Ever After Series: Paranormal Romance Box Set (Steamy Vampire Romance)

by A. C. James

  We followed Arie onto an elevator to the 22nd floor and down a long corridor, until we reached another wall of glass doors, which opened into a sophisticated waiting area adorned in gray, white, and light blue shades that might as well have been white. A receptionist was tapping away at a keyboard behind an oversized desk that seemed to guard yet another wall of glass behind her, only this one opaque.

  She looked up as we approached the desk. “May I help you?”

  “We’re here to see Julian Frost,” Arie said as he leaned over her desk.

  “I’ll see if he’s expecting you. Just a moment—you can have a seat over there if you’d like. Could I bring you some coffee on my way back? Soda?”

  “No, thank you,” Arie said.

  She gestured toward the contemporary seating behind us. It seemed very ill-suited for a waiting room, but the fact that it was as white as snow reminded me of one person who I dearly missed. Victoria. It would kill her to see her maker this way. So maybe it was better that she wasn’t here to see it, but I couldn’t help wondering where she was or if she was okay.

  Julian opened the door to his office. He seemed even more handsome than I remembered him, although it helped that he was dressed in a freshly pressed suit rather than street clothes this time. His eyes lit up when he saw Arie, his old friend, but this was no social visit.

  “Come on in,” he said. “Mind bringing us some refreshments?” The last remark was directed at the woman behind the desk, who also had a very musky, animalistic smell about her. She gave him a nod and took off, presumably toward a break room. Fetch the coffee…that used to be my job. I didn’t miss it.

  We followed Julian into his office. There was a woman standing in front of his desk. She was beautiful, to be sure, with her long, dark hair and deep brown eyes, but in a rough sort of I-can-take-care-of-myself way. It might have been the way her arms were crossed over her white button-down shirt, or maybe it was just the fact that her ensemble was completed by a holstered gun. Regardless, I’d never want to meet her in a dark alley. I was fairly confident that she could kick my ass into next Tuesday and not even bat an eye.

  “This is Rayna,” Julian said, and then coughed as if he just realized he’d misspoken. His voice softened when he said her name. “I mean, Detective Ward. She’s part of a special unit, and she might have information that may assist you in locating the half-demon that you’re looking for. That’s why I brought you down here rather than sending you off to hunt down my cousin.”

  “What’s your cousin got to do with this?” Rayna asked.

  Julian shot her a look.

  “Have you filled her in on the situation?” Arie asked.

  “No, not fully,” Julian said.

  “Right, we’re looking for a half-faerie, half-demon that goes by the name Daeveena. She was last seen with a shifter named Ty in Chicago, but we have reason to believe she returned to New York with him,” Arie said.

  “Why would she do that?” Rayna asked. “Ty knows the law. They can never be together. The Old Ways forbid it, on penalty of death.”

  She was looking at Julian as she shook her head quite vehemently.

  “That’s not for us to debate or decide, and besides there’s no time,” Julian said.

  “Have you tried to find her through Ty?” Rayna asked.

  “No,” Arie said. “We didn’t know how to find him. That’s why we came here.”

  Julian scribbled onto a notepad on his desk, ripped off the paper, and then handed it to Arie. “This is his address, but I’ve only seen him once since he came home. I warned him to break it off with her, but he wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. I have no idea if he’s even with her anymore. I hope for his sake that he took what I said seriously.”

  Something in my gut told me that Ty would be a dead end, but I refused to give up. “Thank you for the information.”

  “Wait,” Julian said and turned toward Rayna. “If they go to find Ty and he’s broken it off with her, then where would you go to find a demon in this city?”

  Rayna’s arms were still crossed and she tapped a finger on her forearm in contemplation. “Well there’s three demon bars in the city: two in Manhattan, and one over in Brooklyn, but the Flamethrower is the seediest. If I were looking for someone like her, that’d be the first place I’d try.”

  “Is it in the Yellow Pages?” Rue asked.

