She pulled away and ran her finger under my eyes, drying my tears. “What was Rachel wearing when you travelled?”
I liked where she was going with this. “All leather.”
“Sounds tacky.” Lennon laughed. “When I left the party, she was there. And she wasn’t dressed like a Dominatrix.”
“If this is a trap...” I pulled away from Lennon’s grasp. “Callie will freak out when she sees me at that party.” Last time, my plus one was a pissed off vampire who wanted to pick The Mistress out of his fangs. Understandably, I hadn’t started this night on her top ten list, either.
“I know you’ve had a rough time with vampires. I won’t let any of them come between you and Rainey.” Lennon put her arm around me, and it was the most natural thing in the world to follow her toward the elevator that would bring me to their lair. “This is bigger than anything we’ve dealt with before. Come to the party. Let’s start getting everyone on your side.”
Chapter Three
It wasn’t that easy.
Everyone should’ve already been on my side. We were partners in the newest show on the Strip, The Afterlife. And from the looks of the reviews that kept obscuring Rainey’s face on the screen, it could also be the shortest-lived show.
I fucked up—my performance had been shaky from the get-go.
I hadn’t been raised vamp. Instead, I’d been raised as an embarrassment, but it meant I could go out in daylight, eat human food, and burst into flames. It wasn’t until I was brought to Las Vegas to lure vampires to me and destroy them did I learn I was one of them. I didn’t share many traits with vampires, but now I wondered if I fed from energy, too.
The ding of the elevator door opening snapped me back from that thought. The vampires of Las Vegas existed in a Realm I failed to master—so far—and I couldn’t afford to make one more mistake.
Tristan Trevosier was the first to notice my arrival. He nodded, his eyes heavy-lidded from too much drink. But Callie was laser sharp beside him, her disapproval made clear by her glare.
If The Mistress could’ve gotten rid of me when she helped destroy my father, she would’ve done it without a second thought. But she couldn’t, and that wasn’t the only thing that gave me the upper hand.
“Great show tonight,” Tristan said as we exchanged cheek kisses. He managed to sober up in time for the show, but that was behind us now. I worried about him. Not only because I couldn’t do the show without him, but because I considered him a friend.
“I can do better.” I nodded at Callie. “I missed a lot of my cues, and my routine was sloppy.” It was better to acknowledge my screw-ups than get sideswiped by them.
“Fuck that.” Tristan scoffed. “Never give them perfect. If you do, there’s no reason for them to come back. They want the unexpected.”
“I never thought of it that way.”
“The most important thing is that they talk about you long after they leave the show,” Callie added, but her gaze slid to Tristan. He slapped her ass in response. She squealed like she forgot she had an audience. It was short-lived, and her attention was back on me. “That’s why you need to cooperate when the camera crew is around. So they don’t forget about you.”
The Mistress might as well have slapped me in the face. Nobody was ever going to forget about me.
“Is that why you made that sex tape?” My words were a growl forced between gritted teeth.
“That wasn’t meant for an audience. I’m not like you. You’ll bare all for anyone who pays a hundred bucks.” Callie’s gaze fell to my chest. Unlike during the show, it was covered now. “What else do you do for money, Holly?”
“Ladies.” Lennon pulled my arm before I had a chance to answer. Or throttle Callie. She and I had closed in on each other. Callie bit her lip to conceal her smile, but not her fangs. I’d burn the little bitch before she even broke skin.
“It’s kinda hot.” Tristan grinned. “Come on. The two of you won’t destroy each other. You need each other too much.”
We both turned to him, ready to rip him a new asshole, but no words came out as we realized he was right. It sucked.
“Speaking of cameras”—Lennon kept a firm grip on me as she talked—“can we have access to what was taped tonight?”
“The production company takes it with them. We don’t get it back until it’s edited. Why?” Callie asked.
