Bertrand scanned the dance floor with disinterest, then settled his scrutinizing gaze on me. There were barely six inches between us, even less on my other side where Celene used any excuse to brush against me.
“Tell me, Melisande, how does our nightlife compare to Portsmouth, Virginia’s?” Mephos asked.
The hostess reappeared with a magnum bottle of something bubbly. Mephos took it from her and poured me a glass. I waited until everyone had a glass before I faked a sip.
My thoughts raced home to my favorite High Street haunts. The beer gardens and tap houses were nothing like this. My biggest Saturday night excitement might be to catch a movie at our restored 1930s cinema house, then grab an ice cream on the way home. I tried not to imagine Gr…his warm hand in mine, or his look of pride as we walked down the main thoroughfare he’d built with his own sweat and tears.
“Is that homesickness I see?” Mephos tilted his head to catch my lowered gaze. His face fell back into its boyish appeal. “What does Portsmouth have that we don’t?” He flung his arms wide. “Does it have the best food markets in the world? Does it have beaches filled with bronzed bodies? Or the finest shopping?” He paused long enough to take a breath, but not long enough for me to answer. “Is there any part of your fine city that compares to our Las Ramblas on a warm, breezy night? Our city’s heart beats with beauty, style, and culture. Tell her, Bertrand. You spend more time here than any of us.” Mephos lifted Celene’s hand to his lips as if it were something to eat. He shot a glare at Bertrand, then dusted Celene’s soft skin with a string of delicate kisses.
“This city is a powder keg,” Bertrand declared returning Mephos’s glare. “But…” He broke eye contact to glance at me. His frost-blue gaze stole over my face, my neck, my barely covered body. I raised my hand to cover my cleavage. The comfort I’d felt upon meeting him eroded. “It is a perfect place to feel alive.” He leaned close. “If it were my choice, I’d take you to La Passeig de Colom for a rooftop drink. We would watch the moon rise over the Mediterranean in style.” His accent was a mix of sounds that I couldn’t trace to any region. It was as if he was from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
“I believe the phrase is ‘bottoms up.’ ” Mephos pointed to my glass and raised his own. “If we are to have any fun at all tonight, you must loosen up, Melisande.” They all raised a glass, and the clear, bubbly liquid disappeared down their throats. I put the glass to my lips but couldn’t fake a sip with all of them watching. They’d had a few opportunities to drug me already and hadn’t taken them.
I tipped my glass and took a minute sip. The sweet bubbles played along my tongue. I swallowed and nodded my approval. Mephos clapped, then slid along the seat. He stood in front of the table and announced that it was time to dance. Celene shimmied along the seat and joined him. They lifted a hand to me, but I shook my head.
“Fine. Bertrand can babysit you. He’s a—how do you say—stick in the mud too.” The two most beautiful people I’d ever seen prowled toward the dancing bodies and melted in.
“Don’t let me stop you from enjoying yourself.” I nodded toward the dance floor. The motion made my head light and floaty. He seemed to consider the swaying crowd for a moment.
“I’d rather be here with you.” His sparkling gaze rested on me again, but something about the seductive slant of his mouth wasn’t quite believable.
“You don’t want to be here either,” I guessed. He froze into the perfect portrait of a virile man just starting an evening of self-indulgence. The weight of his stare was a challenge I accepted. I returned his stare until his gaze slid coolly back to the dance floor.
“What gives you that impression?” Bertrand took another sip from his glass and rolled the fizzing liquid around his mouth.
“You’re not a hard read.” I sighed.
The weathered blond Adonis next to me broke into a thunderous laugh. I couldn’t help but giggle along with him.
“Is that so?” When he looked at me again, he was the man I’d met in the courtyard earlier, calm, casual, and happily lacking an agenda. I nodded my head to confirm it. The amused smile on my face felt goofy and loose.
