Brimstone Seduction

by Barbara J. Hancock

  She took her hand from the desk, and only then did he remove his, as well.

  The birds had gone silent, with only an occasional rustle to indicate that the roosting creatures had the potential for flight.

  * * *

  He’d meant to keep her busy digging through the paper detritus of the past century, but when he’d found her in the office, he couldn’t bear the thought of his beautiful, musical Katherine trapped with the birds and the dust. It would accomplish the same thing if he had his employees comb through the disorganized records. Let her feel that the human owner of the box had something to do with her sister’s disappearance, when all the while she would be inadvertently leading him to the daemon he needed to find.

  His.

  He had no doubt that the daemon he sought had spent time at l’Opéra Severne. He’d been drawn to the opera house because of its proximity to the hell dimension. He’d been drawn to Victoria D’Arcy as all daemons were. Severne had been away hunting other daemons, and Michael had made himself at home, coming and going through the private boxes of the balconies and the private rooms of a woman who should have been under Severne’s protection.

  It wasn’t safe for a human woman to consort with daemons. Or with a man who was damned.

  That was a reminder he needed to embrace. He’d failed Katherine’s sister. She would be hurt by what he had to do if she’d taken Michael as her lover. He couldn’t afford to care. Not when he had to use Katherine and endanger her heart in much the same way.

  Chapter 7

  Backstage could be volatile, and a seasoned company welcoming new players could flare from volatile to combustible. Katherine tried to blend in, but it was tricky. L’Opéra Severne seemed to have less turnover than most theaters. Urgency helped her persevere. For Victoria, she had to find her place quickly and well because she needed to spend the majority of her time searching for some clue about her sister’s whereabouts.

  Just because she didn’t have to tackle a century’s worth of dusty papers in the opera house offices didn’t mean she was free only to rehearse and perform. She had to continue to keep her eyes open and question the other musicians and performers. There was a good chance she could learn more from conversation than disorganized records. She also had to maintain her distance from Severne while still trying to understand what drove him to help her.

  How much time did she spend imagining things about him? Way more than she should. But no one ever needed to know it.

  Victoria had used an assumed name to avoid Reynard. As one cello in an orchestra of five, Katherine didn’t feel the need for such measures. She wouldn’t be on the marquee or the playbill. She wouldn’t be named in advertisements. She was one of a whole. Here she was still Katherine D’Arcy and no one batted a lash.

  “Julia was an understudy until a couple of weeks ago,” one of the seasoned prompters shared. Tess Vaughn was quiet, punctual and good at her job. A woman in her forties, Tess was the backbone of the production without longing for the spotlight of a part onstage. Prompters fed the singers their words on the upbeat, moments before the actual lines were required. They kept the production flowing smoothly in spite of performers who might be nervous or ill or just suffering a momentary memory blank.

  Kat was naturally drawn to Tess because soft conversation could often reveal what urgent interrogation couldn’t. Tess seemed to have nothing to hide. No dark ambitions. No rivalries to put her on guard. Everyone liked her. “She’s not as gifted as her predecessor and she knows it,” Tess said, “so she’s making simple mistakes from trying too hard. Beatrice felt the music. Every word. Every note. Julia is singing a part. Bea was Marguerite.”

  Tess was turned away from her while Kat limbered the muscles and joints in her fingers, arms and midsection, where strength of core centered her playing. She hoped her hands didn’t tremble at the praise for her sister. Victoria was brilliant. No matter what name she’d gone by. Her singing had been her escape from blood and death. But had her song betrayed her in the end? Had it failed to keep her safe?

  “I’m surprised someone made for the part would quit and leave l’Opéra Severne,” she ventured.

  “We were all surprised. And disappointed. Bea’s performance would have elevated the whole company. It seemed unlike her. She didn’t have a cut-and-run temperament. But...” Tess trailed off, and Kat noticed an uncomfortable glance her way.

