“Careful, Max, or your reputation as a ruthless businessman and killer will slip.” Draike raised his bottle of water in salute, surprised at the generosity of his vampire friend.
“Somehow I doubt that.” Maximus grinned, showing off his fangs.
The line went dead, and with a shrug of her shoulders, Mia tucked the phone back into her pocket, wondering what was taking Balthazar so long. He couldn’t want her to leave it here. Besides, she needed a signature.
“Hello? Mr. Balthazar?”
He’d never left her hanging around like this before. Normally he was here, eager to snatch whatever it was from her hands. She was never quite sure what to make of him. The way he acted, he should be a miser of a hundred and ten, but he couldn’t be much older than her own twenty-five years. Just obsessed with weird shit—antiques, occult objects and paraphernalia, trinkets, and strange toys.
Looking around for another bell or something, she approached the pane of glass. No sign of anything or anyone. She turned away.
But out of the corner of her eye, something moved. A white shape reflected in the glass—no, in the glass itself. Mia stared at the shapes, daring them to do it again. The slow, dull ache of a future migraine pulsed in her head as she tried to focus, and she was forced to look away.
Mia blinked and reached out, pressing her fingers to the glass, partly to assure herself of its reality and partly to check if she hadn’t imagined the whole thing.
A shadow moved overhead, cutting out the meager sunlight that found its way into the courtyard, and a chill ran icy fingers over her skin.
The glass split, peeling apart like strips of silver birch bark. She watched, bewildered. Some kind of new, high-tech system she’d never seen before. But it didn’t move like technology. There was something so organic about it, almost musical.
“Mr. Balthazar?” she called, aware that her voice didn’t sound so confident anymore.
“Yes,” he called, distracted and distant, from inside in the darkness beyond the opening. “Come in, bring it with you. Can’t you see I’m busy?”
An old man, that’s what he sounded like for sure. She shook her head. Did he even listen to himself?
She couldn’t see anything at all besides a dark lobby and the corridor beyond it but fought the urge to tell him so. She stepped inside, and the strange doors slid back into place behind her.
“I’ve a parcel for you, Mr. Balthazar, from the museum? I need a docket signed.”
She slid her hand back to the phone, hoping to hit the autodial if she needed to, hoping she wouldn’t need to. Of course, she wouldn’t need to. But still…
Another shadow lurched out of the darkness, clapped his hands together, and the lights flared bright like flashbulbs as they came on all around her.
He was gorgeous. She had thought that the very first time she saw him. But there was more to it than that. He was somehow unobtainable. Distant. He kept everything and everyone at arm’s length. Dark hair fell over his emerald-green eyes, casting them into shadow so they appeared to burn. His features were finely sculpted, as if by a master, but he bore the shadows of old cares and worries in the lines between his eyebrows. He looked like he ought to be in his late twenties, or perhaps early thirties. But he seemed so very much older than that.
It was his eyes, she decided, looking at him now. His eyes were ancient.
“Well, let’s see it, then.” Always such a charmer as well. That must be part of the attraction.
She thrust the parcel at him, unable to delay any longer, and he all but snatched it from her hands, pulling open the seal and taking out a small, slim box. It was plain, completely unadorned, but Balthazar looked at it like it was more precious than gold.
With his attention off her, Mia began to recover herself, and the slow creep of embarrassment slid through her veins. She watched him run elegant fingers over the side of the box, and it opened. Light came from inside, spilling out to define his face in the shadows.
His sensual mouth drew up into a smile, and the faint lines around his eyes crinkled with delight. He looked almost boyish, just for a second.
“Wonderful.” His voice was no more than a breath, but it rippled over her skin, making her shiver. Her stomach tightened, and a lick of flame followed the line of her spine. Cold, green flame, like his eyes.
Mia swallowed hard and found her voice. “Mr. Balthazar?” She pushed the pad at him a little too late, spoiling her professional tone.
