“Could I?” Now he was definitely amused. “Perhaps I could. But then,” he looked over his shoulder at the sleeping bodies of the other passengers. “I’m not you.”
Chloe sat back down. She’d been crouched under the bulkhead, preparing to exit her short, otherwise empty row, and she was getting sore standing there like that. Whether this was a dream or the Warlock King really was hemming her in, she was stuck.
“Then like I said,” she retorted, “one blanket is better than none.”
“And when someone else wants one and you can’t provide it, are you going to let the flight attendants scramble to explain their lack of supplies to the entire flight roster?”
“Why are you asking me all of this?” Chloe demanded, irritation joining her apprehension.
Jason smiled the kind of smile that said he had just been waiting for her to ask that. “Think of what you could do with the magic I would give you, Chloe.”
A chill went through her as he leaned forward, braced his hands on two of the seats, and pinned her with those magnetic, magnificent eyes.
“You would never want,” he told her. “Not ever.” He shook his head slowly. His tone had lowered, intimate and promising. He gestured lightly to the plane around them, but his eyes remained locked on hers. “You want to make the world a better place. You can’t stand the suffering that runs through its veins like blood. So, consider for a moment what I’m offering you. I don’t care what you do with it. You want to give warmth to the cold? You want to feed the hungry? Then do it.” His gaze slipped down her body. “But you can’t do it alone. As beautiful a vessel it is, your body is empty, Chloe.” His gaze returned to hers. “You have nothing left to give.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Jason grinned. Then he straightened, lowering his hands from the leather seats he’d been leaning against.
And Chloe screamed.
The plane was gone. The passengers were gone. Open sky stretched out on either side of her, cold and silent. Chloe stumbled and crouched, her fingers grasping like claws at the air around her. She was absolutely positive that she was going to plummet to her death unless she found something to hold on to.
But she didn’t plummet. She didn’t fall. After a few heart-pounding moments, Chloe realized that she was literally standing on a cloud as if it were thick Tempurpedic cotton. It was impossible, of course. It was that fantastic thing children always dreamed of doing when they stared out the window of a jet plane.
Jason Alberich stood across from her, an indomitable form in solid black, stark against the backdrop of blue and white. They were alone, defying the laws of physics, and she’d been taken from her flight after all.
“How…” and why was the second thing she would have asked. But she didn’t even finish her first question. She knew it was pointless. This was the Warlock King she was addressing. He could probably do anything.
“This is one thing, Chloe,” he told her, his hands clasped easily behind his back as he began to pace toward her across the top of the cloud. “It’s one tiny, miniscule, utterly unimportant and ridiculously easy piece of magic.” He stopped a foot and a half away from her, and Chloe swallowed so hard, it felt as if her thyroid got stuck in her windpipe. “Especially for someone like you, Stardust, someone composed of the Cosmos. But you can’t do this, can you love? Not on your own. And so, you’re right. I would be surprised.”
Chloe stared at him as a stray breeze brushed a lock of her hair against her cheek. Wisps of cloud floated around her legs like fog. Behind her, the sun was setting; she could see its reflection in Jason’s eyes. It turned them to multicolored jade, radiant and fascinating.
She felt empty in that moment. A little like a husk, light and without substance. Maybe that was why she wasn’t falling. She weighed nothing.
And she realized he was right.
“What do you want from me, Jason Alberich?” she whispered. But he heard. He would have heard it if she’d never even given the question voice.
“Figure it out, Chloe,” he told her softly, intimately. He closed the final distance between them, and she watched the sunset flash a brilliant and rare green in the mirror of his eyes. “And when you’re ready to give it to me, I’ll be there.”
Chloe inhaled sharply and sat up in her seat in the first class section of the airplane. The engines droned around her. The air was stale and fresh at the same time, cold and impersonal and devoid of pleasant smells. Goosebumps were raised across her exposed flesh. She felt disoriented. Exhausted.
A man a few seats away on the opposite side of the aisle gave her a side-ways glance before returning to reading his newspaper. An orange light filtered through the drawn shade beside him. But he was sitting on the East side.
Which meant that the sun had set long ago, the night had already passed, and the sun was rising. It was morning.
The flight attendant made an announcement, informing them that they would soon be landing. Chloe’s body felt stiff – light and empty still – but stiff.
She wondered if it had all been a dream.
And then she noticed the neatly folded, tightly compacted pile of at least two dozen blue airplane blankets in the seat beside her. And she knew it was no dream after all.
Chapter Ten
Evie’s brow wrinkled. She stopped in the master bedroom doorway, at once alert. Something in the room was different.
“My lady?” asked the guard who stood to one side of the door.
Evie glanced at him, taken aback. She blinked. Oh yeah, she thought. It would take her some time to get used to being called that. It had already been several months, but it still felt strange, as if she were a pretender.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
His expression was starkly concerned. After what had happened with the other safe house, Roman wasn’t taking any chances. He had guards posted everywhere. He had magic wards thrown up everywhere. And he had Evie walking on eggshells with nervousness.
