As Shadows Fade (13 page)

She almost took a step back from the doorway, but stopped herself. “It's not the first time I've come to you only for information.” Indeed, she'd left Wayren and Max at the town house to come directly here to speak with Sebastian.

“To my great dismay,” he agreed. “Do come in.” He gestured into the small, spare chamber he leased while in London.

He looked tired, nearly as tired as Max. Although his shirt was pressed, and his hair combed back in rich, tawny waves, Sebastian had an appearance of underlying rumpledness. He wore no neckcloth, nor a jacket, and his boots, though clean, didn't shine as they normally did.

“Yes, I know about the pool. And it's no secret, at least among the undead, how to breach it. According to Beauregard, it's Lilith's creation, you know,” Sebastian said, gesturing impatiently for her to sit. “And is hidden not very far from where she lives in the mountain.”

The only place available was a small wooden chair, or the bed. When Victoria chose the chair, Sebastian gave another of those wry smiles. “Of course,” he said. “The fool me.”

“Will you tell me about the pool?” she asked after a moment.

There was no question—she cared for Sebastian deeply. He'd done much for her, offered her pleasure and escape over the difficult last years. With his own particular skill, he teased her, taunted and angered her…always seeming to know what she needed in order to help her clear her head. To alleviate the stress or tension or fear with which she struggled.

Why couldn't she love him?

“I will,” he said. His voice carried low, and she looked up to find him standing in front of her chair. She'd forgotten the question, and for the moment it didn't matter.

Something snapped in the silence, so real, it was almost audible. Sebastian took her arms and pulled Victoria to her feet, there, flush in front of him. She allowed him.

“You didn't really think,” he said, holding her wrists down between their bodies, “that you could come to me, here, without repercussions.”

Her heart slammed in her throat. Warmth billowed between them, and Victoria pulled one of her hands away. One. The other one…He tightened his fingers around it so she felt the pad of his thumb digging into her flesh. It would likely bruise.

“I told you,” he said, leaning forward to her cheek, “that I have no intention of being a gentleman about this.” Now there was a layer of anger in his voice.

“I came for information,” she said. Even to her own ears, she sounded breathless.

“You came for more than that, Victoria.” He was still close enough that his breath heated her temple, and his leg brushed against her gown.

Had she?

No.

No.

“You're pining for a man who cannot be what you want. And need,” he said…then his lips brushed her cheek. She turned her face away, swallowing hard…but she didn't step back.

Was it curiosity that had driven her here? Petulance?

Confusion?

“Sebastian,” she said just as he turned his face.

“Victoria,” he murmured, then kissed her. Roughly.

Yet her eyes sank closed, and she opened her mouth. Their tongues tangled in that hot, sleek way, reminding her how skilled Sebastian was at seduction. Very skilled. Very willing.

Then his kiss altered, becoming more coaxing, teasing, urging; she could feel the change in the way he touched her. As if he knew what this meant…could mean. He traveled to the sensitive spot on her neck, kissing and nibbling down to the curve of tendon into her shoulder. Her knees weakened.

His hands gripped her shoulders now, tightly but not painfully, and suddenly Victoria felt the nudge of a bed against the back of her leg. And as if to forestall any argument, he returned his lips to cover hers at that moment, pulling her up tightly against him, trapping her legs between his and the mattress. With one little tip, they'd be sprawled on the blanket and pillow.

She separated her mouth from his, and turned her face away.

“Sebastian, it's not…” She drew in a deep breath, felt her breasts move against his chest and the long line of his legs against her. He'd not loosened his grip; in fact, his fingers tightened into her shoulder.

“Victoria,” he said. His voice came out rough and with a decided edge. “You came here. To me.”

“I know, Sebastian. I really…came for information.”

“You never come only for information.”

“I did this time.” She pressed her palms against his chest. His skin burned warm through the linen.

“You know I don't give information without compensation,” he said. His voice was tight, and his eyes angry.

