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“What kind of name is that?”
“Apparently, it’s the one my mother gave me.”
She pointed at his face and twirled her finger before her. “What’s that stuff beneath your eyes? It sparkles.” She gave him a sideways sneer. “Are you a freakin’ faery?”
“Such vitriol drips from your pretty mouth. What have the sidhe ever done to you?”
“Nothing.” She paced some more. “Everything! Just get out, will you? This is my place. Go find your own hovel.”
Vail leaned his elbows onto the butcher-block counter behind him and smiled as sweetly as he could manage. He didn’t do sweet, but he could get close to amiable if he tried.
“I don’t think so. I’d like to hang around and have you introduce me to your kidnappers.”
“If you know I was kidnapped, my mother must have sent you. Did you come to rescue me? To bring me back to Mommy and lay me before her sacrificial altar?”
Vail tutted. “You have mother issues?” Even saying it cut into his heart. If anyone had issues regarding their mother …
“I’m not telling you anything.” She stopped before the bed, stared at it a few moments as if it might bite her, then plopped onto it and, shoulders high and straight, fixed an innocent gaze on him. “Get out, Vail the faery.”
“I’m not sidhe. I’m vampire.”
She scoffed. “Could have fooled me.”
“Why, thank you. I take that as a compliment.”
He strolled toward her. The efficiency apartment was small and open, so it was but ten strides to stand before the bed. Squatting, he clasped his hands between his bent legs. “Now, about your kidnappers. I assume the introductions are not going to happen, because the guilty party is sitting right here, before me.”
She looked aside. A pale beam from a distant streetlight glimmered through the window and highlighted her long, elegant nose, narrow face and chin. Vail believed the ice princess label; she wore it gorgeously. Her eyes were deep blue, almost—no, not violet. That was a color he had only seen on faeries.
“There are no kidnappers,” he ventured. “Are there?”
“You think you’re so smart?”
“Actually, let me lay it out for you.”
“Oh, please do. I’m all about the faery tales tonight.”
“Then look at me, please.”
He waited, but she tilted her head away from his gaze. Vail slid a palm along her cheek, the light getting trapped in his iron rings, and forced her head up. He gripped her chin firmly, and she flinched, but not out of his grasp.
“We can make this rough,” he warned, “or we can do this nice and sweet. Which do you prefer?”
If she said rough, he’d lose it right here. Vail was not immune to an attractive woman. Very well, so she was sexy. It was those damned white teeth, clear eyes and a touch of impudence. Nothing else. Couldn’t be the soft, panting breaths that indicated she was still winded from her adventure eluding him. And it most certainly was not her scent that seemed to curl into his brain and dally with the smarts he’d claimed to possess.
The fact she was vampire kept him from shoving her onto the mattress and drawing his tongue down her long, slender neck and to the full mounds of her breasts that peeked above the low neckline of her shirt.
“Tell me what you think you know,” she said through a tight jaw. She shoved his hand from her face, and fixed her hard gaze on him. “Vail.”
“I work for Hawkes Associates,” he said. “You know about them?”
She nodded, but stiffly. She wasn’t about to drop the tough-girl act. If she was a thief, like the rest of her family, then she’d probably honed some excellent avoidance tactics.
“Your mother hired us to track down her kidnapped daughter. Seems she—that is, you—had been taken from the Santiago mansion only minutes before you were to meet the Lord of Midsummer Dark for some kind of exchange. Taken, in a valuable faery gown. Mommy wants back her daughter and the dress. You following me so far?”
She jutted up her chin, defiant, but gave a curt nod.
“Seems you, Lyric Santiago—” he liked that she flinched when he recited her name “—were supposed to go along with the Lord of Midsummer Dark, the dress, I assume, being some sort of pseudodowry.”
“Where did you hear that? I was only delivering the thing. There’s no way I’d go near him again …” She shut her mouth.
Again? She had been in Zett’s presence before? A fact to note. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. And he didn’t want her to do so—it was more interesting this way. He liked watching prey squirm.
“Funny thing, though.” He thumbed his jaw, drawing out the moment and also inhaling her scent, which had deepened with her rising anxiety. Uncomfortable? She may be an ice princess, but he could thaw her out quick enough. “That dress was stolen from Hawkes Associates not ten days ago. Now, who do you think is tops on the suspect list?”
“You think I stole that ugly gown? Ha!”
“Ugly?” He stroked the side of his thumb along her cheek. She did not flinch, but he felt her muscles tense under his touch. Something about this scenario didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t pinpoint what, exactly. “I was told it was fashioned from faery diamonds, the most incredible and dazzling gemstone in the known world. Or unknown world, matters as they are.”
His thumb strayed to her lips, full, pink and soft, worth a kiss— Vail suddenly realized what he was doing.
What the hell was he doing? That had not been a harsh touch, but one of—admiration? Wib.
He stood, shoving his hand in a pocket. “You don’t like diamonds, Lyric?”
“They’re not so spectacular.”
“I imagine so, for one of your profession. You can steal them if you want them, eh?”