It was a surreal experience to be afraid for your life. The realization was a cat, creeping up on you and pouncing every now and then without warning. She would go through the course of the day in normal fashion, and then in the middle of brushing her teeth, she would freeze and a cold chill would ripple through her. She would suddenly wonder whether the toothpaste was poisoned. Never mind that it was virtually impossible to poison a vampire. It was just an unexpected, jarring thought washing through her like an insipid slush, logical or not. It was uncomfortable.
She found herself looking out every window, wondering whether someone was looking back at her. She glanced over her shoulder. All she ever saw were guards, but the motion was instinctive; she couldn’t help it. She also wondered… whether all of the guards were trustworthy. Were they all really on her side?
Roman D’Angelo was an indomitable king, and for the most part Evie trusted her husband to know who to put his faith in and who not to. But this business had her on edge.
“Wait here,” the guard suddenly instructed, moving from his post to enter the room before her. Evie realized that she hadn’t answered him, that she’d been lost in her thoughts, and when he moved, she remembered what had brought her to a halt in the first place. Something in the room was off.
She’d always been very sensitive to her surroundings, but this was bringing it to a whole new level. They’d only moved in to the new safe house yesterday, and she’d only seen this room once before. How would she know if something were out of place?
She was just pondering this question when an overwhelming sense of foreboding stunned her to her core. She cried out, “Stop!” just as the guard was reaching for the top drawer of the writing desk.
The guard froze, his fingers inches from the handle. His eyes flew to her.
“Don’t touch the drawer,” she told him, almost breathlessly.
“What is it?” came a deep, commanding and very familiar voice from just behind her.
Evie turned to look up at her husband. “
There’s something in that drawer,” she told him. “I don’t know what. But I know it’s wrong.”
He eyed her for a moment, his expression unreadable. And then he turned and strode through the room, nodding to the guard to step aside.
Evie took an unconscious step back. At any second, she expected the entire room to go boom.
Roman stood in front of the dresser drawer – and suddenly, there was this odd ripple. It started with him and worked its way through the room. As it washed over Evie, she recognized it for a canceling spell.
A second later, Roman was opening the drawer.
Evie held her breath as he and the guard peered down into the wooden compartment. Roman straightened.
“What is it?” Evie asked, unable to help herself.
Roman’s gaze cut to her. He reached into the drawer and Evie stiffened. But all he extracted was a slip of white parchment paper.
He turned it over so that she could read it from where she stood.
Made you blink.
*****
“What you’ve done,” he said calmly, “is unforgivable.”
Thousands of candles lit on dozens of side tables along the stone walls of the long hall flickered in an otherwise unfelt breeze. The air seemed in fact still and heavy, barely breathable.
“You were not to engage D’Angelo without my permission. Much less twice.”
Ophelia felt her stomach go to lead. “It was nothing,” she insisted quietly. It wasn’t good to raise your voice in his presence. “I only wanted to frighten him. And his queen.”
“His queen happens to be very important,” came the still-too-calm reply.
Ophelia wondered for a moment then whether she was going to live the night through.
“You might have brought her harm,” he continued.
“Roman would never let anything happen to her.”
He was quiet. Ophelia chanced a glance up from where she was kneeling before him. The ground was hard and cold, especially for her in the weakened state she was in, but to drown out the noise of people walking across the chamber, thick rugs had been placed before what she’d come to think of as his “throne.” She was grateful for them now.
He was her creator. Two hundred years ago, he had made her what she was today.
At the time, she had been engaged to Roman D’Angelo, a wealthy and powerful man of incredible good looks, exquisite taste, and unsurpassed charisma. She met him at a gala one night. Ophelia could recall how easily he’d managed to fill her dance card. Now she understood that he’d clearly been using his vampire powers on the other would-be dance partners. She didn’t know that at the time, of course.
The moment he came to call at her father’s mansion, she’d chosen him out of the medley of hopeful suitors she’d earned. Roman was….
He was different.
And he would have been hers, and she would have been a queen by now, had it not been for –
“For me?” her master asked smoothly. He grinned, baring the cruel teeth that had stolen her humanity without remorse. His words mocked and belittled her. He could so easily pluck the thoughts from her mind, so effortlessly make a farce out of her every hope and dream.
Ophelia didn’t bother lying to him. “Yes,” she admitted. Her voice finally cracked in her throat. She’d been doing well, but she was so thirsty. He’d brought her to the desert, where vampires almost never tread, and he hadn’t allowed her to feed in a week. It was her punishment for some other trespass she had committed against him.
And now she had angered him with her actions against Roman and his queen.
Ophelia was so weak. She wondered how much more she would have to endure before he was satisfied.
“What I do to you, I do because I care,” he told her. Ophelia tore her gaze from his and looked back down at the rug. Her fingernails curled into the material as rage curled through her bloodstream.
She hated it when he spoke to her like this, as if she were a child needing a spanking. He cared less about her than he did about the lice in a homeless man’s hair. This was how he tormented her.
He laughed now, a deep dark chuckle, and Ophelia closed her eyes.
“Oh my dear, sweet Ophelia. Your torment has not yet even begun.”
Chapter Eleven
The sanctity and safety of the enormous football field-sized cavern was a welcome reprieve. It was better here.