  “But...?” she prompted. She hoped her expression didn’t show how her heart was hanging on every word the other woman spoke. Tess was right about her sister’s temperament. Kat had been the expert at cut-and-run. Her sister had always chafed at hiding.

  * * *

  Victoria D’Arcy was still dressed as Juliet. Katherine had dreaded the final performance. Her sister was always the least consolable when she sang the tragic part of the young star-crossed lover. Not because she had to play the part of a young woman who had loved and lost, but because Victoria had never had the opportunity to love at all.

  They had no time for romance. Not with Reynard constantly hounding their footsteps.

  She hurried to Vic’s dressing room following the final curtain call, barely pausing to wipe down her precious cello with hurried swipes of a soft cloth. Even her treasured instrument wasn’t as dear to her as her only sister.

  There was a crush of press and fans waiting outside the stage door, but Katherine was able to enter the dressing rooms through the backstage tunnels of the Cincinnati Theater. She was glad she’d gone to the trouble even though she was exhausted from her own performance when Vic turned from her dressing table with tears streaking the pale makeup on her face.

  “I keep doing this to myself. I’m always drawn to Juliet. I don’t know why,” Victoria said.

  Kat ignored her aching body and hurried to hug her crying sister.

  “Because you’re a lyric soprano and you’re perfect for the role. And because you’re a brilliant actress with a feel for the part that most modern performers can’t really empathize with,” Kat reminded her. “You are the young virgin who can’t have the man she loves. Or any man, for that matter.”

  Victoria laughed through her tears just as Kat had intended.

  “Aren’t we pitiful? Blessed and damned all at the same time,” Vic said.

  What she said was true. The affinity in their blood gave them an even greater gift for music than they would have had without it. But it also kept them from experiencing the emotional connections they played and sang about.

  “I still don’t regret it, Kat. Not even Juliet. The role hurts me, but I somehow need to sing it,” Vic confessed.

  Her sister’s need to play the tragic role of the doomed lover bothered Katherine more than she ever let show. She was afraid that it was somehow prophetic of pain and loss to come. And they’d already endured more pain and loss than most.

  “You were beautiful tonight. I cried. The conductor might not welcome me into his orchestra pit again,” Kat said.

  Victoria laughed once more and hugged her tighter. After the embrace, she was able to rise and begin to take off the costume stained with Juliet’s fake blood. Kat fell silent, staring at the blood. This time her feelings of an evil portent were not so fanciful.

  “We’ve stayed too long, haven’t we?” Victoria asked. She had stopped. The makeup wipes she’d been using to cleanse her face fell to the table.

  “Yes. I saw him in the crowd. We won’t be able to lose him tonight,” Kat said.

  “I’m sorry, Kat. It’s my fault. I linger. I hate to give up great roles. I hate the constant running,” Victoria said.

  “I know. I hate it, too. But we can’t give up. Mom is gone. It’s only us now. We have to try to escape. We have to resist,” Katherine said. “Just as she taught us to do.”

  Victoria nodded. She took a deep breath to will away the last of her tears. There wo
uld be real death before the night was through. She could waste no more energy on Juliet. Her sister hated to run and hide, but she always did what needed to be done in the end for them to survive. Kat helped Victoria take off the rest of her costume before she changed out of her own concert dress.

  They had to be ready for Reynard. He would be following them on the hunt. And, when it was over, they would need to be prepared to escape one more time.

  Always one more time.

  * * *

  “She was seeing someone,” Tess said.

  Her voice tore Katherine away from her memories.

  “One of the company?” Kat asked.

  “No. There was gossip that he was from old money. A patron of the arts. Maybe even European royalty. I guess anyone could be lured away from all this by a prince.” Tess gestured to the dusty backstage dressing area and shabby velvet curtains faded from red to pink ages ago. “There was definitely something going on. I worked with her every day. She was distracted at the end. Excited. But she didn’t talk about her personal life much, so I didn’t ask.”

  “Seems odd someone so serious about her work would leave before the season ended,” Kat said.

