Author: Kalayna Price

“What is your companion, Puppet Master?” Her voice made it sound like an idle question, but her eyes… her eyes betrayed her.

“Vampire, of course.” Tatius’s arm slid around my waist, drawing me closer even as he rocked onto one hip, striking a pose of nonchalance.

Games. All of it. Both of them. And little ol’ me, I didn’t even rank as high as a pawn. A pawn, sacrificial as it might be, could at least take another piece.

“Come here child, I wish a peek into your mind.” The Collector held out her open palm, beckoning me forward.

Tatius’s grip around my waist tightened.

“I granted you a chance to view what she saw of your human, not free reign in the memories of my people. You have what I promised you. Be satisfied with it.”

“Of course.” She smiled, the demure gesture looking too genuine to be true. “I believe Selene has arrived.”

She held up her hand, summoning the two women standing in the doorway. Their heads hung as they trudged across the room. Identical falls of pure white hair covered their downcast faces like veils. They shuffled around the chair, stopping directly beside me before dipping simultaneously into curtsies. They straightened slowly as if every upward inch stung.

I expected them to be old, but young faces were revealed when they looked up. Young, colorless faces. I’d never seen skin so pale—the only color was a glimpse of snaking veins under their skin. Both wore sunglasses as if the flickering candlelight were too much for their eyes.

Albinos. And twins at that. Identical.

I blinked at them. Twins with terribly familiar scents. They had to be related to the dead woman.

Triplet albinos?

I inhaled slowly, tasting their scents. I was well fed, but they were human, and my pulse picked up from being so close, from my nearly intimate dissection of their scents.

Theirs were similar, oh so similar, to the harlequin. More alive, of course, fresher, but the same combination of damp darkness with a hint of sweet sunscreen. But under that, each woman had a slightly different scent. Subtle, but definitely different. The headless woman had smelled of wind in the moonlight, and only the guard shared that particular combination.

The Collector steepled her hands, looking between the two women. “Selene, child, who did you feed tonight?”

The twin closest to me started. “I—No one,” she whispered.

Jomar whirled around. “But—”

The Collector held up a hand to silence him. “No one?”

A long strand of colorless hair brushed against my arm as she shook her head. “I was supposed to. It was my turn.” Her shoulders heaved, a small, soundless, hiccup of a movement.

Then they did it again. “Luna took my place.” Her voice quivered, and her shoulders jerked again, as if someone had tied a string around her torso and tugged.

The other twin wrapped her arms around her sister. “It wasn’t your fault,” she whispered, which only made Selene’s trembling more violent. A wet sob tore from her throat.

I shuffled my feet. I needed to get away from the twins. I was too close. Much too close to a pair of strangers who had just lost their sister. Tatius’s arm tightened around my waist, as if he sensed how close I was to bolting.

Jomar watched the twins with emerging horror written on his face. As another sob sliced the air, he fell to his knees.

Then he lowered himself completely prostrate before the Collector.

“I didn’t know. I swear to you. I thought she was Selene. Luna was alive when I left her.”

“Silence!” The Collector’s voice boomed through the room, and for the first time her composure cracked. The look she gave her prostrate guard verged on homicidal, but then she cleared her throat and smoothed the front of her skirt. When she looked back up, her eyes were once again calm, her mouth unemotive. She nodded to Tatius. “Your companion was correct. Can her inhuman nose tell us anything else?”

Tatius smiled at her, and it was an oily, smug tilting of his lips. “It is a shame about the disobedience in your bloodstock, Collector. You might need to question them further. My companion,” he looked at me, lifting an eyebrow. I tilted my head back, searching the scents in the room, but a yawn caught me unexpectedly and cracked across my face. “Is quite exhausted, as you can see. Dawn draws near. We should conclude this discussion before we retire for the day.”

The Collector nodded, but her eyes were on me. Watching.

Analyzing. I pressed three fingers over my mouth, covering my yawn as I stared back at her, knowing that, at least at the moment, my face betrayed nothing, particularly not interest.

Returning her stare probably wasn’t exactly respectful, but I’d spent a good deal of my life as a cat, and every cat, everywhere, has mastered the disinterested stare. Her bottom lip twitched, like she’d suppressed a frown or some other disapproving expression, then her gaze slid away, dismissing me.

“This has been a most unenlightening investigation. Should I assume you will compensate me for the loss of one of my collectables?” she asked, her voice deceptively bored, as if she could barely be troubled to look into Luna’s death any longer.