“Well, that’s good to hear.” He clinked his glass against mine. “Tell me what else you can read in my crystal ball of a face.” He turned his whole body toward me, and the weight of his attention was more captivating than the false seduction he’d tried a moment before. It seemed as though I’d piqued his interest, and his masculine features were suddenly transformed by his attentiveness. I couldn’t help but take a moment to admire the attractive width of his jaw and the beaten metal of his cheekbones.
“You like to fight”—I dove recklessly into this new game—“but not out of anger. At least not anymore.”
His lush blond brows raised. “Why do you say that?”
I pointed to his crooked nose, which looked to have been broken more than once.
“That’s an easy guess. But how do you know that I no longer fight out of anger? I could be filled with rage and fury.” He struck his chest playfully with his fist. A wave of mirth washed over me, and my muscles relaxed.
“I don’t know.” Which was the truth. It was just a feeling. I peered past his rough beauty to that immaterial impression that rode his mannerisms. There was a hardness to him, but it felt petrified like an old wrath that he’d locked away. “Maybe you’ve come to terms with the things that once infuriated you.”
Wait. Was I drunk off one sip of champagne?
Bertrand seemed to glance inward for a moment at something withered and ravished by time.
“Regret.” The word slipped from my lips. His glacial eyes locked on mine. There it was. In the momentary upward pinch of his brows—a pain he’d surrendered to, but from which he’d not fully healed. We all had something from which we’d never recover. Some small thing…or maybe, in his case, something unforgivably large.
My fingers reached for the granite slope of his face. I brushed my fingertips along the stubble lining his chin. He leaned into my touch. Something about him seemed desperate for genuine affection. The thoughts in his eyes yearned to be seen. The dry riverbed of his desire begged to know the trickling touch of a sincere lover. I could be that. I could be a tumbling torrent.
No.
“No.” I was confused. The blue of his eyes was too pale. The color of his hair too light. Dark blue rings drifted up from a place inside me I’d tried not to visit, and the pain washed over me anew. I reached out wildly to brace myself against the abyss of agony that yawned inside my chest every time Grayford entered my mind. I was for him. He was my heart’s desire.
I accidentally knocked into my glass, and the flute tipped over. Expensive champagne raced across the tabletop.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted.
Bertrand grabbed a pile of cocktail napkins and diverted the flow to the opposite end of the table.
“You’re a bit of an easy read yourself,” my companion offered but didn’t elaborate. I didn’t need him to. Our little game was over.
“Melisande, may I have this dance?” I looked up to see Mephos standing in front of the table with one foot propped on the front of the semicircular seat. He was leaning in with his hand only inches from me. I watched in stunned disbelief as I took it. I didn’t want to dance with him. Or did I? I floated like a balloon away from the abyss in my heart, around the table, and onto the dance floor. I stood at the edge of the crowd bereft of will or protest as a stylish remix of a song I knew filled the club with its menacing melody.
Mephos beckoned like a bad dream, like a storm with something dark at its heart. He was everything my mother had told me to avoid. The creeping beat moved me beneath the pulsing lights. It made my eyes rove along his olive skin, along the bodies nearest us. It heated my face as I began to bounce and sway. It was clear, there was something in the champagne, and I didn’t care. The music stopped and restarted in a low, vibrating tremble meant to sift inhibitions from the swaying, grinding crowd and expose the nak
ed truth of the moment. Not everything needed to be contemplated, considered, thought out. Mephos gave me a look that said he already knew that, and he was glad to see I was coming around.
As if he’d just read my mind, Mephos whispered close to my ear, “When was the last time you just had fun?” I turned to face him and tipped my chin as I thought for a moment. The movement exposed my neck, and his question was forgotten. He didn’t care. Neither did I. This night was for us alone.
I tried to meet his improper glance with indifference but who was I kidding? He knew he owned his surroundings. He owned the quivering night, the quaking shadows, the covetous heaving of the moment. I’d never danced like that before. He moved me across the crowded dance floor to the beat of his blistering desire.
The music pulsed beneath my skin. It thrummed through my bones. I laughed as we spun, and the rhythm wrapped me in its rebellion. I felt strong. Powerful. Sexy. Alive. Barcelona’s most beautiful beasts had come out to play and, somehow, I belonged.
