The salons were a crush of beautiful guests in an array of costumes, wigs, hats and masks. There were many in the Venetian style featuring long beaked noses in garish colors. The effect was edgy chaos just this side of madness.
Kat’s heartbeat kicked up in response. The night would only get more chaotic as time passed and champagne flowed.
She made out several of her friends. Tess waved with a glass in her hand, the mask she’d worn as an older and wiser Juliet was already hanging from her wrist by its ribbons.
Music played in the background on discreet speakers. The orchestra had the night off. Instead of Tchaikovsky, an epic rock ballad played, surprisingly fitting with the decadent, theatrical mood.
There were many people she didn’t recognize. So many people at the opera house were still new acquaintances. There were also former players, city officials and wealthy patrons. She would never be able to pick out anyone dangerous in the crowd.
But that lie held for only moments before a tall, lean figure dressed all in black parted the crush of partygoers gracefully, easily, with a masculine authority unmistakable, unmatched by anyone else.
He moved toward her slowly, but his approach was as inevitable as a bolt released from a crossbow. She was the target. He hit home with the intensity of his eyes while he was still half a room away.
They’d been drawn to each other for days. Tonight, behind the masks and in the middle of the crowd, could they indulge the impulse to come together?
The stiff black domino was perfectly molded to his face and seemed soft in comparison to his set jaw. A shimmer of starched silk over chiseled stone. When he was steps away, she noticed what Sybil had done.
Severne’s formal tuxedo with all its textural fabrics in varying shades of black was the perfect foil to her own snowy ensemble with its shades of ivory and white.
They were a pair.
No one here would doubt it.
She was the Gothic angel to his heavenly daemon, and he took her breath away when she saw his eyes widen as he noted the costume magic, too. She could already see a hint of green glimmering from the shadowed holes of his mask.
“I’ve been to this masquerade a thousand times,” he said.
He stopped in front of her only when they were toe to toe, only when he could tilt down to speak for her ears alone. “I’ve never wanted to dance before now.”
She pressed willingly into his darkness, the white of her skirts crushed against his hard, straight form, the swell of her barely covered breasts full against his midnight brocade.
Contrast. And both costumes even more beautiful than before because of it.
He pulled her onto the dance floor, and she tried to keep up. He waltzed in spite of the modern music. No one cared. Many tried to emulate him without the practiced immortal moves of a man who’d been on the floor many times before. The short moments they’d been on the dance floor of the riverboat had been only a preview of what she experienced now.
“This isn’t your first waltz,” Kat said midwhirl.
“I’ve danced a thousand times before. Out of duty, obligation and boredom. Never need. Never hold my dance partner or die. Never hold her and die,” Severne said.
She’d been approached with smooth, practiced lines before. But never such a raw emotion. She didn’t reply in kind. Her need to be in his arms was a confession that stuck in her throat and warmed her cheeks to what must have been scarlet against the crystal gems below.
“I’ve known Sybil since I was a boy. She practically raised me. In this, she plays a dangerous game. Take care you aren’t caught up in it,” Severne said into the soft curls above her ear.
“She seems too serious for matchmaking,” Katherine said.
“Never doubt it. She is,” Severne said.
“Then she didn’t mean for us to be seen as a couple tonight?” Kat asked.
“We are a pair, Katherine. But there are many pairs who are destined to remain apart. Sybil’s artistic needles and thread bewitch, but they are cruel. This night only shows us what we can’t have,” Severne said.
“Only this, then. The dance. Now,” Kat said, fully surrendering to the dizzy thrill of circling the room in his arms.
“Yes. We have this dance and, for now, it can be everything,” Severne replied. “Forget about all else.”
Including promises and lies.
She didn’t say it out loud. She danced. Until her head was light, until when he finally left her to stand alone by the dance floor, it took her long moments to catch her breath and calm her heart. Did he mean for the dance to be a finality between them? No more kisses. No more contact. No more desire.
As her pulse slowed, she took careful, steady inhalations until she could draw oxygen in and release it without the air fluttering from her lungs like butterflies shaken from a bush.
She planted her feet firmly on the ground. She forced her head to clear. She cursed the warm sensation he’d left on her body where his hands had been, on the small of her back and on her hand. She might want to follow him and the music through the crowd to discover wherever he’d gone, but she didn’t.
Kat turned down several other partners.
She wished she had recovered sooner. It took too long to banish the dance. It was dangerous to fall under the heat of his eyes, his voice and his touch. His reaction to her was as heady as hers to him. She’d seen his cheeks darken. She’d felt the restraint he’d practiced not to hold her closer than the dance required. She’d seen the glitter of her bodice reflected in his eyes.
Her perceptions couldn’t be clouded tonight.
She willed his effect on her away.
She tried to pick out individuals in the colorful mass around her.
Severne played havoc with her senses. His proximity had hidden Sybil’s true nature from her detection. She hadn’t discovered the daemons on the riverboat by their magnetic pull. She’d had to pick them out with only her eyes. The room could be full of daemons and Severne’s monopoly on her affinity would hide them from her view. It was new, this feeling of uncertainty. She’d always rejected her ability to detect daemons, but now that it was hampered, she was frightened by her inability to sense their presence.