“Of course,” Tatius said, flashing teeth without smiling.

“That is, if fault is found in my people.”

I blinked, trying to push back the exhaustion suddenly pressing down on me. Tatius hadn’t been lying about dawn approaching.

Time for good kittens to be in bed, I suppose. Tatius’s voice said inside my head.

“Excuse us,” he said aloud. He crooked a finger, and a female vampire pushed off the wall. “Take Kita to our chambers,” he told her when she was only half across the room.

I stiffened at the words. Our chambers?

“I—” I didn’t get a chance to finish, or even start. My jaw snapped closed, blocking off my words. I felt an alien smile crawl over my lips as my body moved on its own. Great, one kitten-puppet, made to order.

Tatius leaned down, pressing a kiss against my mouth. A surprisingly chaste kiss. Maybe it just wasn’t fun to control his partner in a kiss—kind of like a teenager making out with a mirror.

Go with Samantha. I’ll be there as soon as I finish here.

And use that nose of yours as you pass the Collector’s vampires. With that, he dismissed me and turned back to the Collector.

I glanced at Nathanial. He was staring at me, his mask perfect everywhere but his eyes. And when those lost eyes met mine, he squeezed them shut, looked away. I wished I could have closed my eyes too. Made the vampires all disappear. But I’d made my choice, given my word. Nathanial and I were alive. And I guess I was now going to learn where exactly Tatius and my ‘chambers’ were.

* * * *

I paced across the main room in Tatius’s underground suite. I had no idea if I was still somewhere under Death’s Angel or if these underground hallways had taken me halfway across the city. Samantha had shown me to my new ‘chambers’ which, like most other rooms in this place, were mostly cloth draped stone.

Dawn pressed against me, making each step I took heavier, but I had to keep moving. If I stopped, I’d fall asleep. I will fall down if I do not lie down soon, I thought, but the thought sounded like Nathanial’s gentle chiding in my head. Not him broadcasting directly in my brain like Tatius, obviously, but it sounded like something he’d say.

I forced my legs to lift, my knees to bend. My chin hit my chest in mid-motion, but I lifted it again. I really did have to find somewhere to sleep soon because sleep was unavoidable.

Every heartbeat was slower, dawn imminent. I dragged my feet, stumbling.

I needed to close my eyes.

The suite had only three rooms: the sitting chamber where I currently paced, a bedroom, and a bathroom full of every color of hair dye on the market—the vampire should have owned stock in a hair-color company, or maybe he did. No second bedroom was present, and certainly no second bed.

I’d agreed to be Tatius’s companion, not his whore.

Shuffling to the furthest corner of the sitting room, I sank against the wall and slid down. I wasn’t going to his bed, but I had to sleep.

Drawing my knees to my chest, I closed my eyes and surrendered to oblivion.

Chapter Nine

Something blocked my vision.

I blinked, my eyelashes brushing against something solid, yellow, and covering my face.

What the hell? I reached up, jerking at the thing over my eyes. It crinkled in my grasp. Paper?

I pulled the thin sheet of paper, my eyes misting at the sharp sting as the tape securing the paper to my forehead ripped free. I sat up, silky crimson sheets falling around me.

Where am I?

I glanced at the note and its large, flowing script.

“We sleep in the bed. Not on the floor.”

Oh crap. I was in Tatius’s bed.

I scrambled from the mattress, nearly tripping as I tried to kick free of the sheets. My feet hit the plush carpet, and I took inventory. I was barefoot, but still dressed in my jeans and sweater, so while he’d moved me out of the sitting room and into his bed, he hadn’t undressed me. Well, except for my coat. I glanced around but didn’t see the familiar gray material. I also didn’t see Tatius.

Thank the moon.

Clothes had been laid out in a chair by the bed, another yellow note taped to the stack. I crept over, recognizing the flowing script as the same as had been taped to my forehead.

“Get dressed. Sam will assist you.”

Great.

I looked over the clothing. There was a short—a very, very short—black dress made out of a shiny black vinyl, a stringy corset that looked like a torture device, fishnets, and black boots made out of the same material as the dress. Yeah, I think not. I dropped the ‘clothes’ back on the chair. There had to be something else to wear in the place.

I headed for the door, but the knob turned under my fingers. I jumped back as the door opened. A tall woman with straight, black hair and a tight, red dress that showed more than it concealed stepped into the room.

“Good, you’re awake,” she said, smiling at me. “Now let’s get you dressed, deary, so I can do your hair and get you to the council room.”