Page 7 of The Vampire's Guide to Wooing a Curator
In fact, he might not even need the picks.
He left his tool roll on the floor, then grasped the handle and lifted until the wood groaned and there was a sharp click. With the lock disengaged, he swung open the door.
Miss Sorrow gasped. “How did you do that?”
“Leverage. It’s not aligned properly. That’s why the latch slips.” He pointed to the hinges. “Get those replaced, and it shouldn’t lock on you again.”
He really was an idiot. Why was he telling her how to fix the vulnerabilities he intended to exploit? He was only making his job that much harder. Then again, her amusingly wide eyes and open mouth were worth the loss of one potential avenue of entry.
“T-Thank you,” she said.
Her cheeks were still quite red, a fact he chose not to mention, even if her reaction would have entertained him. She truly was unlike anyone he’d ever met, but no matter how soft her lips looked, no matter how tightly she clenched her fingers together at her waist, no matter the faint scent of honey rising from her skin, she was still a hunter.
So why did the thought of stealing from her make his stomach tighten?
He shifted from foot to foot. “You will speak to Mr. Blackwood, then?”
She furrowed her brow. “I’m not going to recommend you just because you helped me.”
“Of course not,” he said, before she could launch into another lecture. “But you never know when you might need the services of a reformed thief.”
She tilted her chin up. “That will never happen.”
He smirked. This was much better than wide-eyed gratitude. She was a tougher challenge than he’d expected, but the seeds of doubt were planted. Now they needed time to grow until they formed cracks in the solid wall of her confidence.
“Well.” He stretched his arms over his head. “I shall leave you to your dusty tomes.”
He strolled down the hallway until he was certain no one was looking, then increased his speed, moving faster than any human could follow. If someone glanced in his direction, they’dsee nothing but a blur, maybe feel a gust of wind. It wasn’t a rare power for a vampire, but it was useful for a thief.
Marcus had assigned him to watch Felicity, but now that he knew how thrilling it was to match wits with her, he could no longer remain a silent observer. The potential for further excitement was worth risking Marcus’s anger. As his pulse quickened, so did his speed, but when he arrived outside the townhouse that had been his haven for the past year, pain seized his legs, and he abruptly stumbled.
His knees hit the ground hard.
A familiar rattling in his chest warned him of what was coming, but he couldn’t pull out his handkerchief fast enough.
The coughing started, deep and violent.
Then, blood splattered on the ground beneath his palms.
Chapter Three
Later that night,as Felicity flipped through the illuminated manuscript in search of a spell that would repel vampires, she remembered the cocky smile on Mr. Drake’s face when he’d lifted the latch on the hall window. As if it were so easy to enter the museum. Well, perhaps it was, but the most valuable items in their collection were in the main hall, where the guards were now on a staggered schedule thanks to the gap Mr. Drake had pointed out.
She shouldn’t have felt grateful. Yes, he had unlocked the door to her exhibit when it had slammed shut, but it had been his fault they’d become trapped to begin with. She turned a page so aggressively that it tore. Now he’d made her damage the centerpiece of her collection!
She huffed. Thinking about him irked her. She was certain they’d met before, but every time she tried to recall where, she became strangely disoriented.
“There you are!”
Felicity straightened as her employer, Mr. Blackwood, entered the room. He was a man in his late fifties with thinning, black hair and a pair of thick, circular spectacles perched on his bulbous nose. He was not an unattractive man, and given his unusual bachelor status, she suspected he would have liked to become better acquainted, but she’d lost all interest in marriage the night she’d watched her parents die.
He looked around the room. “It is rather less impressive than I expected. Are you certain our visitors will be interested in these”—he picked up a carved, wooden statue of a bat and wrinkled his nose—“artifacts?”
Felicity set the illuminated manuscript aside and exhaled slowly to cool her rising anger. She hadn’t worked so hard for so long to be stymied. After weeks of deflecting Mr. Blackwood’s sharp words and probing questions, she had a much better idea of what she needed to do to put his concerns to rest.
The first thing she grabbed was a newspaper sitting atop a stool. She unfolded it, flipped to the page she needed, then held it out before the curator. “Look at this.”
She tapped an article describing several dollymops who had recently been found drained of blood in Whitechapel. There was no mention of bite wounds, but the unusual brutalization of the bodies meant the perpetrator was either a vampire or a particularly deranged human. She was willing to bet on the former.
