It was so stupid: he wasn’t even touching me, but the sight of his hand moving like that made me think of things that would ordinarily have made me blush. Lost in my thoughts, watching Aram’s hand, I completely missed the next act, only noting it was another female performer and that she had been a redhead. I wanted to reach out and take Aram’s hand just so it would stop the slow sensual movement. I had to get a grip on myself.
I took a long pull from my beer bottle and made a determined effort to focus on the stage in time for the last act. The stage turned and another set was revealed. A pink chaise lounge stood in front of five mirrors, and reclined on the chaise was a petite woman. Ringlets of yellow blonde hair fell around her shoulders, and when she opened her eyes they were china blue. The whalebone corset around her chest looked so tight that I found myself wondering how she breathed.
As she turned slowly on the chaise to look at the audience, the feathers that made up what I think was supposed to be a skirt fluffed up. Music started, melodic and bouncy, and I was surprised when the woman’s perfectly painted lips opened and she began to sing.
The dress is Chanel. The shoes YSL.
I recognized the song from the movie Burlesque; the girl sang with all the power and conviction of Christina Aguilera while she danced and moved like a pussy cat doll.
They all say, “Darling, what did you do for those pearls?” She placed a hand coquettishly over her mouth. What?! I am a good girl.
She danced to a mirror and as she looked back, her eyes really did look innocent, if a bit glazed, and her rosy cheeks were shiny under the spotlights. The mirror twirled around, taking her out of sight, and the other four mirrors spun around, revealing the acrobatic quartet, in new matching outfits, dancing as back-up. Her mirror spun once more, bringing her back for the next verse of the song: playful, smiling, teasing and kicking her legs girlishly.
You know I have found the words goin’ round. They all say my feet never do touch the ground. She made the same gesture of her hand over her mouth, just like in the movie.
What?! I am a good girl.
The dancing got a little more riotous, mainly from the identical quartet, until the music ran down. They struck poses around the couch as the singer collapsed onto it, mock exhausted. The applause was deafening, and I joined in. It was a brilliant performance.
A woman slithered out onto the stage. Her black coat had a train that followed behind her like a serpent tail, feathers fluffed up around her collar like an angry bird, and her face was so meticulously painted that you had to look hard to see the nips and tucks she’d had. Her hair was piled onto her head like Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and her fire engine red nails had to be at least two inches long. I wondered how she was able to pick anything up, let alone hold the microphone in her left hand.
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you for joining us tonight. Let us thank the stars of our show!” She took a step backwards extending her arm. “Prima.”
A spotlight lit the back of the stage, showing the black-haired woman smiling and holding a pose.
“The Seasons,” the hostess called next, and one after another spotlights fell on the four acrobatic dancers as she called their individual names. “Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.” The next spotlight hit on the redhead I’d hardly noticed; her name was Ember.
“And last but not least,” she said as the final spotlight illuminated the smallest of the performers, “Trinket.”
As Trinket curtsied in a way I can only describe as childlike and cute, her smile didn’t seem as bright as that of her fellows. Her gaze seemed to rove the crowd for something, and when her eyes fell on me—I knew it was me she was looking at because I felt the intensity of her gaze—I felt that she was trying to communicate something to me. It was strange, and I tried to brush it off; but I couldn’t stop the cold shiver that slithered down to the base of my spine.
Chapter Five
As the performance wound to a close, I had the excuse I needed to get up and leave. Incarra, though, needed the bathroom, which made us linger longer than I wanted. I did not want to give Aram the chance to get me alone; I didn’t know what I would do if he did.
From my spot outside the ladies’ room, waiting on Incarra, I saw Aram and Jareth waiting by our table, obviously waiting to escort us home. Jareth had the look on his face that men get when they think women are being silly. It was not a look I liked on the older vampire.
I began to wonder if Jareth had set this whole thing up; not the converted warehouse and the show, because that would have been elaborate even for him, but sending us each the tickets so that we would be forced into seeing each other. It wouldn’t be the first time I had suspected Aram’s brother of trying to mend our broken fences. He was a plotter and a schemer, that one.
A woman exiting the bathroom knocked into me. As she hit me, the bare skin of her arm touched my hand and I was sucked into a black tinged vision of her death. There was a terrible urgency to the vision that told me it would happen soon and it would not be natural.
When I came back to myself, Incarra was staring at me, and I couldn’t see the young woman who’d brushed past me. I looked around the departing crowd desperately.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” Incarra asked, clearly alarmed by my expression.
“The woman who bumped me. Did you see which way she went?”
“Yeah, she headed toward the stairs. She didn’t pickpocket you, did she?” Incarra pushed up her sleeves as if ready to bring wrath down upon her.
“No. I think she’s going to die,” I stuttered, which disarmed Incarra. “In fact, I’m sure she’s going to be murdered. We have to find her.”
I started into the crowd. Everyone was trying to leave at once. I started pushing my way through, ignoring the grunts and curses. Incarra followed suit, hot on my heels.
