Immortal with a Kiss

by Jacqueline Lepore

  Valerian caught my eye. “Five of us?” I knew why he hesitated. He was a man used to working alone, being alone. So was I. And Sebastian, and Father Luke—all of us had been alone in so many ways for all of our lives.

  We’d parted after Avebury, tried to go our own paths. It hadn’t worked. I needed them. I was convinced I would have failed here in Blackbriar if not for them. They’d aided me, saved me. They had come to me because, I realized now, they needed me as well. This was love, I suddenly saw—so much for the promise of the Cyprian Queen. Nothing so glorious, just ordinary people standing together.

  We none of us were alone any longer. Serena would not be, either.

  “Five is a mystical number as well,” I said cheerfully. “Five decades to a rosary, for example.”

  “Five . . .” Valerian gave me a helpless look.

  “Five fingers,” I said, showing him my hand, “gripping a stake to strike at the heart of the undead.”

  He coughed a wry laugh, his eyebrows furrowing in disapproval at my dramatics.

  And so it was five of us, then, that headed out of the Vale of Eden that day, taking our time as we traveled to Dartmoor to plan, to think, to talk. For, as Sebastian had observed, we had important work to do.

  Emma Andrews

  Brighton, February 1928

  Acknowledgments

  I have a great publishing team: Christina Hogrebe at Jane Rotrosen Agency, and Kate Nintzel and everyone else at HarperCollins. Thank you for championing these books and for letting me run with the concept. Your contributions continue to be so very helpful.

  I need to express my most heartfelt thanks again to my sisters: Kate, Kay, Krisann, and Lorie—the power group, for sure (real power comes from love).

  Thanks to my kids—Luke, Lindsey, and Kelly—who have been so supportive and ingenious in helping to spread the word about their mom’s vampire book to whomever would listen.

  And again, my husband, Mick, deserves the biggest thanks. He worked almost as hard on this book as I did.

  About the Author

  JACQUELINE LEPORE is a native Philadelphian. She holds a Ph.D in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. She lives with her husband in Maryland, where she has practiced for more than twenty years as a licensed psychologist. For more information on Jacqueline, visit her website at www.jacquelinelepore.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Also by Jacqueline Lepore

  The Emma Andrews Series

  Descent into Dust

  Credits

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Cover photograph © Susan Fox /Arcangel Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  IMMORTAL WITH A KISS. Copyright © 2011 by Jacqueline Lepore. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub Edition March 2011 ISBN: 9780062074614

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lepore, Jacqueline.

  Immortal with a kiss / Jacqueline Lepore. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-06-187815-2 (pbk.)

  1. Vampires—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837-1901—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3612.E64I46 2011

  813'.6—dc22

  2010031068

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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