Her eyes flicked his way and then darted off. “I don’t know . . .” Abruptly, she sagged to the floor, drawing her knees to her chest. Folding her arms, she rested them on her upraised knees and buried her face. Her shoulders jerked with a suppressed sob.
Despair, now. Dominic came off the chair and hunkered down next to her.
Poor kid.
He didn’t touch her. She stiffened, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “I know you don’t want to believe this, but I’m not going to hurt you. I don’t hurt kids. I don’t hurt anybody, unless I have to.”
She sniffled. “If you’re not going to hurt me, then why am I here?”
“I already told you that. I need to find her. You know who she is. Help me.”
“Why should I?”
Ahhh, progress.
At least she wasn’t pretending ignorance anymore. That was the first step.
“Tell me so I can help her—before it’s too late.” Settling on the floor next to her, he said, “I get the feeling you care about her. You don’t want her hurt. She’s gotten mixed up in some bad things. Hasn’t she?”
With an unsteady sigh, she nodded. “
Bad things
doesn’t quite cover it. She’s in a world of trouble, and I don’t know how to help her. Why should I think you’d be able to? I don’t know
you
. She doesn’t know
you
. So why should you help us?”
“Because I have to.” He held out a hand.
She gave him a suspicious look, staring at his hand as though it were covered with some unnamed, unidentified matter. Dominic cocked a brow. “You can read a lie.”
Now, her eyes widened, and she scooted back a few feet on her butt. “How did you know that?”
“Because you’re a witch. Witches can read lies. The same way I can smell them. The same way I can feel them.”
“
Smell
a lie? What in the hell are you, a bloodhound?”
Dominic grinned at her. “Nope. What you see is what you get.”
Mostly.
“You really do need to trust me. I get the feeling she’s running out of time.”
And so are you.
If she didn’t tell him what he needed to know, Dominic was going to get somebody down here that would make her. He really didn’t want to do that.
Under that cocky bravado, she was just a kid. A scared kid with old eyes. Tired eyes. He’d say she was fifteen at the most, but she had done things in her life nobody should ever have to do. Lived through things nobody should ever have to live through.
It had made her cynical and very wary.
She’d had enough things forced on her. He didn’t want to add to it.
She jammed her hands into the pockets of her worn jeans. “What’s your name?”
“Dominic. You?”
“Jasmine. Everybody calls me Jazzy.”
Once more, Dominic held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Jazzy.”
“Whatever.” But she placed her hand in his.
“I won’t hurt you—or her. But you have to help me find her.”
Jazzy shook her head. “I have no reason to trust you. No reason at all.” Then she tugged her hand away, tucking it back in her pocket. “So why do I feel like I’m supposed to?”
“Instinct. I can help.”
She sighed, her thin shoulders rising and falling. Thin, too thin. She had the look of somebody rarely able to eat her fill. “Do you know her?”
“Sort of. But you know her better. You can help me help her.”
Morose, Jazzy just stared at him. “I don’t know her so well anymore. She’s been gone a while. Maybe I never really knew her.” She kicked at the plush carpet with the toe of her worn-out shoe. Shooting him a glance from under her bangs, she asked, “How come you’re so sure you can help if you don’t really know her?”
“I don’t know . . . I just know I need to find her.” He shook his head, hoping she wouldn’t press. “It’s too complicated to explain. We would need all night. Hell, we might need all of tonight, tomorrow night, plus the next five nights. And you’d probably want me to call a shrink. But we don’t have that kind of time.
She
doesn’t have that kind of time.” He paused for a beat and then asked, “Does she?”
“Fuck, no.” She flopped down on the couch and stared at him, her blue green eyes shadowed and worried. “Morgan’s my sister. She thinks she’s protecting me. But she’s going to end up in a world of trouble . . . and probably drag me down with her, if I hang around.
Which
I am
not
going to do. I love her, but I’m not gonna stand around and watch her do this.”
“Do what?” Dominic forced the question out past a tight throat. It was a good thing he didn’t need to breathe—also that he didn’t have much of a heartbeat anymore.
Morgan.
She’d called her Morgan. For some reason, that name sent a fucking cold chill straight down his spine.
“Work for
him
—Peter Sanders. He owns these streets . . . and once he decides he doesn’t want her around anymore, he’ll have one of his men kill her.” Once more, Jazzy buried her face against her knees. “I just got my sister back. I don’t want to lose her again.”
N
EED warred with duty.
Dominic couldn’t leave Jazzy here alone. She’d take off. He could see it in her eyes. That would be bad news all around, for him, for Jazzy, and for . . . Nessa.
Hell. He didn’t even know if she
was
Nessa. His gut said Nessa was
here
, and he could scent her all over this kid. But the kid kept calling her Morgan.
Morgan.
Who in the hell was Morgan? The name had to mean something, otherwise it wouldn’t have turned his blood to ice. Storming out to the deck, he pulled his cell phone out and made a call to Excelsior.
Kelsey’s voice was bright and clear, despite the fact that it was two a.m. “Do you ever sleep?” Dominic demanded.
“Oh, sure. When people let me. But people have this annoying habit of calling at two in the morning,” she said, her voice droll.
“Sorry. Question . . . does the name Morgan mean anything to you?”
Her silence said everything.
It stretched on for . . . ages. It was probably only a few seconds, but it seemed to take forever. Finally, her voice soft and worried, she asked, “Why?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Yes. It means something. Bad news. Now answer my question.
Why?