As she stood resolute and determined to recover from his touch, it was precisely the senses Severne had overwhelmed that pinpointed an anomaly.
She sipped a lemonade cocktail she’d taken from a server’s tray, and the crowd whirled and laughed and sang and talked and argued. But one figure in a crimson cloak moved with steady purpose at the edges of her blurred perceptions. Closer and closer still the figure crept. Not dancing. Not pausing. Not accepting champagne. A porcelain mask painted in the French style of the pantomime clown, Pierrot, covered the figure’s face. The stark white facade glowed brightly within the hood of the crimson cloak, its hard, pursed lips red and a single black teardrop painted on its cheek.
Kat forced herself to sip casually while she focused on the figure, but her attention didn’t go unnoticed. Crimson-cloaked clown stopped. The swirl of the blood-colored fabric wrapped around its legs. Feminine hands reached from the cloak’s folds to keep it from tangling in legs encased in black leggings and tall, shiny boots.
A woman.
And something about her hands...
It had to be wishful thinking, but as she watched the woman pause with one foot placed toward her, it was as if the cloaked figure would rather run to her side than run away.
Kat stepped toward the woman in red. She allowed the empty glass in her hand to drop and roll on the heavy rug behind her.
“Vic?” she asked.
The woman was too far away. Kat couldn’t tell what color eyes shone behind the black holes of the clown mask. But when the woman in red heard the utterance of her sister’s name, she backed away. Urgently. She bumped several other par
tygoers but didn’t pause to apologize.
“Victoria?” Kat said, louder and more desperate now that the woman in the crimson cloak had reacted to her first cry.
Several revelers near her turned to see why she had called out.
The crimson-cloaked figure also turned and pushed her way into the crowd away from Katherine.
Kat followed. Her progress was slow. The crowd of people had tripled in seconds. They pressed in around her on all sides. She pushed. She apologized. She excused herself through dozens of dancers.
But she couldn’t hurry. She could only propel herself desperately at a slow slog through people determined to ignore her pleas.
She reached the hallway as the crowd thinned. It branched in two different directions. The way toward the exit was the most crowded. The opposite way led into the heart of l’Opéra Severne. It was darker. The sconces had been turned low to discourage partygoers from areas that weren’t part of the event. But it was the flickering sconces that lit the vanishing flash of crimson around a distant corner.
Kat bit back another cry of her sister’s name. The woman had run from her when she’d called out. It was doubtful she’d get a different result now. She could only hurry after the woman in the crimson cloak and hope that her instincts were right.
Victoria was still in the opera house. And she’d come out of hiding to find Katherine tonight.
Chapter 17
Her footsteps were muted by the party noise at first, but as she chased Victoria farther and farther from the crowd, the music and roar dimmed and her steps grew louder. She could hear a hint of movement ahead of her, down each corridor, around each bend—a scuff of a tread, a sharper sound as a boot heel connected with the ground—but those noises, too, began to fade.
She found herself alone in an unfamiliar part of the sprawling building with only her own footsteps and her own quickened breathing making any sound.
Kat slowed at the intersection of the hallway she hurried down and a larger corridor that had no sconces glowing. The whole length of it, this way and that, was devoid of light. She stood, undecided, straining her ears to pick up any hint of sound. Both directions were black as pitch with darkness so thick it seemed impenetrable.
How had Victoria found her way, and why had she run from a sister desperate to find her?
There.
Was that a sound?
Kat stepped toward the left, but stopped when the sound of a footstep approached instead of retreated. Closer and closer someone came. Instinct urged her to back away. But her desire to see Victoria and make sure she was okay warred with self-preservation.
And won.
She stood her ground. The steps came closer still.
“A strange place to hunt for daemons, I must confess. Yet there are so many at this fete that my problem is choosing where to strike first.” The voice was unfamiliar to her, but not so the robes that revealed themselves around the ruddy shine of a monk’s face that at first seemed to float toward her from the shadows.
One of Reynard’s men had found her, or else his stalking of l’Opéra Severne was a chance hunting foray that had proved crazily fortuitous to his master.
“Leave me and my sister alone,” Kat said.
He came toward her with his pale hands stretched to the sides as if in supplication. His gesture said he had no weapons and meant her no harm. She knew better. Even if he hadn’t been tall and broad and obviously scarred from his warrior training, his intent to harm was inherent in his quest to use her to harm others. She would never know peace or freedom as long as the Order hounded her footsteps.
And what of Victoria?
Her disappearance. The charred bracelet. Her almost haunting appearance near Katherine tonight, and now this sudden showing of their worst nightmare. Stalking, stalking, never stopping. Had Victoria been harmed, or had she finally decided to hide deeper than they ever had before?
“I’m no longer the Order’s bloodhound. Tell Reynard that. Tell him I’m finished. I won’t be his servant anymore. I want no part of his obsession,” Kat said.