Evie could breathe.
The cave ceiling so far above was colorfully lit with lichen and moss that sent the rock walls into soft rainbow hues. The beautiful and lush willow-like underground trees with their sweet, juicy fruit that vampires could actually ingest were some of Roman’s most wonderful magic. The massive waterfall on one side of the long cave provided a pleasant, comforting backdrop of white noise. The numerous carved wooden bridges with their oil lamps were idyllic where they spanned the clear, babbling streams that cut through the cavern rock. They transported Evie to another place and time.
And then there was the cabin.
She stood before the small wooden hut now, gazing up at the smoke curling from the chimney, and she was reminded of a Thomas Kinkade painting. The smoke evaporated almost immediately after leaving the brick column; the air in the cave was pure and clean. The windows of the cottage emitted a warm, yellow light, and Evie could just see through the gauzy curtains on the first floor to make out the couch and its soft throws, and the rocking chair on the thick rug before the hearth.
This was Roman’s private cavern. No one else in the world but Evie knew it existed. This was where he’d brought her when he’d first met her. To protect her from a mortal enemy, the Vampire King had sequestered her here in this magically created safe haven. In doing so, he had shared something precious of himself.
“Let’s go inside,” came his voice now, just inches from her right ear. He had a king’s voice, deep and melodious. It was as unnaturally beautiful as he was, and as his breath brushed her skin, a small shiver tickled her nerve endings.
He gently pressed his hand to her back, guiding her through the cottage’s front door and into the warm, scented interior beyond. The smell of fresh baked bread, coffee, and other pastries assaulted her. It was a familiar, but startling sensation when her stomach growled.
Vampires did not need to eat. They did not get hungry for mortal food. But here, Roman had painstakingly created the illusion of humanity. There were things about being human that vampires felt envy toward, things vampires were curious about. Food was one of those things.
Hunger for food was underrated. Evie understood that now. It was something humans took for granted, this ability to feel desire toward the most basic of pleasures. Hunger pangs and scent-induced cravings for chocolate or Doritos were alien sensations to a vampire.
Roman wanted to understand them better. He was a good king, and good kings always tried to learn more. The fruit on the trees in the cave, and the table in the small dining room now overflowing with tea, cakes, cookies, sandwiches, and coffee were evidence of as much.
Roman created this environment to give himself the impression of humanity. Evie hadn’t known about all of this the first time she’d come here. She’d been human then, and the desire to eat the food he’d given her had been just as human and very real.
Now, all of the old human desires returned to her and she headed to the table like a shark moving in on blood in the water.
Roman joined her, sitting across from her and watching with glittering, gorgeous eyes.
She picked up a pastry and paused. “How long do I have to stay down here?”
“Not long,” Roman lied.
Evie gave him a reprimanding look. “Shame on you.”
Roman broke eye contact, and she felt the unease slipping off of him. He didn’t know what to tell her. He was worried about her.
“You know I can’t stay down here forever, Roman. And you know I can’t hide from my problems.”
“Ophelia is not your problem, my love. She’s mine.”
> “Wrong,” Evie corrected as she stuffed half a cupcake into her mouth. “She wash your pwobwem, bunnow she’s mine,” she said around a mouth full of food.
Roman looked up and grinned, chuckling softly.
Evie swallowed and wiped her mouth, smiling now as well. “You gonna watch me?”
“Always,” he told her shamelessly, folding his fingers under his chin as he prepared to observe her further.
“I hate you,” she teased, picking up a truffle now and taking a small, savoring bite. The chocolate flavor rushed over her tongue and she rolled her eyes in remembered ecstasy. She hastily popped the rest into her mouth and reached for a chocolate chip cookie.
She was stressed. Food was the obvious solution.
“You don’t hate me,” Roman said. “But I wouldn’t blame you right now if you did.” He paused, and his expression shifted a little. Evie recognized the change to seriousness once more. “I’ve brought you into quite a mess.”
Evie didn’t say anything. Her mouth was full anyway, thank goodness.
“You sensed the note in the drawer before I did,” he said then, changing the subject. “That is a seer capability and not one a Warlock normally possesses. I believe Lalura was right about the queens becoming more powerful than their kings.”
Evie considered that, chewing slowly. She had gained warlock abilities when she’d become a vampire, solely because vampires were the Offspring of Akyri and warlocks and hence possessed their parents’ powers. She wondered how many other abilities she might end up with before this was over. Or she was dead.
“I’m sorry about your computer, my love.”
Evie’s eyes shot up to meet Roman’s. His thoughts had followed hers, winding ever fatefully to the explosion that had taken out an entire house and nearly killed half a dozen vampires.
Evie swallowed the food she had in her mouth and licked her lips. She took a deep breath and thought of the computer she’d lost in the blast. She’d written so many books on it, it had born the grooves of her fingertips on its faded keys.
Now that she pondered the significance of the loss again, a new pang registered somewhere under her breastbone. She tried to hide it, knowing she would fail. She averted her gaze from her husband’s and reached for another pastry, not even conscious of what it was this time. “It’s okay.”