Balthazar looked up from his prize, frowned as if trying to place her and then blinked, surprised to find her still there. He snapped the box closed in one hand and put it behind his back. Something flickered in his eyes, guilt or shame perhaps. An instant later, he shielded his emotions, all expression gone. “Let me put this somewhere safe. Won’t be a minute.”
“I just need you to sign, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Just wait there. It’ll only take a moment.”
Before she could argue or agree, he was gone, back into the shadowy hall, leaving Mia alone in silence.
Great.
She shifted from foot to foot, waiting, irritation mounting by the second. Good-looking or not, it didn’t forgive rudeness. But clearly he didn’t care. Where had he gone now? He wasn’t about to vanish off without signing, was he?
“Mr. Balthazar?” she called.
No answer. She took a couple of steps forward and then paused, thinking better of it. She couldn’t exactly go wandering through his house—or whatever this mausoleum was—in the dark.
Damn it, where was he?
Her eyes strained to see through the half-light beyond the entrance, which was still far too bright, and tried to make out shapes from the shadows. That looked like a coat stand and that like a suit of armor. There were huge paintings on the wall, bigger than Riley’s plasma TV. And a cabinet like something you’d see in a museum.
A small movement snagged her gaze on the middle shelf of the cabinet—a little jerk of motion, like someone trying to attract attention covertly, or give directions with no more than a flick of their eyes. Reluctantly, but intrigued, Mia took a step toward it. She shouldn’t, she knew that. Not because of regulations or common sense. Not because it was someone else’s home and she
didn’t
know him. Not really. Not enough to wander through his house on her own. Not so he would be comfortable with the idea. Not because of anything rational. She just knew, as if every instinct was screaming at her to stay put and wait.
But she couldn’t.
Reaching the cabinet, Mia peered through the dusty glass. She rubbed some of the outer layer away with her finger, but it didn’t help much. The glass squeaked as she rubbed harder. There were so many objects in there jumbled together, but each one was marked with a slip of paper. Mia squinted at the nearest, but she knew neither the script nor the language. A strange code of squiggles and dots like nothing she had ever seen before.
Her breath misted the glass as she breathed, and behind the fog something moved again. Quickly wiping the glass until it squeaked at her, she peered closer, leaning in until her head banged off the glass, and she jerked back with a stifled cry.
Mia knew she shouldn’t, but her hands acted before her conscious mind could catch up with their intentions. She opened the cabinet door to try to get a better look at whatever it was that was trapped in there. Because, logically, it had to be something alive to move like that.
A spiral twist of silver rocked toward her. It had a snake’s head carved at one end, with two little garnets for eyes. She stared at it, bewitched by its impossible movement. It must be off balance, rocking with some indiscernible vibration she caused just by standing there.
She breathed out a sigh and put out her hand to stop it. The tail lashed out, and the tip sliced into her fingertip like a blade, drawing a bright bead of red blood after it. Mia gave a yelp of surprise and alarm.
The snake looked up at her, blinked its garnet eyes, and a miniscule silver tongue flickered out, tasting her blood.
Transfixed, Mia watched the silver snake uncoil itself, hissing as it shook its slender body and unfolded gossamer wings. It reared up, hissed again, and shot straight at her like an arrow from a bow.
Mia screamed and threw her arms over her face, an instinctive shielding reaction. Cold metal struck her, lashing itself around her arm, tight and cold, burning against her skin.
A hushed and expectant stillness descended over the room. Mia lowered her guard, movement by movement, waiting for—well, after all that, anything could happen. The silver dragon, with its knife-sharp tail, garnet eyes, and tiny wings folded against the body was just a bracelet, coiled around her arm. It didn’t move. But it shouldn’t be there. It shouldn’t have moved at all.
Her finger ached, blood dripping from the cut. She brought it to her mouth, sucked it to dispel the pain, and the taste of her blood filled her mouth. Her mind lurched inside her skull as if it didn’t belong there anymore.
She forced herself to breathe. It hurt.