“That’s not what I’m talking about, doll.” Lennon could diffuse any situation. Without her, Embrace had most likely disintegrated into a festering, open wound. “I mean the surveillance tapes.”
Oh. Good thinking.
“Yeah.” Callie’s gaze landed on me. “What’s going on?”
“Notice anything missing?” I scanned the room. It hadn’t occurred to me that Rainey could’ve been waiting for me up here all along. I knew better than that. Rainey would rather stand on stage naked than go to a vampire party by herself. And she always left the public nudity to me.
Callie rolled her eyes. “I figured Rainey and Blade would make a grand entrance later, now that you’re a happy little threesome. You managed to avoid the surveillance cameras last time you crashed the party.” She squinted, checking the room to make sure we hadn’t pulled anything else over on her. Callie understood her weaknesses. None of us were sure how many she had, or what was the breaking point. “Where is she?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.” Shit, that came out all wrong. The fangs were back on display. “I don’t think you did anything to her. But she’s not here, I have her purse and her phone, and she’d never leave without telling me.”
Blade and the Embrace contingent were familiar with Gabriel and his drinking buddies. I didn’t think of them all as angels because I didn’t know if they were like him or like Rainey—sent to Earth to save us from ourselves. And I had no idea how much Callie knew about him. When dealing with her, I didn’t like to share information. Anything I said could and would be used against me.
And if Rachel were to be believed, Callie wouldn’t have power over me for long. I wasn’t playing fair, being able to see the future. It was maddening not to share every gruesome detail with all of them. I’d been on the receiving end of that for years with Rainey, and it was too easy to dismiss all the warnings and still be unprepared when it came to pass.
She really was an angel for putting up with me for so long.
“I need to see the tapes. She wouldn’t have left on her own. Not like that.” I dangled the strap of her purse off the edge of my finger.
“Follow me. You know where the surveillance room is.” Callie detained Rainey and I there when Rainey cast a spell to make people think she was The Mistress. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me that Rainey could’ve done that tonight. No. I couldn’t keep making up excuses and refusing to face the hard, ugly truth. She was gone.
“You didn’t piss Blade off, I hope.” Callie waited for the elevator doors to close before she tossed out her accusation. “You know I have, and it’s not pretty. He left his common sense in the human world. He ripped my roommate to shreds, and he took out Lennon’s boyfriend, too.”
Holy shit. I knew about the roommate, but I forgot about Lennon’s connection to the first wave of vampires that tried to destroy me. Lennon balled her fist against the glass wall, not looking at either of us. I never thought about her life past the parameters of what had been with Cash. There was only about two-hundred and thirty years of filling in the blanks to do. I was so desperate to have her on my side I’d been willing to ignore any history that didn’t suit my needs.
“Is that true?” I asked. The motion of the elevator threatened to make me ill.
She nodded. “We think so. The murder was never solved. That’s the problem with being something other than human. Can’t expect their rules to protect you anymore. Jacey died around the same time we realized that Talis had been destroyed.”
“Also by Blade,” Callie interjected. Sure, he was racking up the kills, but none of it erased that she took out
my father.
“The investigation was totally overshadowed by Talis. Everything fell into chaos, and Blade was an easy explanation. Things fell apart for Fire Dancer after that.”
I did not want to think of my first venture into Vampirelandia. I had to keep my wits about me, because chances were I wasn’t going to like what I saw on the surveillance tapes. Especially when I would need vampires to help me get Rainey back. Darkness, light, I didn’t give a damn how they did it.
Walking into the office, I could practically taste Rainey. The sensation melted on the tip of my tongue, but unlike her, it didn’t disappear. It intensified like the whisper of her skin against my hand, but when I looked down, nothing was there. Lennon had been hugging herself ever since we left the elevator, and Callie was never in the mood to cuddle.
Rainey was here, which chilled me to the bone. I refused to consider that the Realm Rachel mentioned involved death. It was possible that without Rainey, I was more aware of my vampire traits. Rainey neutralized them. Left to my own devices, I knew I’d be drawn to the darkness, but I expected it to be more of a shove than a swan dive.