The monk’s face hardened. His hands, still held out at his sides, fisted. His hands were a truer indication of his intentions than his words.
“His obsession. His? We all have a divine mission entrusted to us by Samuel himself. Your family was blessed by his kiss. Specially selected by him to lead us to our prey,” the monk said. He spat out each word as if it was a curse.
“Well, I refuse. You can tell Reynard. No more,” Kat said.
She couldn’t stop the tremor in her voice. The crowd from the party was so far away, there was no longer even a murmur from them. She and the monk stood completely alone. Isolated. Even the low hum she usually heard from the walls was silent.
“Where’s your hellhound when I need him, Severne?” Kat muttered, but only the walls could hear her.
She was alone with a trained killer. A man used to dispatching daemons easily. He was not so proficient as his master, perhaps, but still formidable. And deadly.
“You can tell him yourself. I’m sure he’ll be eager to see you again,” the monk said. “It is your duty to come with me. It will be my duty to father the next generation of daemon Seekers. I’ve beaten Simon to the prize.”
His anger had turned snaky and triumphant. His grimace turned up into a thin smile. He’d seen her glance around for help or a weapon. He’d seen her eyes go hollow when there was no help to be found. No witness for whatever he was about to do.
The monk stepped forward. Kat’s heart jumped, and she stutter-stepped back. In the heavy skirts of the ball gown, she could never outrun him. All the Order’s monks were as physically fit as soldiers, but this man was the largest she’d ever seen.
She wasn’t expecting the harsh laughter that erupted from the monk’s mouth or the wide grin that split his face. He was a serious hunter who rarely had the luxury of toying with his daemon prey. She, on the other hand, amused him. He thought she presented him with an opportunity to play.
Katherine stilled. Ball gown or not, she would make him regret that laugh. She could at least spoil his game.
She was a cellist.
Not a hunter.
Not a daemon.
But she was a fighter. She’d been fighting this battle her whole life.
When he saw her serious stance, his grin faded. “Come with me quietly and no one needs to get hurt,” he said.
His cajoling tone upped her anger exponentially.
“I won’t go quietly. You need to hurt,” Kat said. “You need to bleed.”
This time when he moved, he closed the gap between them without laughter. As he reached her, she dropped back in a defensive stance. She braced her body. She lifted her fists.
But a growl erupted from the shadows.
Unlike when the monk had stepped forward out of the shadows like a pale apparition, Grim brought the inky black of the corridor with him. Shadows clung to his fur so even when he leaped between them, it was hard to see where darkness ended and hellhound began.
“Samuel’s kiss,” the monk cursed. He fell backward in retreat, clumsily shuffling several paces away from the huge hound.
Grim bared his teeth. The white of his gaping maw startled, his giant teeth easily distinguished from the less distinct animal that bared them.
Had those teeth lengthened and thickened since the last time she’d seen them?
It was only then that Kat realized Grim had never truly threatened her. His ferocity had always been in check, muted for her benefit. He gave no such quarter to the Order of Samuel.
“Call him off. Tell him we’ll be married. We will work together to fulfill Samuel’s gift,” the monk ordered.
This time it was Katherine’s turn to smile. She did it sweetly. It turned out a cellist had no need for te
eth and claws when such lovely ones were hers to borrow.
“I told you. I quit,” Kat said. “Grim.”
She didn’t have to say more. The monk had already turned to run. Grim disappeared after the panicked sprint of the man who would have gladly dragged Katherine back to his master...once he’d finished with her himself.
A waft of cold, crisp, forest-scented air washed back over her face. The atmosphere contracted as if the pressure had changed. Her ears popped. Then the dusty, close corridor returned to the way it had been.
Grim was now chasing the monk over pathways she couldn’t follow.
Instead, Kat turned and hurried in the other direction. She would try to find her sister all night long if she had to while Grim kept her stalker occupied elsewhere. A greater urgency now drove her search. If Reynard’s men were here, he wouldn’t be far behind. He’d sent his minions into the opera world to find her. Her time at l’Opéra Severne was running out.
Chapter 18
When she finally slowed to a stop, she was all alone and far from the distant crowded salons. There wasn’t a hint of the crowd’s murmur. Or of Grim’s growls. There was only her, the carvings on the walls around her and her sister’s dressing room. The key was tied beneath the folds of her dress, but she didn’t retrieve it.
Severne’s Brimstone heat had been the only thing to save her the night the shadow’s touch had almost frozen her to death.
The dance had been a goodbye between them. She was sure of it.
Some pairs are destined to remain apart. But she couldn’t confront the shadow without Severne’s fire.
Kat clenched fingers gone suddenly icy. From fear. That was all. There was no preternatural chill in the air.
But there was a murmur.
He’d said not to focus on the murals. Not to look too closely. But it was impossible to ignore them completely. From the corner of her eye she could see a woman embraced by a man brought to his knees with disappointment or pain. Even closer to her than that was the tragically rendered figure of an angelic form whose wings were being shorn from his body with a merciless sword.
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