Victoria looked up at him and recognized the pain in his face. She hated that she was the cause of it, but it couldn't be helped. If she had any question before, she did no longer. “I'm sorry, Sebastian.”

Now she stepped to the side, away, putting space between them. Her heart still slammed in her chest, but it wasn't the right kind of slamming.

It just wasn't.

 

+ + +

A rumpled Victoria returned to the town house late that evening, tired and dejected. Despite the unpleasantness of their confrontation, she'd obtained more information than she'd hoped from Sebastian.

His knowledge had no doubt been obtained through the relationship he'd had with his grandfather Beauregard. Sebastian was able to answer several questions, and as a result gave Victoria enough to begin to formulate a plan. But the situation was not a hopeful one. It would mean long travel and danger, but worst of all, they would need Lilith's cooperation.

Which was impossible to imagine.

To make matters worse, when she walked into the front entrance of the town house, Max was there. She had no idea what would cause him to be standing in the foyer, perhaps he was merely passing through—but he was the last person she wanted to see at that moment.

Apparently, the feeling was mutual.

His eyes scored her more sharply than usual, disdain pronounced in his expression. “Don't expect me at supper tonight.”

Surprised at the venom in his voice, she paused in her intention to sail past him, up the stairs, to the sanctuary of her chamber. “You're going out?” she asked, suddenly aware of the burn of moisture at the corner of her eyes. No, not now.

Not in front of Max.

She drew in a deep breath, brought herself upright, and clasped her hand over the newel post. The sting abated, but her throat felt scratchy.

“I have matters to attend to,” he replied. Still just as bitterly. His face looked as though it had been sculpted from some harsh gray stone.

“As you wish.” She turned away and started up the stairs without a backward glance. Her eyes filled with angry, furious tears, and the inside of her nose began to tingle.

Perhaps she ought to let him go.

Perhaps it would be best. For both of them.

 

+ + +

Victoria fell asleep in her clothing on top of her bed, waking only when Verbena brought her a tray much later that night.

Amid clucking and
tsk
ing, the maid helped her mistress to remove the rumpled gown and insisted she eat the meal of cold chicken, bread, tomatoes, and cheese. Victoria felt marginally better after her nap and a good meal, yet an angry, itchy sort of internal grumbling continued to nag at her.

Even after her bustling maid finished brushing out her hair for the night and helped her dress for bed—she had no social engagements tonight, and apparently there weren't any vampires left in London to hunt—Victoria hadn't relinquished her mood. Half of her wanted to curl up and sob, over what, she wasn't certain…and the other part would have loved to come face-to-face with a pack of vampires.

She'd annihilate them.

Verbena's twittering began to grate on her nerves, and at last Victoria sent her maid away for the night—which apparently was the right thing to do, as Verbena confessed that she and Oliver had planned for a drive to Vauxhall Gardens.

“Then be off with you/' Victoria said, noting it was only eleven o'clock.

Perhaps all she needed was a bit more sleep.

And she did, for a time, dreaming of black-smoke demons and red-eyed vampires and dark-eyed men.

But after a while she woke to a cool moonbeam shining through her window, lighting the room as if it were a gray-and-blue-tinted day.

The thought that had been worrying, grumbling, grating in the back of her mind now came out to the fore with full force: Perhaps she ought to let Max go.

Victoria sat up, slid off her bed, walked over to her dressing table. Her face shone ghostly in the mirror, her thick dark hair falling over her shoulders, brushing past her elbows, her eyes dark almonds alongside the bridge of her nose. A faint sheen of moisture dampened her upper lip, for the heat of day still lingered.

Perhaps Sebastian was right. She was pining for a man who couldn't give her what she wanted. Who didn't want, or need, anyone.

She looked at herself in the mirror for a long time and at last made her decision.

If that was what he really wanted, she'd let him go. But the way he'd looked, as he stood over her in the carriage after the dinner dance, spoke otherwise.

Perhaps it was time to force his hand. One way or the other.