“I’m not a thief.”
“That has yet to be proven. What happened to the dress?”
“It’s a gown.”
“Gown. Dress.” Vail leaned over her. A tendril of blond hair swept his hand. It felt like summer. He fisted that hand behind his back to keep from touching her again. “What did you do with it?”
“They took it from me. And left me here.”
“‘They’ being these imaginary kidnappers of yours?”
She nodded. Liar.
“So you didn’t steal it?”
She shook her head.
“Nor did anyone in the notorious Santiago clan steal it?”
More negative head shaking.
“And now someone else has the gown, namely, your kidnappers.”
A positive nod.
Vail shoved her across the bed, pressing her shoulders to the mattress, which reeked of mildew and dust. Pinning a knee across her thighs, he prevented her from the anticipated sneak attack of her knee aiming for his jewels.
“You’re lying,” he growled at her. “There was no sign of force or struggle in your bedroom.”
“Force? The whole damned window was taken out!”
“But you expected that to happen, which is why the rest of your room was pristine. As well, the gown has not been sold because that is something the entire Faery realm would be aware of—”
“If Faery is so aware, why don’t they go right to the ugly thing and get it?”
“It’s not …” Like that.
Faery sensed the thing, but couldn’t pinpoint it. Not without expert trackers, and someone had to actually be wearing the gown to give out the strongest vibrations. And apparently the Seelie court was not currently aware it was anywhere but at Hawkes Associates.
“You plotted your own kidnapping to steal the dress yourself. Admit it!”
“It wasn’t for the gown—it was to get away from Zett!”
Vail pushed from the bed and walked a few steps away. Breathing out and raking his fingers through his hair, he then chuckled. He’d gotten the truth from her much quicker than he’d expected.
But seriously? The chick thought Zett had planned to take her to Faery with him? Vail doubted that very much.
On the other hand, he wasn’t privy to all Zett’s devious kinks. It was possible the bastard wanted Lyric for reasons unknown. And she had intimated they’d met previously.
“I get it,” he said. “You saw an opportunity and took it.”
“You’re not going to take me back to my mother, are you? I need time.”
A touch of measured panic warbled in her voice. She didn’t want to go back, but at the same time, she was not afraid of such an outcome.
“Time for what?”
The vampiress looked aside, giving him her silence again. The streetlight adorned her profile, glistening off fine cheekbones in a tempting tease. It reminded him of the constant glimmer in Faery, and of what made him most comfortable.
“I am going to return you to your mother,” Vail said, forcing away the image of light-kissed skin, “but the deal was you and the gown. Where is it?”
“I fenced it already.”
“Liar.”
“Junkie vampire.”
“Junkie?”
“You sparkle. Around your eyes and at your neck. It’s in your skin. I know what that’s from. You’re a dust freak.”
He laughed again and pointed at his eyes, which were neither bloodshot nor clouded, which is what happened to dust freaks. “You think so?”
She nodded, knowingly. The vampiress could not begin to know him. Ever.
“Think what you wish. The faster I can get this damned assignment wrapped up the sooner I can be rid of you.”
“Just walk away. That’ll take care of your problem, like that.” She snapped her fingers.
Vail leaned over her. “So who’s the fence?” She gave him the side of her face again.
After her false accusation, he had no patience. He gripped her chin and forced her to meet his gaze. He considered enthralling her, but the little he knew regarding vampire-to-vampire relations was that a vamp couldn’t enthrall their own kind. Since arriving in the mortal realm, his power of persuasion had been frustratingly absent. And if he dusted her, she’d be worthless.
“I don’t have a name,” she offered.
“How do you contact him?”
“He calls me.”
Vail swung a surveying look around the small apartment. The place was merely a safe house, he suspected. It was empty, save the bare-mattress bed. Just a place to hide out until … Until? “Where’s your phone?”
“I … lost it.”
He narrowed his brows—then remembered. “I think I can help you with that.” Reaching into his back pocket, he drew something out and slammed the phone on the kitchen counter. “I guess I’m staying the night.”
“No! Where’d you get that?”
“Found it under your bed when I was looking through your room for clues.” He crossed his arms and kicked out a boot to put his weight against the counter. “I’m here until your fence calls, sweetie.”
“I hate you!”
“Not feeling much love for you, either.”
“I hate it all. I hate this place. I hate this awful, smelly bed.” She stood and kicked the bed frame, slamming the entire twin bed into the corner.
“Hey now, that’s no way to treat those pretty red shoes of yours, is it?”
“And I hate you again,” she retorted. “And I’m starving, which, thanks to you, my supper got off but he didn’t get me off.”
“Frustrated?” Vail ran a hand over his crotch.
She understood the signal. Tiny fists formed beside each of her thighs. Her plan had backfired, and now he would drag her home to her mother, kicking her pointy red shoes and screaming hate and damnation to high heaven. He couldn’t wait to do it.
The petulant vampiress stomped into the bathroom.
“Where you going?”
“Where does it look like?” She slammed the door shut.