“What have you done?” Balthazar’s voice came out of nowhere, and her heart made the escape attempt the rest of her longed to, slamming against her ribs as she turned to face him.
He was right behind her, his mouth set in a grim line, his eyes blazing with annoyance.
“Nothing. I didn’t mean to. I just—” She tugged desperately at the bracelet, but it wouldn’t budge. Rather, it seemed welded to her arm, caught there. With rising panic, she tried to pry it off with her fingernails, but all she succeeded in doing was scratching the skin beneath. “Here.” She thrust her arm toward him. “Get it off me.”
But Balthazar didn’t move to help her. He just continued to stare, his breath deep and even, his hands hanging by his sides.
“Even I am not powerful enough to remove that.” His gaze rose to her face, curiosity blending with the austerity in his eyes. “Who are you?”
“I’m just the courier. I’ve been here no end of times.” She wanted to back away, but the cabinet—and dear God knew what else was in there—was right behind her. She had nowhere to go. And besides, she didn’t back away from anyone. Ever.
“Yes. Interesting coincidence that. Do you have a name?” Gentler now, almost amused. Had she said anything even faintly amusing? Sure, the way she squirmed and tried to worry the unwanted bit of silver off her arm with her sweaty hands was probably freaking hilarious from the outside.
“I’m Mia. Look, I didn’t do anything, I swear it.” Maybe if she explained. “It started moving. I know how it sounds, but that’s what happened. And I thought there was something trapped, like an animal or something, and I—” And this wasn’t going well. She could see the humor growing in his face. She wanted to punch him, good-looking or not. “I’m telling the truth!”
Balthazar took another step closer, deep into her personal space. But all those instinctive alarms she’d relied on all her life didn’t go off. He didn’t feel like a threat, for all he might look like one.
“
Mia
. Interesting. And I know you aren’t lying. I know that bracelet of old. It doesn’t allow itself to be stolen, though of course, the police might see things differently. They don’t have a lot of imagination, do they?” He rolled his eyes and smiled. “I wonder how far
the priceless antique just jumped out on me
would get at the local precinct?”
A yawning pit opened in Mia’s stomach. Reality lurched in her head again, struggling to reassert itself. A deep sleeper struggling to respond to an alarm the body didn’t want to hear.
“No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Of course it wasn’t. Did it tap on the glass to get your attention first? Clearly it had to wait for you to open the cabinet door.” He studied it. “No broken glass, and those certainly look like your fingerprints.”
Damn it, if he did call the cops, she wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. “No, please. I didn’t do anything. It just…it moved.” Admitting it hurt. It was mortifying. “It moved by itself.” Might as well tell him she’d seen a ghost or found a portal to another world. She waited for mockery, for his disbelief.
Balthazar just smiled. Of all the possible reactions, she hadn’t expected that. He smiled like Riley smiled when he’d been pulling her leg and had decided to finally let her off the hook. Familiar, gentle, and amused. A smile to be trusted, a smile that might even be enjoyed.
It transformed him, that smile, drained the edge of age and sorrow from his eyes. In spite of everything, her breath caught in her throat, and she couldn’t help but stare.
“You could just tell me, talk to me, Mia,” he continued in a soft, relaxing tone. “And maybe I can explain what it means.”
His voice altered so subtly she hardly realized she had already reached out and taken his proffered hand. Gentle, reliable, trustworthy—she had no reason to believe any of that, but she did. His touch was surprisingly gentle too, purposeful, but in no way threatening or unkind. She gazed at his face, at his green eyes, so very green, the pupils dilated in the dim light of the room, reflecting the windows behind her with their frosty pattern. She saw the movement, sensed it really, as a thrill of alarm ran prickles up her spine. Movement behind the window reflected in his eyes. Balthazar frowned, his eyes narrowing even as his eyebrows lowered. His mouth formed a curse that he never said aloud.
“Get behind me,” he said, as calmly and quietly as if he’d asked her to pass the salt. His hands closed on her arms, pushing her back even as he stepped around her. “Stay down, Mia.”