  “It depends on the man, doesn’t it?” Tess smiled, and an unexpected dimple showed at her chin.

  Kat’s heart fell. She suspected foul play, not romance, but she couldn’t forget Victoria’s many portrayals of Juliet. She hoped her sister hadn’t been drawn to the romantic tragedy for prophetic reasons. She had to force a smile for Tess’s benefit. The friendly woman had no idea she might be joking about a deadly situation. Perhaps this “patron of the arts” was the owner of the private box where the opera glasses had been returned.

  “All the patrons will be at the preseason masquerade two nights before our first performance,” Tess said. “Michael might be there, too. She never mentioned his last name. Only Michael. I’ll point him out to you if he’s there. We’re expected to attend, but no one minds. It’s the hottest ticket in Baton Rouge. It’s a hundred-year-old tradition. Sybil always allows us to choose a costume from the collection. Last year I was Marie Antoinette.”

  Kat thought about John Severne in formal wear and a domino mask. She could perfectly envision the potential for green to glitter in his eyes. They would seem dark to everyone except the person who got close enough to see more. She could also too easily imagine how the black silk of a mask would highlight the cut of his jaw and the swell of his sensual lower lip.

  She closed her eyes and swallowed. One more challenge for her to endure.

  “Mr. Severne serves the best champagne that night. Always. We look forward to the masquerade all year,” Tess said. “And there’s always a buffer of recovery time between the party and the first performance.”

  A daemon she desperately needed to resist at a masquerade. The possibility of meeting a man involved in her sister’s disappearance. And a high-profile party where the Order of Samuel could easily stalk her unawares.

  Her first week on the job was revealing multiple ways in which she might fail before she’d even begun.

  Their conversation ended when rehearsals began. Tess had to make her way to the tiny spiral staircase that led up and into the hooded prompter’s box, where she performed her vital role with only the performers as a grateful audience.

  Kat took her place down in the orchestra pit. All the other musicians waited for the conductor to wake and move slowly from his chair to become suddenly animated and vigorous as if the music brought him to life.

  * * *

  After rehearsal, Katherine could no longer put off the inevitable search of her sister’s room. Forewarned was forearmed. She needed to learn more before the masquerade. She swallowed her fear and her pain. She forced herself to ignore the dust and stale perfume. If her sister had disappeared because of this mysterious “patron of the arts,” it had to have been against her will. The opera glasses might be only the first of many clues she uncovered, but only if she braved her pain.

  The scariest question plaguing her was whether or not Michael was a daemon.

  Alone, without Reynard, without the Order of Samuel to help her or even her sister at her side, Vic would have been in terrible danger if her gift had led her to a daemon that didn’t want to be found.

  And what of Severne? Had he known the mysterious man? Severne was supposed to be helping her find her sister, but she could only doubt his motivations. How could she trust a daemon? Maybe her sister had been killed by a daemon at l’Opéra Severne and its master didn’t actually want her to be found. Maybe she would join her sister in oblivion when Severne decided it was time.

  On the night of the masquerade, she was sure to face dangers even darker than she could imagine. The opera house was filled with secrets. Perhaps her sister had stumbled upon some secret that had ended up being too dangerous for her to handle alone.

  The room was less poignant and vaguely threatening this time when she unlocked the door. What terrible things might lay in a drawer or cabinet?

  Kat breathed deeply, somehow fortified by the hint of freesia Vic always wore. It was faint, but still there, as if determined to bear witness to Vic’s having been in the room not too long ago. Her resolve wavered as she faced intimate reminders of Vic at every turn. She forced herself to go through the drawers. She found her sister’s favorite scarf. Kat picked it up, and underneath its silken folds she discovered a photograph of their mother. In the photograph, her mother was achingly familiar. Kat recognized the clothes she wore and the way she styled her hair. It must have been taken just before she was killed.

  The photo made Kat pause.

