’re serious?”
??
?It reattaches with a little venom,” Saxson said, more sheepishly this time.
She turned to glower at Ramsey and then each of the males, one more time. “What is wrong with you people—you non-people?” she demanded, slowly backing away from both Ramsey and the table.
Saxson blanched, and then he glanced at Ramsey for…
What?
A hint?
An answer?
When nothing was forthcoming, he muttered, “I don’t know. Abandonment issues? Separation anxiety?”
Santos nodded. “I was a late developer, I think, maybe by a couple of months?” He eyed Ramsey inquisitively.
Julien snorted. “And we all know Saber spent eight hundred years in Satan’s army, so—”
“You think this is funny?” Tiffany interrupted, no longer caring that she was dealing with a gathering of lethal vampires.
“A little?” Saxson said, and they all started to chuckle beneath their breath.
Ramsey dropped his head and sighed. “Damn,” he muttered.
Tiffany ran her hand through her hair, messing the perfect layers up. “That’s crazy.”
Ramsey tried to smile and shrug it off. “Tiffany… ”
“Seriously,” she said. “That’s absolutely insane. Barbaric. Unnatural.” She turned to Saxson and narrowed her gaze. “How many fingers have you lost in one game?”
He looked at Ramsey and held up both palms, clearly afraid to answer.
“Never mind,” she said. “I really don’t want to know.” She frowned at Ramsey and slowly shook her head. “Well, I know one thing you can be sure of.”
“What’s that?” Ramsey whispered.
“I will never, ever play pool with you!”
Saxson made an apologetic face and mumbled, “It kind of goes for poker and water-polo, too.”
“Oh hell,” Ramsey snarled, shooting a murderous glare at his brother.
Tiffany spun on her heel and walked as briskly as she could without running out of the parlor, toward her office. She had to get away, if only for a moment. She had to gather her wits and collect her thoughts. Maybe it was just the entire situation, the Blood Moon, the inherent apprehension she felt as a human female in the presence of so many powerful, dangerous males, but at that moment, she was certain she had just stumbled into a den of hungry lions—and it was more than she could take.