by Sunny
“You know Mom would kill me if she smelled liquor on my breath,” Julia said. “You, though, now live on your own. You could drink alcohol if you wanted to.”
“But I don’t want to,” Mary said. “If I’m complaining about paying three dollars for seltzer water, how do you think I’d feel about paying eight dollars for fermented brew that will mess up what little senses I have left? Besides,” Mary said dryly, “you’re supposed to be checking up on me, not encouraging me to drink.”
“I’m not checking up on you,” protested Julia. “I’m having you check out a guy I met in the supermarket. Pierre Dumont. Isn’t that a beautiful name? So French. He’s supposed to be singing here tonight with his band. Seriously, Mare. I want to know what you think about him. You have great intuition.”
“Great intuition that you don’t always listen to.”
“Well,” Julia said, giggling, “some things I just have to find out for myself. Oh, Mare, this guy is so hot! I just about combusted when I bumped into him.”
A small smile. “You bump into a man who invites a nineteen-year-old girl to a bar—”
“I told him I was legal.”
“—and I run into a guy who feels so guilty about my clumsiness that I get three hundred dollars stuffed into my hand for damage he did not cause.”
“Maybe I should frequent grocery stores more, and you should avoid them.” Another giggle.
Affection for her sweet and pretty sister warmed Mary. “Even if you did come to check up on me, it’s good to see you. Although, without my glasses, I guess that’s a really poor choice of words.”
“I, for one, am glad that man felt bad enough to insist you take the three hundred dollars. It’s going to cost at least that much to replace your lenses.”
“Two hundred,” Mary corrected. “I called and found out it’ll only cost me two hundred dollars. I wish I could return the extra hundred.”
“Oh, pooh. So what if he overcompensated a bit. Being without glasses and having to wait for the new lenses to be made up makes it much worse for you. Doesn’t it?”
“My glasses sharpen up what I can see. Now things are, I don’t know—even more blurry, I guess. Although that’s not really correct. It’s more like I can only see half of what I could see with glasses on.” Which was hardly anything at all.
“Oh, Mare.” Just those two words like a warm hand squeeze. Then the sound of the door, a sense of her sister turning her head. An excited whisper. “Pierre’s here with his band. Oh, look, he sees me. He’s coming this way.”
Then a masculine voice with an admittedly sexy French accent. “Hey, it’s Julia, right?” He chatted amicably with them for a minute before excusing himself to help his band set up, after getting her sister’s assurance that she would be staying for a while.
“So what do you think?” Julia asked after he left.
“I think that he’s very good looking, like you said,” Mary said slowly. You could hear it in his voice, the same ease and assurance her sister had. “And that he’s used to girls, lots of American girls, being attracted to him.”
“And . . .”
“He finds you attractive and would like to spend more time with you.”
“Come on, Mare.”
“And there’s nothing really objectionable that I sense about him,” she said, letting out a breath. “Other than he’s a confident, good-looking guy who invited you to a bar, and is likely just looking for a good time rather than someone to share the rest of his life with.”
“In other words, he’s perfect for me.”
“Julia . . .”
“Ma-ry,” she sang back. “So. Nothing objectionable, right?”
“Nothing that I sensed in that one brief minute of conversation that was mostly between you and him,” Mary clarified. “I’m not infallible, you know. Just because there was nothing disturbing I got in that first impression doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole like any other guy.”
“Oh, Mare.” A tinkling, short laugh. “Such rose-colored spectacles you view the world through.”
To tease her, Mary slipped her broken glasses back on. “You mean these spectacles?”
“Take them off,” Julia said horrified. “Oh, God. I hope Pierre didn’t see you. It makes you look like you were in a train wreck!”
Not an inaccurate description, Mary thought, putting her poor broken glasses back into her pocket. Despite her limited vision, her senses usually guided her accurately around objects and people. She could function amazingly well for someone with her severe degree of visual impairment. But her infallible senses had faltered completely with him—that man. For some reason, he hadn’t show up on her radar at all. Running into him, into that hard, solid mass, had indeed felt like a train crash.
