Page 29 of The Vampire's Guide to Wooing a Curator
Of course she would say that. He could have let it go, but the scent was a distraction he could not afford. So he brought his right index finger to his mouth, coated it in his saliva, then shoved it between her lips. Her eyes widened, and she tried to pull away, but he grasped the back of her neck and rubbed his finger along the ragged flesh. As soon as it was smooth, he stepped away.
She slapped a hand over her lips, frowning fiercely.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I had to do it.”
He would have much preferred to transmit his saliva to her wounds via his own mouth, but he suspected that would haveresulted in him getting a knee to the crotch. Biting her had been bad enough. He would not make the mistake of kissing her again.
Her cheek bulged as she probed with her tongue.
He crossed his arms. “What does the vampire you’re searching for look like?”
Felicity licked her lips. “She was very tall, with long, black hair and sharp features. She wore a black dress and a black lace veil.”
The image of Marguerite appeared in his mind. She’d taken to wearing black in the months before she’d vanished. He cleared his throat. “Anything else?”
“She carried an ebony cane topped with a golden dog’s head. One of the dog’s ears was chipped.”
It was not terribly helpful, but if that was the best she could do, he would have to manage. There were a few places in the city they could check where vampires gathered to show off their human concubines.
“Where do we go first?” she asked.
“Nowhere.” He gestured to the window and the sky, which was a deep shade of red. “Unless you want your protector to turn to ash.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
He grasped her hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed her knuckles. “I look forward to it.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Thank you forvisiting,” Felicity said for the hundredth time as a well-dressed couple breezed past her.
“…not worth the ticket price,” the man said. “Why would anyone want to steal something so unremarkable?”
Felicity forced herself to smile wider. Skeptics were expected. She’d known there would be guests who visited her exhibit only to snicker or gather fodder for gossip. They were not the people she needed to reach.
Still, it was difficult to remain in good spirits when the crowds Mr. Blackwood had insisted would swarm the Sloan House had not manifested. There had been several groups of young ladies accompanied by one or more stern-faced matrons, but the former giggled behind their fans while the latter followed silently behind their charges.
Two days earlier, the disappointing turnout would have been devastating, but she was too eager to begin her search for her parents’ killer with Mr. Drake to dwell on the failure of her exhibit. With the vampire at her side, she’d finally get the revenge she’d been seeking since that awful night. When it was over and Mr. Drake had served his purpose, she’d dispose of him with a stake through the heart.
She lifted her hand to her neck. His bite had not left a mark, but she swore she could feel the wounds beneath the fabric of her black crepe blouse. She’d spent the entire night tossing inher bed, plagued by dreams of Mr. Drake plunging his fangs into more scandalous parts of her body.
Mr. Blackwood turned the corner and straightened when he spotted her. He maneuvered through the few guests who remained in the corridor, then stopped in front of her. The way his eyes narrowed and his eyebrows pulled down made her stiffen. He made that expression only when he was delivering bad news.
“I am terribly sorry, Miss Sorrow,” he said. “It seems we have been upstaged.” He held out a folded newspaper she hadn’t noticed he’d been carrying. She accepted it with numb hands.
“It’s on the third page,” he said.
She reluctantly opened what turned out to be yesterday’s edition of a popular scandal sheet,Ladies Daily, and immediately found the problem. An article in the center of the page decried ‘Miss Sorrow’s latest absurd notion’ and cautioned anyone that visited the Sloan House to first ‘anoint themselves with garlic.’ The writer also claimed that Felicity had planted the threatening note as a scheme to increase ticket sales and called on the public to abstain from visiting the museum.
Winifred.
It had to have been her cousin.
Well, Winifred could do as she wished. The exhibit had only been a means to an end, another way of pursuing revenge against the vampire scourge while operating around Great-Uncle Ezra’s refusal to let her join the nightly patrols. Now that Jonathan was going to help her, she no longer cared if the people of London dismissed her.
She’d find the vampire who killed her parents without them.
*