The maddened crowd was a blur of enraptured faces except for one. A young woman with mocha skin and sun-bleached, spiraled locks caught my wandering gaze. She didn’t dance. She didn’t simmer with lust. Her calm eyes locked on mine from her oasis of stillness against the far wall. She leaned on one leg with the other casually propped against the wall behind her. She watched me intently. Her graceful eyebrows creased as if she were trying to figure something out.
Mephos pushed me to the center of the dance floor. Bodies swayed around us as if we were the main event. The hunger in his warm, brown eyes made me feel desirable. He fought that youthful, lopsided smile as it bloomed across his face. Mephos held a corner of his bottom lip between his teeth as he watched me. My cheeks flushed. Heat ran to all the right places as I remembered what it was like when the prettiest boy in school smiled at you. Mephos was a groping, grinding, teenaged dream. It felt wrong to want someone so young, but this night was destined for wickedness.
The sinister song blended into another slower penetrating beat. The crowd around us turned.
Every pair of eyes in the club slid from our undulating bodies to Celene’s swaying form as she reclaimed the dance floor at the opposite end. Their collective gaze slicked along her slender shoulders and tapered waist. They rocked as her hips tipped and circled to a rhythm that could make weak men weaker and strong men bargain. She could own them if she wanted. She could cast her shimmering nets and feed on their desire. A question swam through my fluttering thoughts. What did Celene feed on? What fired her soul? What did Celene—with no last name—live for? Breathe for? Yearn for in the dead of night?
She rippled and flowed and poured across the dance floor until she found her quarry. It was the girl from the door who’d shared a wanton smile with Celene when we’d first arrived. The glittering gem-eyed girl turned her heated gaze to Celene’s gently heaving body, worshiping the hypnotic ecstasy of her movements like everyone else.
Celene’s arms beckoned as the deep thumping bass rode her like a lover. Hands reached, fingers entwined, and Celene reeled the shorter woman in close. Celene’s eyes burned fever bright as she turned the boneless woman and pressed into her, pinning the round swell of her dance partner’s bottom into her grinding pelvis. I tried to look away, but my eyes followed hungrily as Celene’s hands slid along the dancer’s front, seeking her tender spots. The young girl’s pink-glossed lips parted in a soundless moan as Celene rolled a nipple between her fingers.
My cheeks heated as Celene’s other hand smoothed along her partner’s hip then charted a path beneath her skirt. The music shifted and the fizzing, metallic remix seemed to tease down Celene’s arching back. The spinning lights hid the gratuitous groping for a moment, and the loss of it pulled at me. She was intoxicating. Each wriggling, rippling, squirming movement envenomated the crowd with reckless surrender. I felt it too—the need to let go and let the night have its way with me. I’d never relinquished control like this. Giddy laughter bubbled to my lips, and I let it spill out of me. I was light as a feather and alive with sensation.
Mephos moved behind me, leaving an unobstructed view. My eyes locked on my sensuous, feminine captor. And, between the strobes of light, she noticed. A pleased smile spread across her dimpled face. I watched from my floating place at the far end of the dance floor as she abandoned her prey and stalked toward me through the mindless dancers. She was ten feet from me, five, two, and then she was swaying in front of me like a sultry cobra. I tried to break eye contact, but it felt like I’d miss something very important if I did.
Celene tipped her head until the scarlet curtain of her hair drowned us in privacy. Mephos was gone. Her arms closed around me, guiding me slowly into a swaying motion that matched her undulating hips. Our bodies pressed together. Our breasts bumped and slid until our nipples turned to aching diamonds. Suddenly, I yearned to rub my fingers against the rolling hardness of her tips. I wanted her fingers to find mine.
The music sped up, and the bodies around us whipped to the quickening beat. But Celene moved only to the soft grind of our hips. Her long, satin-smooth thigh slipped between my legs. One hand found the small of my back and the other gripped my bottom. With a strength that should have scared me, the lithe creature at the center of everyone’s attention rubbed me against her silky leg until my body quivered.