”
“I don’t know. Who in the hell is Morgan?”
There was a soft murmur—Dominic recognized Malachi’s voice and he swore. “Damn it, one of you answer me.”
Kelsey sighed. “Dom, it’s complicated. This was one of things Malachi wanted to talk to you about before you left, but you weren’t in the mood to wait, and frankly, it didn’t seem to be anything you needed to know.”
“Obviously, it would seem different. Who in the hell is Morgan?”
“She was a witch that Nessa fought a few years ago. One who nearly killed Nessa—hell, we thought she
did
kill her. She was a dream thief, and she used blood magic. She was bad, bad news, all the way around.”
Blood magic. That bit, he pretty much understood. “What’s a dream thief?”
“Rare talent. Kind of a psychic vampire. It’s a witch who can slip into a person’s dreams and suck their life force out of them while they dream. They can drain a person dry—even kill them.” Kelsey’s voice was heavy and tired. “Like I said, bad news.”
“But Morgan is dead, right? Dead, buried?”
“Well . . .”
Just when Dominic thought things couldn’t get any stranger. But things could always get stranger—always. Kelsey managed to break it down to the bare bones, explaining in under ten minutes, and even though she’d kept it simple and concise, his head was spinning when he hung up the phone.
So Morgan’s
body
wasn’t dead. Nessa’s was.
Morgan’s soul was gone, but Nessa’s
wasn’t
.
Son of a bitch, what in the hell was going on?
All the questions tumbled through his mind, but before they could take over, he shoved them all aside, because in the end, none of them really mattered. He had the answer he needed—he knew who Morgan was, or who she had been, at least.
Whether or not she was truly dead, he didn’t know, but that didn’t matter now, not to him.
No, what mattered to him was the fact that his woman was just miles away and in more trouble than she possibly knew. That was one thing he was sure of.
He came back inside and started to pace, turning things over in his head. From the corner of his eye, he watched Jazzy. She sat on the couch, pretending not to watch him watching her.
“Do you know where I can find her?” Dominic asked, coming to a stop. He turned to face her, and once more, he caught sight of the fear in her eyes. It was enough to turn his stomach. She was just a kid. The last thing Dominic had ever wanted to do was frighten a kid.
She shrugged, her blue green eyes meeting his for just a second before she looked away again. “No, not exactly. But I probably have a rough idea.”
“A rough idea is fine,” Dominic assured her. All he needed to do was get close enough to her, and he’d be able to track her down like a bloodhound.
Or a ravenous vampire.
“You . . . you’re not going to try to go after her alone, are you?” She shook her head and said, “You can’t do that. Sanders is a fucking psycho. I’ve heard that he kills people just because they looked at him wrong.”
“Sounds like a paragon.” Dominic smiled humorlessly.
Jazzy didn’t look amused. “I’m serious. You seem to think I’m kidding around. But I’m not. He’s bad news.”
“I get that.” Dominic wished he could reassure her. But he wasn’t about to tell her some drug dealer and his lackeys just weren’t much of a threat to him. She’d want to know why. He wasn’t going to explain that part to her.
“There’s a club.” Jazzy sighed and tucked her hair back behind her ear. “It’s closer to downtown, in an older building. His club is on the main floor. The second level for private areas.” She curled her lip and added, “You can probably figure out what those private areas are for.” She licked her lips and looked away. “That’s where he keeps his girls.”
Dominic didn’t need to ask what the girls were for, either. He knew.
Jazzy rubbed her hands together, staring at the floor. “Now you need to understand, I’ve never been in any of his places. I don’t like him. I keep my distance. But I do hear things. Last I heard, Sanders had a place on the third floor they use for business. He doesn’t like to do any business in his home—it’s always at the club. And I’m pretty sure that’s where Morgan met up with him.”
Morgan . . .
Dominic rubbed the back of his neck, staring off into the distance.
There was some seriously weird shit going on and if he had a hope of untangling it, he needed all the information he could get—starting with whatever this kid knew.
CHAPTER 14
L
ESS than an hour later, Dominic was crouched in the alley outside the club. He had found it with no trouble. It had been harder for him to walk away from the kid than it had been to find this place—he hadn’t wanted to leave her there, but he hadn’t had much choice.
I’ll take care of your sister, kid. Just trust me. Trust me and wait here
, he’d told her.
She didn’t trust him, but she was still young enough to hope, to
want
to trust him. He only prayed it was enough to keep her in the house while he dealt with all the other problems.
He could feel her now . . .
his
witch. His woman. Nessa . . . It didn’t matter what name she was calling herself. He knew who she was. It was
her
. That pull was back. Deep inside, he felt it tugging on him, drawing him. It no longer felt like he was being pulled in five different directions at once.
He
knew
where he was going.
Her.
He was going to her.
He could feel her.
Adrenaline crashed through him. His body responded as it always did to the rush of adrenaline. His fangs throbbed in their sheaths. His senses were on red alert.
Inside the building, even over the throb and pulse of music, he could hear people talking. He could hear the beating of a hundred hearts . . . more. He could smell the drugs. He could smell the sex.
And . . . son of a bitch, he could smell Jazzy.
Swearing under his breath, he rose and began to pace back down the alley. She was here. He could hear her footsteps, the erratic beat of her heart.
Should’ve tied her up.
He should’ve known she would follow him.
Furiously, he thought, contemplating possible plans, discarding them almost immediately. He wasn’t going into a fight with the kid at his heels. He couldn’t risk it.