  I almost laughed, but it came out a snort instead, just loud enough to be audible. Toren glared at me. Rue’s question wasn’t an unreasonable one, but it struck me as funny somehow. Oddly, it wasn’t the looking up a demon bar in the phone book part that made me laugh, but the idea that she wouldn’t suggest Google instead. I found it endearing, but Toren was still glaring at me.

  “Actually they’re not listed,” Julian said. He bent to scribble on another sheet in his notepad and handed that to Arie too. “Although be careful. You don’t want to mess around in that place. Demons don’t really mess with outsiders, but they will if it’s self-serving or if you piss one of them off.”

  “And they’re easy to piss off. You can piss off a demon doing damn near anything,” Rayna added.

  None of this reassured me.

  “And what if she has friends that can back her up?” Arie asked.

  “I’m not worried about her having friends. What I am worried about is her owing someone who might not be too keen on you messing with someone that still hasn’t paid their debt. You get what I’m saying?” Julian asked.

  Arie gave his friend a quick nod. “Yeah, Flamethrower, be careful dealing with demons. I got it.”

  “If you get yourselves in trouble, I’m not sure that I can help you whether you’re friends with Julian or not. That bar isn’t in my district, but I’ll see what I can do if you need me,” Rayna said.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  She nodded. “Let’s just hope you don’t need me.”

  I hopped like hell that we wouldn’t, but my stomach felt like it had lead in it as we trooped out of Julian’s office. On the way out I noticed you could see through the glass walls in his office from this side, but not from outside in the lounge in front of the reception desk. The receptionist wished us a good day as we exited and headed back toward the elevators. Everything in this place was shiny, metallic, and perfectly polished. It didn’t matter to me how pristine it was; my stomach shifted on the elevator and continued to do summersaults all the way down to the bottom floor.

  We were so close now that I could almost feel it in my bones, and a swirl of anxiety rushed through me. When we piled back into a cab and headed to find Ty, I caught Arie looking at me strangely, like he was seeing me for the first time.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re not Katarina,” he said.

  Rue and Toren were both watching him.

  “I told you this,” I said.

  “Then who are you?”

  I sighed. “I’m Holly, but I already told you that too.”

  “And I’m in love with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I can see why.”

  Then he was staring out the window, watching the traffic and the pedestrians that sometimes seemed to be moving faster than the cars crowding the streets. I’d never had faith, never really believed in anything, but I swore that if I ever got Arie back I’d do anything. I’d give up my soul if it meant that we could be together. Which seemed appropriate, considering we were headed to find a demon.

  Chapter 14

  We’d been standing outside Ty’s apartment for nearly twenty minutes. Arie banged on the door yet again. The door to the apartment across the hall flew open instead.

  “Hey, I work nights! Could you quit with that racket? I’m trying to sleep over here!”

  A rumpled and angry-looking redhead shot daggers at Arie.

  “Sorry, we’re trying to get a hold of Ty,” I said.

  She looked the four of us over with dark-circled eyes and only mild interest. “You know him?”

 
; “Yes,” I lied. I got the distinct impression that she didn’t really care about anything other than a short answer that would allow her to go back to bed.

  She shrugged. “He won’t answer.”

  “Why?” Rue asked.

  “Well, I imagine he’s probably wallowing in misery and drowning in a puddle of his own drool by now.”

  Rue and I exchanged a look.

  Toren glared at her. “I don’t care about his drool.”

  The redhead crossed her arms. “If I give you a key to let yourselves in will you stop making so much noise?”

  Toren smirked. “Lady, we’ll be quiet as church mice.”

  “Right. Whatever.”

  She turned and started rummaging through a candy dish just inside her door. “Here.” She threw a set of keys at Toren and then slammed the door.

  “Nice neighbor,” I muttered.

  “Nothing like giving a set of complete strangers the keys to your house just so you can go back to bed,” Rue said.

  “Nah,” Toren said. “I’d have just picked the lock anyway if he continued to ignore us banging on the door.”