“We have cameras covering almost every angle of the theater. Where do you want to start?” Callie’s voice snapped against me like an electric shock. She sat in the chair that Rainey had occupied last time I was here, and tapped at the keyboard. There was a series of password hoops she had to jump through before she could manipulate the data. Sin City Vampire Club had been guarded well against mortal attack, but it was full of holes in the places it counted.
“She was sitting in the front row.” I pulled a chair next to Callie. Lennon didn’t sit, instead she held onto the back of my chair. I glanced back at her and she winked at me. I wasn’t sure if she meant to say you’ve got this or bitch, you are so fucked.
“I saw her there.” Callie tapped the keys, bringing up a fuzzy screen full of screaming fans. She pinched the image on the screen, manipulating it to zoom in on Rainey’s seat. “When was the last time you talked to Blade?”
“The night you kicked us out of the party,” I said. His absence left a void, and so many unanswered questions.
My fire had been the result of our union—the three of us, Blade, Rainey, and me. Their powers flowed into me and I ignited. That night, we hadn’t fought. I simply pushed him away.
I had trust issues, and this was why. No one was fully good or fully evil.
“Hmm.” Callie didn’t have to say what she was thinking. She already had all the evidence she needed to support her theory. She swiped the screen, positioning the image over Rainey’s smiling face.
It hurt to look at her.
Callie pushed play. “The cameras in the crowd pivot, so we won’t have a continuous shot on her. It’s never been necessary to have a still cam on the audience. We’ve had threats before from fans, but they usually don’t stay in one place. If we don’t catch her leaving, we’ll still be able to narrow down the timeframe of when she left her seat.”
It left too many variables. “She was gone when I did my silk routine.”
“That helps.” The tape dragged in slow motion. The only bright spots were the flashes of Rainey. It was easy to tell when my routine ended because the light faded from her eyes, and she fidgeted in her seat, glancing at her phone. Her phone.
“Go back,” I instructed. Callie did as I asked, freezing the frame on Rainey’s face. Her gaze was directed at the screen in her hand, and she frowned at whatever she saw.
I pulled the phone out of the bag and scrolled through the messages. There had to be a clue there.
“She had her phone.” Lennon was on the same page as I was. “But you said her purse was left in your dressing room. Are there cameras in your dressing room?”
I eyed Callie. “There better not be.” Now I was regretting the decision to make my dressing room off-limits.
She shook her head. “No. The only places in the theater that aren’t under surveillance are the dressing rooms.”
“Does anyone else know that?”
“Only the people who have access to this room.” Callie tapped at the keyboard, bringing up an image of my closed dressing room door. “And you have to be pretty high on the food chain to get these codes.”
“But your guards brought Rainey and me to this room when they wanted to hold us prisoner.” Which never made any sense to me, unless it was some sort of passive aggressive resistance against The Mistress. “So your enemies might not have the numbers, but they know the lay of the land.”
She turned her chair toward me. “I can count my enemies on one hand.”
“Is that so?” I stifled a laugh. She’d dipped into whatever Tristan drank to wash away reality. “Do you know who Gabriel is?”
Lennon’s grip tightened, pulling my chair away from Callie.
Callie smiled, her tongue settling on her fang. I’d let her keep thinking they scared me. If she could keep Tristan happy, chances were pretty good I’d like it if she bit me. “Everyone thinks I’m weak because I’m young. Or because I didn’t earn my position. So what, I had connections. But I inherited a very sophisticated system. I have surveillance all over this city. I keep an eye on what’s happening at Embrace. I haven’t stepped in because it’s much more satisfying to watch them destroy themselves.”
Interesting theory. Too bad she was dead wrong.
“You’re not answering my question,” I said. She couldn’t even tell me when my girlfriend had been stolen out of her theater. She was bluffing. “What do you know about Gabriel?”