There was another stir at the door. A sudden change in the atmosphere.
“Oh . . . my . . . God.”
“What?” Mary asked.
“What?” Mary asked.
“You know how I said that Pierre was good looking?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, in just walked a bunch of people that make Pierre look as homely as mud pie.”
“They’re good looking?”
“No. They’re beautiful. One woman and six guys. And if I’m not mistaken, that boy with them isn’t one day older than I am. But the woman . . .” A soft groan from Julia. “If the guys make Pierre look homely, that woman makes me look like cow manure.”
The dramatic way she said that made Mary smile. It was not often that someone outshone her pretty sister. “Is she blond, like you?”
“No, her hair is gold. And she has a body that puts Angelina Jolie to shame. She looks, I don’t know . . . like a goddess.”
“What, like Venus?” Mary asked, amused at the mix of awe and angst in Julia’s voice.
“Body and face, maybe. But not the attitude. The attitude is more dangerous. Like she could irresistibly lure a guy into bed. Then not only shred the skin off his back, but have him enjoy it, and come crawling back for more!”
“I can’t believe you’re going on about the woman instead of the men. What about the guys you mentioned. Are they all handsome in a drool-worthy sort of way?”
“Three of them are,” her sister immediately said. “One guy’s black or Hispanic or maybe from India, I can’t tell. He’s tall, thin, and beautiful in this metrosexual kind of way. The guy next to him has like, wow, movie-star looks. The third guy is the complete opposite, good-looking in a villainous, dangerous, sexy kind of way.”
The last guy sounded like someone Mary wanted Julia to stay far, far away from.
“The other three guys include the boy my age I mentioned earlier, and a shorter man who isn’t as beautiful as the others but still ruggedly attractive, very manly. The last man . . . now that is one very scary, lethal-looking brute. He’s the size of two men put together and looks like hired muscle. His face is battered-looking, like he spent a lot of time in a boxing ring. Oh, God!” Julia’s voice choked down into a hiss. “He’s looking at us! He couldn’t have heard me, could he? Oh shit. He’s coming this way!”
She was mildly alarmed by the panic in Julia’s voice. But that was nothing compared to the shock Mary felt when she heard him speak . . . and recognized that deep, gravel-pit voice.
“I caused you to fall earlier this evening. I hope I did not cause you any physical harm other than what was done to your glasses.”
“Oh, it’s you,” Mary said, surprised—no, actually shocked. She was having a really hard time lining up her sister’s description with the man she had stumbled into. The kind and gentle man who had seemed so miserable over the accident. A trace of that guilt still colored his voice.
“No, I’m fine,” she was quick to assure him. “Nothing broken in the fall other than my glasses. Speaking of which . . .” Mary pulled out the extra hundred-dollar bill from her pocket. “I didn’t know how much you’d given me. It seems that I only need two hundred dollars to fix my glasses. Please give this back
to your lady friend with my thanks.” Mary didn’t bother waiting for him to take it. He never would, she knew. Reaching out like before, feeling truly blind since not only could she not see him, she couldn’t sense him, she patted her way down his hard stomach to his left hip pocket, and tucked the hundred-dollar bill in there. He stood very still while she did this. Her sister, on the other hand, was making odd, squeaking sounds.
“Forgive me if my hands were a bit free over your body—it seems to be a very nice body, by the way,” Mary murmured with a quirked smile, eliciting more choking sounds from her sister, “but I knew you wouldn’t take it if I just held it out to you. And then I’d end up not only looking like a blind fool but an idiot as well. This saves us—well, saves me, at least—from an embarrassing experience.”
No reply. Just a blank and empty silence.
“Are you still there?” Mary asked uncertainly.
“Yes,” that low voice confirmed.