  I didn’t care how or why she had Ty’s keys when it had worked out to our advantage and it kept Toren from breaking and entering. Toren unlocked the door, and the first thing that hit me was the god-awful smell. His apartment smelled sour, like somewhere in its depths was rotten food. The second smell that hit me was the booze, but I would’ve known even if my keen sense of smell hadn’t honed in on it. Evidence of his heavy drinking was spread in all directions in the form of empty bottles. It looked like more than any one person could possibly consume. And there were so many flies it wasn’t even funny.

  Lying on the beige sofa was a blanket-covered lump with a mop of hair sticking out of one end and feet out of the other. Ty. I really, really hoped that he had simply drunk until he passed out.

  Arie nudged one of the legs that dangled from the sofa with his foot. “Get up.”

  Ty didn’t move.

  Oh, no.

  “Is he dead?” I whispered.

  Arie shook him hard. “I said get up.”

  He groaned. “I’m going to fucking kill Ava for giving you my key.”

  “The sooner you get up and answer a few questions, the sooner we can be on our way,” I said.

  “Why should I tell you anything? Get the fuck out of my apartment.”

  “Where’s Daeveena?” Toren asked.

  That got his attention. He shot up so that he was sitting rather than half-hanging off the sofa. The blanket that had been wrapped around him loosened, and the unpleasant aroma of unwashed were-shifter hit me with full force. When was the last time he’d taken a shower? Or shaved for that matter? His face didn’t just have stubble. It had grown into a full beard, which I’m sure reeked just like the rest of him.

  “How should I know?” he asked.

  I wrinkled my nose. “Anything you could tell us would really help.”

  It was difficult to keep from gagging, even though I was at least four feet away from the sofa.

  He rubbed at his temples and then leaned back into the cushions. “I broke it off with her. I have no idea where she is.”

  “We need to find her,” Arie said.

  “Yeah, well, maybe you should go back home and wait for her to look up her sister. That’s about the only other person she cares about, and I imagine she’ll turn up sooner or later.”

  “We can’t wait for her to come around,” Rue said with quiet conviction.

  “Then I can’t help you. Sorry.”

  My heart deflated like a balloon. “There’s nothing that you can give us to go on? Does she have any other friends here in New York?”

  “Look, you see all those hangers over there?” He gestured to the hangers strewn from the door to his apartment down the short hallway to the bedroom. Instead of cleaning up the depressing path, he’d opted to drink himself into a stupor. “She took all her stuff and she left.”

  “I know this must be hard, and I’m sorry we barged in on you like this. We wouldn’t have come here if it wasn’t important. You mean there’s nothing at all—not one thing that you can tell me that might help us find her?”

  I was practically begging, but nothing else mattered. We had to find Daeveena and make her restore Arie’s memories or I might end up a pathetic unwashed heap too. I couldn’t go back to Chicago empty-handed.

  “I’ve told you everything I know. Now go.”

  I wanted to hit something. Hard.

  Arie seized my hand. “There’s nothing for us here.”

  I looked down, surprised that he’d grabbed my hand.

  “Okay.”

  I snatched my hand away when his thumb stroked the back of my hand. It was just too painful. Him touching me the way he always had nearly killed me. I knew he was just trying to comfort me, and there was nothing more I wanted to do then to throw myself into his arms. But it didn’t feel right. Not when he didn’t know me.

  He looked puzzled when I’d pulled away, maybe even a little hurt, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Let’s just go.”

  Ty regarded both of us and sighed. “You might want to try one of the demon bars.”

  “Any particular one?” Arie asked.

  “I’d try the Flamethrower or Wicked Heat. Both of them have card rooms in the back, and she likes to gamble.”

  “Thank you,” Rue said.

  “Come on,” Toren said. “I could go for a drink anyway.”

  We left Ty to return to his own personal pity party and regrouped outside on the steps to his apartment building.

  Arie clutched the paper with the address to the Flamethrower. “Let’s try the Flamethrower first. If she’s not there we’ll try the other one.”

  “And what if she’s not at either one?” Toren asked the question that I refused to acknowledge even though it dwelled in the back of my mind.

