“There you are. Lieutenant, it’s been a pleasure.” He took her hand, held it firmly. “But I really need to get back to work. Roarke. I hope you’ll both come back, for the entertainment.”
Through the fog that shimmered and curled, he glided off again, easing his way through the crowd. Eve shifted her body, stared hard at the bartender. “You want to tell me why you lied for him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Busily now, Allesseria wiped the bar.
“You don’t see a woman whose face is all over the screen and mags, and she comes in at least twice, hangs with your boss. You don’t make her.” Some of the anger she felt for herself snapped out in her voice. “But you remember Dorian got a spring water at two in the morning.”
“That’s right.”
“I need your full name.”
“You’re going to cost me my job if you don’t back off.”
“Full name,” Eve repeated.
“Allesseria Carter. If you have any more questions, I’m calling a lawyer.”
“That’ll do it for now. You remember anything, get in touch.” Eve laid one of her cards on the bar before she stepped away. “If that wasn’t Kent ’s Prince of frigging Darkness pigs are currently dive-bombing Fifth Avenue.”
“Blood will tell,” Roarke said quietly.
“Bet your fine ass.”
Once they were out on the street, Peabody ’s sigh was long and heartfelt. “Man. Creepshow-even if the Lord of the Undead is intensely sexy.”
“Looked like another freak to me,” McNab muttered.
“You’re a guy who likes women. If you were a woman who liked men, we’d still be rolling your tongue back into your mouth. He completely smoked, right, Dallas?”
Women had found her father attractive, Eve thought. No matter what he’d done to them.
“I’m sure Tiara Kent thought the same even as he was draining the life out of her. I’m going to call a black-and-white for you. I want you to take the blood sample directly to the lab, wait while it’s logged in.”
“Got it.” Peabody took the sample, stowed it in her bag.
“I’ll run our host, and the bartender. This isn’t his first time around the block-and she was lying about seeing him this morning. Lab comes through quickly enough, we’ll be giving Vadim a very unpleasant wake-up call.”
They separated, and as she walked Eve gave Roarke a quick hip bump. Now that she was on the street, away from Vadim, away from those pulsing lights, she felt herself again. “You’re quiet.”
“Contemplating. He was scoping you, you know. Subtle but quite deliberate.” When she started to jam her hands into her pockets, Roarke took one, brought it casually to his lips. “He wanted to see your reaction-and mine.”
“Must be disappointed we didn’t give him one. Or much of one on your part.”
“More puzzled, I’d think.”
“Okay, why didn’t you slap him back?”
“It was tempting, but more satisfying to let him wonder. In any case, he’s not your type.”
She snorted. “Nah. I don’t go for the tall, dark, gorgeous types who exude sexuality like breath.”
“You don’t go for sociopaths.”
She glanced up at him. He’d seen it, too, she realized. He’d seen at least that much, too. “You got that right.”
“Besides, I’m taller.”
Now she laughed, and because really, what did it hurt, she turned as she climbed the platform to the car, feigned judging his height as she laid her hands on his shoulders. She pressed her lips to his, warm, ripe, real, then eased back. “Yeah, I’d say you’re exactly tall enough to fit my requirements. You drive, ace. I want to start the runs on the way home.”
She used her PPC, and though it was limited to a mini-screen, Dorian Vadim’s ID photo still had punch. His hair had been shorter when it was taken, but it still brushed past his shoulders. It listed his age at thirty-eight, his birthplace as Budapest, where according to his data, he still had a mother.
It also listed a very impressive sheet.
“Grifting’s a specialty of our suave Mister V,” Eve related. “Lotsa pops there, starting with a juvie record that was never sealed. Bounced around Europe and came to the States, it seems, in his early twenties. Arrests for smuggling-no convictions on that. Illegals, some pops, some questioned and released. Worked as an entertainer-mesmerist and magician. Hmmm. A lot of dropped charges, heavy on the female vics. Was questioned about the disappearance of two women he reputedly bilked. Not enough evidence to arrest, and no DNA in his records.
“Slithered through the system like a snake,” she muttered. “No violence on record, but wits recant or poof with regularity.” She frowned over at Roarke. “You buy into that mesmo stuff?”
“Hypnotism is a proven art, you know Mira uses it in therapy.”
“Yeah, but mostly I think it’s bull.” Still she remembered the odd sensation she’d felt when Dorian had stared into her eyes. Her problem, she told herself. Her personal demons.
“Anyway, the man’s bad news. And he’s got a pattern of victimizing women, wealthy ones particularly.”
She did a quick run on the bartender and found no criminal on Allesseria. “Bartender’s clean. Divorced, with a kid just turning three.” Eve pursed her lips as Roarke drove through the open gates toward home. “I get her in the box, even alone at her own place, I can break her. She’s lying about seeing Dorian. I could snap her statement in five minutes without him around. He scares her.”
“He’s a killer.”
“Yeah, no question.”
“I mean she knows it, or believes it. You’re capable of snapping her statement, and he’s equally capable of snapping her neck-and with a great deal less passion.”
“Wouldn’t disagree. I just wonder why you’d say that after one conversation with him.”
“I would have said it after one look at him. His eyes. He’s a vampire.”
Her mouth dropped open as he stopped the car. She hadn’t managed to get words working with her thoughts until she’d pushed out of the car, rounded the hood to meet him. “You said what?”
“I mean it literally. His type sucks the life out of people, and does it for momentary pleasure, just as effectively as any fictional vampire. And he’s just, darling Eve, as soulless.”
Like her father, Eve thought. Yes, Roarke had seen it, too. He’d seen all of it. There was nothing strange or frightening about recognizing a monster.
It only meant she understood her quarry.
Eve stepped in, pulled off her jacket. She gestured toward Summerset, Roarke’s majordomo, who-as he inevitably did-stood waiting in the foyer in his funereal black suit. “I always figured vampires looked like that. Pale, bony, dour, and dead.” She tossed the jacket on the newel and started up the stairs.
“Will you be having dinner in the dining room like normal human beings this evening?” Summerset asked.
“Got work, and nobody who looks like you should toss around words like ‘normal’.”
“We’ll get something upstairs,” Roarke said placidly.
He strolled with Eve into her office, then immediately whipped around and boxed her against the wall. “I think I’ll start with an appetizer,” he said, then crushed his lips to hers.
Her blood went to instant sizzle. She could all but feel her brains leaking out of her ears as his mouth ravaged hers with a kind of feral impatience that thrilled. Even as she gripped his hips, he was doing torturous things to her body with those quick and clever hands.
She gulped in air, and simply gave herself to the wild and wanton moment. And to him.
She would always give. He knew no matter how much he wanted, she would always be there to give, or take, to meet those endless, urgent needs with her own. Her mouth was a fever on his. A moan poured from her as he tugged her shirt apart, then found that warm, trembling flesh with his lips, his teeth.
The taste of her incited a fresh and mammoth wave of hunger.
Her hands yanked at the hook of his trousers as his yanked at hers. And she pressed erotically against him, core to core.