Page 17 of Thirst
A frisson went over my skin. Fear and a messed-up kind of arousal.
I drew a slow inhale and eyed my reflection—wrecked hair, smudged makeup. I hadn’t brought a purse, but I made use of the makeup samples in a glass bowl on the counter, touching up my eyes and mouth, finger-combing my hair. Then I unlocked the door, pulled back my shoulders, and sauntered into the hall.
Jerome was waiting, his mouth in a thin line. He pushed past me without a word.
I kept walking.
He wouldn’t find anything. Cain would’ve slipped out of the door behind me.
Jerome might be my bodyguard, but he wasn’t allowed to touch me. All he could do was report back to my father, and what would he say? That I’d spent too long in the washroom?
Back in the gallery, I inserted myself into the circle that had formed around the painting of the island.
“Why the fire?” asked a vampire from the Madrid Syndicate, a woman named Viviana. “What’s its significance?”
“Fire cleanses,” said the man with her.
“Fire represents rebirth,” murmured a third women.
Viviana smiled. “Perhaps the vampire in the forest makes her burn.”
They were close, but nobody quite got it. “Maybe,” I offered, my gaze flicking toward the washrooms, “she’s saying nothing’s permanent. Love. Alliances.” I kept my tone light, even as something bitter rose in my throat. “Even the promises we give people right before we throw them away.”
“Deep,” said a ponytailed dhampir from California.
I nodded, but I’d drawn the wrong kind of attention. Several people had turned their heads to eye me, brows raised.
Jerome had returned to the gallery. He sent me a last, scowling look that made my skin tighten, then headed back upstairs.
I dredged up a light laugh. “But what do I know?” I added and melted into the crowd.
5
Cain
The La Cave speakeasy lay three floors beneath the Hotel de Nuit. Neutral ground where out-of-towners were tolerated, if not exactly welcome.
I stopped by my own hotel to change into loafers and a Tom Ford smoking jacket, a slim steel bar pinned to its black velvet lapel. For my glamour this time, I borrowed the face of a Kral Syndicate soldier who happened to be in Paris but was busy elsewhere.
I reached the hotel at a quarter to midnight, deliberately early so I could be in position before Nyx arrived. Downstairs, the doorman looked me over, then waved me into the speakeasy. The place oozed fifties-style glamour: red leather booths, marble-top tables, a Marshall jukebox humming in the corner.
I claimed a spot at one end of the gleaming walnut bar and ordered a blood-whiskey. “A double.”
Glass in hand, I leaned against the bar and surveyed the crowd. You had to hand it to Parisiens, they knew how to dress. Even the thralls looked sharp—polished up and put on display, all shine and bored expressions.
I took a long pull of whiskey, anger simmering in my gut.
It had been Nyx the whole time. We’d known there was another operative on the island, someone who’d slipped away scot-free. Someone who’d blown up our motorboat.
The boat we’d all been on—me, Brien, Talon, Twilight, Eden—when it had exploded in the North Atlantic, hours from any help.
I’d never suspected her, even though there’d been a moment on the island when I thought I’d caught her scent. I’d figured I was wrong because Nyx was on our side, wasn’t she?
Hell, six weeks before Eden’s kidnapping, she’d passed along the location of a QCS lair running a blood-slave ring, intel that helped us take the whole operation down. She’d seemed genuinely concerned about the men and women ensnared by the ring.
I’d admired the hell out of her for risking her syndicate’s wrath to help them.
And I’d taken that as proof she was with us.