Mary didn’t know if she had offended the man, embarrassed him, or possibly even angered him. No clue whatsoever. He was just an odd emptiness to her. “I hope I haven’t offended you,” she ventured tentatively.
“You haven’t,” came the gruff reply.
“Good, well . . . thank you for coming over to check on me. You needn’t feel bad. Nothing broken from our encounter that can’t be fixed.”
“Good evening then.” He bowed, if Mary interpreted the lowered position of his voice correctly. Other than the rough physical looks Julia had described to her, excepting that, everything else about him seemed to be courtly and mannered, old world. A gentleman in the true meaning of the word. A gentle man.
“Is he gone?” Mary asked after a time.
“Yes,” whispered Julia.
A pity, Mary thought, as she bid a silent good-bye to her phantom mystery man. He’d been a brief dash of something different in her simple, contained life. Now it would return once more to its steady, constant mundaneness like the carbonated water that had lost its pop and fizzle, she noted as she took a sip. For one brief moment, Mary almost wished she’d done as her sister had suggested and ordered something stronger. A brief moment of discontent, then it drifted away.
Carbonated water was enough. Anything more potent would threaten to wash away what little remaining senses she had left, and her ability to function along with them.
A pity, Mary thought again.
A pity that anything more intoxicating in life was beyond her reach.
NINE
EVEN AFTER RURIC walked into the room where the others had gone, he could still hear them talking. Could still hear clearly the shocked and appalled voice of the other girl taking the blind girl to task.
Are you crazy, Mare, touching him like that? Stuffing money into his pocket like he was some kind of stripper in a nightclub! You’re lucky he didn’t take your hand off, or think you were coming on to him!
A frown furrowed Ruric’s brow. The blind girl’s name was Mare? Humans were even more peculiar than he thought if they named themselves after animals. He wondered what a stripper was.
A large, green, velvet-clothed table took up the center of the small room Ruric stepped into, onto which Jonnie and Stefan were gathering round, colored balls, loading them into an empty triangular frame. The fresh scent of human prey was mixed in with the acrid stench of lingering smoke. But whatever humans had been here had obviously vacated the room when the others had entered. Most humans’ instinct for danger was still intact; just not the girl he had just left. Her sense of danger, of self-preservation, was sadly lacking, he thought sourly as he continued listening to the two girls—the worried, blistering chastisement of the blond girl, and the meek, soothing agreement of Mare in turn.
Maybe we should leave now, Mare.
Yes, Ruric thought, you should leave.
Even though Lucinda described humans as peaceful creatures, for the most part, there were still violent elements among them. He found himself greatly discomforted by the thought of the two women sitting there unprotected in this bar with so many males present. Peaceful or not, men were by nature more aggressive and powerful than females.
And miss Pierre sing, sis? My guy must be even more dangerous looking than you described to make you suggest that.
Ruric’s frown deepened. Pierre? Who in blasted hellfire was Pierre? Even more disturbing was the possessive Mare had used for him—my guy.
The blond girl was apparently Mare’s sister. My guy? she intoned ominously. He could hear the sound of her teeth clenching.
Don’t have a heart attack, Julia. It’s just an expression. Of course a man as big and tough looking as what you described could never be my guy. And then more softly, I know someone like him is beyond my reach. He’s not attracted to me—he pities me. I know that. Nothing for you to worry about.
Ruric tuned out their next words, too disturbed by what he had heard, and discovered Hari and Lucinda looking curiously at him. It reminded him of what had been stuffed into his pocket, the extra hundred-dollar bill. Had he been able to, he would have returned it to Mare, but he had been hampered again by his cursed nails.
“Here.” Ruric returned the money to Lucinda without an explanation. She had no doubt heard the exchange.
Jarring music came from the central room, along with the husky rasp of a male voice singing to loud, abrasive music.
“Ah. That must be Pierre,” Lucinda said with a tiny smile.