  “Then we go home,” Arie said.

  “No!” I grabbed his arm. “Then Rue does another locator spell. We’re not giving up.”

  “We can do that,” Arie said slowly. “But you might need to realize that this is it and there’s nothing more to do.”

  I ignored him and took the cement steps two at a time until I was on the sidewalk and hailing a cab. The three of them followed behind.

  “Yeah, well, we’re not there yet. There’s still plenty that we can do.”

  I’d be damned if we’d come all this way for nothing. Arie meant more to me than anyone in this world, except for maybe Elizabeth and Rue. I wasn’t ready to let go, and I’d hold on for as long as I could. I’d hold on for forever if that’s what it took. Love was crazy and it made you do crazy things.

  A cab pulled up to the curb and we all piled into the back, once again crammed up against each other. When I gave the cab driver the address he gave me a strange look in the rearview mirror, like maybe he knew the place and perhaps even had a hunch about us being vampires. I couldn’t imagine how that was possible, and didn’t really care to think about it at the moment.

  Yes, love makes you do crazy things indeed. Like risk your life and frequent demon bars.

  * * *

  The Flamethrower was located on a side street, down a short flight of stairs littered with cigarette butts and a few stray beer bottles. On the outside, it looked like any other sketchy bar back home in Chicago. Toren led the way down the steps; for all we knew we were heading for some hole-in-the-wall hellhole. Literally. What Rayna had said about the place wasn’t overly reassuring, and I’d hoped like hell that we’d find Daeveena with Julian’s cousin. He pulled open an unmarked red door, which led into an alcove where a beefy-looking bouncer hunkered over a stool guarding another door. This one was marked with a glimmering symbol that looked like burnt copper, but maybe it was a trick of the light, because when I looked again it was gone.

  Strange.

  I nudged Rue, who’d been looking at the door too. She nodded. Oka
y, so it wasn’t my imagination. Clearly, there had been a symbol on the door because Rue had seen it too. The bouncer gave us a once-over and stood up. Man was he big.

  “You can’t go in there,” he said before we even had a chance to speak. “This is a private club.”

  Toren smirked. “What, is there a cover charge?”

  Always the perpetual smartass. I had a feeling from the look on the bouncer’s face that Toren running his mouth might get us in a lot of trouble. He took two steps toward Toren.

  I stepped between both of them. “I know this is a private club. I saw the symbol on the door and figured you’d be less than welcoming, but we’re not here to cause a problem. We’re just looking for someone.” I paused. “A friend,” I lied.

  “You can see that?” the bouncer asked as he gestured toward the door.

  I nodded.

  “And who are you looking for?”

  “Daeveena.”

  The bouncer seemed to consider this for a moment and then stepped aside. He grabbed my arm as I headed toward the door with the disappearing symbol. “Don’t make me regret this,” he said.

  I nodded. “You won’t.”

  He grunted, but let go of my arm. It was a good thing, too, because Toren looked like he was about to break his hand. I grabbed the brass handle on the door to the bar and yanked it open. Arie, Toren, and Rue followed me into its shadowy depths, but I heard Toren mutter, “So no cover charge,” as he passed the bouncer on his way in.

  I shook my head. -Don’t.-

  -Why?-

  It wasn’t even worth a response, so I kept moving, but then stopped, so abruptly that Rue almost smacked into me. When we passed through the symbol-marked door, a current ran through me. I didn’t know what I’d expected, but there were only two people sitting at the bar. The charge that had zapped me on the way through didn’t hurt, but it did seem to signal the bartender, who stopped wiping down the bar to look up at us. He pointed to the wall across from the bar and then I realized the two patrons weren’t human at all. The one on the right turned and his face morphed into a hideously deformed and mangled skin-rag that looked like it might melt onto the bar. The face of the woman sitting with him was replaced by a black pit of nothingness that looked like it could swallow me whole. When I blinked, they were human again, but a chill crept up my spine and the bartender was still pointing at the wall.