Another set of arms closed around me, and I felt the hard press of a man behind me. Mephos had rejoined the dance. My head rolled back to rest on his shoulder, and I noticed the watcher was gone.
Just as my thoughts began to settle in place, Mephos dipped me. Celene moved with us. My poor equilibrium left me with no sense of up or down. All there was in the world at that moment was Mephos, Celene, and the pulsing music. A tongue found my collarbone, and another found my neck. My hindbrain sent up a flare of warning, but it mixed so well with the dopamine pumping through me. Bitter and sweet. Pain and pleasure.
A loud string of bangs sliced through the music and everyone turned toward the entrance. One of the glass doors glided closed, and a small wisp of smoke twisted up from the entryway. Firecrackers. Someone must have tossed them in and run.
The ardor of the moment suspended. I looked around sluggishly at the disoriented faces on the dance floor. Their bewildered looks were filled with the hazy befuddlement of sleep. Had we all just woken up?
“I think it’s time we moved this party to the beach,” Mephos announced and dipped me again. “Come, Melisande, the moon awaits you.”
Chapter Nineteen
She enjoys a handsome man.
Grayford
The breath of early morning clung to the pasture in a foggy embrace. Tendrils of mist twined through the farmer’s fence, hiding my guide from view just to reveal him farther down the trail. I did my best to follow the little fey along the overgrown footpath. Wrens rustled in the hedgerow, passing word of our movements down the tunneling green walk.
It didn’t look as though many people trod the narrow path. Maybe the well was forgotten. Maybe its disuse had rendered it null and magicless. Anxiety itched at my shoulder blades as the moments since I’d last seen Melisande stretched on into eternity. The longer it took to find her, the more time her captor had to harm her.
The memory of the stranger’s stammering heart thumped in my mind. His ill look, his ability to translocate, the way he had so easily brushed the poltergeist aside, was he a druid? I wondered at the nature of his talents. How strong was he? His body had seemed ready to break, but his piercing gaze was sharp and devious.
I needed to learn everything I could about these druids before I rained down on them. A wave of anger threatened to stir that uncontrollable force at my core. I allowed myself a quick squeeze of fists and then I loosened my muscles. The pressure eased.
“Are we near?” I asked impatiently.
“Yes,” was his only answer.
I could only hope that this Maiden was a bit more communicative.
“Ye’ve naught traveled through the wells before, so l
et me offer a word of warning.” I bent to hear him better in the morning’s swell of birdsong. “The waters of the wells run deep underground. A trickle on the surface, a quiet pond, does naught indicate the power connected to its flow. Many of the older wells are positioned on ley lines. It links them and allows them to share energy.” The fey held his arms out straight to form a line as he scuttled along. “No matter yer Christian slant, earth magic is the oldest and strongest. It can naught be reasoned with. And, for all the druids’ efforts, it can naught be controlled.” He stopped and turned to me. “Accept what help it gives, and do naught ask for more. Do ye understand?”
“Yes.” I nodded my head.
“Good. Now, the Maiden is a part of that magic. It created her. It flows through her, and she answers to it. Ye may ask for her help, and she may decide to assist ye. But then again, she may turn away. It is naught for ye to question her decision.”
I nodded.
We continued a few meters farther, then slowed to a stop next to a tree with branches reaching low to the ground. The plunking notes of dripping water reached my ears from somewhere close.
Strips of colorful cloth fluttered in the crisp breeze along the winding bark arms. Flashes of red, orange, blue, and purple fabric stood out against the verdant background, while the yellow and green strips blended in. Some bits of cloth looked new and bright. Others had faded and frayed at the edges. Here and there, an entire article of clothing had been secured to a branch.
“What is this?” I caught a tendril of orange fabric between my fingers.
“Rags.” The diminutive man drifted under the low canopy. “Some visit the wells for healing, or for blessings. They leave the rags as gifts."
“Does the Maiden heal the sick?”
A Shiver of Shadows Page 9