“You’re really serious, aren’t you?” she asked as we emerged at the top of the stairs. People filed out to waiting cars and taxis; some were walking away in groups. I looked around but caught no sight of the woman; still, she couldn’t have gone far. The vision had placed her murder on this street. She had to be walking home.
“Yes, absolutely serious. I can’t see her. Can you?”
Incarra shook her head. I rallied and started heading toward the main road. This whole area was a maze of alleys and side streets that wound themselves around warehouses. Incarra stayed with me.
“We should split up, each take a different route,” she said, but before she could leave my side I grabbed her arm. I didn’t want her going off on her own, not on this side–it was far too dangerous. She shrugged off my hand and my explanation.
“We’ll cover more ground and I’ll be fine. I won’t do anything that could be considered brave, I promise.”
I had to admit that it made sense to split up but I was worried about her: she had no weapon, no magic to protect her like I did. I reached into my purse and handed her a canister of mace. I had it since I was a teenager and never had to use it. She arched a brow at me.
“What? It’ll disarm a bad guy.”
“Is it magical?”
I shook my head, smiling at her. “No, it’s mace, which I have on good authority really stings.”
She nodded and went left while I went right. I didn’t exactly run, because I find running in heels to be extremely difficult, but I more or less trotted, peering down alleys, walking into one or two.
It was disturbing to see someone die before it had happened, and even worse to think that I could stop it. I wanted to save this woman from a horrible, unnecessary death.
I ran into another alley, only to bump straight into a hard, pale chest. Aram was caught between desire and anger. He obviously didn’t like that I’d made a mad dash to get out of the show and away from him before we could talk. I took an involuntary step back.
“Have you seen a brunette about so tall?” I asked, making a rough scale with my hand in the air.
Aram shook his head, looking puzzled.
“Great!” I started to go around him, but he grabbed me by the arm, spinning me so that my back was against the alley wall with him looming over me. He had something planned, a further assault on my resistance to come rushing back into his arms.
“Please, I don’t have time…” I barely had the time to voice my protest before he took one long step and pressed his cool, demanding mouth over mine, kissing me like I hadn’t been kissed in months. I’d almost forgotten his familiar, comforting taste. He pulled back from the kiss, smiling because I was already a little breathless; when he nipped my ear, I forgot why and where I was going.
“I have missed you, pet.” He kissed along my jaw, down my neck to find the scar there and slowly licked along the white rough ridge of it. I gripped his arms, convinced that I needed to push him away; but I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me up if I did, so I just clung helplessly to his sleeves as my body betrayed me. His mere nearness had such a powerful effect on me.
I’d spent ages trying to erase the memory of how much I loved being touched by Aram. Apart from the deluge of erotic dreams he was sending me, I’d been living like a nun and nearly managed. I knew that I loved Aram, but I was still trying to deal with my identity issues that were raised when I discovered I was not human. I couldn’t engage in a relationship with him until I was settled in my own skin and could commit to him—I mean we could literally be together forever. Why couldn’t he understand that I was trying to be fair to him?
I tried to shield myself against him as he caressed my breasts through my top, tried to temper my reactions; but when he bit lightly on my collar bone, I whimpered. Since my discovery—at his hands might I add—that I was a sexual creature, I found I had a woefully small capacity of resistance to someone who could push the right buttons. I hadn’t been with anybody since Aram, and it was shamefully easy for him to prove how well he knew my body. He slipped his hands under my skirt and stroked along my panties. I bit my lip as arousal rushed over me.
“Did you miss me too, my Andra?”
My knees were shaking but I had enough strength of will left not to answer that question; besides, my body was doing a fair job of answering for me. I shivered as his fingers slid under the edge of the damp cotton and delved inside me. I moaned low, fisting his shirt lapels in my hands, dragging him close to me and wondered—not for the first time—if I was perhaps addicted to vampiric sex.
I didn’t have sex on the brain, but I’d never truly been away from him because of the dreams. My body had reacted to them as if they were real, and part of me had begun to look forward to the sensations.
I licked a line up his throat, and it was easy for him to just bend his head back to kissing me. I began to flex my hips in time to his fingers and he had to have known he had me. He pushed me back so that as he ripped my panties from my body I saw him tuck them into his jeans pocket. I felt exposed, and a tiny part of me liked that, liked the danger and thrill this entire encounter was shooting up and down my body.
Aram pressed me back against the wall, showing that he too was enjoying himself and that he didn’t have to use his hands to do it. I moaned as he ground against me; he grabbed my hair to draw my mouth back to his. His free hand pressed between us, unzipping his trousers. There was a brief second of time when I could have stopped him. In that second, I came up with several excuses for why we couldn’t continue. Some of them were even good, non-flimsy ones, like the fact that we were in a dirty alley, anyone could walk by, and I was sure that there was something else I was supposed to be doing.
He never stopped kissing me, even when he hiked my skirt and me up against the wall and entered me. My body and mind became complete in its agreement, we just wanted him, wanted this. I locked my legs around his waist, ignoring how the bricks bit into my butt in favor of giving him a good angle for his hips. Aram purred in a deep contralto as my increased vigor against his mouth nicked my lip on his fang and he tasted my blood. He did away with all caution in favor of hammering noisily into my wet, willing body.
