Delilah Dawson - Wicked After Midnight

“Did you see everything?” he asked.

Without thinking, probably because of the lack of blud in my brain, I blurted, “I mostly watched your butt.”

That got his attention. He was instantly focused on me, his light eyes shining in the darkness. “Did you now, bébé ?”

“Oh, well, I . . .” I looked down and fidgeted, very un-Bludman-like.

Light hands settled on my hips as he stepped into my personal space. “What is it you fear, Demi? You walk right up to the line and kick dirt over it and laugh, yet you won’t step over. Do you think a man minds being admired?”

“Of course not. I just . . .”

“Are you ashamed of me, then? Do you not find my backside pleasing?”

“What? No! Vale, come on.” My cheeks were red, my insides all twisted up. “Your butt is . . . awesome. I just . . . I didn’t break into the Louvre with you to talk about . . . this.”

“This?”

“Us.”

“And yet here we are. All alone in the greatest museum in Franchia. Think of all the things we could be doing here, and yet we stand arguing in a hall. You could always kiss me to into silence.”

For a brief moment, I let myself think of all the things we could be doing—against this very wall, on one of the velvet couches, upstairs in the Sun King’s old bed. And yet . . . I couldn’t.

“My life is really complicated right now, Vale.”

“Yes, and that is why it’s good to have someone on your side.”

“You’re already on my side.”

“But I could be on your inside, too.”

A fire burst into life in my belly and radiated outward. I knew what he meant, but it was the double entendre that really caught me. And maybe it would have been easy to give in. But I knew how relationships happened in Sang, and no matter what I had thought about romance from the confines of the caravan, I wasn’t ready to give up my autonomy and start letting him call the shots. Especially when his first demand would be that I stop seeing Lenoir and drinking absinthe.

But I couldn’t tell him that, so I chickened out and went for the cheap shot.

“Maybe once I’ve found Cherie. But until then . . .”

“Until then, you dance on your side of the line.” He dug tight fists into his eyes. “And I dance along with you. From the other side.”

“I have responsibilities.”

“You keep saying that. As if I don’t know. Mon dieu, bébé , do you hear yourself?” He rubbed his head as he paced back and forth, more agitated than I’d yet seen him. “I have halted my life to help you. I have not been back to my tribe since I found you. I haven’t seen my horse. Do you think I am a boy playing a game?”

“I do, actually. You’re using me to avoid your real responsibilities.”

“You are the only thing I’ve ever cared about besides horses! You are my responsibility! So do not toy with me, because I am not a toy.”

His passion shook me, and I was torn between running away and clawing off his clothes to screw him senseless on the floor of the Louvre. But I did neither. “I’m not used to you being serious, Vale.”

“Perhaps I hide my true intentions behind jests because in truth, bébé , the way I feel about you terrifies me. But you don’t wish to hear that.” He pulled out a pocket watch and checked the time. “But for now, let me return you to your giant, lonely bed, as I know you have . . . business tomorrow.”

I snorted. “Oh, so you get to sleep with all the girls at Paradis, but if I don’t fall at your feet and do whatever you say, you get to call me a whore? That’s fair.”

Vale’s jaw dropped, and I’d never seen him look so caught out. “ Bébé , no. That’s not what I—”

I put up a hand. “That’s exactly what you meant. You imply it almost every day. And I’ve never slept with any of them, never even kissed them. So let me do my job, and I’ll let you do yours. Which way is the bathroom with the ladder?”

Giving me a long, charged, measuring look, he pointed down the hall. “I might hide behind humor, but you, ma chère , hide behind cruelty.”

I started walking with my back as straight as a curtain rod, and he followed. We didn’t talk all the way through the Louvre, which had lost its midnight luster for me. Down through the hole in the floor, we were silent. Tromping through the sewers, we didn’t say a word.

And I hated it. God, how I hated it. But he hadn’t apologized. And he needed to.

Conveyances were scarce, but at least the one we finally landed had more room in it, which meant we weren’t forced to touch. The air was too thick with resentment for words, anyway. Still, he insisted on seeing me to the back door of Paradis.

“Thanks for a shitty date in a sewer,” I said.

“And thank you for ruining a lovely experience in a romantic museum.”

We stared at each other, breathing audibly through our noses.

“Weren’t we supposed to go see some shady friend of yours and bleed me out?” I spat.

He shook his head, smiling the saddest little smile. “It was only pretense, bébé . Just an excuse to enjoy your company. I was going to take you out for a stroll. There is no way I would put your blud into another man’s hands. Not now.”

“Well, why didn’t you fucking say so? You romantic idiot!” I stormed upstairs, hating the way my hat was bobbing stupidly and even more the way I felt like a spoiled, silly child.

“Good night, bébé ,” I heard just before I slammed my door.

There was something on my pillow, and I picked it up with hands still hot with anger.

“ Merde .”

It was a small book. “The Elements of Signing with Style” was printed in gold on the cover, along with a hand making the Okay sign.

I ran downstairs to screw his brains out and confess my feelings, in that order.

The hall was empty.

It was goodto wake refreshed and without a headache, even if I was sleepy and still conflicted over my time with Vale and our troubling good-bye. I was alert enough to slip the book back under my blankets before Blaise entered with my teacup of blood. When he presented a second vial nestled in his tiny blue hands, I shrugged and drank that one, too. Wholesome warmth bloomed in my belly, but when I licked my lips, I longed to taste bloodwine tinged with Lenoir’s special cocktail of absinthe. Tomorrow seemed very far away.

The morning was a flurry of makeup, hot hair tongs, fitting dresses and skirts, and the occasional sting of a pin when Blue wasn’t satisfied with the fit. Fully dressed in my Demitasse costume, I called for a break, taking a quick cup of perfectly warmed blood handed over by the surly bartender. The afternoon belonged to two run-throughs of the chandelier act in my new outfit while dangling high over the stage. Charline and Sylvie knew me well enough now to avoid the fury they would have caused by requesting that I start my practice just a few feet from the floor. I never slipped, never faltered. The confidence and grace of a predator were well suited to performing onstage, and all the high-quality blood had done its work. Even Charline was pleased, and when the curtain went up on a packed house, I was ready.

Every performer dreams of the flawless opening night, and that night I had mine. No one missed a cue. The daimon orchestra’s music was perfection. The girls had never smiled so brightly or kicked so high. The collective gasp as I descended on a giant golden chandelier covered with dripping faux diamonds—well, I drank up their adoration and wonder with the hunger of a daimon. They loved it. They loved us.

They loved me.

And I loved performing for them. This was what I’d dreamed of every night in Criminy’s caravan. A packed house, a sea of tuxedos and faces suffused with red. The hot kiss of spotlights, the breathless exultation of a standing ovation. I was a star, and no one could take it away from me.