He never saw the base of my right palm shoot up. Just grunted with shock as it jammed into his jaw and knocked his head backward. He staggered. Cole aimed the tranq gun at Kamal to make sure he stayed peaceful as I fol owed Yousef down the sidewalk, throwing a side kick that landed on his chest with the thump of a bongo drum. He landed flat on his back in the street.
I watched him struggle to breathe as I said, “We go where we please.”
Cole translated. To my surprise Yousef smiled. I looked over my shoulder at Kamal. He was staring around nervously, making me think he didn’t savor a conversation with any authorities that might show to investigate the noise. He didn’t seem concerned about Yousef. Maybe girls hit him a lot.
“Feel better?” Cole asked me.
I backed off before the bul y’s blech could stick to my sunny-day outfit. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
We headed down the street, keeping our eyes and Cole’s gun on the mini gang until we reached the end of the block and turned north. Yousef cal ed after us.
“Unbelievable,” said Cole as he shook his head.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He wants to know if he can see you again. He says his uncle’s friend owns a good restaurant above the Djemaa el Fna.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“No.” Cole’s wild blond hair danced at the suggestion. “I think he liked what you did to him. In fact, I think he liked you. Do you think he’l try to fol ow us?”
“Move fast,” I urged, pul ing him into the next al ey. It would mean doubling back, but Yousef was one freak worth losing. At the same time I asked, “Bergman, is our mark stil there?”
“He hasn’t moved.” Finally, good news.
At the end of the al ey we turned into another neglected street. This one didn’t even have sidewalks to separate the painstakingly carved apartment doors from the hit-and-run lanes. A single light at midblock threw a weak glow onto the run-down two-stories, al owing for multiple hidden spaces where people could do their worst to each other without ever being witnessed.
Our heavy breathing combined with the stress we felt at having to confront our target should’ve alerted him. But feeding vamps are so immersed in the moment they rarely sense their hunters. Ours had stopped beside an empty donkey cart, a hulking shadow stooping next to the wheel like he was checking its integrity. Except that a man wearing a plain white shirt, wrinkled blue pants, and backless leather shoes that dangled from his toes like dead squirrels lay twitching on the cobblestones beneath him.
Movement at the corner of my eye sent my hand to Grief. But it was just one of the gaunt, raggedy-eared cats that stalked the streets for scraps. This one must be hoping for a feast. It darted away when Cole strode forward, switching off his gun’s safety as he said, “That’s enough.
Drop the guy before you kil him.”
The vampire turned. And my heart broke like it had every night I’d been forced to witness this scene. While Cole lifted the cart driver onto his seat and slipped him the wages we’d promised, I watched the creature that had shattered my defenses and made me fal in love lick the man’s blood from his lips.
“Madame Berggia,” Vayl said to me as he straightened. “Why are you interrupting my meal?” Madame Berggia. I think that hurts the most, Vayl.
That you were calling out my name like I’d invented sex three days ago, now you don’t even remember it, and we can’t figure out why. Do you know how much I’d give to hear you call me Jasmine that special way you do, like a song (Yazmeena), right this second?
“You could’ve kil ed the poor guy,” I said dul y.
“You saw him in the Djemaa el Fna,” he replied. “He shoved his wife. He was shouting at his children.” Because we paid him to. So we could set up your hunt tonight and make sure your victim didn’t end up dead.
Like the first one nearly did, before we realized what had happened the night we arrived in Marrakech when you went missing and we had to hunt you for real. The night you woke with such a bizarre case of amnesia that you thought you were still a Rogue, still outside of your vow never to take human blood, and so deep in this brain-blip of yours that you’d mistaken all of us for people who shared your life over two hundred and thirty years ago!
I wanted to slap him with those words like a dueling glove. But he’d just look confused, and I’d be extra miserable. So I said, “The man’s family would starve without him.”
Vayl lowered his eyebrows. “I did not hire you to remind me of such things.”
I shoved my hands into the pockets of my sundress. It was one of his favorites, and I’d hoped seeing it would snap him out of his past. But he stil believed that I was his frumpy middle-aged housekeeper. He also thought Cole was my husband, his valet, who he simply cal ed Berggia. In his mind we’d just traveled to Morocco from his estate in England along with his beloved ward, Helena, whose part was played—grumpily—by Bergman.
My hands closed around the items most likely to console me. In my right pocket sat the long knife my great-great-grandpa, Samuel Parks, had used during his stint as a machine-gun operator in World War I. Mistress Kiss My Ass (my loudly suffering seam-stress) had skil ful y made a place for the sheath in al my clothes. My left pocket held eight poker chips that rang like bel s in my ear when I shuffled them. And on a silver hoop attached to the material so it wouldn’t get lost: my engagement ring. I hadn’t worn it long. But I cherished it now more than ever, because I was sure the man who’d slipped the pear-shaped emerald on my finger eighteen months ago would never forget me, no matter where he ended up. Right, Matt?
It’s not like you’ve slipped Vayl’s mind. Not Matt’s voice. He’d kept a steady silence since the vampire Aidyn Strait had murdered him two weeks after our engagement.
On the other hand, my Granny May, who ruled my frontal lobe, couldn’t wait to comment. He believes he’s living over two hundred and thirty years before he met you, she reminded me.
Exactly! The way he looks at it, Jaz Parks doesn’t exist at all!
So quit whining and figure out why! Granny May had taken up needlepoint. She sat in her tree-fil ed backyard in the old metal chair she left out year-round (paint flecks hinted that it had once been red) alternately watching the cardinals fight over the sunflower seeds at her gazebo feeder and taking long, smooth stitches in a piece of fabric the size of a pil owcase.
I watched her manipulate the needle with one hand while the other steadied the hoop that framed her workspace. Why did I suddenly think she would’ve been just as precise with a throwing knife? I shook my head.
I’m not whining!… Okay, I am. It’s such sucktacular timing, that’s all! I mean, I may have control of the demon in my head. But I think you need reminding that Brude is still a Domytr. Which means Satan’s go-to guy is not going to give up without a fight. Especially when he was so close to succeeding at his own coup. And there’s Vayl, out of his right mind just when I need him to be the sharpest!