  She held the delicate paper in her hand. It was pale and faded, representing a moment captured in time now long, long gone. In it, her mother stood in front of a flowering hydrangea bush. The shrub was covered in drooping blossoms. Kat imagined the damp summer day. She wondered if her mother had cared that the humidity had lightly frizzed her usually smooth blond hair. Her mother looked at the person taking the photograph with a soft, sad expression on her face. One Kat had often seen. A faraway look in her eyes. Sybil had said she looked like her mother. The expression in the photograph was too familiar. She saw it every time she looked in the mirror.

  But in the photograph, her mother held one of the blossom clusters in her hand so tightly its petals were crushed. Not a posed shot, but one snapped when she’d been taken unaware.

  Why had she crumpled the flower in her hand? The fist and the flower conveyed a tension in the shot that her face belied. And why had Kat never seen the picture before this moment?

  Inside the drawer of the bedside table, where the photograph had been left, was also a key. It was an old brass skeleton key with an artistically scrolled stem and a faded crimson tassel hanging from its handle. It had no distinguishing marks on its surface to indicate what it might unlock.

  Kat picked it up and put it into her pocket. She also kept the photograph. Somehow she couldn’t leave it behind in the room as if it, too, along with her mother and her mother’s life, had been abandoned and forgotten. She placed the scarf back in the drawer, determined that one day her sister would return to reclaim it.

  She found nothing else beyond the ordinary until she opened a small drawer of a secretary desk that had been almost hidden behind a folding screen. The table was buried under a small hill of Victoria’s discarded clothes. Inside, nestled on a soft handkerchief, was a heavy brooch made of iron that was tarnished at its rusty edges. A stylized L decorated its center. The monogram was eerily familiar. Katherine picked up the brooch, and a cool rush of gooseflesh prickled along her arm.

  The iron was cold against her fingers, but its chill didn’t account for the frisson of fear that followed.

  Suddenly she felt as if she was being watched from the shadows.

  Kat wrapped the brooch back in the handkerchief. She cl
osed the drawer and glanced around one more time. No other belongings seemed unusual. She refused to let her nervousness rush her away. But she found nothing else during one last, quick sweep of the room.

  She tried to ignore the tingle between her shoulder blades and the chill on the back of her neck.

  The feeling was even worse in the corridor, where hundreds of eyes stared at nothing for eternity. She passed them quickly, trying to ignore the observation from inanimate eyes that were too real.

  She took the brooch, the key, and the photograph of her mother back to her room.

  Only when she closed the door did the feeling of being watched fade.

  Chapter 8

  The enclave nestled on the side of a mountain in the Western Carpathians on a range that ran through Slovakia, Hungary and Ukraine. Formerly an Eastern Orthodox monastery, the Order of Samuel had reclaimed the deserted castle-like structure for their training. Young novitiates were brought to the Order by train to Poprad-Tatry. Then they moved on to electric tram to reach High Tatras. From there, they proceeded on donkey up steep, winding trails to the enclave.

  The strenuous journey was the first trial Reynard had conceived to test the strength and determination of those he called to serve. The wind, rain, ice and snow contributed to the monks’ education.

  There were many more trials, some so cruel they resulted in permanent scars or even death.

  The abandoned castle wasn’t the only abandoned thing Reynard used to fuel his obsession.

  He traveled the world to recruit for the cause. The devout, the driven, the orphaned, the abused and neglected—all proved fertile ground for his teachings, lost boys made devoted servants when they were found. He gathered them to him like a pied piper, and all of them danced to his tune.

  All but the members of the D’Arcy family.

  They had been of Samuel’s choosing.

  Their reluctance to serve never allowed Reynard to forget it.

  He’d come back to his mountain sanctuary to heal after the daemon attack that had left him near death in spite of his special blessings. His men had nursed him with special medicines and poultices and prayers, but it was his calling that had begun to close his wounds and strengthen his heart. He’d made a pledge to those who would help him to fulfill it. This cause now burned in him where a soul no longer resided.