“You should be concentrating on protecting the Princess,” Hari said, reprimanding Ruric, “not concerning yourself with a human.”
Ruric wanted to snarl at him, because he was right. An odd reversal of their roles.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Lucinda said, amused. “We’re the most dangerous ones here. Relax, Hari. Go hunt up some food. You, too, Ruric. Here . . .” She handed them some bills. “Ten dollars to buy a drink at the bar to help you blend in. You can even try drinking what you order. Leave one dollar as compensation to the barkeep on the counter.”
“And the other rules here?” Hari asked warily. “Are we to take no one’s blood unless they give it willingly?”
Lucinda looked at him curiously, unsure if he was asking that in jest. “Of course not. That rule applies only to those of us here in this room. But I do ask for discretion, and no killing. No harm to those you drink from. The humans here reside within my province.” And, as such, belonged to her.
“I understand, Princess,” Hari said, gliding from the room. Ruric followed him, half his attention back with the Princess, the other half focused on the dangerous demon in front him.
To Ruric’s relief, Hari steered clear of the two girls by the front entrance and made his way instead to the far corner of the bar. Women’s eyes were drawn to the dark saturnine demon, and he returned their stares with a slow, wicked smile of enticement. Eyes stared at Ruric also, but with repellent fear rather than tempted fascination. So it was since his healing, so it always would be . . . except for the veiled innocence of a blind girl.
He remembered the feel of that small hand running lightly over him. Remembered her smile as she had said, “A very nice body, by the way.” As if she didn’t quite believe herself that she dared tease him, touch him like that.
With Hari safely hunting on the other side of the room, Ruric glanced toward the front and found the table empty where she had sat. A hollow sensation of disappointment filled him, no matter that he told himself it was better they had left. A clear lie when he caught a glimpse of blond hair making its way back to the table and a familiar darker head following behind her.
“Oh, drat. I forgot my purse in the bathroom,” he heard Mare say. “You go on, save our table. I’ll go back and get it. I know my way now.”
He watched with disbelief as Julia returned to the table and let Mare return by herself to the bathroom. She walked as if she were fully sighted, pausing when a couple crossed her path, then continued unerringly to the end of the room, disappearing down a back corridor. He positioned hi
mself so he could see her. Watched her walk past a man talking on a telephone, and push open a door labeled “Ladies.”
The area back there was empty but for Mare and the man. The fume of fermented brew clung to the disreputable-looking male. She clearly was unaware of the appraising look he had cast at her, since she didn’t react with wariness or distaste. The other man seemed to take that for invitation, and his lazy interest in Mare sharpened.
When she came out a moment later, the man had ended his phone call and was lounging against the wall, waiting for her. He stepped into her path, blocking her. “Hey, pretty lady. You looking for some company?”
Her voice was cool, distantly polite. “No, thanks, my sister is waiting for me, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Aw, come on.” He ran an appreciative leer up and down her body, which made Ruric want to tear his throat out. Again, Mare didn’t react, and again the scruffy male took that as encouragement. “Two young and pretty gals in a bar. Course you came looking for some company. Well, look no further. I’m more than willing to provide all the action you need tonight, honey.”
“We came to hear the band play,” Mare said with cool frost. Surely the dolt heard that. “Step aside,” she said in a tight voice.
“Aw, darling. You don’t want a young, inexperienced boy. You should be looking for a real man like me, who knows what he’s doing. Trust me, I’ll have you purring in no time,” he promised with a leer and reached for her.
Belatedly, alarm spiked through Mare, and her heart began to race.
Ruric moved then with inhuman speed, so that none of the other humans in the room saw him. He was there then suddenly gone, reappearing in the back corridor with his large hand wrapped around that reaching male arm, though he hadn’t really needed to touch him; he held the man’s will under his tight control.
“Stay here,” Ruric snarled to Mare, and saw relief cross her face as she recognized Ruric’s voice. Viciously he yanked the unresisting male into the empty men’s bathroom.