Rising from the stool, she whisked off her simple white night rail and pulled from the wardrobe a lacy shell pink gown. The fabric weighed little more than a whisper, and fitted her breasts like two lace hands…then fell free, in a sheer pink glaze from her bodice to the floor. Her two
vis bullae
glinted behind it, at her navel.

Victoria left her chamber silently and padded through the small town house to the rear, where the servants kept their rooms. Then she climbed up a flight of stairs to the next level, where the heat lingered even more heavily.

Her gown swirled around her, light as smoke, as she came to a stop outside Max's room. The crack under the door showed no illumination, but it was well after two o'clock in the morning. He was either sleeping or out. And since there weren't any vampires in London anymore…

Victoria opened the door and saw the same moonbeam splaying over his bed. Empty. Unslept in.

He wasn't there.

Victoria backed out of the room, her stomach twisting uncomfortably, her palms suddenly damp.

She felt foolish.

Back down the stairs she went, and kept going down to the ground floor. She found herself near the kitchen at the back of the town house. She wasn't hungry, but walked through to the front of the house, now wide awake and alert. Suddenly she realized why.

The hair on the back of her arms lifted, and she slowed her careless movements into something silent. The sound had been a soft clink, or a dull scrape, perhaps.

Not a vampire—she didn't feel a chill. It could be Kritanu or Charley or…

Victoria drew herself up tall and continued along the corridor to the sitting room. Her heart pounded.

A yellow glow shone from under the door, faint and unassuming. She turned the knob and pushed it open.

Max sat in Aunt Eustacia's favorite chair near the piecrust table on which her stakes had lain. A short glass with liquid that glowed amber in the lamplight gave testament to the dull scrape Victoria had heard, and the fat decanter next to it, the clink. He raised his face, half of it burnished gold from the lamp, and the other melding into shadow. His white shirt, with a loose neckcloth draped around his shoulders, glowed in the dim light.

“What do you want?”

She stepped across the threshold and stood close to the wall, feeling anger…and something else…bubbling through her. Her fingers gripped the edge of the door, but she moved to stand in that beautiful, broad moonbeam from the side window. “I couldn't sleep.”

His glance flickered over her, and she saw his mouth compress. “Go away, Victoria.”

“Max.”

Then he looked at her, straight on, and she was knocked nearly breathless by the venom in his expression. The same bitterness he'd had earlier that afternoon. That same deep, flat anger he'd had when she drugged him with
salvi
three weeks ago.

“You've settled things with Vioget. Why are you here?”

There was no use wondering how he'd known she'd visited Sebastian; she'd accepted that about him long ago. Max knew everything.

“Ye—” she began, but he didn't wait to hear the rest of it.

“Get. Away.” His words were little more than a breath.

She took a step closer, and felt the whisper of fabric around her legs. She knew what he saw, with the white glow behind her: the froth of pink gauze outlining her from torso to toes, the heavy bundle of thick curls cascading down her back. Victoria had no illusions about the image she made.

She needed all the help she could get.

“Max, I went to your chamber, looking for you.”

“Obviously.” Those dark eyes scraped over her, somehow managing to be cold and yet arrogant. “I've no interest in Vioget's leavings. Or is it that you prefer not to know your child's patrimony?”

So he also knew she had stopped taking the potion. Again, that was no surprise to Victoria. She'd told him it was her intention, and Max, being Max, would confirm it. But his other accusations…

“Sebastian's leavings?” She gave a short laugh, trying not to let that cold voice penetrate too deeply. “Max, don't be—”

“Or was that someone else's mark on your neck?” He'd not raised his voice this whole time. It came out quiet and flat. Cold.

Victoria reached reflexively to her shoulder, where Sebastian had indeed left a small mark earlier today.

Max couldn't have seen it now, for her hair covered it. But this afternoon…

“This is the last time I'll say it. Leave.”

His eyes looked like black pits with a faint glitter in their centers. Though the glass of whiskey sat next to him, he never lifted a hand toward it. Instead, she saw that his fingers curled around the arm of his chair.