I felt like I wouldn’t be able to draw breath until he found his mark. I looked up for a moment, gasping for air, and thought I saw a pair of beady dark eyes looking down at me. Before I could double check that I wasn’t imagining it, Aram hit his mark and I saw nothing but stars. Aram thrust once more as he had his own moment, shudders rolling down his spine. My warm glow and panting breath were abruptly cut off by a woman’s scream.
Chapter Six
Aram wasn’t pleased with my sudden and erratic dismount. He had ignored the sound of a woman other than me crying out enjoying his afterglow and growled angrily when I shoved him away. I hoped to God that I still had time. I yanked my clothes back into place and ran toward the sound, wobbly but frantic, leaving Aram staring after me. It was a shoe that led me in the right direction. It looked like the owner had broken the heel and instead of stopping to assess the damage, she had just kept going. It was a navy blue pump, the toe twisted toward a nearby alley.
I picked up the shoe with a terrible sense of foreboding and walked slowly toward the alley. Alleys don’t smell good at the best of times, but the coppery smell of blood was overpowering as I walked further into the gloom. The woman’s body was illuminated by a security light over the fire exit of the building on the left. The neon glow lit her frozen, terrified face. Her other shoe was half off, at an angle suggesting that she had fallen or been pushed over. Her shirt was torn open; buttons lay scattered like snowdrops across her body and the alley. Her bra was ripped apart, and the gouge in the middle of her chest was a sickening mass of red. Thankfully, I have always had a strong stomach, but I did drop the shoe in my hand.
Footsteps sounded behind me and I spun, half-expecting the killer, but it was Incarra. She leaned against one wall of the alley, breathing hard. I stood in front of her so that she couldn’t see the sickening mess that had been the woman’s chest; I wanted to protect her as much as I could from having to see everything my world contained.
“What happened? Heard…heard a scream.”
“Too late,” I said, shaking my head. “We were too late.” Incarra looked at me and then tried to look around me. I stepped to block her view again. “You don’t want to see.”
She was clearly racked by curiosity, but she understood that she needed to listen to me. She stepped back out of the alley and I did too, taking my cell phone out of my bag–which was, remarkably, still on my shoulder. I scrolled down my phone book listing and selected a number I’d called only a few times before.
“This is Hamilton.”
“Detective Hamilton, this is Cassandra Farbanks.”
“Cassandra.” He practically purred my name. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I sighed and looked back over my shoulder into the alley. “No pleasure, I’m afraid. I’ve got a body.” I gave him our location.
* * * *
We were surrounded by police and forensics in what seemed like minutes. Hamilton parked on our side of the alley, allowing us to use the front seats of his car as a place to sit. I sat sideways in the driver’s seat with the door open because it faced the action. I saw Doctor Ororo Soltaire, the night shift forensics for homicide, arrive. She gave me a sad little wave and I gave one back. We never seemed to meet each other outside of there being a body to look at, although I quite like her. She had short pixie-cut hair and tended to dress in goth/punk style clothing, not that you saw that under her silvery blue work clothes.
She lifted the tape and went under it into the alley. Incarra tapped me on the shoulder and I turned back to look at her.
“You know all these people?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was seriously beginning to regret having brought my friend over to this side. “We’ve worked together before.”
“So, not granny sitting?”
“No, not granny sitting. I lied. I’m sorry.”
“Seems like you did a lot of that.” She went back to staring out the windscreen. I didn’t know if she was mad at me, sc
ared for me, or just tired from what was turning out to be the weirdest night of her life. Either way I didn’t want to poke at her, so I turned back to watch the police doing their work. The tape lifted again and D.I Hamilton stepped out from the alley. His face was as serious as I had ever seen it, and he shook his head disbelievingly. He flipped over some notes he was making, then turned to walk over to me, his trademark smile absent from his face. I sat with my elbows on my knees, supporting my face on my hands as I watched him approach.
“Despite the situation, I’m pleased to see you again, Cassandra. Now, you want to tell me what happened?”
I gave him a slightly edited version of events. I left out Aram. I left out my vision of seeing the woman dying and played my part down to just discovering the body. If Incarra had a problem with me lying this time, she didn’t speak up but she did get out of the car to walk a little distance off , her posture stiff.
“I know this has to be hard for you,” he said. “Nobody should see another human reduced to that. I can’t help but feel there is more, though. I’ve come to expect that if you find yourself somewhere like this, it’s for a reason.”
He started shaking his pen to get the ink flowing; the pen shot out of his hand, bounced off the door frame, and landed on the floor between my feet, rolling slightly under the car. He slid down to retrieve it and his eyes widened. I followed his look, slammed my legs tight together, and twisted them to the side. His face flushed as his eyes met mine, and I tried not to look as embarrassed as I felt; I hadn’t gotten my panties back from Aram.
Not that they’d have been much use, as he’d ripped them off. Maybe I could have tied the sides back together? Irrelevant, I chided myself. There was no point in worrying about it now; Hamilton had already gotten an eyeful.
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