“He’s not a vampire. I’m not concerned with him.” She turned back to the screens, calling up the tape from the camera outside my door.
I could hardly breathe, waiting for something to happen. “You should be. Without his help, The Afterlife has no chance of succeeding.”
“What are you talking about? Don’t blame other people if you can’t hold up your end of the bargain.” Callie shook her head, but her eyes were glued to the screens.
“It’s the energy.” I was getting grumpier by the second, and it had nothing to do with my company. “It’s like someone’s draining me. Rainey balances the different sides of me, like the fans do for Tristan and the rest of the band. Gabriel was probably also keeping the peace at Embrace.”
“Makes sense,” Lennon added. “He stopped coming a little while after the night you saw him. And everything went downhill from there.”
“What do you think he is?” As clan Mistress with a ‘very sophisticated system,’ she shouldn’t be asking that question. Unless she was trying to gauge what I thought. I didn’t have anything to lose by telling her, because he’d already taken everything.
“Gabriel’s an angel.” I gasped, unable to finish my theory when Rainey flashed on the screen. Nothing seemed unusual as she entered my dressing room. I concentrated on breathing. It wasn’t easy, waiting for shit to hit the fan. So far, nothing.
Callie leaned back in the chair. “What does that have to do with The Afterlife?”
She was so screwed if I had to explain this to her. My patience wore thin waiting for Rainey to emerge from that room. “He’s been guiding Rainey for years. Longer than you’ve been alive.” I had to make this sound more coherent than when Rainey explained her visions to me. “She was the one trying to make things right, keeping me out of trouble. If I couldn’t be pulled away from the darkness, he threatened to take her someplace where she could make a difference. I’d been able to do it until Immortal Dilemma closed their show. Since then, vampires are consuming too much energy. The city can’t sustain it.”
“The Afterlife will fix it.” Callie didn’t buy into my conspiracy theory, but at least she admitted there was a problem.
“Without Rainey, I’m not sure I can sustain my fire.” And if Blade was behind her disappearance, I was doubly screwed. “And the reviews...”
“Don’t worry about the reviews.” Callie groaned. “All press is good press. We knew you didn’t have your fire when we signed the con
tract.”
“So you played me.” I wouldn’t tell her how much I didn’t agree with her. I expected every review to be glowing. That was the energy I needed from the crowd. Complete awe and admiration, not to be made into a laughing stock when I misfired.
“No, Holly. We—”
The room fell silent when a figure appeared on the screen, and the three of us turned to each other in confusion when we realized it was me.
“Did we miss something?” Lennon dragged out the words. “Because Rainey didn’t come out and you just went in. Is there another door?”
“Just to the bathroom.” I racked my brain, trying to remember if anything was off in my dressing room when I came back from my silk routine. I’d been aware of her absence at that point, and it had thrown me off. But as I tried to calm myself down, already knowing the worst-case scenario had begun to unravel much like I had minutes before, I missed a lot. I didn’t remember seeing her purse, or any signs of struggle, or any evidence she actually entered the room.
Callie rewound the tape and we watched it again. Nothing. Rainey went in the room and never came out.
“Do you think she cast a spell?” Callie asked, her voice soft. All her usual bravado and bullshit defenses were gone. It scared me even more.
“She must have.” In a way, it comforted me because it meant no one had taken her against her will. But it meant that she left on her own.
She left me.
Chapter Four
I refused to believe it. It would’ve been kinder if Rainey ripped my beating heart out of my chest and dropkicked it into the screaming crowd rather than simply making herself disappear. And she knew that.
Digging through her bag that was always full of tricks, I pulled out a spell book, a few crystals, and the velvet scarf that guarded her most prized possession, her deck of goddess tarot cards. No, Rainey didn’t go willingly. She left every single one of her defenses behind.
Queen of the Night Time World Page 2
